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Take a dream and breathe a little life into it and it becomes hope. Stretch hope out a bit so that it gets quite tall and then it becomes a wish. Rub a wish counter-clockwise across the belly so that it laughs and grows spindly little horns from its head and then, finally, it becomes a faun.
It’s a sunny autumn day like any other in the valley. The sky is washed pale blue from the midday sunlight and pale clouds stretch from one end of the horizon to the other. The hills roll towards the horizon like ocean waves and, far out in the hazy distance, the leaves on the deciduous trees turn red and brown and golden with the coming cold season.
Jisung sleeps in the shade of a tree. He’s a particularly tall faun with straw gold hair and two pretty little horns growing out of the top of his head. He hasn’t granted a wish in a while so he’s been getting sleepier and sleepier lately, dreaming longer into the day than he wishes.
He’s visited by a particular strong breeze, the moving air rustling the limbs of the tree above his head so roughly that a bird’s nest topples out of a low-hanging branch. It’s not the nest’s fall that stirs Jisung from his sleep, but rather the crazed squawking of the bird the nest belongs to.
Jisung drifts into consciousness just in time to notice the nest falling down towards his head, the little bird frantically fluttering down after it. Just in time, Jisung reaches out his furry little hands and catches the nest in his cupped palms.
The bird alights on his shoulder, but Jisung can’t tell if its ear-piercing cries are angry or relieved.
“Stop with the noise,” he huffs and, surprisingly, the bird obliges.
He stares down at the contents of the nest, expecting to see bird eggs, but he finds a small horde of silvery trinkets instead. Tiny necklaces, tear-dropped shaped earrings, narrow rings and gaudy bracelets. Jisung wonders how or why the bird came across so many human treasures. There is even a tiny mirror in the nest and he gazes at his reflection: a tiny, flat face with sleepy-looking eyes; his horns have grown and they curve marvelously to frame his head; tufts of hair peek out from his pointed ears and narrow chin.
The little faun boy smiles at his own face, for it has been quite a while since he’s last seen it.
“Don’t touch a thing,” the bird on his shoulder cries, so suddenly that Jisung flinches at the sound. He’s nearly forgotten about it.
“I wasn’t going to,” he defends himself.
“Put it back in the tree,” the bird orders him.
Jisung gazes up at the high branches of the tree and frowns. “I can’t.”
“Why can’t you? Goats are good for climbing.”
“Not trees.”
“Try anyway. You never know.” The bird sounds surprisingly confident, but it’s just desperate to be high off the ground again, away from goat-legged boys and their furry little hands.
Jisung uneasily gets to his feet. It’s tough to push himself upright without the use of his hands. Now that he’s standing up and staring at the rough bark of the tree, he decides it’s completely impossible to climb such a thing.
“Get a move on,” the bird commands, ruffling its red feathers impatiently.
The faun would have glared at the bird from the corner of his eye, but his horns block the bird from his sight. He only knows the thing is there because of the pinch of its talons in the bare skin of his shoulder. He wants to protest, to tell the bird that the branch is just too high for him, but instead, he shifts the nest to one hand and places his other against the tree. He hops as best as he can onto the tree, his hooves finding the tiniest grooves in the bark to balance on. He wiggles his way further up, clutching the tree desperately, as if a three-foot drop might kill him. The journey is slow and the nest in his hand seems to grow heavier by the moment and when he finally slings a leg over the lowest branch to take a rest, his arms are sore from the climb. He places the nest down on a little fork in the branch and sighs. “This is as high as I can go.”
“This isn’t my branch, though,” the bird says with a huff. He dances anxiously from side to side on Jisung’s shoulder, the pinching of his talons making Jisung smile even though he should probably be very serious right now.
“You’ll have to deal.” Jisung prepares to shift off of the branch and make the drop back to earth, certain his legs can handle the impact, when the bird’s anger bubbles over and he flies off of Jisung’s shoulder, circling around him angrily and flapping his wings in the poor goat boy’s face.
