Chapter Text
Saps,
My mother had told me once that my father will not be able to take the grief that we hold for him in the present moment, in the moment in which he breathed. You cannot, after all, take any gold or rings beyond the grave. Thus, she said, neither can you take love.
The things with which we treasure are fickle in the face of death. Where else can you put the treasures you have amassed in life besides the tomb where you rest after it? Still we, as Aculons, do not heed such fear of mortality. We never go to the grave unless we are ready.
And so, mother told me to not grieve for father when it is yet to be his time to go. To love him, so that even if he can’t take such sentiments with him, he can at least take it to the door of his final resting place.
I trust that my love for you rests at the doormat of your tombstone, Saps.
Flux
—
Millenia pass without change in the mountain that the Aculon clan resides.
Even now, after approximately 200 years since Flux’s birth, only a number of changes have touched the mountain that he’s resided in his whole life. People come and they stay.
Most of them do, anyway. Those who married into the Aculon clan usually accepted the gift of immortality to stay with their spouses, after all.
(He emphasizes on “most.”)
Others who don’t, they naturally go with time. And recently, there have been a number of people who gave up their immortality, tired and weary from nearly a thousand years of living. There are also those who have started to descend the mountain, and never come back.
“Mother’s been visiting the village recently.” Flux murmurs, using an old cotton handkerchief (with Saps’s clumsy embroidery on it) to wipe off the dust that had started to gather on his father’s shrine. It still feels like yesterday when the man would fill the dinner table with untimely jokes; like a moment ago when the man would ruffle his hair that was carefully styled by his mother for a meeting with the patriarch; like a second ago when he last heard his voice. And yet, all the same, it feels as if it’s been too long. What a weird thought it is to have, the fact that you are older than your father ever was.
“She’s been less opposed to interacting with people. It took her a couple decades to get over your death, get over the fact you had the choice to stay with her but didn’t.” He continues his murmurs, as he moves to get the incense sticks he brought with him. “Why didn’t you stay, father?”
The resounding silence of the Aculon mountain, unchanged and untouched by the world, is what he gets as an answer.
Standing up, he bows to the shrine, and the old painting he and his mother had made painstakingly to reflect his father’s visage as best as it could stares back at him. “We will forever miss you. I hope that the world beyond this one is worth it.”
The trek back to their house, empty and cold as it is, is scenic. It always was, in the Aculon mountain. Fall brings crisp leaves and shedding to trees and orange—so much orange—to the landscape, after all, so it could never be too boring.
In the moment of silence, he mulls on the fact that his mother has started to move on. Her stillness has finally gained motion, once again.
He wonders when he will feel that motion, too. When his life will once again kick start, without the silence and nonmovement of decades old grief and longing. When he will finally let go of the time he was sixteen, clumsy and shy, new to the world and the wonders it has to offer.
The waters of his heartbreak aren’t uncharted, anyway. If anything, they were one of the most familiar constants in Flux’s immortal life. Rocking against his body with the harshness of a storm in the sea that he had only read from books, the tides pushing and pulling him on a whim.
Quietly, he thinks back on the time he and Saps first met, feet dipped into a shallow pond. Saps had talked to him regarding the ocean, opening his world slightly wider, even when stuck on the mountain. He wonders if he was doomed to drown the moment the white haired nobleman talked of the waters. Wonders when he sealed his fate; was it when he, himself, drowned in the pool of canola eyes or when Saps had buried him under the warmth of his sandalwood scented embrace?
—
Saps,
I fear that the love I nurture for you holds onto my body like a ghost, a spirit, an entity—something tangible, something I can hold onto as well—for what feels like eternity.
I wrote once, when I was younger (the age, I can no longer remember) that I would miss you like a bird misses spring in winter. That I would not be able to bear the guilt of not making your person permanent as I am. You said once, through the mouth of a dying Snowbird, that if love were enough, you would be at my side.
Couldn’t you understand that love would indeed have been enough? My most precious companion, if you loved me so, why had you not told me? Why had you not stayed by my side?
I am terrified at the thought that I will never bear my soul to another as I had done to you. Even in the grave, you continue to take my love.
Flux
—
“Too much thinking will lead to a life unlived, Flux!” A familiar voice breaks him from his contemplative walk through the sea of orange leaves, followed with a distinct “nyahaha!” behind it. Flux tries not to sigh too deeply—can he truly not wallow in his grief without being disturbed?—as he turns around.
Sure enough, Thomas and Seraphim stare back at him, unblinking. Their deceiving feline features hide their true natures as spirits of autumn.
“What’s wrong with you then?” Seraphim, in the form of a calico cat, brushes up against Flux’s ankles, using her tail to tickle him ever so lightly.
“He was probably wallowing in self-pity again!” Thomas, the fox spirit, laughs teasingly. He sits on a rock. Flux notes that he’s in the form of a fox with a brown coat today.
“None of that is true, first of all,” Flux frowns and rolls his eyes. “I just visited father’s shrine.”
The two felines exchange a look, as if agreeing to not push it further, at the mention of his father.
“Ahem. Anyway, I feel like there’s this weird energy around your house today.” Thomas says through a smoke that covers him. Then, appears his human form.
“Maybe it’s a new spirit?” Seraphim chimes in, still in her cat form.
“Or Schpood,” Flux says with a shrug.
“Or Schpood.” The two agree. Flux starts walking, and the two naturally follow.
Thomas walks alongside Flux, all confident strides. Seraphim, however, forgoes them and decides to hop through the trees that lead to Flux’s home.
The two spirits were the first he encountered around fifty years ago. He had freaked out, then, wondering if such was allowed in the Aculon mountain. However, he’d been reassured by his mother who reminded him that they were sorcerers—what rights do sorcerers have over spirits, beings they should be revering? The mountain, while being claimed by the Aculon clan, is not entirely theirs. At the end of the day, nature will have its way with it, and the natural owners were graceful enough to let them live there. The least they could do was respect the spirits.
So, Flux had decided to leave them be. Ignore them, but do so with respect. Keep them at arm’s length. Still, the spirits seemed to take special note of him, approaching him whenever the opportunity arose. So, naturally, the loneliness in him had flared, thawing what he believed to be an unwavering resolve, and overtime, a reluctant friendship had started to bloom.
Spirits weren’t all that bad, if you don’t consider the standard that Saps had left for Flux to grapple with.
“Schpood!” Seraphim had yelled a slight distance away from where Thomas and Flux were walking. She arrived at the house earlier than the two, what with her hyperactive jumping.
“If it isn’t Seraphim and Thomas,” The man who seemed to always carry a different energy around him whenever they met greeted them with a nod. “And, of course, Flux.”
“Hello, Schpood,” Flux acknowledged after he neared a respectable distance. Curious, as the other usually doesn’t approach him without a need for his sorcery, he asks, “What’s wrong?”
“Perceptive as always.” He says with a lilt in his voice, a trace of a laugh.
“Not quite, if it’s merely noticing a pattern.” Flux replies playfully.
“Can we not speak like old aristocrats for one fucking moment?” Thomas butts in with an incredulous tone.
“Don’t be such a dick!” Seraphim laughs, the distinct nyahaha matching her appearance as a cat quite well. “They’re fossils! Slap a fragile sticker on Schpood and it wouldn’t look out of place.”
