A Qiu remembered it clearly. That day, she had been sleeping in her wooden cabin, wrapped in her blanket sewn from deerskin and rabbit fur, sound asleep.
In her dream, she was eating some very sweet fruit, its juice running down the corners of her mouth, so sweet that her eyes narrowed. Then something tugged at her blanket. It wasn't a dream. Someone really was tugging at her blanket.
She opened her eyes groggily.
A furry face with large ears was right in front of hers, its nose wet, its warm breath puffing against her face. Its round eyes were full of anxiety, and it held a corner of her blanket in its mouth, pulling hard.
"Mmph... what are you doing..."
She wasn't fully awake yet. The next second, the brown animal, which looked like an oversized marten, jumped onto the bed, bit her sleeve, and dragged her toward the floor.
Several other little creatures squeezed in too, some pushing her back, others pulling her hair, all chattering at once.
They dragged A Qiu off the bed. She staggered to her feet, and before she could ask, "What's wrong?" the big brown marten was already pulling her toward the door by her sleeve.
She stumbled out of the cabin and into the clearing. Before she could steady her feet-
She saw it.
The sky was black.
Not the black of night, but a thick black, like ink spilled onto rice paper, still spreading outward.
The black clouds hung extremely low, so low they seemed about to touch the ground. Their edges churned and twisted, as though something were struggling inside.
Lightning darted through the clouds, not one or two bolts, but hundreds upon thousands, densely woven into a golden net that covered the entire sky.
The wind was already fierce. It wasn't the kind that blew in from afar and felt cool, but the kind that pressed down from overhead and made it hard to breathe.
A Qiu's long hair streamed backward, and her skirt snapped in the wind. She had to hunch over to keep from being blown off her feet.
Her cabin creaked under the strain of the wind.
Then it flew.
It wasn't blown over or overturned. The wind swept the whole thing up like a fallen leaf. It tumbled twice through the air, then vanished into the black curtain of clouds.
A Qiu's mouth hung open, but she couldn't get a single word out.
She just stood in the clearing with her head tilted back, watching her home-the home she had spent an entire spring building, the home she had thought she could live in for many, many years-fly through the sky.
Only later did she realize that it hadn't been the time to stand there in a daze.
If the big brown marten hadn't bitten her skirt and dragged her toward the woods, she probably would have flown through the sky just like that cabin.
Then came the rain.
Not raindrops. The entire sky collapsed.
Even now, A Qiu couldn't describe how that moment had felt. She only remembered opening her mouth wide to call for her mother, only for rainwater to pour down her throat and choke her until she nearly suffocated.
She lay flat on the ground, both hands clamped around an exposed tree root, her nails digging into the bark. Her fingers were scraped bloody, but she didn't let go. Because she knew that if she did, she would be gone.
She ran after her animal friends into a burrow-she didn't know who had dug it or when. The entrance was so narrow that she had practically crawled inside, scraping both her knees and palms raw.
The burrow was deep, winding down underground through several bends.
She could hear a muffled roar overhead, filtered through earth and rock, like someone beating a drum above her head. Water flowed down the slope at the entrance, rushing past her ankles before draining away to lower ground.
"If the entrance hadn't been dug with so many bends, it probably would have filled with water already..."
A Qiu later checked the burrow's exit. Its other end opened on the sheltered side of a stretch of high ground that the flood hadn't reached, and she led her animal friends out that way.
Then she saw the forest after the storm.
A Qiu stood there in a daze, staring for a long time.
There were no trees left.
Or rather, there were no trees left "standing." Those great trees that had grown for decades or centuries had been uprooted, snapped in half, or stripped by the wind until nothing remained but a bare stump.
Trunks and branches lay piled every which way, layer upon layer, like an enormous graveyard built from wood. The wind had stripped every leaf away, leaving only bare limbs that looked like fingers thrust toward the gray sky.
Broken stones and dirt covered the ground. In some places, the water had carved deep gullies; in others, thick silt had piled up.
A Qiu couldn't find the familiar stream, or the big rock where she often sat in the sun, much less her cabin, which had already flown away.
Even a layer of topsoil had been stripped off.
That was the world A Qiu saw after the storm.
"Come on, help me move this one... yes, that one... gently, gently, don't drop it on your feet..."
A Qiu pulled herself out of her memories and directed her animal friends as they moved the timber.
There really was wood everywhere. The storm had flattened the trees throughout the forest, leaving ready-made timber all over the place and saving her the effort of cutting trees down.
But most of the wood had been soaked by the rain. Its surface had blackened, and some had already begun to rot. Probably only a third was usable.
She had spent an entire day picking through the wreckage, digging out a dozen or so reasonably sturdy trunks and collecting large quantities of branches, bark, moss, and dry grass. Then she had spent a whole morning building this little cabin-which was barely fit to live in.