Jisung swipes his hand at the bird. He misses the bird entirely and sends the nest plummeting to the ground. For the second time that day, the bird dives to the ground after his nest but this time he squawks in mourning as the nest hits the ground.
The silver treasures spill out all across the grass and wildflowers. Many of them break into pieces from the impact.
The faun slides off the tree branch and jumps to the ground..
“They are just things,” he tells the wailing bird, standing to his full height.
“They aren’t just things; they are my most prized possessions,” the bird protests, hopping across the ground from one broken object to the next, his beak nudging the items pitifully.
Jisung feels sorry for the creature and is tempted to lean down and comfort it, but the bird wheels on him and chirps angrily, red feathers puffed up in agitation. “It’s your fault. If you had just climbed higher, I’d be back on my branch by now.”
Jisung stamps his hoof, making the bird hop back in surprise. “Just start a new collection!”
“I can’t,” the bird says in a voice far softer than it had been using this entire time. “Those were the only things in this world that I loved.”
“You… loved them,” Jisung questions the bird. He’s only heard that word a handful of times in his life and he has never quite understood the meaning, but he is certain it is a word that shouldn’t be used in reference to a group of inanimate objects. “You can’t love things.”
“You certainly can,” the bird defends himself. “You can love anyone or anything. You can’t deny your heart such things.”
Jisung twists up his face in confusion, growing tired of the complicated concept and already turning to walk away.
The bird calls after him in a loud and sing-song voice, “You just don’t know what love is, do you?”
His sentence cuts deeply and makes Jisung turn back around. “So what if I don’t? I don’t need it.”
“You do,” the bird corrects him, proud. “You haven’t truly lived until you've felt the fire of love in your heart.”
“Fire, huh?” Jisung repeats the word. Now he’s even more wary about love. He doesn’t have much experience with it, he doesn’t even know how to properly describe or identify the emotion, but if this bird says it’s a fire in your heart, then it can’t... be entirely comfortable. “I bet the fire prince knows all about love, then. He’s got fire in his heart for sure.”
“What?” The bird asks, confused by Jisung’s random statement. It clicks in his head after a moment. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Jisung tells him, like it was an easy enough mistake. “That’s why the fire prince would be better at explaining love. I bet I know where he is at this time of day.”
“Let me come with you,” the bird says, practically pleading.
“Why?” Jisung frowns. He’s not exactly thrilled by the idea of being ordered around by something so small.
“I kind of don’t have a home anymore,” the bird states in a quiet voice, so softly that Jisung has to flick his ears to pick up on the murmurings.
“Fine,” the faun relents and walks away, not surprised at all to feel the bird alight upon his shoulder again. “…but at least tell me your name.”
“Chenle,” the bird identifies himself. “And you are…?”
“Jisung,” the faun states, rather proudly. “And I’m… we’re going to find out what love means.”
🐐🐦
The bird and the faun don’t get too far before Chenle complains that he needs a break even though he’s done absolutely no flying or walking or any kind of work.
Jisung wordlessly agrees with him, though, and plops down in the high grass so quickly that the bird doesn’t have a chance to take flight before he’s falling from the faun’s shoulder and tumbling across the dirt.
“What’s with you,” Chenle chirps. He gets up and hops along the grass to sit on Jisung’s chest as the young faun reclines across the grass with his arms cradling his head.
The forest has thickened up around them, flowers of all shapes and sizes and colors thick and lush on all sides. In the gaps between trees, Chenle can make out… more trees. They are all starting to look the same to him and he worries that Jisung may not actually know where they are going. He’s been keeping a bird’s eye view, but he hasn’t seen even the faintest hint of any kind of fire prince.
Of course, if the fire prince is in these woods somewhere, then the bird should also expect blazing forest fires and stampedes of startled animals.
Jisung slips his wooden flute from the beautifully patterned pouch on his hip and lifts it to his lips. He plays a gentle and lilting little melody that almost makes Chenle sing along.
Almost.
It’s a pretty song about spring, even though it’s the start of autumn, and Jisung gets into it enough to shut his eyes and only let his fingers and mouth move.
