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Prompt 2 (Holiday Blues): One day, in the very early morning hours, a strange, bluish fog rolls in. It floats low to the ground and is incredibly dense and incredibly cold. Anyone who inhales even a single breath from this fog will be met with a sudden, harsh sensation of sadness. It’s the worst part of the holidays—the Holiday Blues. The fog slowly spreads through the town and is gone by mid afternoon, but the sensation of sadness, loneliness, and nostalgia may linger for longer than that. Scientists are explaining the bluish tint as just being a natural phenomenon, but in Destiny City, ‘natural’ isn’t really something anyone should expect. Today would have been a good day to stay inside.
Huanxi was beginning to get used to the weather on Earth, he thought. A few months were certainly not enough time to have seen all possible variations, but overall, one thing he was sure of was that fog, generally, was not blue. It was whiter, usually, or gray--blue was the exclusive domain of the sky on a bright day.
But this was already an unusual morning; Huanxi was not often up before Lianli, but sleep had felt elusive the night before. Too many things weighing on him, too many memories of a thousand years ago to sort through. An entire lifetime of loss, and of reflection. Particularly with the knowledge that Dewey had found his own reincarnated lover--or almost lover, as it were, given their situations. The parallels were far too obvious to ignore, really, even if it had been less "duty" that divided Huanxi and Xingyi and more "deep foolishness." Not to say that Huanxi's duty played no part, but...
All of it had him reminiscing, and reminiscing, Huanxi found,w as dangerous. There were so, so many unknowns, and all of them held their own painful pitfalls. So, earleir even than Lianli tended to wake up, Huanxi ghave up on his fleeting, disturbed sleep and carefully slipped out of bed, doing his best not to wake his partner. He padded quietly to the kitchen, made himself a warm mug of tea, and had intended to step outside and enjoy the early morning chill--but instead of a clear morning as he'd expected, he found a rolling, blue fog. And instead of cold air to sharpen his thoughts and clear the cobwebs from his mind, he found nothing but more weight.
His chest hurt, with the aching sense that he had lost....something. Hardly a foreign sensation, in the end; in truth, Huanxi Xin had lost....everything. His beloved. His family. His very world. All that was left was a ruin on a moon of Saturn, and the memories he carried with him, and the faint hope that perhaps, someone else might have survived. Zhiguang. Xinzhang. Their Knight, perhaps, though Huanxi had yet to hear of a Knight that had made it throguh the years alive. That did not mean that it was entirely impossible, but it seemed...less than likely.
And all of those felt like vain hopes anyway. Like clinging to even the slightest chance that he was not the only bearer of these memories, that maybe someone he had known would find him again. That he might lean on his elder brother for guidance once again, or hear his brother-in-law's deadpan acerbic commentary on his mistakes--commentary that never felt meant to wound, despite its less-than-genial delivery.
But he had been lucky, he knew. Lucky that Lianli had looked at him, and seen someone he wanted. Lucky that Lianli had mistaken him and Xingyi for husbands, and wanted that for himself. Lucky, from what he'd heard from Dewey, that Lianli remembered him at all. Dewey's Izanami, after all, seemed to have not yet recovered those parts of her memory--if she ever would. There was always the possibility that such things were lost to her forever. And what a tragedy that would be--to find someone who mirrored your beloved's face, who held their title, held their very soul....but would never remember you.
The very thought of it made Huanxi feel dizzy with a grief that was not even his own. But that could be, so easily--because he had not yet found Zhiguang or Xinzhang, and they could easily have died and bene reborn, and he would find that he was...truly alone. Even fit hose bonds could be rebuilt, they were not the same. Lianli was not Xingyi. Lianli did not know all that had passed between them; never would, like as not.
Huanxi had spent a thousand years grieving Xingyi. He knew that he hardly owed anyone more than he had given. And at least it had not been a surprise to him, as it had been to Dewey; Xingyi had died long before Helene was cut off from the wider universe, and he had mourned his beloved and his world all together for all those years of loneliness and emptiness.
But the loss weighed on him still, if he was honest. The knowledge that for all he wished to be everything Lianli wished from him, it would never really fix what he had lost with Xingyi.
It felt like a physical weight, the sadess that rolled over him with the fog. A grief, all at once, fort he things he had lost and even for the things he had gained.
Huanxi frowned, and took a last sip of his tea, and stepped back inside.
All of those things were hypotheticals, ones that weighed on him greatly, yes--but hypotheticals nonetheless. Xinhang and Zhiguang could very well be alive. And even fi Xingyi was lost to him, Lianli was not--Lianli who was so vibrant and bright, who made him love again when he thought that such a thing was long lost to him. There was a word that Lianli had used for him, a few times--zhiyin, a word that Huanxi had not before thought to ask for the meaning of. Not until Murikabushi had.
The one who knows the melody of my soul.
That, Huanxi thought, felt...right. It was the only description that properly encompassed how Lianli made him feel; loved, wanted, understood. Even if there were pieces that he was never sure he could share, even if there were parts of himself that felt forever locked away--Lianli understood. Took him as he was. Had seen him in memory and in reality, and decided that he wanted.
And oh, it felt good to love again.
Huanxi set his mug next to the sink. Lianli might still be in bed--and Huanxi did not have to grieve alone. Nor did he want to. Not when his zhiyin was so close. Not when he could have Lianli's loving care, and forget all about whatever had decided to rear up inside him.
He turned back towards the bedroom.
[wc: 1,010 words]