“It’d match his dark emperor vibe quite nicely…”
“And Flux can go in the artifacts section!”
“I think he would make a good vase! Here lies the vase, Fluixon Aculon, mold from the finest clay of yearning and—”
“I think,” Flux cuts in, before it gets out of hand. “That me and Schpood should head inside. If the two can behave, they can follow too.”
“What an ingenious idea, Flux.” Schpood says with equal amounts of sass. “Shall we go, then?”
—
Saps,
Will this get easier? Will the grief ease itself? As the days pass and the colors lose their shine more and more, I wonder. The dullness of the world, ever accelerating, comes with the fact that hope is beginning to be lost. The sky which used to look so brightly blue is closer to gray at this very moment. The canola that has started to bloom, pale in the comparison of your eyes, looks dull.
I miss your eyes. I miss your warmth. How can spring feel colder than winter? How can the colors which shone so vibrantly be so lackluster? How can the world feel so still?
Come back. Bring me back my vibrance, my spring. I await you, evermore.
Flux
—
“So,” Flux starts, once he settles a cup of tea in front of the spirit. “What truly brings you here?”
“I need you to cast a spell that can locate something.” Schpood, now unbridled with Seraphim and Thomas’s shenanigans and presence, cut to the chase. “I must admit, the person I’ve been looking for has appeared.”
“Your lover?” Flux asks, not without surprise. He feels the need to clarify his shock, “A mortal. You mean your mortal lover. From, well— an age before even my birth.”
“Yes, quite.” Schpood confirms, his eyes scanning the room and taking a sip of his tea. “You’ve read her novels.”
“…It must be so, then. She wrote well.”
“She did, indeed. Even to her last breath.”
“Well, Schpood, I can’t exactly—”
“—locate something without a basis. I’m well aware of your arts now, which is why I’ve approached you and not somebody else.”
“Much obliged. I’m glad to know I have your trust.”
“Of course, friend. …Here’s something of her’s.” Schpood reaches to hand over a haori.
Flux frowns. “This isn’t enough.” He runs his hands along the softly aged fabric, already feeling the electric touch of his sorcery bring him some memories. Laughter. Lightness. Joy. Carelessness. Mortality. “I need something she held dearly, something more than just a haori she happened to wear everyday.”
“Hm.” Schpood hums, the haori seemingly more important to him than what Flux’s words implied. He understands—the coat made of the bear fur Saps had hunted specifically for him still hangs upon his shoulders during winter, no matter the fact that he has higher quality ones now.
“This might suffice, then.” Schpood slides over a quill, the feathers held together only by hopes and dreams. One wrong blow of the wind, and it will simply disintegrate.
Flux nods, and stands to seek out his spell book.
As he does so, he tries to hold his tongue, the disbelief of a soul reappearing weighing on his lips. As a result, the house is recognizably silent.
If a soul reincarnates—a new face, a new body, a new life, a new personality—is it really the same person at that point? What importance is there in you seeking out an old soul in a new person in your search for familiarity and comfort? What matter is it, if the person you loved is overwritten by one who experienced entirely different things, by one who doesn’t even remember you?
…If Saps’s soul reincarnates, would Flux be able to take it?
Would Flux be able to love Saps for himself—however his being is after the act of reincarnating—with unbidden thoughts regarding the Saps he knew from his past? Would Flux be able to distinguish the things he loves regarding that Saps, in comparison to the things he loves regarding his Saps?
Would it even matter?
“You seem to be putting much thought into my request,” Schpood’s baritone voice wakes him from the deep caves of his wondering. “But I hate to break it to you—I’m simply doing what I must.”
“Not quite,” Flux says in response to Schpood’s first comment. He settles back down in front of him, armed with his spell book. “But what do you mean, must?”
“I promised that I would find her in all of her lives. I have already failed that promise once. I cannot allow it to happen again.”
“Romantic.”
“That’s what loving a writer does to you, unfortunately.”
“Cheer up. I would say loving a noble that doubled as a war general is more unfortunate.”
“...I suppose I’m inclined to agree, noting the state of you.”
“I feel like I should be quite offended by that comment, Schpood…”
—
Saps,
If love were enough, I would have given up my immortality and taken your hand, running without mind of the speed limits the world might have against a teenager with spunk and spirit. If love were enough, you would not have felt, in your dying moments, that you should have given up your mortality—the thing you must treasure so dearly, after spending years holding it close to your chest during the war—just in order to be beside me.
If love were enough, you would not have deemed it important for you to ask Snowbird to tell me your dying words, when he, himself, was dying too.
If love were enough, my love for you would not be at the doormat of your tombstone; neither will your love for me be resting eternally in an immortal’s heart and mind without release.
If love were enough, I would be resting with you in the moist of the earth. You would be by my side, eternally.
Flux
—
Schpood leaves the house soon after the spell was cast, pointing the dark-spirit to head upwards, north. Apparently, his lover had been reincarnated, a woman who lives relatively well-off—she also still writes, wherein Schpood had promised to bring Flux some of her books.
She was also Jophiel. As in, Saps’s older sister, Jophiel. The lifetime that Schpood hadn’t found her was the last one, because it had been cut short by the war.
He tries not to feel too sick at the thought.
All in all, Flux supposes that he’s grateful he hadn’t made an overarching promise to Saps to find the white haired boy in every one of his lives; how can he hope to do so, chained in this very mountain?
Another moment of contemplation draws in on Flux, like a raven that rests on his chamber door. He remembers a poem he read recently, and he feels comforted in the presence of the nonexistent raven. He thinks of Saps’s face, so faded and rusted with time that he can no longer remember it clearly, and he whispers out into the open engawa, into the cold tea before him; “Nevermore.”
So he sits, and so does his life, his heart. Still, like the very mountain itself. He holds his breath, as he had all those years ago when he had not confirmed whether or not Saps was alive during the war, and he doesn’t release it.
Never releasing, never letting go. Not yet, at least.
He wonders why it feels as if the mountain was holding its breath with him, too.
—
Saps,
I breathed today.
My lungs have been clogged, but not with disease or with the plague. My heart has become swollen, you see, from the force of my longing for you, the yearning too much to bear that it has inflated on itself. For the longest time, my heart and lungs have been congested with need to be by your side.
I held my breath as I had many times before, during the war, in a moment of wishful thinking that it would prolong your life. I held my breath, waiting for you to come back—waiting for love to be enough, as Snowbird had relayed.
And yet, I found courage in myself to breathe again, today. I found the strength to clear up my airways of my yearning. I breathed for myself, lacking the fear to hold my breath for you.
Tell me, Saps, is this progress? Or is this just another way for time to take you away from me again?
Flux
—
Flux is having dinner with his mother.
Dinners used to be a rather boisterous affair; his father filling the table with his antics, complimenting mother’s cooking up down and center; Flux, himself, partaking in the chaos if only to instigate it; his mother, being rendered relatively flustered by the compliments.
If only he hadn’t had those dinners from nearly a century ago to compare with this one—silent, as if a funeral rite—maybe Flux wouldn’t mind too much. Maybe he could even think of this as tranquil, peaceful. Maybe he could have enjoyed it.
But knowing what was only emphasized what isn’t. Knowing the fun only emphasized the loneliness.
