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Soft sunlight leaps through the small room, showering Xie Lian in an embrace of warmth. His eyelids flicker in the tender light, awakening him from a dreamless sleep. The new sky is painted on the ceiling above, visible through the humble holes of his humble shrine. Consciousness is slow to return, and it is after a few moments that sensations begin to collect. One after another: sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste.
The spirit beside him makes it clear that this morning is not like those past. No longer are mornings filled with deep gasps of yesterday’s failures nor sighs of dread over tomorrow’s inevitabilities.
Beside him, the mornings are always sweet.
In the glow, Hua Cheng’s sleeping face lies peacefully.
Xie Lian feels a smile spread over his own at the gentle sight. He traces over each fine porcelain feature with his eyes. No tension dares settle on his husband’s face. His brow rests comfortably. Carefree, as if never knowing grief. His eyes are closed with his infamous eyepatch discarded.
Just for now. A secret just for them.
How many times Xie Lian had laid kisses over that eyelid, he can’t count. Mentally dispersing each scar that lay etched over the thin skin with each touch of his lips.
He continues mapping from Hua Cheng’s eyes to his nose. A reminder of its coldness when it presses into his neck returns to him. Its softness was only rivaled by that of his lips.
From his nose to his lips, Xie Lian follows the tranquil slopes of Hua Cheng’s profile. They are upturned slightly, as if recalling something indisputably pleasant. The slight tint of pink over his lips disrupts the paleness of his face, adding life to his otherwise departed appearance. Kissing had never been something in the forefront of his mind before Hua Cheng. The introduction to the act had now turned it into a pressing matter. One that he takes every opportunity to attend to.
Those kisses, their union, tethers them together with red threads. Never to part.
A chorus of birds all sing to their own rhythm, overjoyed to greet the morning. There is no order to their calls, but harmony interweaves their varying melodies into a single song.
These quiet ballads are missing from the mornings in Paradise Manor. In a land where night is eternal, there are no praises of a new day. Time interweaves, unknowing of day and night, stretching infinitely. This little absence was something Xie Lian would never fathom professing. Instead, he savors the simple phenomenon during these fleeting moments.
He watches his husband's chest rise and fall, out of time with the birds. Counting the beats between each steady movement, no sounds are audible as air neither enters nor leaves the apparition.
The god wonders what sleep means to a ghost. Where does a ghost’s consciousness wander in such a state?
Breathing, sleeping, and eating are all mere mimicries of mortality. Just as much as the touch of warmth added to his fingertips whenever they reached to grasp Xie Lian’s. Small gestures summing to equal a greater expression of love.
Twos and fours echo in Xie Lian’s mind as he focuses only on the tempo set by his beloved. Thoughtlessly, his own breathing settles in time, pulse slowing to a quiet and subdued pace. Serenity falls heavily on Xie Lian’s lashes as he gives in to the hush of the morning.
A swift breeze stirs the parading trees that cover the mountain and their restless leaves whisper and flutter in the wind, sending currents of sound rising over the birds’ songs. The reception of autumn is underway, and all the foliage begins to paint itself as embers. The color crimson embraces all, and crisp coolness lingers past the night.
The draft slips through the cracks in the walls and bathes the room in a wave of cold. Hua Cheng rouses only enough to wind his arms around Xie Lian, drawing him to his chest before settling once again.
Silent bliss binds Xie Lian’s heart in knots. Tethered to the moment, he lets himself be swept into a flood of joy so light and warm, all nips of the fall wind vanishing. New blooms of spring overgrow in his chest as Hua Cheng’s hands hold him gently. Tucked away and hidden from the endless bitter winter of the outside world. The god’s sight is captured and held only by the color red.
The nearness makes soothing breaths of patchouli and fragrant maple dance around him, drifting from the folds of Hua Cheng’s robes and caressing him in the scent.
Eight hundred and one years of wandering, equal to a second here. A second in his home. A second in this happiness.
The honeyed taste of the word ‘home’ falls over Xie Lian’s lips as sleep kisses him once more. The word finally reunites with its true meaning as he lies cradled in the silks of love.
Ghost and god lay asleep, bathed in morning’s sweetness.