“Squeak—” pulling open the wooden door embedded in the floor.
A damp, moldy smell rushed toward her, like cobwebs sticking to her face, impossible to shake off. Besides the moldy smell of wood, there seemed to be another special scent—rust? Or a faint odor of rot?
The smells were too mixed, making it hard to distinguish.
Meili saw herself holding up a lamp, step by step walking into the dark basement. The wooden stairs creaked lightly under her feet, the flame flickered, and the shadows under her feet stretched out like claws.
In the pitch-black basement, everything was indistinct. Only a faint candle flame and the lantern in her hand reflected one another. That candlelight emitted an old glow as if it did not belong to this time and space.
That glow was still, and the person it illuminated was also still. Under the light, a girl lay with her eyes closed.
The girl’s face was pale and blue, without any sound. She was a dead person.
That was—Meili!
Meili abruptly opened her eyes. A wave of dizziness and headache hit her, and after a while she belatedly realized that her body wrapped in the quilt was drenched in sweat. When she raised her hand to press on her forehead, she felt a palm full of cold sweat.
She turned her head to look outside the window. The time was a little later than when she usually woke up. The blazing sun had already shone into the room, casting a bright light across the desk and floor in front of the window.
She got up to change clothes, tying her hair while walking downstairs. Reaching the first floor, Meili paused in her steps, looked toward the small cupboard in the corner, but quickly averted her gaze and went to open the side door of the kitchen and the main door.
The autumn sunlight was hard to come by, the warm sun driving away the daze brought by the nightmare. Meili stretched lazily in the sunlight.
Today she needed to take apart and wash the bedding. She learned from Hesha that winter here was cold and damp, rarely giving a chance to dry quilts in the sun, so while the sunshine lasted these few days, the quilts needed to be repeatedly dried so they would be soft and fluffy in winter.
The broom flowers that had bloomed lively for months had already withered, making the garden lose much of its color. But in Meili’s eyes, on the withered broom branches, there were things even more curious.
Things like flower buds had grown on the branches of the broom flowers. Hesha couldn’t see them; only she could. So they were probably those weird things again.
Today she carried the quilt down to dry it, and with a casual glance, she unexpectedly saw the “buds” on the broom branches had blossomed.
She walked over and bent down to look closely, seeing inside those blooming buds, curled up golden little people the size of fingers.
Meili: “….”
She ignored them, minding her own business. After busying for a while and coming back, those buds were already empty, and those little people bright as sunlight were giggling and rolling around on the quilt she laid out to dry.
Meili walked over. They didn’t run either, stretching their bodies to bask in the sun.
Curious, she reached out to touch the belly of the closest little person. In an instant, her fingertips were burned red, like she had touched a piece of burning coal.
…What on earth was this!
“Hesha, I suddenly remembered a story I heard before, about thumb-sized golden fairies that grew on the broom flower branches… I can’t quite remember clearly, it seems something like that. Have you heard of it?”
“Hm? I don’t think so. I’ll go ask Grandma. She knows everything!”
Grandma truly lived up to her title. Hesha got the complete answer from her.
“Grandma said they’re Sunlight Yaojing. When the golden broom flowers bloom, they absorb a lot of sunlight, and occasionally glowing buds grow on the branches. When winter is about to arrive, Sunlight Yaojing come out of the buds. They like sunlight and flames. In winter they will hide inside people’s houses, tucked inside the flames of the fireplace.”
“If you offend them, they will burn little holes into your skirt by the fire in winter! Some Sunlight Yaojing might even deliberately use flames to set your house on fire!”
Meili: “…Burn the house?” Are they such violent bros?
Hesha: “Right, the Lauren family in town always says their old house was burned down by Sunlight Yaojing, but they love to lie. Everyone knows it was actually their youngest son playing with fire that burned it down.”
Among all kinds of legends about sprites and monsters, some might be real, but some are just things people cannot explain, or excuses for shifting blame, so they make up stories and pin everything on non-human creatures.
“Ah, I really want to see Sunlight Yaojing too. The older generation always says we have all sorts of sprites here, but how come we never see them!” Hesha patted the quilt being dried, completely unaware that under her palm, several Sunlight Yaojing quietly laughed and dodged away.
Meili shifted her gaze, holding up her middle finger which had been scalded into a small blister, and pretended she couldn’t see these little fellows.
The blister was on her fingertip, making everything inconvenient.
When the weather turned cold, Meili no longer went swimming in the small lake, but she still often took walks around the edge of the forest. The swamp monster occasionally disappeared, but most of the time, it was there.
Meili walked over, and sure enough, she met the swamp monster again.
“Look, I got a blister from being burned on my finger.” Meili stretched out her finger, waving it in front of those gray eyes.
The swamp monster slowly leaned closer to her finger.
Meili thought he was cute, and directly pressed that finger onto his cheek.
Cold and chilly, it soothed the pain.
When she returned home, Meili realized that what she did earlier was practically acting spoiled.
