"I'm… alive?"
Her voice cracked the silence and stares from the people. Gasps erupted from the circle of strangers surrounding her. But before she could take another breath, a woman knelt beside her, eyes wide with awe, and replied in a language Yan Rou didn't understand.
"El'theri ve'Ankya?"
Yan Rou froze.
"What…?"
She furrowed her brow and repeated, shakily, "I'm alive?"
Once again, the woman responded with the same alien phrase.
"El'theri ve'Ankya?"
Yan Rou's heart thudded faster. Her eyes darted from one face to another—tan robes, bright sigils, silver hair, bronze skin. Nothing made sense. Her breath quickened.
What sort of world is this? she thought.
Slowly, she rose, her knees trembling beneath her. She raised one hand to shield her eyes from the sun. The murmuring crowd parted as heavy footsteps rang out. A man clad in darkened armor pushed through the crowd. His face was half-covered with a scaled helm, his dark eyes unreadable and a long blade rested at his hip.
He stopped in front of her, crouching to her eyesight.
"Who are you? and why did you appear on our land?"
Yan Rou blinked, mouth opening slightly to speak—only.
No sound came.
Her throat moved. Her lips shaped words. But nothing.
Not even a whisper.
Panic surged through her. She touched her neck instinctively, as if the answer would be there.
Why am I suddenly mute?
Chills crawled into Yan Rou's spine. She looked up at the man crouched before her, desperate to signal something—anything—that might explain why no sound came from her lips. But he seemed to be growing impatient.
"Give her some space, honey. Her body has been out for two months. You don't expect her to speak the moment she wakes up."
A woman stepped forward. Her robe was brown and worn, frayed at the hems, her hair tousled roughly to the right. The sand on her clothes showed she had been farming all day long.
The woman knelt beside the armored man and gently touched his arm. Her eyes never left Yan Rou's. The man sighed, clearly reluctant, and turned slightly toward the woman. He muttered something under his breath.
"Sha'el vun atrin, ve'marak."
The woman replied softly, nodding her head some sort of agreement to whatever he said. "Naeri, luthran… sha'el tevi."
Her reply was nothing understandable. Yan Rou closed her eyes for a second and opened it up. Weird language, weird people and clothing, what world was she transported to?
Centuries ago?
Decades ago?
Yan Rou's hands raised up to her head level, a surge of pain erupting at the sides of her head, then she looked down into the pool of mud water a distance from her.
Her breath caught in her throat.
Was this me?
Her clothes—if they could even be called that—were nothing more than tattered linen strips clinging to her frame. Mud-streaked, water-soaked. Her arms were ghostly pale, as if blood had long since abandoned them. Her hair hung in dripping, knotted strands, framing a face she barely recognized.
"I don't think she is normal. Honey, we have to send her away. We don't have enough food to go around and getting another mouth to feed is a problem." The man in armor decisively replied, tossing his eyes away from Yan Rou.
Interjecting his words, "My name is Lin Caihua," The woman in the brown robe moved away from him, sayinh gently to Yan Rou her body lowered to her level. Her voice was calm, but laced with concern. "You must be terrified. You look lost. All we know was that after the disaster that cleared our inhabitants, your body landed on our shore. You have been sleeping for two and a half months."
Yan Rou stared at her, swallowing hard. Her lips parted again, but still—nothing came out.
Lin Caihua's eyes flicked down to the red voluminous patches across Yan Rou's arms and collarbone. She reached out slowly, not touching, just hovering near the rash. "Pla--gue. You need to see the healer so he can help you with this."
She spoke English. The woman had spoke English and not the language they spoke first to her. Yan Rou lifted her eyes to the woman's outstretched hands.
'For now, I will closely follow the woman and then find my way back to my timeline or probably get some answers on why I landed on their shore.'
**********
"I can't believe you brought a mute plague girl into our home. What if she is a spy? What if she is cursed? We've suffered enough Hua!" The argued from behind the door didn't let me concentrate on what the healer was rubbing against my skin.
It was powdered blue, giving this tingling sensation against the rashes and soon enough, they were popping like they never existed. The healer—an elderly man donned in fine adorned red sleeves and robe—didn't speak much. He muttered something under his breath, occasionally glancing at me as though trying to place who, or what, I was.
I lowered my eyes, letting the silence between us wrap around me like a blanket. But outside, the voices grew louder.
"She appeared after the disaster, Lin Caihua! The timing is too perfect. Just look at what she looks like, she is not from here. We have to send her packing after she gets healed. We can't take any risk again."
"She's just a girl, Qian Jun. Look at her. Weak, fragile, mute—barely alive. We can take her in as our daughter, teach her and have her dressed."
"Abomination Lin Caihua! Our daughter is dead and gone. She bleed during the raid and her body was fed to the living dead. Wake up to your right senses!"
Lin Caihua didn't answer him right away, creaked open the door and slammed it right into his face.
The healer finished rubbing the last of the blue powder onto Yan Rou's skin and stepped back with a nod, allowing Caihua to inspect through her skin. "Lovely, your rashes wore off with no stress. Um, that's true---you can't talk. Do you write?"
Caihua smiled weakly, rushing to the corner of the room packed with piles and piles of inkstone and tree leaves. She picked up a bundle of dried leaves from the shelf, crushing them between her hands before placing them onto a flat stone, grinding the leaves into a fine powder.
Once satisfied with the powdered grains, she gently placed it into a small bowl and lit a candle on a nearby table. She turned to Yan Rou, her eyes softening as she carefully handed over a small wooden board and the inkstone. "This will help you communicate. You may not be able to speak, but we can try to understand each other through writing."
Her hands trembled while she grasped onto the board, weakly. Her muscles stiffened trying to hold onto the brush and at the first attempt, it fell from her hands crashing onto the ground.
"Not bad, we can try it again." Caihua clasped her hands together, picked up the brush from the ground and dropped it on the board. "Again, can you write what your name is and where you are from?" Hua coaxed gently, picking up the brush and handing it over to Yan Rou.
Yan Rou stared at the brush. Her fingers curled toward it slowly hesitantly, but picked it up. Gradually her hands went over the board, writing out something.
"She is writing!" Caihua happily clapped her hands, and collected the brush from Yan Rou noticing the pressure on her arms. She picked up the ink board from her, settling it at the window side to let it dry. "You can have your sleep, you are too tired to move or do anything. Um,"
She straightened herself up from the ground, fixing up a stick and a metal rod. "Hit this if you notice or feel sick." She nodded her head, proceeding to hit the stick on the metal rod.
The sound screeched in my head for a very long time before vanishing. I laid down on the bed, my head resting on the hard folded fabrics. Hearing nothing from me, Hua gave up sighing, she dropped the metal rod and stick next to the bed and excused herself from the room.
At last I was left alone, I clutched to my sides, my brows furrowing. If my guess was right: this was not my world, nor my body nor my timeline. What happened to my timeline?
Did everyone truly die?
'Yan Rou, you have to get yourself out of this mess.' I mumbled to myself, rolling off from the bed, my feet falling on the ground. I stood, walked around the empty, thatched house made of bricks, stones and leaves. Pausing, I got a veiw of my shadow on the wall as the sun set pretty fast.
'Who's body is this?'
Definitely, I couldn't hold my curiosity, checking out myself from my shadow. It was a bit petite than my previous body, Faint red spots ran from the bridge of her nose to both cheeks, standing out against her pale, dull skin. Her face looked gaunt, almost hollow, with patches scattered across her jaw and forehead.
"If I sleep, will I be able to return to my timeline?"