The performance is cut short by a heavy paw swiping the instrument right out of Jisung’s furry hands. He blinks open his eyes and sits up hastily, once again sending the little red bird to the ground in a heap of feathers and angry-sounding squawks.
“I like the sounds this thing makes,” says the big brown bear cub now sitting in the grass next to them.
“I made it myself,” Jisung says.
“Thank you,” the bear states, running a paw over it. It looks so tiny and fragile in his massive paws.
Jisung tilts his head. “Why are you thanking me?”
“For giving it to me, of course,” the bear elaborates.
“You took it from me,” Jisung corrects him, but even when he gets to his hooves, he’s not as tall as the bear is sitting down.
“Semantics,” the bear declares and puts the small piece of wood to the end of its snout and blows. It makes a high-pitched squealing noise that has Chenle cursing and Jisung’s hands flying to his lengthy, pointed ears. “It doesn’t work properly. It’s bogus,” the bear diagnoses, clutching it a bit too tightly and snapping the thing completely in half. With distaste, he drops the broken bits to the grass and Jisung can only stare at the smashed pieces in horror.
“Why did you do that,” the young faun cries out, eyes wide and terrified.
“Because my name is Jaemin and I do what I want,” the bear growls, a sound that vibrates the earth beneath Jisung’s hooves and makes the poor faun cower and sink back to a sitting position on the ground. The bear rolls onto his feet and, without another word, trundles away.
Chenle waits until the bear has vanished deeper into the trees before alighting on Jisung’s furry knee. “Don’t take it personally. Some people just love being awful.”
“People can love causing others pain?” Jisung asks, scandalized. He blinks rapidly as confusion washes over him. “How is something like that love?”
“You’re taking this too literally, kid,” Chenle declares, but when Jisung only stares blankly back, Chenle realizes that explaining is a hopeless battle. He just goes along with it. “Love is complicated,” he says instead, then preens at his feathers, removing tiny bits of grass and grime from all of today’s fumbling around.
Jisung sighs, not sure why people would bother with a thing like love if it could cause hurt and pain like that.
🐐🐦🐻
They decide not to rest for too much longer. In case Jaemin decides to make a return trip or something.
Jisung travels in the opposite direction he saw the bear go and the trees eventually thin out into a fine example of a meadow.
The breeze blows through the high grass, making the whole place look like a stationary ocean, the waves a brilliant and shining green.
Still no sign of the fire prince, Chenle concludes as he looks around. He is so tempted to ask Jisung if he’s alright in the head, but decides that his perch on the boy’s shoulder is too great to pass up just in case Jisung takes true offense to the question and bans him from the ride.
A lone tree stands in the middle of the meadow, its lush leaves reaching up to the sky like hands seeking something bigger and better.
Jisung approaches it, but it’s not until he stretches out beneath it on his back as if to nap that Chenle speaks up. “Why are we resting when we can be walking,” the bird hollers.
“I’m hungry,” Jisung says plainly, as if that is the answer to everything. He’s staring up into the boughs of the tree, sleepy little eyes focused on the brilliant star-shaped fruit dangling from the branches. “Go get me one,” he commands in a voice similar to the one the bird had used on him when they first met.
“I refuse,” Chenle snorts as best as a bird can. He hops impatiently from one leg to the other on the grass next to Jisung’s shoulder, eager to get moving again for a reason he has yet to figure out.
Jisung smiles at the lack of cooperation. “I bet you’re hungry, too.”
“Yeah, but that’s not the point,” Chenle retorts, but he’s looking up at the fruits now too.
For a moment, one of the fruits looks like it's growing larger and larger, then Jisung realizes that it is floating through the air towards him. Closer and closer. It takes him a second longer to realize that a tree branch is twisting around and lowering the fruit to him and yet another second after that to notice that the branch is an arm.
The arm is attached to a wide-eyed tree spirit, his skin textured and rough like splinters, his hair tangled and green like vines. The tree spirit plops down on the earth next to Jisung and holds out the star fruit like a peace offering. Jisung sits up and takes the fruit from the spirit and admires it in his hands.