So, silence blankets the table, just as the autumn leaves blanketed the mountain. Flux only had the blowing of wind and the quiet crunch of the tempura to cling to, else he would have lost it.
“I was with the patriarch today,” Mother broke the silence in an unexpected move. He already knew the information. He listens, anyway. “The village, it’s changed a lot. They have mechanisms running all throughout it, now. The people don’t quite wear the same clothing as we do. Nobility has been at a decline.”
She picks up rice from her bowl, but doesn’t eat it. She stares down at the rice, “I bought this sack of rice, earlier. A humble farmer. Warm brown eyes.” She places it back down. She looks up at Flux, her face as devoid of expression as ever, “I’m not making sense, am I? …I saw him, Fluixon. He doesn’t have his ridiculous yellow hair or his deft hands at making textiles or his baby fat or his memories.”
A tear rolls down her cheek. “It’s been centuries…”
“It has. It has been, mothe… mom.” He scoots to sit beside her, and gently guides her so she rests her head on his lap. “It’s been so long.”
“Too long.” She says, as she closes her eyes. He feels the cloth covering his lap get damper.
“He’s not father, mom.”
“I know. I know.”
“He doesn’t know us, doesn’t love you.”
“... He has a daughter, Fluixon, do you know? He said the mother died, said he loved her dearly. Said I had the same eyes she did. He doesn’t like tempura. In contrast, he’s allergic. He’s not even from the village.”
“Mom…”
“Why did I have to meet him again when he doesn’t even remember me?” She asks, though Flux knows she isn’t asking him. He keeps quiet, brushes the tangles out of her hair.
“I promised, before you were born, that I would keep him by my side. I told him that I would convince him to accept immortality. But I was a coward. I didn’t want to take the glimmer in his eyes away from him, didn’t want to make him become something that would ultimately ruin him. And even though he hoped I would succeed for my sake, he knew I would never be able to sway him. Knew his love for mortality was greater than his love for me.” Her voice was eerily steady, despite how much tears escaped her eyes.
“So I prepared for his death. I made sure that, for as much as I could, I would love him. So that when we do part, he could at least regret, even if a little, not staying with me. So that I could hopefully be remembered in his next life. But it’s all wishful thinking in the end, isn’t it?” She sits up, wipes her eyes, and holds Flux’s hands.
“I’m starting to wonder if I ought to taste the mortality he held so close to his heart.”
“Mom?” He asks, quietly, as he squeezes her hand back.
“I tried to be selfless, Fluixon, I did. But I was never generous, was never made to be.” She kisses his temple and pats his head, just as he longed when he was younger. “I wanted to give you time. I’m going to get my affairs in order, after all. Maybe the years have caused me to become weary.”
She stands up, leaving Flux sitting at the silent dinner table. This time, alone.
That night, he opens the window just beside his writing desk in the room, leaving a piece of homemade mochi on the low table. It was an invitation for Thomas to come over, if only to quell his loneliness. He wonders if the fox would even be able to smell the dish, through the cold of the autumn night.
Luckily, his friend was never one to let him down.
“What’s gotten you all desperate to see me?” He winks down from where he sits on the windowsill, munching on the mochi. “Are you hot and bothered? Well, you have me now, so—”
“I think… Mother wishes to pass on, now.” His voice is deliberate, slow. There’s no waver in it, no matter how much emotions he holds inside his heart. Fear, for the last person he loves might leave him behind; resignation, because he cannot ask for more from his mother; pain, because he doesn’t want to let go. Not again. He never wishes to let go.
Thomas pauses, still chewing on the sweet treat. Finally, he speaks up, “Do you know why?”
Flux shakes his head. He can guess the reason, assume what she feels, but at the end of the day, he was never privy to the inner workings of her mind. There was only one person who understood his mother well enough to know what she’s feeling, and that person is already resting in his tombstone. It doesn’t matter that his soul reincarnated, doesn’t matter if he’s back. That person is not his father, and never will be. His father is dead.
“How much longer do you have with her?” His friend asks, dropping the mochi in favor of slotting himself onto Flux’s lap. He’s in the form of an orange fox, this time around.
“I don’t know.” He answers. How funny. Being alive for longer than any mortal human, but still being oblivious to answers you wish to have. What is the purpose of years in your life, if not to gain wisdom? What is the use of living so long, if you still feel so young? He never knows the answer to questions these days. He’d thought it would become easier.
It never does.
—
Saps,
You had never come around to tell me about the death of your family. How did they die? Did you see them, or their dead bodies? Was there blood? Or perhaps, you only learned about it later on? I wish you had told me. I may be older now, but I do not feel any wiser. Death still eludes me. You had died, Snowbird had died, father had died—but that is all.
I never saw your body, nor your tomb. I can imagine it. I can picture it in my mind, trace the ink lines with my sight, but the truth remains. I haven’t faced death. Father’s tomb is cold—mother no longer visits him. Snowbird’s body was colder, his hand wrinkled and fragile in mine.
Is that what death is? Cold? Is death akin to winter? I wish you could tell me now. Answer my letters, as you always had. Write with your illegible scrawl, drag your brush against the parchment. Tell me that death is warm and blooming, so that I cannot fear it anymore.
I do not want to fear death. I do not wish for it to haunt me. Not when life already does so without trying. But now that my mother is willing to succumb to it, I cannot help but flinch before the blow is dealt.
How did your family die? Will my mother die the same way?
Flux
—
Fluixon handles organizing his mother’s funeral with a sterilized heart. He’d scrubbed it clean of any pain, any longing, ensuring that she can pass on with a level of disconnect. He can’t make this any harder than it already has been for her. He’d decided on this long ago, and only accepted it during that night with Thomas on his lap.
“I want to have canolas by my tomb,” She utters, as they’re sorting through her hairpins. Some will go with her, buried under heaps of soil. Most will go to other family members, ones she’d been close with in a distant time. “Your father’s hair was colored like canolas.”
He smiles, remembering all the times he’d think of Saps’s eyes akin to canola blooms. “Of course. I’ll make sure of that.”
She turns to look at him then, and smiles. He doesn’t know what she sees. If she sees the sixteen year old boy who hadn’t known how to groom himself properly when meeting the patriarch, or if he sees the eighteen year old him who selflessly threw himself in harm’s way to protect the brother of the man he loved. Perhaps she’s seeing the person he’s grown into, even though his complexion is frozen in time.
He thinks her complexion is, too. He can’t see a difference from her appearance now, and from the time he’d been young enough to dream for more.
“You are selfless.” She finally talks. “Just like your father. I was always the more selfish one, out of us three. Wishing to steal your father’s time, and now wishing to have you steal mine.”
He doesn’t fully understand what it is she means. He tries not to feel resentment for it—how can he, when he’s equally to blame for their distance from one another—and instead vows to engrave every word she says into his heart. If he cannot understand right now, then he will remember what she says and inspect it, again and again, until time itself ends, until he understands.
“I hope that you find love, Fluixon.” She murmurs, picking up a familiar canola hairpin. A distant memory, foggy and blurry, like looking through a misty morning, surfaces. Gaps of sunlight flooding through trees, rays refracting and hitting her hair, before the fateful meeting with the family with silver-spun locks. While he remembers, softly, she gathers his hair, twisting so that she can pin it into place with the hairpin. She nods, and he knows this one is his to keep. “I hope that love will stay for you.”
