Eileenburg (14)
Mi had just opened the window and hadn't even had a chance to speak when a foot stretched out from the balcony railing. Ailian's other foot dangled in mid-air before finally reaching the balcony railing as well. Mi let go of her thoughts and heard Ailian panting heavily, her head filled with voices: "Oops, I can reach it!" "It smells so good, I can smell Mi's scent." "Hehe, I'll sneak in and give her a surprise!" Usually, Ailian was dignified, quiet, and composed, rarely speaking. When she was angry, she would call Xiaowei, who was her everyday spokesperson. Mi had never realized that Ailian's little head was full of such talk.
Ailian's feet were dangling from the balcony of Mi's room, her hands pushing back as she shakily moved towards Mi. Mi was too frightened to speak, afraid Ailian would slip and fall. She reached out to support Ailian's legs, but Ailian pushed herself up, her upper body plunging down, her feet barely catching the balcony railing. Mi rushed forward to grab her legs, only to find Ailian gripping a rope, her upper body dangling in mid-air, turning back to smile at Mi.
"Are you crazy?" Mi pulled Ailian up, pressed the smiling Ailian down, and slapped her bottom hard several times, making Ailian sob and cry. Mi, still shaken, hugged Ailian and said through gritted teeth, "Are you out of your mind? Do you know how dangerous this is? Who are you trying to scare to death? You're scaring me to death!"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Ailian, who was crying after being hit, felt guilty upon hearing Mi's words. She mumbled softly, "I'll do it next time—"
"There will be a next time?" Mi glared at Ailian, whose round eyes reflected Mi's slightly red eyes, and whose whole body trembled slightly.
"No next time, no next time." Ailian was terrified, seeing Mi so worried and frightened for the first time, and dared not act rashly. In Ailian's mind, Mi had always been calm and composed, never so flustered. Mi lowered her head and kissed her almost-lost treasure, gently and tenderly kissing it again and again, completely ignoring the fact that they were still lying on the floor by the window, until they both forgot the terror of Ailian jumping out the window and climbing the wall. The blue moon in the night sky was directly opposite the window, and under the bright moonlight, two pale figures intertwined and entwined.
Mi carried Ailian, who was sore all over, to bed and covered her with a blanket. The kitten lay lazily and contentedly in the blanket, stretched out two fingers, pinched the corner of the blanket, smelled it, and said sweetly, "Mmm, it smells all like Mi."
"What nonsense are you talking about? That's the smell of the rising sun." Having recovered, Mi finally had the mood to talk to her kitten properly. "You came over in such a hurry?" Mi leaned to the side, propping herself up on her arm, and looked at Ailian, whose face was slightly flushed.
"Hmm," the kitten let go of the blanket, wrapped its arms around Mi, rubbed its face against Mi's chest a couple of times, stole a couple of kisses, and then looked up and said, "I miss you so much, I can't sleep."
"You," you ruffled Ailian's hair, "if you want to come over, just knock on the door. Don't do such dangerous things in the future. What if you fall down?"
"I have this!" You hold out your hand, and a plump, round, translucent white lotus seed suddenly appears between your index finger and thumb.
"Ailian, you know you're a long-lived species, right?"
“Rice, I’m giving this to you. If you eat it, you’ll have an extra life.” Ailian stared intently at the rice. “Since I can’t live as short a life as you, I’ll make you live as long as I do.”
“Two lifetimes are short, even for a long-lived species.” Mi stared at Ailian. “And I cannot afford to lose your life if you lose your long-lived species.”
"Mi," Ailian hugged Mi's waist, buried herself in it, and kept muttering, "Mi, Mi."
Mi sighed and gently patted Ailian's back with one hand: "Ailian, tell me about the Longevity Species." This time, Mi wanted to learn more about the Longevity Species.
“Longevity species is what outsiders call us, but we’re not actually called longevity species.” Ailian blinked. “Our lifespan is very long, but that’s before we had a heartbeat.” The lotus seed on Ailian’s fingertip suddenly disappeared. She placed Mi’s hand on her chest, and the thumping sound of her heartbeat came from Mi’s palm.
"What were you originally called?" Mi thought of the Shali people, which was also the name given to the native inhabitants of the wasteland by outsiders.
“We are called the Seed of Life,” Ailian said softly. “We are merely containers for storing the Seed of Life. Our heartbeats will be activated when we meet our destined one, and then we will hand over the seed we have stored to her.”
"What makes you think you can find your destined one?"
“Intuition, um, it’s a feeling, the feeling of my heart beating, that feeling of being a living person,” Ailian said happily.
Mi had never seen Ailian before her heart stopped beating. What was she like? A zombie? A living dead? Mi watched Ailian playing with lotus seeds: "How do you find your destined one?"
“Well, sometimes there are omens, but we don’t know when we will meet our destined one.” Ailian shook her head. “The day I met you, I was flustered and very hungry. I sat in the carriage and drove around until we got to the restaurant, and then my heart started pounding.”
Mi hadn't expected that on the day she first met Ailian, the sunlight was exceptionally bright, and Ailian was exceptionally beautiful: "With so many people, how did you recognize which one I am?"
“Mi, we don’t judge people by their eyes, we follow the guidance of our hearts.” Ailian smiled slyly, like a fox, and after a while she buried her head in Mi’s arms and took a deep breath and said, “You smell so good, you taste so good.”