“I’ve been working on these all season,” the tree spirit says proudly, motioning to the fruit. “I poured my heart and soul into it.”
“That sounds like a very painful thing to do,” Jisung says, wide-eyed. The fruit in his hands no longer looks as appetizing as it did ten seconds ago.
The tree spirit grins shyly. “It’s alright. I love what I do so I don’t mind sharing it with other people.”
“You love doing this?” Jisung repeats the word of the day, eyes lighting up. “I’ve never been in love. How does it feel?”
“You’ll have to excuse him,” Chenle suggests. “He’s not exactly familiar with figurative language.”
The tree spirit smirks, the shyness in his expression slowly melting away as Jisung laughs at Chenle’s words, not even fully aware that he’s laughing at himself.
“Well, I don’t know if I’m in love with my work… but I do love it,” the spirit says, which just makes Jisung blink.
“Don’t confuse him,” Chenle warns, but his voice is playful and light like a song.
Jisung decides it’s not worth attempting to keep up with their conversation, so he busies himself with peeling off the velvety skin of the fruit, exposing the white, chewy body beneath. He bites into it and a sharp, almost too-sweet flavor explodes over his tongue.
Jisung moans in pleasure, which excites the tree spirit. “It’s good, right?” The spirit asks, despite the obvious answer. “I put a lot of hard work and love into it, so it feels great knowing others enjoy it.” His voice develops an edge of sadness. “But… I chose the wrong place to plant my roots. Not too many animals find my clearing, though… so I don’t get to share the fruits of my labor with as many beings as I would like.”
“Sharing with one person is better than sharing with no one at all,” Chenle attempts to sound poetic, hopping onto Jisung’s wrist and nibbling at the fruit.
“What do you know about sharing,” Jisung wants to know.
Chenle ignores him in favor of swallowing a beak full of fruit and fluttering away.
“Well, if love is something that can be poured into other things, it’s very tasty,” Jisung concludes, chewing the last of the fruit and licking the sticky remnants from his fingers.
The tree spirit is still smiling. He hasn’t stopped grinning since Jisung first bit into it. His smile is very lovely. It takes up his whole face. “Love can be very tasty… but it can be nasty, too.” The spirit pouts slightly. “Love can make you do bad things… but love can also make you scared.”
Jisung asks, “Why would it scare you?” But even as he says the words, he starts picturing ways in which it can be frightening.
“Love can be this big and brilliant thing that you might not even realize you are in,” the tree spirit mumbles. “It’s scary to realize how deep you’ve fallen without knowing… It’s scary to pursue it further because it can be a long and difficult road. It’s scary because you may have never felt anything like it and there’s always the chance you’ll never feel anything like it again.”
Jisung blinks, his idea of scary love completely different from what the tree spirit has just described. He was thinking more along the line of actual monsters, with claws and glowing red eyes and everything. Like Jaemin but a little bigger. “So love is a fire that can be complicated, wonderful and scary,” Jisung hypothesizes, once again wondering why anyone would bother with such a thing.
“That about sums it up. Rather accurately, I might add,” Chenle states. His surprise is evident on his beak as he gazes into Jisung’s sleepy eyes. “Now, if we can get back to the original plan…”
Jisung lets out an “oh yeah” and stands up on his hooves, wiping blades of grass from his fur.
“Will you do me a favor,” the tree spirit wonders, not budging from his seat on the grass.
“Yeah, sure I will,” Jisung states as Chenle settles in on his shoulder.
“Will you tell people about my fruits?” The tree spirit smiles again. “Just tell them all to come to Jeno’s Meadow.”
Jisung repeats the phrase, liking how it nearly rhymes, and then agrees to the task.
Chenle has to peck him on the neck--hard--to get the faun moving again.
🐐🐦🐻🌳
Their journey resumes well enough. The air deep in the forest is cool and damp, the leaves shifting from green to brown to yellow to fiery red, unable to decide which color looks best on them and not willing to believe the exclamations of “you look great” from their neighbors.