Flux still sheds tears, when the patriarch finally revokes her immortality. Still, it’s not loud tears. Quiet ones, like unsuspecting snowfall in the cold of winter.
Perhaps death is akin to winter, then. Not for the people it’s taking, but the people it’s leaving behind. The cold seeps into his bones as he watches his mother drop, like water to sponge. Except he can’t wring it out of his body, can’t let it escape him. He holds on too much, and too tightly. Until his knuckles turn white from the effort, until his palms are bleeding crescent moons from his nails. For even though they leave, their memory remains inside his body, as if he were biologically designed to keep count of the deaths it can withstand, the memories it can keep in place.
He wonders if he’s destined to be a record that keeps track of all the people he loves, until he can no longer engrave their names into his heart, until he no longer has a piece of it to give away for them to bring to death.
He wonders if the moist soil can feel his love thrumming and burning with effort to keep his beloved’s heart beating. He wonders if the maggots taste life—his life, his love, living in the crevices of their veins, in the marrows of their bones—for once, when they eat the people he loves. He wonders if they can take his love further than their grave, into their next life. If their soul will be reborn and remember what it feels like to be loved so painfully by a cursed immortal shackled to this forsaken mountain.
He closes his eyes as his mother is taken to her tomb.
Schpood visits, a few years after he’d located his reborn lover. The trickle of time feels irrelevant, now that he doesn’t have anyone to worry about. Thomas can handle himself as he always had. Seraphim visits only when leaves begin to yellow. Meanwhile, a new friend, Nk, was added to the roster of visitors only recently. He was a creature of the void, only visiting on moonless nights.
“I’ve come bearing gifts,” Comes the spirit emperor’s voice from a fog outside his window. Flux looks up from the book he’s reading, unsurprised by the familiar voice. Schpood enters his room, each step languid and assured. He’s not wearing flowing silks or draping coats, instead favoring trousers and… Buttons?
There must be a question in his eyes, because he laughs. “I forget that you do not visit places beyond this mountain, and am always sorely reminded of it whenever I visit.” A wave of his hand summons books on Flux’s table, and then another causes intricately embroidered kimonos to lay on his bed. “These are from my beloved. All hand crafted by her specifically.”
“Thank you,” He nods, standing up to organize the new items. “What brings you here?”
“Can I not visit as a friend?” Schpood smiles, sitting down and waiting for his usual tea. Flux uses his sorcery to have it there as he works on hanging the kimono. Schpood observes him, before taking a sip from his cup, “Hm, finally using your magic for inane tasks?”
“I’ve outgrown the habit of using my sorcery scarcely,” Flux acknowledges. It’s true. He hasn’t done busywork as much as he had when he was younger. He doesn’t see the point, when he can instead spend the time wasted to lose himself in books. “I do not understand why you would visit so soon after our last meeting, if not to give me another task.”
Schpood laughs, but it sounds mirthless. “So soon, you say, yet 11 years have passed…”
“You have grown attached to time, it seems. I remember you telling me that a year feels as quick as a second.”
“Perhaps it’s an effect of life.” A pause to drink tea. “...11 years is a long time. I only realize now, again, what it means to mortals whose lives pass them by as quickly as a minute in our time.”
Flux is inclined to agree, remembering what it means to live with someone whose life was reliant on time. After all, he is nothing, nowadays, if not for his memories. But the stillness has become routine, the apathy a companion. It’s hard to imagine a year being more than a blink of his eye, in this current moment.
“Ah,” Schpood sighs, when Flux finally sits down in front of him. “How cold your eyes are, my friend. I see myself in them.”
“I’m simply growing accustomed to your views, is all.”
“My old views,” He corrects. “Just as I understand yours.”
They spend a few moments in silence, but Flux isn’t a good judgement of time. It could have been minutes, or it could have been months. He wouldn’t know. All he knows is that there’s right now, and there’s later. There won’t ever be an earlier again, though.
“...I wonder if there is a way to remind a soul of what it had gone through.” Schpood finally pipes up, when the tea has cooled. Flux expected a request, but he hadn’t expected this.
He talks softly, “There is no way to remind someone of past lives.”
“How can you be so sure?” There’s a challenge in his friend’s eyes. “My beloved talks of war. Of younger brothers. Of leading a noble family.”
There’s a pause, and Flux holds his breath. He still hasn’t let go of this habit, after all these years. Still holding, still waiting. Even when he knows there isn’t anything to wait for. Even when he knows holding on is futile if it’s only him that’s doing it.
“My beloved talks of a boy that sounds too much like you.” Schpood adds. Flux looks away. “When did you plan to tell me that in my beloved’s past life, she had been acquainted with you?”
He sighs, having never expected to have this conversation. At least, not in Jophiel’s current lifetime. Slowly, he admits, “...Never. You didn’t ask, and I didn’t have to tell you.”
“...You do not have to tell me things that you deem too close to your heart. I understand, as someone who also leads a life longer than mortals. But… Please, I wish for my beloved to remember me as I was. Not just as I am now. You must tell me, if there is a way to remind her. If there is a way to keep her memory, so that we do not spend too long away from one another in her next life.”
Flux turns his eyes downcast.
—
Saps,
Hello, my old heart. I still feel the faint beating from beneath my fingertips, when I write to you.
A new friend, Nk, brought me a contraption called a “pen.” Writing with one is uncomfortable, but perhaps it is because I have spent years using a brush. I wonder how you would write with one. The ink is easier to control. Perhaps your letters wouldn’t look so messy, if you used a pen.
Humans are quickly changing. Although, I would never know myself, nor would I see it up close, as the patriarch still refuses to die. Do you not feel that it is a bit petty for him to stand by a punishment he’d dealt me a century ago? I have yet to visit the village because of my youth’s impulsivity, and my mother is already dead. I find this fact outrageous.
I do not have the drive to feel passionate about this topic anymore, though. Age has a way of wearing thin even my yearning for the world outside. I am content with tea, and with spirits visiting me, and with hearing the happenings of mortals through them.
People have begun to wear trousers, and forgo “traditional” clothing. I do not find them comfortable, myself. You would like them, though. At least, I think you would.
I no longer feel confident in my knowledge of you. All the things we did and talked about are bygones of the past. Old news. Forgotten, buried, just as you are. I can no longer infer to them because of how new things are becoming.
I wish to get to know you again. I wish to love you again.
Flux
—
A few years pass Flux by yet again, since his conversation with Schpood. He believes Jophiel has started to wither, by the time summer brings morning dew to the canolas by his mother’s grave.
The Aculon clan has begun to dwindle. There are only a handful of them now. Cynikka and Ender, one of the last generations, have begun pestering him about learning sorcery through his teachings. The patriarch, on the other hand, calls for him to have tea together from time to time.
“I never envisioned for us to die out quietly.” Elanuelo opens up during one such time. The tea in between them wafts a pleasantly sweet scent, and Flux focuses himself on drinking and eating, rather than talking. He’s beginning to think the old man is only searching for companions that can share even a small sliver of the old days with him. “I had always thought that millennia can pass by the Aculon clan, and we will remain unchanged.”
He remembers thinking such, too. That millennia can pass without change in the mountain that the Aculon clan resides.
