Moonlight Contract (Midsummer Night 2023)
The lavender fields turned into purple waves under the full moon, and Lin Luo's birthmark ached with the moonlight rising tide. Gabriel unrolls the parchment he brought back from the cellar, and the grape juice code of 1927 reveals itself in the moon - not a stream of data, but a love poem written in roots.
"At the seventh moon rise, take seventeen steps southwest."
He read the first line, and Lin Luo's right foot moved uncontrollably. Silver tendrils of grapes emerged from her birthmark and led her to the ruined mill.
Bullet holes in the stone walls oozed the smell of old wine.
As Lin Luo pressed the palm of his hand to it, Gabriel's synesthesia suddenly changed: instead of tasting memories, he became Louis 1943. In the smoke, he is hiding the bloody wedding ring into the bullet hole, the touch of Emily's hair on his fingertips.
"There's something here..." The tendrils of Lin Luo poke into the cracks in the wall and pull out a rusted pocket watch. The moment the lid popped off, the midsummer night's cicadas were all still -- Madeleine's shadowy figure stood between them, her wrist wrapped in a birthmark from the same vine as Linlo's.
The shadow points southwest, and the lavender suddenly falls over en masse, revealing a path marked by fireflies.
At the end, in the middle of a mysterious array of seven olive trees, lies a Roman column half-carved with words of love.
"The weeping olive tree." Gabriel stroked the crack in the bark. "
Grandfather said that true lovers make it produce rose-scented resin." His last sound disappeared in the sudden dizziness - Lin Luo's birthmark was resonating with the Roman column, and crystal liquid oozed through the cracks of the stone column, with the breath of the torrential night of 1927.
Lin Luo dipped in resin and smeared on the pocket watch, the gear suddenly flew counterclockwise. The moonlight is refracted by the dial into a projection screen:
Emily is at the 1953 wedding site, burying Louis's shell carving under an olive tree.
And the maid of honor next to her has the same birthmark as Madeleine.
"We are not reincarnation." Ringo's tendrils wrapped around Gabriel's wrists, "a companion to the wedding of eternity."
At midnight a thick fog rose from the olive groves.
Lin Luo's birthmark began to bleed, not bright red but wine pulp. Gabriel took a fragment of the Roman column and soaked it with wine blood, spelling on the bark the old Provencal phrase:
"With wound as your servant, with pain as your conduit."
Seven trees shed tears at the same time, and the resin condensed into moonlight contracts in the air. Terms float in the fog:
Blood swears must find all the tokens within seven full months
Each token awakens the trauma of a century
The final pact will take effect upon Comet's return
When Gabriel bites his finger and presses the blood mark, Linlo suddenly sees a vision:
her 2097 self burning the contract in Mars Colony, while Emily, wearing a 1927 dress, cries in the fire.
The pursuers of Deep Capital were kept out of the fog. The CEO's molten lead scar festers in the moonlight, and the mechanical tentacles degenerate into rusty blacksmith's hammer.
He fell to his knees next to the blood of the forest, and greedily sipped from the wine that contained Madeleine's genes - only to swallow it as food for the roots of the olive tree.
"The contract is starting to bite."
Gabriel put his arms around the collapsed Lin Lo and saw that her birthmark had become a complete tattoo of a grapevine, with seven silver stars between the leaves.
As the first rays of morning light pierced the mist, the contracts crumbled into stardust.
One piece fell on the heart of the forest, revealing a hidden clause:
"When a companion kisses, the wedding bells of all centuries will resonate."
The moment their lips and teeth touched, the bronze bell of 1953 and the moon phase clock of 1927 struck simultaneously.
In the folds of time and space, Madeline is burying Emily's astrolabe in the earth, and the inscription is her unspoken blessing:
"May every wound wait for the moon to kiss it."
Contract stardust in the heart of the Lin Luo under the imprint of the silver moon, the olive forest suddenly rolled up counterclockwise rotating wind.
The tip of Gabriel's synesthetic tongue smelled of rust - the metallic scent of the countdown to the 1953 wedding bomb, but encased in the green SAP of the pine cone of 1927.
"Look at the roots! Lin Luo's vine tattoo suddenly tightened. In the moonlight, the roots of seven olive trees break through the ground and intertwine into a medieval confessional.
On the rotting wooden door hung not a cross, but an engagement ring half pierced by a grapevine.
As Gabriel pushed open the creaking wooden door, the sounds of 1943 poured out. The small space is cluttered with centenary artifacts:
fragments of Emily's plaster soaked in a nutrient solution from the year 2097, carvings of Louis's bullet casings wrapped around the fiber optics of the Martian colony, fragments of Madeline's astrolabe in the shape of a DNA double helix.
"It's a showroom for the pain of all covenants."
The silver moon of Lin Luo exudes the aroma of lavender essential oil, healing the cracks on the display. Gabriel suddenly stumbles - a gun cocoon from his palm that doesn't belong in this life, resonating with the trigger of a 1943 rifle in the display case.
Midnight bells rang from the earth. The first token floats: a bloody piece of a sackcloth dress with a pinecone brooch from 1927.
When Lin Luo reached out to touch, time and space suddenly reversed --
She was Emily on a stormy night, measuring the cracks in the mill cellar with her astrolabe.
Gabriel was Louis with a carving knife, and beads of blood from a fresh wound in the tiger's mouth were seeped into Madeleine's notebook she had just discovered.
"Don't turn to page seven!"
They both shout a warning across the century at the same time, only to watch "myself" tear the seal. It was not words that floated out of the parchment, but live silver vines that wrapped themselves around their necks.
The olive grove in real life is a windy place. Linlo's birthmark begins to bleed, and Gabriel is forced to suffer the pain of hanging in his previous life.
The moonlight contract had a new clause on the back of their hands: "The witness shall pay for the death of the covenanter."
The pre-dawn confessional began to collapse.
When Linde tore through the silver vine, it spewed not juice but Madeline's tears. When tears fall, they create a protective battle, sealing the pain of the century into the depths of the earth's veins. Gabriel grasped the pieces of the cloth skirt with his calloused hands, and the fabric suddenly stretched into a bridal veil, gently covering Linlo's blood-soaked birthmark.
When the first rays of sunlight penetrate the veil, all the tokens return to silence.
They sat down on the altar woven with olive roots and found the shadow of their wedding rings wrapped in moonlight between each other's fingers. In the silver moon of the forest, Madeleine sighed:
"To heal the wounds of the seventh century, it takes the true tears of the seven rising moons."
The pursuers of deep root capital turned into stone statues in the morning light, and the CEO's molten lead scar opened a rose. Lin Lin picked up the rose that had fallen into his heart. On the back of the petals was carved the clue to the next token:
a plaster shard blessed by a comet, hidden in the cellar kissed by the Seven waves.
Gabriel's synesthesia tasted salty -- not just the sea breeze, but Emily's unshed tears on her deathbed in 1953. He looked out at the southernmost cliffs of Provence, where the first tide was rising before the seventh full moon.
"To the Church of Holy Tears."
Lin Lo's birthmark points the way, "Where Madeline buried all the cries of the centuries."
The olive groves behind them stand up again, the resin tears glinting like stars in the sun.
In the folds of time and space, Emily is laying her blood-stained wedding dress on the path of this world, paving the path of moonlight for the seekers after a hundred years.