Jisung bounds along cheerfully, hooves leaving behind a trail of dirt and dust on the forest floor, the fur on his legs as rich a brown as the soil he treads on. He decides that now would be a wonderful time to play his flute with the sound echoing around him like this, but then he presses his hand to the lighter-than-usual-pack on his hips and remembers that his flute lies broken elsewhere in the forest.
He drops his hand from the pack sadly and picks up his pace.
“You said you knew where the fire prince was, right?” Chenle asks the question when he’s been jostling along on Jisung’s shoulder for far longer than he pleases.
“He should be right up ahead, at the riverside,” Jisung explains.
“What a terrible place for a fire prince,” Chenle mutters, more to himself than to his companion. “If I were a fire prince, I’d do everything I could to avoid bodies of water.”
Jisung has an idea of why the prince might go there in the afternoons, but he doesn’t voice it.
They crest a hill and the forest floor slopes down sharply to a wide but calm river. Its shores are muddy and bare and littered with pale white rocks that protrude from the ground like teeth.
Jisung, skilled with slopes like these, effortlessly bounds down to the water. Chenle, having had enough of the bouncing around, takes to the air with an annoyed chirp and doesn’t land on Jisung’s shoulder again until the faun is walking at a steady pace on the muddy riverbank. His hooves make wet noises as he steps, but he grins at the odd sensation of mud on his hooves.
“I don’t see him,” Chenle observes, and only then does he wonder if he should have stayed at his tree and not cared at all about his broken treasures. Look where it’s got him!
“Of course you don’t see him. We haven’t found him, silly,” Jisung offers, his voice light with joy.
Chenle rolls his eyes as best he can and wonders if the shiny things that were in his nest are still where he left them on the ground. He peers over his shoulder, trying to remember the way back. He decides against it, however, his heavy heart at the loss of his lovely things makes it impossible for him to think of flying so far. He sighs in surrender and settles on Jisung’s shoulder.
The river widens even more before it narrows and dips down a steep, rocky cliff for a merry romp. Jisung effortlessly follows it from ledge to ledge, the tiny waterfall eventually pooling in a lake where the fire prince is resting on a big boulder overlooking the water.
Jisung grins from ear to ear and lets out a bleat of greeting.
The fire prince looks up, startled, but recognizes the faun and relaxes.
“He’s far from home,” Jisung explains to Chenle as they approach the man. “He’s not supposed to be out here, surrounded by so much wood and water. He belongs in the sea of sand out west. Where the sun shines even at night and rain never falls. He sneaks out of his kingdom once a week to come here.”
Chenle lets out a bored, uninterested sigh.
Jisung hops onto the rocky surface of the boulder, his hooves slipping on the slick surface like he’s dancing on ice. With some effort, he manages to cross the damp rock and sit next to the prince.
The prince turns his gaze away from the lake and looks up at Jisung. His skin is the color of ashes and his eyes are as dark as coals. He is handsome, but Jisung knows he can be as dangerous as wildfire with just a flick of his wrist.
“Hello, Donghyuck,” Jisung greets cheerfully, he would have placed a hand on Donghyuck’s shoulder, but he’s done that once before and the fire that always bubbles beneath Donghyuck’s skin had scorched his fur.
“Who is your friend, Jisung,” Donghyuck asks warily, eyeing the little red bird on the faun’s left shoulder.
“He’s not a friend, he’s a hitchhiker,” Jisung states.
“I asked to come along and you let me come along,” Chenle chirps.
“You’re a hitchhiker,” Jisung repeats.
Chenle lets the matter drop, still aware of the heated gaze Donghyuck is laying on him.
“He’s okay, though,” Jisung states quickly, as if finally catching on to Donghyuck’s discomfort. “He won’t tell anyone you come here. Can’t go having everyone know where runaway princes like to run off to.”
Donghyuck’s shoulders stay tense, but at least he turns away, his eyes back on the water. “He’s late today.”
