Tragedy of the Shadow

Performance of the Shadow

Days passed. Wukong was in a rush all the time, but nothing really important happened. He was jumping between Celestial Realms and the theater. Eavesdropping on the gods' conversations, searching for some way to prevent Lady Bone Demon from whatever she was planning on and at the same time coming back to the town to listen to this uncomfortably too close to his heart story for the n-time.

The stone monkey felt as if he was trapped in some twisted play himself. Being thrown from location to location in another pointless chase after something he wasn't sure he could even picture. And he felt the pressure of knowing very well time was not on his side. Each passing day was a relentless reminder that the threads of destiny were slipping through his fingers, and the more he struggled, the tighter they seemed to entwine around him.

The plays started to feel like the sweetest poison on his tongue. Stealing his time, that already was limited, despite him knowing it was just pointless coming there, listening to the same story and watching the hooded storyteller that would never be what Wukong wished he was. The weight on his shoulders only grew heavier, guilt of past actions crawling on his back. Yet in all that rotting him inside out experience was a new found strength. Maybe he was going crazy already. Maybe it was only what he told himself; an unhealthy excuse to keep coming back and feed into that building up obsession. Yet at the same time, he felt like those plays were the only thing that was holding him together.

There was some sense of familiarity in them. Even if the man telling the story was a stranger to him; even if the story could be just vague and about something else; even if it was only a distraction - it just held the past comfort he yearned for so long. The aura, the aesthetic and ... it all just hit so close to home it was equally painful as it was comforting. And in all the stress and rush that poisonous scraps of comfort were something he would do anything for.

"Welcome viewers, to a shadow play likes the which have never been seen."

It was another long day when he came for a late show. He sat at the same spot, watching the man on the stage tell his story. It really picked his curiosity to where that story was born from. Was this only a cruel coincidence or did this mysterious man truly possessed some kind of knowledge of his and Macaque's past? If so, did he possess any more knowledge on the Six Eared monkey? And, furthermore, where did he have this knowledge from?

The amount of questions only grew as he was thinking over this case. There were just too many unknowns and holes in any narration he had tried to take to make this situation make sense. Yet the more he tried to understand, the more he felt lost.

One could argue that the best option was to just straight up ask the hooded man what his deal was. But Wukong felt just so anxious after each and every spectacle that he was unable to even move for a few minutes after the show had finished. He figured maybe after several times it would be easier, that he would build up the courage with time, but it seems to be to no avail...

All this just brought back to life the memories of the past, buried centuries ago. He was looking at the stage and all he was seeing were images of his old friend, flashing before his eyes. A faceless Shadow of what he had lost to time. It wrecked his soul twice as much to not be able to recall any details of the face he once held so close to his heart.

And with this heaviness of forgotten Shadow, past battles and broken promises, he carried on on his investigation. Further failures on finding out what Lady Bone Demon was up to only brought him more misery. Because if he couldn't even protect those he cares now, from a threat that was slowly coming their way, what distinguished him from his former self? It was as if destiny just spit in his face and shitted on all the progress and change that he went on the Journey to the West.