"A smell?" Mi was startled. She raised her arm and smelled herself. Could consciousness have a smell? Mi knew that the witch's body had colors, various dazzling lights, but a smell? She had never smelled anything from El or Joe.
"Mmm, it smells amazing, like something you'd want to eat." Mi was completely confused by Lian's description. What was that? The smell of rice? The smell of vegetables? Maybe it was the smell of cooking oil on her clothes from spending so much time in the kitchen.
"What if my destined one doesn't love me?" Mi tentatively probed. Although she found Ailian adorable, a simple and beautiful noblewoman, she never felt love for her. While Ailian had been a great help, Mi could solve those problems on her own. Mi had always considered her a tourist in another world, perhaps able to uncover the Watchers' secrets. Whatever the final outcome, she would definitely return to Earth; spending a long time here with this long-lived species was not part of her plans.
“You don’t need to love me, just be rice. My destined one is rice, not rice that loves me.” Ailian looked at rice carefully, and after a moment of silence, she said softly, “Long-lived species rarely go out. We all have fixed living areas, and few outsiders come into our territory. Before outsiders arrive, only one in ten thousand long-lived species finds their destined one. Or rather, it’s not quite right to say they find it; it’s more like they wait for their destined one to appear.”
"Why aren't you going out to look for him?" Mi was at a loss for words again. If the destined person was so important, why not go and look for him?
“We don’t know how to find it, or which direction to look in. Rather than running around aimlessly, we might as well wait where we are. At least we won’t get further and further away from our destined one,” Ailian continued. “The reason Mrs. Aldrich was able to find the longevity seed is because she controlled her destined one.”
"What does this mean?" Mi sat up in surprise.
“The people destined for longevity are usually those with exceptional vitality,” Ai Lian said. “Sometimes I feel that longevity is like a storage device, unable to begin one’s own life until the seed of longevity is handed over.”
Storage device? Mi recalled the history books she had seen in Lincheng 17, where outsiders arrived in the Flower Kingdom sick and weak, and many children survived only thanks to the Longevity Seed. Mi looked at Ailian: "You, I mean, what did the Longevity Seed originally look like?"
“What was the original appearance of the Longevity Bell? Actually, I can’t really say what the Longevity Seed looks like.” Ailian squinted her eyes. “Father said that we would naturally grow to look like the people we were destined to be. There was a Longevity Seed named Deer Grass. She took out the Longevity Seed and saved a fawn. Later, she also turned into a fawn and has been living in the forest ever since.”
"You're not human?" For some reason, Mi thought of a mirror. The long-lived beings saw humans as if they were looking in a mirror, shaping their own forms according to human appearances, just like the witch, who still habitually shaped her body according to her human form. Mi was currently in a split state; one half of her was experiencing Ailian's life, filled with joy, wanting to stay in that state forever; the other half felt she was still Mi, a Blue Star human, still trying to find a way to leave this place and return to Blue Star.
“We are human, just a little special,” Ailian insisted. “Most long-lived species like children because children have the strongest vitality and are the most attractive to long-lived species.” Ailian stared at Mi’s face. “I have never been able to see your face clearly in my dreams.”
"Life force?" Mi knew her witch form was a hazy droplet of ink, which, no matter how much she squeezed, would only become a black sphere of light. Since entering the Misty Forest, she had seen life force appear green; Ailian herself was a green sphere of light. If green represented life force, then Mi currently possessed no life force at all. She asked, "How do you distinguish life force?"
“There’s no need to distinguish.” Ailian hugged Mi’s arm. “For long-lived species, life before finding their destined one is like a stagnant pool. Haven’t you always wondered how Old Sampson could stay as a cook in Ailian Castle? To me, there are only two kinds of food in the world: yours and other people’s. What you make is delicious, and what others make is all bad.”
Mi suddenly remembered that Aileen had been picky about her food at Doug Tor's a few times, and now she understood why. But since all the ingredients were prepared in exactly the same way, Mi asked curiously, "How can you tell the difference?"
“It’s not that I can taste it, it’s that I can smell it, my heart can tell.” Ailian smiled slyly, “Long-lived species also have some special abilities.”
Mi was completely confused. What exactly was this long-lived species? And what was this strange concept of a destined person? "Do you know what the world looked like at the beginning?"
"At the beginning of the world, you mean the Land of Flowers? What it looked like five hundred years ago?" Ailian asked, a little puzzled. "Do you want to know about the Sand People or the Fishermen?"
"I mean the whole world, including what the Sharia ate five hundred years ago?"
"Let me think." Ailian pressed her head against Mi's forehead, and scenes flashed through Mi's mind: the world was made up of different points of light. These points of light connected to form lines, different lines formed different surfaces, and different lines formed different patterns. The patterns overlapped, and the ground began to appear, followed by trees, flowers, and various animals. Some point patterns formed the Sand People, while others became long-lived species. Each had a large territory, living quietly in this world, like hibernating animals, remaining still, occasionally moving only around their dwellings, mostly dormant. Until outsiders came to the Flower Kingdom, the points of light changed, the climate changed, forests were cut down, trees decreased, houses increased, food varieties began to change, competition began, and war and slaughter began. Mi watched as the original world collapsed until a new order was established. She couldn't help but ask, "Do you welcome outsiders?"
“This land does not belong to us. You know we don’t live on the land, right? We live in the air, and the air is interconnected. No one is the master of the world.”
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