It is a sudden subject change, but Jisung knows what he means. “He’ll be here. He knows you’ve come all this way just for him.”
Donghyuck doesn’t look too reassured, he just sighs dejectedly, a tiny billow of steam escaping his ears.
“I’ll go check up on him,” Jisung offers.
“You can’t swim that deep,” Donghyuck tells him, so quickly that it was as if he knew Jisung would make such a suggestion.
“Watch me,” Jisung states and hops from the boulder into the lake. The water is far cooler than he imagined it would be, even with his thick fur.
Chenle takes off from his shoulder. “I’ll sit this one out, thank you kindly,” he states before landing on the low-hanging branch of a nearby tree.
Jisung turns back to Donghyuck, and the flaming fire prince looks severely out of place surrounded by so many flammable things. Jisung decides to make this quick. He hops further into the lake, the water reaching his waist, then his chest, then his neck. With a deep breath, he dives beneath the surface and swims forward.
The underwater world is every bit as magnificent as the forest he just left. The lake is far, far deeper than it appears from the surface and it doesn’t take long before Jisung is surrounded by the dark of the depths. Sunlight doesn’t illuminate much but Jisung knows the water kingdom lies at the lake’s deepest point.
His hooves make swimming difficult, but he swims anyway, pushing himself further downward until his lungs begin to burn from the strain. He pushes further and further down, his ears popping from the changing, building pressure.
Jisung’s lungs cry out in agony. His brain threatens to make him open his mouth and swallow air that doesn’t exist.
Just when he’s about to give up, a small and gentle hand reaches out of the blackness and presses something cold and round against his mouth. It’s shaped like a pearl and feels almost too large to swallow, but as soon as Jisung accepts it into his mouth, it dissolves and tingles all the way down his throat and into his belly.
He almost chokes. He feels water flood his lungs, but… he can breathe it.
It takes him a few moments to steady his breathing, but he eventually turns to face the owner of the hand still pressed against his face.
“It’s about time you showed up,” Jisung states, adopting the same sarcastic tone Chenle usually uses.
“You better be lucky I heard you thrashing about,” the mercreature states, his voice low like tidal waves. But his smile is friendly. Warm. His skin glows faintly blue, not very bright, but it’s enough light to allow Jisung to see.
“He’s waiting for you,” Jisung states. “Still.” He looks into the mercreature’s fathomless black eyes. “Based on how low his fire has gotten, I think he’s been sitting up there a few days.” Jisung has to admit that he is a bit worried. Usually, he could feel the blazing heat of the fire prince from quite some distance away, but today, Jisung had hardly felt his warmth, even when sitting right next to him. “His fire will go out if you don’t go see him, Renjun.”
Renjun curls his fingers into a desperate fist. “I can’t.”
Jisung sighs before kicking himself closer to the mercreature, gripping onto the thick fins at his side. Renjun’s body is like a stable anchor in the underwater tide. “Why can’t you?”
“His heat scalds the water at the surface,” Renjun replies, staring at a point slightly to Jisung’s right, as if he can say these things as long as he isn’t looking right at the faun. “It burns my skin, which is why our visits can never last long.”
Jisung sighs again.
He’s known these two star-crossed lovers for only a few months but, apparently, this predicament of theirs has been going on for seasons .
Renjun would turn to steam and seafoam if Donghyuck ever touched him.
Donghyuck’s fire would be fatally doused if Renjun ever touched him.
Yet they still visited each other nearly every week, Renjun gazing up at Donghyuck from the lake’s depths while Donghyuck gazed down at him from the boulder’s edge.
“I’d have given up quite some time ago,” Jisung says honestly, still clutching Renjun’s fin. “Why would you put yourself through something so difficult if you get no reward at the end?”
“Seeing his face is reward enough,” Renjun mutters, pulling the two of them through the water until they’re both resting on an outcropping of rock. Jisung tangles his arms around the slim mercreature to keep himself from drifting away. “Seeing him fills me with light.”
“So he’s the fire in your heart,” Jisung blurts out, the words escaping his mouth as bubbles.
