Xiulan had never seen his world as it was, at its height. He had seen little enough of it even when it was crumbling. For so long, his world had been the palace, the capitol, fancy houses and balls and staged shows for the people to show that their Senshi was alive and well and things were going as they were supposed to.
He hadn’t even known anything was wrong. Sure, the eclipse, the eerie red sky, their world being cut off—those things were strange. But everyone told Xiu not to worry, that it was a temporary situation, that they would be able to resolve things, and all he needed to do was look pretty and follow orders.
It had been a good life. Xiu had been happy. Music lessons with his fathers, trading gossip over tea and snacks with Haoran, long walks in the palace’s extensive gardens with Hongyun. Giggling over Junkai’s crushes and the silly gifts his brother got from other young nobles.
Sheltered. Protected. Safe.
Of course, he knew now that it had all been a lie. That while he and his family lived in happy isolation, the world around them had been crumbling. Crops dying, people starving, what little harvest there was scooped up for the capitol while the outlying provinces were left with naught. Lavish celebrations of prosperity on a world that had so little.
But the kerria flowers in the palace had bloomed as golden as ever, and so the richest of Tianyi’s citizens had been happy to carry on as if nothing had changed.
As if Xiu’s own birth hadn’t been a terrible omen, a promise of doom. As if he and Bailian hadn’t been born the very day their star was eclipsed and the sky painted bloody. As if all that happiness, the twenty-one years of joy and love and family that Xiùlán had known, hadn’t all been built on the backs of his own people.
But he hadn’t known.
Until he did.
Until they came with pitchforks and scythes and torches and clubs, until the people who were supposed to protect the royal family turned on them too.
Xiu hadn’t wanted to leave. He hadn’t wanted to let Bailian put on his crown and his clothes and take his place. Hadn’t wanted to let his brothers, his fathers, everyone he had ever loved die.
But Hongyun had gently cradled his face, and told him that he had to keep living. That as Sailor Tianyi, he was the only hope their world had.
There was very little Xiu wouldn’t do, if Hongyun asked it. So, for his oldest brother, he agreed, and let himself be disguised and spirited out of the palace.
And that was when he learned.
Learned that outside the capitol, his world was dying. Learned that survival came at a cost—that just because the knights who swept him from the palace didn’t want him dead and didn’t want to hand him to the rebels didn’t mean they didn’t have other designs for him.
And he learned that people hated him.
People he had never known, never met. Who only knew Sailor Tianyi and hated him anyway. Hated the symbol he was. Hated that his birth—the birth of the Senshi, which should have been a day of joy and celebration—had instead been the day the sky darkened and something came to ruin everything.
He learned that people looked at him and saw a curse.
And he wondered if maybe they were right.
When he slipped away into the night, he wasn’t sure what he intended—just that he had to get away. That months of humiliation were more than enough.
That maybe he didn’t care that Hongyun wanted him to live, that maybe he wouldn’t mind a chance to try again in another life. That maybe he shouldn’t have let them send him away.
That maybe being the Senshi didn’t make him his planet's only hope.
When he tucked himself into the hollow of a tree in a peaceful glade, Xiu expected to sleep for a single night. But his world closed the glade around him and lulled him into a deeper, longer slumber.
And when Xiu awoke, long, long after he fell asleep, Tianyi was silent.
He had expected to wake to what little first sounds there had been when he fell asleep. Or, perhaps, to the sound of boots and the feeling of rough hands pulling him from his hiding spot.
Instead, the red light of Tianyi’s eclipsed star filtered through the forest canopy, painting the whole place in an eerie, bloodstained hue. And there was no sound at all. No one coming for him. No birds. No rustle of wind or leaves. And when he climbed out of his safe little hollow, he was greeted by a withered, dead grove.
Xiùlán was truly, wholly alone.
The weight of that silence was, for a moment, almost crushing, as Xiu tried to reorient himself. Everything felt…strange. Displaced. Out of alignment.
Time had passed. More than he could grasp, in that moment. But there was…something. Xiu wasn’t sure what to make of it at first, of the strange, bright sensation he felt. Like a pull. An invitation.
He looked around him, at the place where he had sheltered for—days? Months? Longer? Xiu wasn’t sure. Wasn’t even sure how to begin to guess. Clearly his slumber hadn’t been entirely natural, and he suspected that it had protected him from whatever had left things so…barren.
Perhaps his world, at least, didn’t hate him. That would be something of a relief. Because what else but the magic of a world itself could have kept its Senshi preserved and protected for so long? So perhaps Hongyun was right. Perhaps he *was* Tianyi’s only hope.
Perhaps there was something more waiting for him, on the other side of whatever was calling him away.
Perhaps if he followed the call, there might be answers.
…Perhaps, a reason he had survived when everyone else he loved had died.
So Tianyi let himself follow the calling, and be swept away.
[wc: 1,020 words]