“Immortality isn’t a gift,” He murmurs in response, taking a bite out of a pastry. He feels that the patriarch wants to disagree, to defend the pinnacle that he and past elders of the clan tried so hard to reach. In the end, the old man only sighs.
“I suppose not. Not when you are born a human one, in a world full of mortals.”
It takes a few years, but Elanuelo decides to finally dissolve the Aculon clan, after much debate. After all, elders have begun to choose death, and new generations do not wish for anything else but the outside world. Plus, humanity has begun to forget about them, as they hurdle onto the newest thing that they can conquer. Nobles and sorcery and wars… They were things of the past, of fairytales.
“What will you do, boy?” Elanuelo asks, after gathering the family together one last time. He must be sentimental, enough so to call Flux such an old nickname. He hasn’t been a boy to anyone for a long while now.
He thinks about the question, pausing to look at the last few of his blood ties leaving the hall. Some have chosen to explore the world. Few chose to stay on the mountain. Most decided that their life had been enough, and wish to die. He thinks about his father, a memory so faded he’s even forgotten his face. He thinks about his mother, the canolas he waters everyday resting beside her grave (which sits near her only true love’s, his father). He thinks about Saps and Snowbird.
“I will wait.” He decides. For what, he does not know. But why choose to brave a world that has left him behind? He doesn’t like the pens, doesn’t like the trousers, doesn’t like the stories he hears of mechanisms that dominate the lands. He likes the books he gets, and the visitors. He thinks he can live like that, remembering. Always remembering.
Elanuelo only nods. That’s the last time he sees the old man breathing.
He thinks the death of the patriarch is the hardest to remember—which does he choose to carve into his memory? The one who punished him, or the one who called him out for tea?
—
Saps,
Father’s painting has faded to time. It only captures the curve of his mouth, smiling, now. However, even the yellow of his hair has begun to turn to dust. I wonder if I should repaint it as a dutiful son. But if I do, then I will be painting over the handiwork of my mother.
I think remembering the past is unbearable because of this fact. I am torn on such decisions. Do I let the past be the past, or should I do everything in the present moment to preserve it?
I do not know.
I hope that death has been kind to you. I miss you evermore.
Flux
—
There’s a different sort of stillness in winter that Flux has only begun to appreciate, after all these years. Even more so, now that only he lives on this mountain. After all, millennia pass without change in the mountain that he resides on.
Cynikka writes to him, sometimes. She talks of her travels and her lessons. Ender does as well, but rarely. He was always more aloof. Flux thinks about what could have been, if the three of them were born into a more normal family. Perhaps they would have been closer.
Seraphim is sleeping away, being a spirit that thrives during Autumn. Thomas is out in the world, doing who knows what. Schpood is mourning the death of Jophiel. Nk visits, but rarely. And recently, a water spirit, Hvyrotation, had taken a liking to pestering him. All in all, he’s gained companions, just as he’d lost them.
He doesn’t think he could have been prepared for the newest addition, though.
It goes like this: Flux is wiping away the snow that fell on top of his mother and father’s tombstone, as he lights incense sticks and says his prayers. When he’s on the way back to his house, he hears Hvyrotation call for him.
“Flux!” The spirit cries. He understands that he ought to not freak out, now. He exists in all forms of water, and snow is surrounding him.
“Hvyro?” He asks, looking around. “Is there something you need?”
“Foot of the mountain!” The spirit exclaims. “Help!”
“Where?” He asks, already starting to run down.
“Turn south— a bit more— there! Continue downwards!”
He ignores the bite of cold on his fingertips, as he tries to trudge through knee-deep snow with only his kimono, coat, and sandals. He tries not to feel angry—such fiery emotions are beyond him, but it licks at his heart from time to time, a habit from his youth—and reminds himself that the spirit wouldn’t call for help without needing it.
He’s beginning to slow down as the snow hikes to near his waist, and he has to step higher and higher in order to get through. He asks, “How much farther?”
“Look to your right!” The spirit answers.
Three things happen all at once: he holds his breath, his eyes prickle with tears, and his heart begins to beat again.
After all these years, he’s begun to outgrow his need to hold onto things. Habits die hard, they say. He supposes it’s only true when a person doesn’t have forever. So he’s started to let go—at first, his father’s painting. Then, the pavilion that he and Saps used to spend afternoons together. Then, certain memories. Until little by little, he loves and he forgets. Honors, but does not begrudge.
But today, it comes back full force—the giddiness of youth, the impulse of love, the bright, canola-like bloom of passion.
He trips over himself in his effort to reach the destination that Hvyrotation pointed him towards. He hears himself sob, but he doesn’t make an effort to silence himself, not this time around. He believes himself to be worthy of feeling pain openly, now. Even if there is no longer anyone by his side to be open towards.
My old heart, he’d refer to Saps. Faintly beating. And yet, his ribcage hammers with the effort of holding his heart back from leaping forward and soaring through the snow-littered skies. His ribcage is shaking, quivering, not from the cold, but from the life that has possessed him all at once. For the first time in a long while, Flux feels the winds of life blowing towards him, and each inhale is supported with it. For the first time in a long while, Flux is full of life.
And it’s all thanks to the white haired boy that lay limp on the snow, near the foot of the mountain. Older than the sixteen year old he’d first met, all those years ago. But younger than the man he’d seen wrap an arm around another woman, talking about a political union to end a war.
Canola eyes catch his, and the stranger who has his beloved’s soul smiles at him, before turning limp.
He tries not to think too hard about how this isn’t really his Saps, as he carries him to his house, hummingbird heart singing tunes of life and love.
Flux is wringing a damp towel, warm and toasty, when the man opens his eyes.
“Who… are you…?” The familiar stranger asks, laying in his bed. Flux looks at him, observes his short-cut hair and calloused hands. He raises the boy’s bangs with a gentle hand, placing the warm towel on his forehead.
“Fluixon Aculon,” He murmurs in response. “And you are?”
“Sa…ps…” Saps croaks out.
He breathes a sigh of relief.
Then, he closes Saps’s eyes, and tells him gently, “Rest.”
If he uses his sorcery to make the other feel drowsy, then nobody but his soul would know. After all, in the current times, magic was nothing more than fiction.
“Are you alright?” Hvyrotation asks, as he sits on the engawa. He cannot bear to be inside, where Saps’s reincarnation resides.
He thinks for a short while, before deciding it would not be good for him. All he’s done is think—he should enjoy this moment of peace, of reunion, before his emotions come crashing down on him full force. So, he answers, “Yes.”
“Is he…?” Hvyrotation starts, as he materializes his human form from a patch of snow. He radiates cold, when he sits beside Flux.
He sighs, “Yes.”
The other turns quiet, contemplative, as he notices the immortal’s curt replies.
Normally, he would be glad for such consideration. He does enjoy having time to contemplate, to think. Oftentimes, they would find him lost in thought for days, missing meals. Whenever this happens, whoever finds him would give him an earful, be it Thomas or Seraphim or Nk. After all, although he is immortal and forever in the form of his twenties, he still needs sustenance, and still gets hurt—once damage is done, it can only be undone through sorcery, lest he exist as a pile of flesh and bones until the end of time.
He’s lucky his sorcery is advanced.
However… Right now is not a time that he’d like to spend pondering. If he ponders, he fears he’ll be swept away by the force of his own thinking.