A Qiu stood in front of the crooked little cabin, looking at the door that wouldn't close properly, the wall stuffed with moss, and the makeshift bed covered in dry grass. The corner of her mouth twitched.
Ha ha.
Fuck.
She swore inwardly, then crouched down.
Not because she was tired, though she really was exhausted. It was because her nose suddenly stung, her eyes burned, and something lodged in her throat that she couldn't swallow no matter how hard she tried.
She thought of her old home. Of how, whenever the sunlight woke her in the morning, a little gray-blue bird would always be perched on the pine branch outside her window, chirping as it waited for her to get up and feed it breadcrumbs.
Of the mushroom rack by her door, covered in little mushrooms of every color whenever the rainy season came, like strings of tiny bells. Of the trout in the stream behind her house, so fat they dripped with oil, so delicious roasted that she had nearly swallowed her tongue.
Of her mother.
Of her father.
Of the little village where she had grown up, hidden in the deepest part of the forest. There had been dozens of wooden cabins there, home to several hundred forest elves.
On nights when the moon was fullest, everyone would gather in the clearing at the village entrance to sing and dance, drinking wine brewed from wild fruit and making merry until dawn.
What was left there after the storm?
A Qiu didn't know.
She didn't dare think about it.
"Wah... I want my mom..."
She crouched on the ground and buried her face in her knees, her voice muffled and tearful.
"My mom... my dad... are they all right...?"
No one answered her.
A little furry creature with big ears hopped onto her knees and nudged her palm with its wet nose. The gray squirrel jumped down from a stump, set the pine cone it was holding beside her feet, then crouched nearby and watched her with its head tilted.
The big brown marten came over and rubbed its head against her shoulder, making a low whimper that sounded like comfort.
A Qiu raised her head, tears clinging to her eyelashes, and looked at the little creatures gathered around her.
"You... you're all still here..."
She sniffled, wiped her face haphazardly with her sleeve, then reached out and gathered the little big-eared creature into her arms.
"Mm... I'm all right."
She took a deep breath and stood up. Her legs felt a little weak and her knees trembled, but she stood up all the same.
"Life has to go on. If the house is gone, I'll build another. If my home is gone..." She paused, her voice growing quieter. "If my home is gone, I'll look for it again."
She turned around, ready to go back to sorting the scattered timber.
Then she stopped.
"Hmm... is it windy?"
It wasn't a gentle wind blowing in from afar, but an uncomfortable wind pressing down from overhead, hot and humid. There was a strange smell in it, something like the earthy smell after rain, or the body odor left behind by some large animal passing through. It was hard to describe, but it made her instinctively uneasy.
A Qiu raised her head and squinted up at the sky.
The sky was very blue. After the storm, it was as clean as though it had been washed, with barely a cloud in sight. The sunlight was dazzling, and she had to raise a hand to shade her forehead.
There was nothing.
Just as she was about to lower her head, the big brown marten suddenly darted out from beside her, bit her skirt, and pulled backward hard. It pulled so hard that she staggered a step.
"Hey-what are you doing? Stop pulling, stop pulling, you'll tear my skirt-"
The big marten ignored her and kept pulling, making urgent, low whimpers.
The other little creatures began to grow restless too. The gray squirrel dropped its pine cone and spun in circles, squeaking shrilly. The little big-eared creature jumped out of her arms, pricked up its ears, and tensed like a bow, shrieking in a certain direction.
Their behavior startled A Qiu.
She had known these animal friends for a long time and had never seen them like this.
The big brown marten tugged at her skirt, dragging her hard toward the space beneath a large fallen tree. It was far stronger than a marten should have been, and A Qiu stumbled along, nearly falling several times.
"Wait-wait! Let me look-"
A Qiu struggled to turn her head and looked toward the distant sky, following the little creatures' gazes.
There was nothing.
Still nothing.
No.
There was a cloud.
A very small one on the horizon, so far away she could barely see it. Its color was different from the clouds around it, neither white nor gray, but-
Black.
Like ink dripping into clear water.
A Qiu's eyelid twitched.
That black cloud was growing at a speed she could see with the naked eye.
Like a drop of ink falling into water, the blackness spread wildly in every direction from that point, swallowing the white clouds around it.
In less than a few breaths, that tiny patch of black cloud grew to the size of a fist, then a washbasin, then-covered almost half the sky.
The wind grew stronger.
It was no longer the faint breeze from before, but a powerful wind blowing from that direction, bearing down on her and making it hard to keep her footing.
A Qiu's long hair streamed backward, and her skirt snapped in the wind. She had to hold her skirt down and hunch over to keep from being blown off her feet.
She finally knew why her animal friends were afraid.
It was that direction.
It was that expanding black cloud.