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The grass below Yoongi’s feet is still sticky. Morning dew or gore, he doesn’t bother looking down to check, the air too sweet laden with the honeysuckle that grows along the water's edge. He tries not to breathe in too deeply, the mortal world heady, too bright after all these years of quiet.
He is an ill-fit for this body, though he thinks that each time he is reunited with it, twin flames of familiar and unfamiliar coiling low in his gut. He feels too big for it, his lungs pressing painfully against his ribs, heart beating too harshly, bones stuffed awkwardly into their flesh prison. Yet he never expects otherwise.
He turns the villagers' heads even now as he breaches the invisible line that divides wild from tame, monster from man. They know not who he is though the bluebells turn their little bonneted heads to bow respectfully as he passes, the grass wearing her most vibrant green, the bees in hurried frenzy to appear their most diligent.
In a fleeting moment they will forget they have never seen him before. He will become someone's nephew, someone's uncle, someone's husband, someone's lover. They will have lingering memories, hazy and false, of a man that was never further than an arm’s length away, a figure in the corner of their minds that seemed to always be. Some will ignore him, other’s will question how they never paid attention to him before, their skin heating, lungs seizing with flowers blooming too large to be grown alongside weary sighs.
Love, they will think it is, but Yoongi knows the human condition too well to believe they are capable of love. Even when they die wheezing petals at his feet trying to convince him otherwise.
”You are so cruel,” Hoseok will tease, knotting barley golden like the sun into halos, into nooses, wound tight around phantom necks. “Cruel cruel Yoongi.”
But Yoongi isn’t cruel, he is kind, benevolent even. He asks for so little, offers so much. One sacrifice for a hundred years of peaceful harvests. For protection from all the ravenous monsters itching for a taste of human flesh, for those far more dangerous that prey off fears and weaknesses. One sacrifice, one soul, and he is content.
There are full-blown preparations for the festival when he enters the village square. Tents and hand-woven banners, a maypole hung with every blossom in season, azaleas the kind of red that would bring colour to the purest man’s cheeks. He can identify them easily enough, those that believe they are the rightful sacrifice. They walk different, a studied piety in their gaze, uncontrollable arrogance in their stance. They are always hunters, broad, strapping men or lithe, muscular women, each carrying game larger than the next in order to impress the invisible eyes they know are judging them. Each competing to be chosen to die for their community, no greater honour possible in their barbaric minds.
There was a time Yoongi loved them, his land and his people. But the sweetness of those days has faded to a bitter aftertaste of war and corruption that weighs heavy on his tongue, one that fills him with disdain almost akin to hatred. Yet he will fulfil his own duties, unlike the humans Yoongi is still just. Not made of blood and violence and –
“Do you have a wreath?”
The words seep into his skin, sun-drenched and soft, too-soft, Yoongi suddenly struggling to draw breath. The boy beside him watches him curiously, head tilted to one side, a wicker basket cradled off one arm. He is crowned in gold, hair like blossoming marigolds falling prettily around a face that would make the Gods weep, a certain gentleness to his features despite his strong, muscular frame. His voice is gentler still, patient.
“Wreath?”
The boy gestures to the delicate circlets of woven flowers overflowing from his basket, orange blossoms upon his own head, tiger lily. He rummages amidst his goods, selecting one with large red flowers, the petals long and tapered. He reaches out, placing it carefully upon Yoongi’s head, a soft smile.
“There.”
As he walks away Yoongi hears something he hasn’t heard before, the thrum interrupting his own thoughts as it pulses against his ears. It is his heart beating, each thump a thunderclap against the perfect blue skies of his mind.
The Sugar Moon is dwarfed behind the tall tress surrounding the market, night having come early to match her strides to day for the Equinox. It is an auspicious celebration, the full moon landing on the Sabbath indicating it is time for a new sacrifice to be chosen, a tradition none alive in the village have been witness to. It is a choice that Yoongi does not actually make, the sacrifice is appointed by Mother Nature herself and he has never seen reason to deny her wishes. Light like silver thread woven around a chosen neck on the third night of the festival, the exact place Yoongi separates head from body.
Now he stands watching the youth wrestle in the mud, their bodies gleaming with sweat in the moonlight, each sure of their supposed soon to be divine status. It is farcical, Yoongi cannot stop himself when he turns away, heading instead for the quiet banks of the river.
His golden haired youth is perched at the edge humming a half-remembered song. He is preparing the red water for tomorrow’s feast, hands a bloody crimson as he immerses bundles of azaleas in a small basin before him. It is quiet, his work, but he raises his head to smile at Yoongi anyway. Familiar, but in a different way. Familiar as they have met just hours ago, familiar as they have talked. For a breathless moment Yoongi is not someone’s husband, someone’s uncle, someone’s friend, and it aches. It aches naked and raw, as though he is bleeding out in thick, red drops of want, of need, till the water at his feet is a crimson to match that in the basin.
But then his youth looks away and the illusion is broken, flesh stitching back over muscle and sinew, colour draining to leave behind water as clear as the spring sky overhead and Yoongi feels his throat clench, bile burning acrid in his mouth.
“Not a lot of trout this year, isn’t that odd?”
His voice is murmuring like the stream, inviting. Maybe Yoongi should answer, maybe he wants to answer, but maybe there are azaleas beginning to bloom in the hollows of his lungs too. He doesn’t speak, afraid of what might come out if he does.
His youth, Jungkook he has heard him called, dances around the maypole, ribbons like leaves of green intertwined through his thick hair. He laughs and plays, hands clasped with another young woman, a song of a harvest to come. Yoongi looks to the sun, the heat burning the image into his eyes, and he is bothered in a way that flushes his cheeks, kisses them red from within.
Then Jungkook's hands are in his, warm and blushed like summer, and Yoongi feels them burn his skin as he is pulled into the circle to dance. He feels them burn even after the sun has fled for more sheltered pastures, the bonfire crackling high, hymns praising a faceless God sung to the realms above. Jungkook finds his gaze then too, a secretive smile, almost shy. If only he knew better he would sing of a God made of death.
Yoongi coughs, a handful of red petals heavy in his hand, somewhat terrifying, somewhat like their bearer.
Yoongi feels despair on the third day, strangely without the gnawing want for loneliness that usually set in by then, without the want for solitude. The air has been tense since the morning, petty rivalries and fragile egos flaring easily, jaws clenched so tight they may never move freely again. He still laughs, Yoongi’s Jungkook, though he hasn’t strayed close enough to hear it, musical and soft, lilting light as feather on the spring breeze. He hasn’t strayed close, petals on his tongue, creepers around his heart.
It is time, now all that is left to do is wait. Wait and then fade away, never to be remembered.
He feels him at his side, a gentle rustling of fabric, Yoongi’s lungs constricting more.
“Pomegranate?”
Yoongi turns towards the offered hand, bothered once again, breath catching when he looks. It is like threaded light, the invisible noose around Jungkook’s neck, the eyes above watchful and curious.
Yoongi swallows, unable to breathe from the floral arms stretched long and tough inside his throat, the taste of azalea sharp on his tongue. He takes it wordlessly, Jungkook smiling soft and indulgent, nodding before moving on into the crowd.
Yoongi coughs, petals like gore sticky against his fingers.
Then he turns, away from the celebration, away from the village, away from his duties, and disappears into the night.