Which—fear is a foreign concept, nowadays. He isn’t afraid of much anymore. He isn’t afraid of death, its cold sigh a thing that shakes nations and takes thousands. He isn’t afraid of life, its passage unforgiving and undiscriminating of who has it and who loses it. He isn’t afraid of loss, often holding it closer to his chest than even love. He isn’t afraid of people, nor animals, nor nature.
He is afraid of Saparata de Theria and what he represents.
“I don’t know what to do.” He admits, if only to Hvyrotation. The spirit turns to look at him. His hands are shaking, his clothing still covered in winter snow. There’s icicles that droop above them. “I’m scared.”
It’s Hvyrotations to sigh, taking Flux’s hand in his. Somehow, even when cold to the touch, he feels warm. Perhaps it’s the blood of his heart beating, rejuvenated at the sight of his only love, that empowers his body so. It feels like forever ago, when he was confident in the fact that he ran hot. When your life turns dreary, so does your body.
“It’s normal to be,” The spirit amends, and he waves his hand, making snowmen in front of them. “I believe even Schpood would admit that knowing an old soul and seeing it in a new mortal body isn’t a fun thing to see. It’s hard to decide what to feel, because they aren’t the same.”
As if to prove a point, Hvyrotation crushes one of the snowmen, and then remakes it with another wave of the hand. He starts, “It’s made of the same snow. But it’s not the same thing.”
It’s true. The first snowman was rounder, flatter. This one was the slightest bit taller.
He looks at the spirit, tears brimming his eyes. “If the soul I loved is residing within the same name and same eyes…”
He’s not sure what he’s trying to say, what he’s attempting to ask. He remembers this feeling—the familiar tugging of the unknown, the unsettling tickle of uncertainty. He hates it.
Luckily, Hvyrotation doesn’t need him to speak in order for him to understand. Perhaps that’s a benefit of being friends with a spirit. “If the same soul you loved is here, then love is back. Only in a different form. You can’t see who he was, but you can see how he has grown. Think of it as him coming back from a long journey. A journey where he’d grown without you, and so you must relearn him.”
He thinks that’s a beautiful way of putting it. Of telling him, the love you had is gone. But it doesn’t have to stay gone. He only has to decide for himself.
Flux thinks back on the last time he’d decided for himself, he’d said to Elanuelo that he would wait.
Maybe he can stop waiting, now.
—
Saps,
I will let your soul rest in the new life that it has found itself in.
I let go of who you had been—nobleman, war general, father, and husband. However, I promise to relearn who you have become.
You are the same soul. It is without a doubt that, though you may have many changes, you will also have the same qualities. I hope your old life can rest easy, now that I will come to love your newest one.
I will spend my entire life relearning the maps of your life, if you would let me. If you would learn how to come back to me, in all of your lifetimes. Thomas had told me about cartographers, and how they learn about the world and map it out for everyone else to see.
I will become a cartographer of all of your lives. I will remember you, and map you out for forever to remember.
This is my last letter for now. Good bye.
Flux
—
“Thank you for finding me,” Saps had smiled, a few weeks down the line. Flux has now learned not to hold his breath, when the other talks. He clings onto every word that escapes the white haired man, and notes the differences, but doesn’t allow him to cling to them. Like how this Saps talks with an edge in his voice, obviously wary, but also because his personality is more forward. Unlike the nobleman, who was gentle and rounded even after war, this one had an intensity in him that’s refreshing. “Not many would have helped.”
“It’s no problem,” He shakes his head, replacing the towel on his head. There were various injuries on his mortal body, unfamiliar ones. Deep holes that dug into his muscles, with rounded, metal objects burrowed deep inside. He can’t use his sorcery, still doesn’t know how to approach the topic. He settled on bandaging the other, preventing bleeding. “I’m only glad to help.”
The other glares at him as he stands up. That’s another difference—this one was untrusting, and wary. Always on his toes. He doesn’t easily accept the kindness that Flux attempts to give him. In fact, he never eats unless he sees Flux eating from the same bowl. He’d devolved to sharing meals, once he realized this fact. Was he afraid of poison?
Regardless, it’s a work in progress, their closeness. Saps wasn’t as open as he used to be, and he is more cunning than he ever was. Every carefully crafted question is sidestepped as easily as the other breathed. Every attempt to ask about what happened is redirected seamlessly into an easier topic, like the harsh snowfall, or the upcoming blizzard.
So Flux contents himself with taking care of the other, cooking and cleaning and rebandaging.
That is, until a few more weeks later, when the other can move around on his own.
He supposes he had been quite careless, trusting as he is of Saps’s old soul. He should have noted that, even though not openly, the other displayed animosity. It was jarring, to have a knife pressed upon his neck. How does he explain that this wouldn’t kill him, only mutilate? He sighs. What a situation.
“No need to act coy,” Saps whispers, cold and distant. How curious. He wants to know what led the other to be like this, later on. “Tell me who sent you.”
“I live on this mountain.” Flux says, slowly and coaxingly. “I have no connections to the outside world. I cannot be sent or ordered by anyone, because of this.”
“Spare me the honey trap.” The other hisses into his ear. In a distant time, he would have blushed.
“...What’s a honey trap?”
“Please.” A cruel laugh. Then, the knife presses on his cheek. “Your act will cost you your life. Tell me who sent you and I won’t cut up your pretty face.”
He frowns. All this movement will lead to him reopening his wound.
Ignoring the blood that trickles from his cheek, he waves his hand so that the knife disappears.
“What the—” Saps jumps backward, clutching at his abdomen. He’s even more wary now, “What did you do?”
He really hadn’t wanted to reveal himself like this, but he had given him no other choice. Looking the other in the eye, he heals the cut on his cheek with a flourish, before approaching. Saps presses himself to the wall, a cornered animal.
“I’m an immortal.” He finally says, once they’re face to face.
“Spare me the fairytale.”
“Hm.” He tilts his head. Of course the other would be dubious, but surely his sorcery would have at least convinced him? Perhaps he was even more wary than he’d first thought. Regardless, he summons a talisman and places it squarely on his chest, before the other could react.
“What are you—”
“Your wounds should be healed, now.” He cuts off. “But I do not understand why you have metals inside you. It might not be as effective, as a result. You must rest.”
Saps was stunned enough to be led to his bed to rest. He checks on his abdomen, his shoulder, and his arm. Sure enough, the metals should be gone, but the talisman hadn’t fully healed the muscles that it tore through. As a result, he concluded that Saps should rest for at least the duration of winter, before he can descend the mountain.
He tells the other such, but he only stares at him, calculating.
In the end, Flux leaves the room to prepare their meal, and they spend their time in relative silence.
The next time the two speak, it’s a week later, while eating.
Saps pipes up, “Are you really an immortal?”
He raises a brow, sipping on broth. Swallowing, he answers slowly, “Yes.”
“How old?”
“Too many years to keep track of.” It’s true.
“And that… thing you did. Is it magic?”
“Sorcery, but yes.”
“And… you’re human?”
“As human as you can be, while having eternal life.”
Saps turns quiet, again. He’s much more contemplative in this life. In the old one, he’d always charge ahead, all passion and heart. He wonders what he went through, to change so drastically. He wonders if he can love him, who he is, or if he’ll only be holding onto a ghost.
He never did learn to let go.