Renjun turns to the faun with confusion in his eyes, mouth ajar. “He is fire and he does live in my heart,” he finally offers.
“Then you’re in love,” Jisung diagnoses as casually as if he were talking about what he ate for breakfast.
Renjun’s body goes rigid next to Jisung and, for a few seconds, Jisung wonders if he has said something he shouldn’t.
“I think I am,” the mercreature whispers, his voice almost lost in the depths of the water. “I don’t know why, though. I don’t know why I love him. I don’t know why I can’t stop. It’s impossible for me to show him that I love him. Sometimes…” He pauses briefly. “Sometimes, I wish I didn’t feel this way about him.”
“A little birdie told me you can fall in love with anyone or anything and that you haven’t truly lived until you feel the fire of love in your heart,” Jisung says this while nodding, as if he’s become an expert on the subject.
Renjun stays silent. He presses his lips into a firm line, doubtful and unsure.
“Just go see him,” Jisung nudges urgently, partially because he hates seeing Renjun look so sad but mainly because the bubbles in his throat from the pearl are becoming tinier and tinier and his lungs are starting to tighten with the urge for real air again.
“I’ll go see him. Even if it kills me,” Renjun decides and kicks off the rock outcropping with so much speed that Jisung nearly loses his grip on the man.
The landscape whirls past them in a monochromatic blur of blues and blacks before Renjun breaks the surface in the center of the lake. Jisung coughs and sputters as his lungs struggle to switch from breathing water to breathing air.
The noise they make is enough to attract Donghyuck’s attention and as soon as his eyes focus on the blue-skinned and purple-haired creature next to Jisung, his eyes light up and he stands up as rigid and tall as a candle’s wick. “Renjun,” he cries out with such passion that the air around him superheats and the trees at the lake’s edge shrivel backwards in discomfort and fear.
“See, look at that fire,” Jisung points out. "He loves you, too, with all his fiery goodness.”
Renjun gasps for air as the revelation steals his breath from him.
“Cool it, will ya,” an angry voice that sounds like Chenle shouts from the treetops. “I’m talking to you, fire boy!”
Donghyuck glares upward at the bird, but takes a moment to get his emotions under control. The fire that blazes from his hair dims. However, the water has already gotten hot from his intensity. Jisung quickly notices the rise in water temperature and he suddenly feels unsafe. He glances at Renjun, who looks like he’s thinking the exact same thing.
“I can’t go any closer,” Renjun informs the fire prince. He’s already looking completely unwell in the quickly warming water.
Donghyuck nods. “This is close enough, Renjun. I haven’t seen you in so long.” He chokes up a tad. “All I want to do is hold you.”
“I just want to hold you, too,” Renjun agrees, because as long as they’ve known each other, they’ve never been able to embrace. “I can’t, though…”
Donghyuck catches the sadness in his tone, but still manages to smile. “The fact that you want to is all I need.” Donghyuck pats his chest in the general location of his heart and Jisung smiles to himself, deciding that this is the love Chenle mentioned. Fire. Hearts. It all checks out.
“I must go,” Renjun states after a minute of just staring into Donghyuck’s burning eyes.
Donghyuck nods in understanding and, without another word, Renjun vanishes into the water.
Jisung swims across the surface of the water and by the time he’s gotten back to the muddy shore, he’s panting and uncomfortably hot and his fur is water-logged and his skin is red and nearly blistering.
Donghyuck can’t stay too long, either. He turns to Jisung. “I must go.” But he doesn’t seem sad at all. Not like before. “I’ll be back though.” And then he turns to leave.
Jisung watches him go.
Jisung doesn’t really understand what he did or how or when but the surge of magic in him is unmistakable. He feels his tiredness melt away. Without realizing it, he’s just granted a wish. Renjun’s? Donghyuck’s? Perhaps both?
He still doesn’t exactly know what love is but he understands just the slightest bit better now.
Chenle lands on his shoulder. It’s become his new favorite place. The bird happily chirps, “Where to next?”