unfinished

vi. warbler

i bet this one will shock you. warbler is, in fact, the ghost of psychedelic! it's the first draft that i ever wrote for the alternate universe that psychedelic is in. 

would it astonish you if i said that hai was originally planned to be a farm boy, ploughing the fields with his oxen? would it also amaze you more if lang wasn't actually hai's stoic older brother, but a random young man from the community college that also heard the singing voice of the mountains? and hai and lang were slated to go on an adventure to the mountains to search for the source of that voice, together, and the main theme of this whole story was to be that "boundaries have to be overstepped, and you should chase your dreams"? 

how trivial. how superficial this first creation was. it has nothing to psychedelic - it couldn't even hold a candle to the way that i'm developing psychedelic right now. (i promise i will update. i'm just really busy with school these days.) 

nevertheless, this draft serves as proof that i am a crude writer. 

also! just a heads-up, i wrote this first chapter in chunks and the story does not flow well, it's broken apart into pieces where i stopped writing, so there's no logical progression of events. i'm sorry about that! 

---

He hears it every morning when he rolls out of bed and thumps on the wooden floor, his mother's yells almost obscuring the pure sound that filters through his windows like the dappled rays of first sunlight. He knows, by instinct, that it isn't the farmers' roughly carved bamboo flutes that they tote around for fun; nor is it the twittering of the tiny sparrows that like to perch on his hand and steal breadcrumbs from his palm. No, the boy's imagination roams far and wild, he knows that the lilting music isn't a thing of his village. 

Yet when he questions his parents about it, he gets back blank faces and confused glances; he has long since figured out that he is the only one who hears it. The warbling, almost like an angel's song, with no words interspersed between the notes - just a shivering melody that sends tingles up his spine and sets his heartbeat racing. 

Only once has he ever found another who hears it. Another young man a year older than him, studying in the prestigious community college where his parents could never afford to send him. The boy knows he would never dare to speak to the other himself; he'd learned, through a mutual friend, that the young man is also entranced by the strange music. 

There is nothing to it. The boy is too busy slaving away in the hot fields, the sun beating down on his aching back and the whip in his hand a burning sensation across his tendons as he thwicks the cattle with his remaining energy. In the evenings he collapses into bed, and his dreams are sweet and pervaded with the strange music. He simply does not have enough time to wonder where it comes from, only to savour the rich, warm notes that peal in from the cobalt-tinged mountains and echo through the bottomless valleys. 

But there comes a day when the boy gets a visit. He opens the door, slicking away the sluicing remnants of sweat from his hair, to see the young man from the community college, him who could also hear the melody-

And the boy bows deferentially as the young man nods curtly back. It is in the morning, the mist gathering around the two youngsters' backs and coating their shoulders in dewy gloss. The boy knows what the young man has come for, and they speak in unison as if their speech was pre-planned,

"It stopped." 

"It stopped." 

---

The boy shivers. He has heard tales about the daunting world behind the mountains before. The mountains ring their valley in a shining skyline of deep gushing cerulean and the skies are sapphire and the sunlight is blinding sea-white, and that is all there is to it. The way the world works. But they say, and the boy echoes as if deep in thought, 

"Far beyond the mountains, there is a place of extreme peril. Those who have trespassed have never returned, those who brave the summit will never be commended for their courage. There has never been an escape." 

"That is what we have been taught, yes. But what do we know? Our world is now fenced in by the mountains. We will never be able to seek out the music if we stay here."

The young man stares directly into the boy's eyes. The boy's eyes flicker back in startling realisation. Something is off about the young man's eyes; something, something dark. His eyes are a strange colour that the boy has never seen before, something that doesn't have any blue tones to it. Blue is the only colour the boy has ever learnt, and he wavers at the gaze. 

The young man chuckles, and a reassuring smile lights up his face. The boy is suddenly sure that his imagination has just played tricks on him, for the young man's eyes are beautiful cerulean, and his sky-blue hair flickers in the sunlight like they are waving stalks of maize in the dappling warmth and the boy sighs. 

"I'm sorry. I'm just not used to this. I've been a farm boy ever since I was born," and here the boy lowers his head in shame, "I've never gone to college, or studied the arts, or anything like that. I guess I just do the same things every day." 

A firm shake of the young man's head assuages the fears of the rather timorous boy. 

---

"Why not? I mean, it would be an adventure. Considering you have never stepped foot out of this stifling place." 

The young man grins as if the boy is the first ever person on the face of their village to bring up the idea of escape, when in truth he is most definitely not. As if on impulse, his hand shoots out to grab the startled farm boy's wrist, and then slides downwards to grasp his palm. The boy swallows, dazed at the contact and hesitant. 

"Pleased to meet you. My name is Lang." 

"I-I'm Hai."

The young man pumps the boy's hand with an abnormally strong grip, and the boy watches as the veins on the back of his own hand seem to run with a blue-hot electricity that he has never felt before. 

---

a.n. funny thing this is. it's laughable. i'm pretty proud of how psychedelic will turn out.