“…What am I even doing!” she muttered to herself, tapping her own brow.
Even if she acted spoiled toward him, that silly mud angel wouldn’t give any reaction. She had acted spoiled for nothing.
That afternoon, the sky was filled with rosy clouds. Meili was pruning branches in her garden when she saw the swamp monster walking out of the forest, draped in the light of the setting sun.
His slender silhouette separated from the woods, edged with a warm shade of orange.
It wasn’t nighttime, nor raining, and he wasn’t stepping out of a muddy swamp. He simply walked on the grass, leaving muddy water along his path.
Meili sensed something, still holding the scissors, and ran out of the garden to meet him.
She was startled by a bouquet of fragrant narcissus in front of her.
He didn’t know where he had tugged them from. The leaves and a bit of the roots were still miserably dangling below.
She had only gotten a tiny wound at noon, acted spoiled with him without thinking, and in the afternoon he suddenly broke his usual habits and came bringing her a bouquet of narcissus.
She had lived in this world for months and had never seen narcissus growing anywhere nearby.
Even though they couldn’t communicate with words, at this moment Meili had no doubt that he had specially brought this gift to comfort her.
Just by guessing that much, Meili felt she was about to be sweetened into a dizzy mess by this mud man who smelled of earth and grass.
A direct hit to the heart.
She had never felt this before.
It made her a little at a loss, yet inexplicably excited, like a flower wanting to bloom ahead of its season.
The narcissus were kept in a glass water bottle placed on her desk. While Meili was writing a letter, she couldn’t help but lift her head to glance at them, reach out to nudge them, or pick them up to smell.
The fragrance was long-lasting. Even after falling asleep, she could still smell it from the bed.
That night, she thought she would have a dream as fragrant as narcissus… Wrong guess!
Not long after falling asleep, before she could even start dreaming, Meili was awakened by a sorrowful, whimpering cry. The sound was faint and tender, coming from the direction of the desk, almost making Meili think she was having another nightmare.
A little person the size of a small bird, wearing a white tiny dress and a yellow collar garland, sat beneath the narcissus, crying.
“My home… this is my home…”
“Give my home back to me…”
Meili: “…” Judging by its appearance, even without hearing its companions speak, she could guess — it must be the narcissus flower yaojing.
It kept hugging those few narcissus flowers, lamenting that they were its home. It probably dwelled on the narcissus flowers while resting.
For two consecutive nights, that narcissus flower sprite came to mourn its home, leaving Meili unable to sleep.
With dark circles under her eyes, she went into the forest, chopped down a small tree, and used the bark, twigs, and trunk to make a simple little birdhouse — the kind she made in elementary school craft class.
She plucked a narcissus flower and stuck it in front of the birdhouse. Just like that, the little house looked more refined and beautiful.
That night, as expected, the little narcissus sprite came again and was naturally drawn to the little house.
Meili reasoned with her, “Will you exchange with me using this little house?”
The narcissus sprite happily hugged the little house and left, giving her a peaceful night.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end. The next night, Meili was choked awake by a strong scent of flowers. When she opened her eyes, she saw four narcissus sprites in white dresses sitting by her pillow, each holding several narcissus flowers.
No wonder the scent was so strong.
Meili: “Achoo—”
“Ah!” One of the narcissus sprites who almost got blown away quickly hid behind another sprite.
The sprite at the front straightened her yellow flower collar and said, “We are narcissus sprites from deep in the forest. We want to exchange our flowers for your house!”
Meili never imagined she would become a craftsman. She made ten little houses one after another before she finally stopped being disturbed in her sleep.
Fortunately, there were only narcissus sprites — no wildflower sprites or iris sprites. Otherwise, she would never dare pick flowers again.
Winter approached. Every morning, the mountains and forests were blanketed in thick fog that only completely dispersed near noon.
Meili saw the swamp monster’s tall, thin silhouette in the mist.
He no longer stayed by the waterside. Instead, he went to the marshland farther out in the open field — the very place where she first met him.
Perhaps the weather was too cold, the waters and the nearby mud pits had all frozen over.
He probably didn’t like frozen waters.
When it’s cold, water freezes. The swamp monster would freeze too, right? His body was all mud and water, so he should freeze as well.
What would he be like when frozen? A stiff, solid block?
Meili made herself laugh.
She hadn’t seen the swamp monster return for several days. Feeling bored inside the house, she put on thick clothes, wrapped a scarf around herself, covered her head and shoulders with a shawl, and headed into the field to find the swamp monster who might have frozen into a statue.
White frost flowers had settled on the yellow blades of grass, crunching under her shoes.
The white breath from her nose and mouth dissipated quickly, disappearing into the dim sky.
Near the forest, the trees blocked the wind. But once in the open field, the wild wind raged without restraint, blowing many blades of grass into the air.
In this cold wind, Meili found him — that solitary figure with his face buried in the mud: the swamp monster.