Later, while checking on the man’s bandages, he sees various other scars littered across his body. Too many to describe, too many to pass as being clumsy or accident prone. There’s intent behind the scars—old and new, deep and shallow—and it’s similar to the scars that he had after the war, but also different. It’s not just swords, after all. There were round scars, scars that suggest stabbing, and not just slashing.
But the thing beneath the scars is what fascinates him the most—a back covered entirely by an intricate dragon. Tattoos weren’t foreign concept, but he doesn’t understand why Saps would have one.
Flux thinks that, since he’d answered the other’s questions, he’s owed his own. “What do you do, to be so accident prone?”
Saps turns to look at him, genuine curiosity in his eyes. The animosity has died down, and there’s only observation behind his gaze. Perhaps he’d gained a bit of his trust.
“…You truly don’t know.” Saps concludes, after the impromptu staring contest. He tilts his head.
“Of course I don’t,” He frowns. This one was tricky, truly. He misses his Saps. “I wouldn’t ask otherwise.”
Saps frowns back at him.
In the end, he doesn’t get in answers.
Another week passes, and he’s begun to take Saps on walks.
“It will help with recovery,” He answers, when asked why. He takes care to carry warming talismans, careful to not let the other grow cold. He doesn’t usually carry them—they were tedious to draw, and making them reminds him of what it felt like, making dozens to send to his Saps.
In these walks, they pass by ruins—old houses that are no longer occupied, the main estate, the pavilion—and Saps would ask about them, for entertainment if nothing else. Somehow, Flux finds himself talking about the past again.
Not even Thomas got this much information about his experiences within the Aculon clan.
He supposes he’s still weak to the soul of his only love. He can’t say no to such an old friend. Cannot resist sharing bits and pieces of their old experiences, because his heart is heavy and tired of bearing the weight of memories all by himself.
Saps was always respectful. He listened kindly, when he recalled the old rules of his clan. He nods along, when he devolves into a petty rant about the patriarch. Then, he laughs at the appropriate times, when he begins to contradict himself about the old man, and the mixed bags of positive and negative memories of him.
“Why do you have such mixed opinions on your leader?” A question slipped, while they laughed.
He doesn’t know how to answer.
(Because of you. Because he couldn’t accept that I loved you when it mattered, and because he only understood why I loved you when everyone finally passed.)
Instead, Flux tries to tell a different joke, and leads them to a different fork in the path. Shows him the caves that contain the sleeping bears, the nests of the few birds that don’t leave, the burrows of rabbits. He shows the running river that he’d sat beside, all those years ago. Dips their feet in a shallow pool of water, a recreation of their first ever memory.
And tentatively, they open their hearts to each other.
“I’m part of a gang,” Saps finally answers, beside candlelight, with his kimono pooling at his waist, Flux’s deft fingers checking on his injuries. The old soul of his love takes his hand, back still turned to him, and makes his palm rest upon the big, ornate dragon that’s forever engraved on his back. “Cindercrest. I know that you won’t know of us, though.”
Flux breathes. Of course, Saps just had to become a gangster right after becoming a war general. “What do you do there?”
Saps turns to look at him, incredulous. He laughs, “You don’t care?”
“Not if it’s you.” He answers quickly. Too quickly, too assuredly. Not if it’s you.
He understands that, had he been younger, he would flounder around and panic at such an open admission of his affections. Still, he cannot resist being open. He spent one lifetime hiding his love for the other. He can be selfish and be open, this time around.
Saps’s eyelids turn low, and he realizes that he’s looking at Flux’s lips.
“Yeah?” Saps murmurs. “You know, a honey trap is when an enemy sends over a person to attract and lure the target.”
“Hm.” He hums, and he doesn’t avoid the other when he turns around fully.
Saps had always been built. First, as a war general, and now, as a gangster. All broad shoulders, reliable muscles, strong arms. This Saps also reminds him of his Saps, when he smiles. They both have the same way of upturning lips, the same curve of their cupid’s bow. But their eyes—where his Saps was warm like canolas in spring, this Saps was molten hot like the sun in summer.
Fiery, passionate, desiring. Always desiring, coveting Flux.
“I thought you were someone they sent,” He whispers, crowding into Flux’s personal space, exchanging breaths, foreheads pressed upon each other. “Because you’re exactly my type.”
Flux looks into his eyes, stares at the reflection of his eyes. He sees himself in them, and realizes that he’s blushing. He holds his breath, traces the long, white lashes of this Saps. Shares his breath, soaks in his scent of cold, burning his lungs just as winter does. So different from the sandalwood of his old love.
Then, he tentatively presses their lips together, and lets go of the comparisons. Pulling back, placing his other hand that wasn’t resting upon the other’s back onto his cheek, he asks, “And what do you plan to do about that?”
Saps grin, devilish and cunning. He decides that he loves this Saps, too. How could he not? Snarky humor, curious eyes, sharp words, but painfully gentle hands. Not his Saps, but his in a way the other never was.
“This.” He answers, as he surges forward.
That night was his first kiss, and then his second, and then third. And then he loses count, loses care, as they entangle themselves in the throes of passion. Both are desperate, and Flux tries not to think of why, tries not to think of how fast time will pass by this time around, too. Instead, he clutches onto the other’s back harder, scratches on the dragon that’s stamped there, lines drawn red and angry.
Flux loses himself to the heat of his kisses, the tickle of his breath. He surrenders himself for the first time, second time, third… He lets himself lay there, pleasure, lust, longing—whatever Saps had to give him, he took—and he feels fuller than he ever has.
Life has never felt as exhilarating as it had been, the first night they shared their passion.
After that night, the two of them had become more physical. Saps would cling to his back, pepper kisses on his nape. He would hold Saps’s hands as they walked, kiss either side of his cheeks every chance he got.
They tell each other more stories of their life, with winter as their backdrop.
Flux shares some stories from his first life, although he doesn’t tell him about the intricate details. Only that these were stories about his most precious friend. Never about how he was his first love, or how this was him, in a different lifetime, in a distant memory.
In turn, Saps shares about how humans have created contraptions like guns, and how they’re experimenting with making automobiles. Whatever that meant. He also talks of a twin named Micro, and how he’s loved and lost a lot in his life.
He figures out quickly, why Saps had been so weary of him. He feels anguish at the thought that he’d suffered again in this lifetime, after having gone through so much already.
And then, when the snow begins to thaw and plants have begun to bloom again, he leads him to his mother and father’s graves, tombstones sitting beside each other.
“There would usually be more,” He murmurs, talking about the canola flowers that have begun to pop up. “But it’s only late Winter.”
Saps hums, respectfully kneeling in front of the tombstone, as he lights an incense stick for them. He smiles. He thinks his mother would have enjoyed meeting Saps again.
“My mother loved canolas,” He whispers, as he begins to kneel beside Saps. Hand brushing over the blooms, he picks the biggest one, and settles it in the crook of the other’s ear. It presses nicely on his temple, a beautiful contrast to his sun-bright yellow eyes. Different, but made of the same thing. “It’s something me and her share. It’s like your eyes.”
Saps holds his breath, and it’s rare to see him flustered. Flux chuckles, cupping his jaw, moving closer to kiss either side of his cheek.
He turns to light his own incense, and they sit in silence for a bit. Then, Saps speaks, “It’s nice to know that… It’s almost like she approves of me.”
