Black bubbles dance to the bottom of the cup, allowing brown sugar’s shade of tea and milk to take over. Her hands wrap around the vapor-blanketed cup in transparent plastic. And hair flies in random directions instructed by the wind’s mood.

“Layla, time to go.”

Like the black bubbles that look like coal pearls, pearls of tears crawl down her cheek. Dripping like the melting ice of her milk tea.

“Your father and I have explained to you already. It’s time to go now.”

She turns around, cheeks blushing as dragon fruit’s flesh. And shakes her head. “I’m not leaving.” A wave of tears dribbles down again, like the rising water tide. “I’ve told you I can’t.”

“Of course, you can, Layla. We’ve sorted it out. Now let’s go!”

“No— no— it’s not a thing you can sort out; I can’t leave my ancestral home and then suffer the consequences. I can’t. I made a pact. And you know it.” The river waves rise and twist and morph into a delicate hand of water. Ready to take me home.

“I’ve done it,” she whispers. “Now you leave.” In serpent-resembling form, her body bends, and her skin tears into scales in the color of glimmer. Pearl tears become orbs. Cup of milk tea leaks down the pavement of dust. Take me home.

And in dragon form, she slides down the railing, forgetting the screams of her human family. I can’t be in a mammal body anymore.

“Darling, you’re back,” her mother’s silky voice echoes through the jade palace.

“Emiyo, your horns have changed.” Father’s layered scales shimmer in the river’s light, an armor infallible.

“Mother. Father.” Layla—Emiyo—twists her body, giving a drop of a bow. “I’m willing to be this river’s spirit now.” Water blows like the wind, encompassing her body as her longing for land burgeons. Her hope of escaping an eternal pact dissolves as a drop of her vermillion blood fuses with the salt water of the thousand years old river.

Mother’s amber eyes flutter as the wings of butterflies do. “You’ve finally recognized your duty, darling.”

Image credit: Reddit