Chapter Text
Shi Qingxuan remembered, when he lived in the heaven, that the other gods often told him that his brother and him were truly an inseparable pair. Like the phoenix to the dragon. Like milk to the honey.
He didn’t think that beneath the honey rotted maggots.
He didn’t think that his brother would bet with life.
He didn’t think his brother, arrogant and proud, would kill.
Sometimes, in the nights where the cold would seep in his bones, and the blankets did no more that scratch his skin, and the wretched smell of the sick seemed to gouge out his lungs, he would lay on the ground (for he had no bed) and think.
He think and think and think until his brain mushed and the night turned to dawn, and the fingers on his hands cracked and blistered from the cold. Then he’d get up, darkness in his eyes and plaster another mask for another day.
Sometimes, when the nights were warm and damp, and the blankets were pushed to the side, and the scents of the sick were replaced with the fragrance of spring blooms. He allow himself to dream. They were mostly jumbled messes of colors and small things, such as sweets or how the wind felt in his face (for he couldn’t feel much these days). They were never constant, mostly greedy things and small pleasures.
One thing remained constant through those rare instances he’d allow himself to dream.
A mere silhouette at some.
A voice in others.
Sometimes, it had seemed so real that Shi Qingxuan could almost feel the brush of their robes or hear the breath they emitted, heart twisting into small, atching crumbles.
But he could never properly see their face.
Shi Qingxuan stopped counting the number of years that passed, stopped wondering whether they might come.
Foolish hope, useless meddling helped no one in reality. They’ve only created insanity.
Shi Qingxuan’s seen it too.
He saw with his two eyes the nice widow who gave him treats everyday murder her own son, stuffing candy and buns into his throat until he choked to death in the middle of the street.
My husband will come back for his body, I’m sure, she had screamed at anyone who would listen, He will come back for me. I know he will. He said he will. They always come back for the body at the end.
Her kind eyes had a crazed mania in them, and her hands were sticky with crimson sugar. When she saw him in the crowd, she had smiled at him as she gestured him to come over, like she did every morning when giving him a snack to munch on throughout the day.
Shi Qingxuan ran.
Hope, he remembered, when shivering in his hut, is something only idiots and foolish people believe in.
Is it better to have loved than to never love in your lifetime?
The god of the winds wouldn’t have known the answer to that.
Shi Qingxuan does.
He remembers the body-shocking fear when he first saw silver in his hair. He had denied the fact then, but now that he thinks about it? Wasn’t the signs always there? The slowness to rise in the mornings. The throbbing pain that flamed his whole body whenever he had moved too much? He was a fool in the end, to hope that nothing will end, that things stay the way forever.
Don’t promise me with the moon, for it wanes every evening and sets every morning.
He doesn’t hope anymore, too tired and too too old , to dwell on something as foolish as….love?
Naivety, oh how he wishes he had that trait again. To smile at everything in the same way. To spread cheer and good wishes upon the deserving people. To think that the world was composed of good and evil, yin and yang, white and black. To laugh with the people he loved, and to go on extravagant adventures with his highness and...someone.
He thinks he remembers loving once.
It’s an idle thought, and it comes from no particular place or form. When the blood from his lungs bedrid him, and he was left with nothing to do but think, he could sometimes pull up the emotion from his chest. It was small, no bigger than a grain of rice, but it beat to its own rhythm and it was always, always , so so warm.
His memory wasn’t what it used to be, and his arm and legs ache at every movement, but he thinks he can imagine a person. Always in black, and never laughed at any of his jokes. He thinks he can imagine them smiling at him, a small curve of his lips that brightened his face. He thinks he can see himself, beautiful and dressed in white, laughing along with him.
He thinks he loved once.
He doesn’t know anymore (for he couldn’t feel much these days except for the pain.)
But he can pretend.
Pretend he was still Shi Qingxuan, god of wind, who was a carefree as his element, and loved someone who he thought loved him back.
He doesn’t know anymore. (for the winter was getting longer and it was getting harder and harder to stay awake.)
He wishes he could remember what they looked like.