He wants to reassure Saps that his mother knows of him, knows of their love. He wants to tell Saps that she’d long approved of him.
Instead, he smiles as he stands up, “I’m sure she would have loved you as I do.”
When Spring has finally begun to truly bloom, he realizes that his time is up.
He’s cooking when he realizes this. The icicles have begun to fall and melt, one by one. Saps regularly went into the forest to find bundles of flowers to bring back to him. Birds that left have begun to come back. All of these signs point to his love finally going back to his old life, the one he has down below, and leaving behind the one he’d formed during the winter with him.
Saps must have realized his sadness, because he’s immediately clinging onto his waist, hard chest on a heavy back. He doesn’t know if he can stand the other leaving.
“What’s the matter?” Saps murmurs, head resting in the junction between his neck and shoulders. He presses butterfly soft kisses there.
Flux frowns more, and he waves his hands to turn off the fire. He’d reformed the habit of not using sorcery for everyday tasks. He’d begun to live every second again, slowing his time down to match Saps’s. It will hurt more when he leaves. He curses his own mistakes.
“Flux, tell me?” He realizes he’d been lost in thought when the other begins turning him around, hand slotting under his thighs, carrying him. Having gotten used to being manhandled by Saps, he wraps his arm around the other’s shoulders. “Hm? What’s weighing on your mind?”
Flux looks down at worried eyes, and frowns even harder. Then, he admits, “You will be going down the mountain soon.”
Saps freezes. It seems he, too, hadn’t thought about their limited time together.
After all, Flux knows he cannot ask the man to stay. Listening to his stories, he knows that he loves his twin, Micro, too much to leave behind. And he still has commitments, still has ideals to fulfill in Cindercrest. He still has a life to live. He knows mortals well enough, even if he hadn’t been acquainted with many—they are desperate to leave their own mark on the world, whatever it is they decide on, because they know best how short their life truly is. An immortal like him couldn’t hope to understand, really understand, that desperation.
So, he doesn’t need to ask. He already knows.
“...Are you stuck here?” Saps asks, after they look at each other. He huffs in laughter.
The other knows that’s not the case. “No.”
“Come with me.” The man tries anyway, because he’s not Saps if he isn’t at the very least idealistic. He doesn’t understand why his person had to be someone who wants to push every boundary, wants to test every limit. When told to jump, he doesn’t ask how high, he asks why and how and where.
Flux doesn’t realize he’s crying, until Saps sets him down on the bed, and he’s wiping at his cheeks. Then, he answers, “I can’t.”
Saps frowns.
“I don’t want to leave this mountain,” He adds, because he knows the other always wants to know more, always wants to know everything. He knows that Saps, this Saps, wants and craves all of Flux. Everything, past, present, and future—this Saps wants to claim all of it.
But he cannot let go of this mountain. Of his memories.
He never did learn how to let go.
You are selfless, his mother whispered lifetimes ago. It was not true. He was as selfish as could be. He holds onto the past tightly but still dares to covet the present. He devours the current moment, and yet he’s already thinking of the next. He is gluttony and he is greed. He hungers, he craves, he eats, and he clings in spite of all that.
So he cannot come with Saps, cannot leave this place.
“Why not?” Saps asks, and there’s anger simmering underneath his tone. Still, it’s not the type that he will act upon—it was as if the other already knew, just as he had. That they would no longer be together, at the first bloom of Spring.
He shakes his head, “You know why.”
Saps had taken him again, that night. And he’d given himself—again and again and again. Until Saps felt satisfied. Until he no longer felt empty. Until there was no more anger. Until understanding caressed their faces, instead of tears. Until they whispered their secrets, creating oaths for Flux to carry until his next lifetime.
And when morning came, Flux kissed either side of the other’s cheeks, and sent him away.
The life of mortals laugh at the face of those who cannot embrace death, yet again.
The next time Flux meets Saps, he’s smaller, just an inch taller than himself. His eyes are warmer—the yellow of dawn. He greeted Flux with open arms, their meeting less dramatic than the last one. He’s wearing something he calls jeans, and a hoodie and whatever a Converse was. He thought it was short for speaking, at first, but was promptly laughed at when he’d brought it up. He didn’t dare to clarify again, after that.
This Saps was a college student, he said. He wasn’t built, but he wasn’t weak either. He played volleyball, whatever that game was. He was as passionate about literature as Flux was, and they spend their days talking about authors and plotlines and how modern poetry has evolved. They don’t kiss, don’t hold hands. He still loved him.
How could he not, when he sees matching moles on either side of his cheek?
“You know, I was made fun of because of these when I was a kid?” Saps says, when he points them out.
“Oh…” He answers, suddenly guilty. Saps must have noticed, because he tries to cheer him up immediately.
He poked at them, and smiles, “It’s fine! I think it’s cool now! Who else has such symmetrical moles, anyway?”
He chuckles, shaking his head. Then, in a rare show of being open, he says, “They say that you get moles where your past lover kissed you often.”
“Huh,” Saps brightens up even more. “I wonder if that’s true. They must’ve really loved my cheeks.”
I did, he does not say.
In the next lifetime, he meets Saps earlier than he ever did. He was short, only up until Flux’s waist, as he knocks on the door of his house.
“I’m lost,” He says, scratching at the back of his neck. Then, as if remembering something, he says, “I’m Saps and I’m nine and I go to State kindergarten.”
He frowns. What is a State kindergarten? He doesn’t know of any kinder plants that you could garden.
He ends up ushering that Saps in, feeding and cleaning him up. Apparently, he’d been kidnapped, and was fortunate enough to have gotten away. Flux is glad he found this house, and thanks whatever higher force there was that led Saps here.
He humors the kid with a few spells, ones that he’d performed for the nobleman him, before sending him away. He’d loved that Saps too, the same way he’d grown fond of Cynikka and Ender.
Thomas visits him a few weeks later, telling him about how Saps had kickstarted a rumour about a beautiful and kind spirit that lives in the mountain. He rolls his eyes. No matter the age or the lifetime, Saps enjoyed talking about him, it seems.
And so, he ends up staying true to his promise, learning about Saps in all of the man’s lifetimes. He wonders, briefly, how he finds Flux everytime—after all, he cannot be missing any lifetimes, unless Saps was reincarnating at exponential speed, which was unlikely—but he learns to just be grateful, in the end.
“I’m jealous,” Schpood sighs in front of him. He’s gone out of hiding again, now that he believes Jophiel’s soul was about to be reborn. “I don’t know how you keep finding him even though you never leave this mountain.”
He hums, taking a bite out of a biscuit, “I suppose this mountain is easy to come back to.”
Schpood rolls his eyes, not unkindly. “I suppose.”
They sit in silence, and for the first time, Flux can say he’s truly content.
The pain of loss is a temporary price to pay for the luxury of learning about Saps in the next lifetime, anyway.
—
Saps,
How is it that you find me everytime? I wonder if I’ve somehow bound our souls together.
That’s a silly thought, though. I do not know how to do that. If I had, I would have made sure that your siblings—Jophiel, Micro, Snowbird—would be with you in every lifetime as well, so that you would not be too lonely.
I await the next time I see you. I am excited to learn about who you have become, and to fall in love with you all over again. No matter if it’s platonic, romantic, or familial. As long as I can love you, I am fulfilled.
Flux