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Time seemed to subconsciously slip away from Alear’s forefront mind as the days passed, blending into blurs alongside the thousand years he’d spent sleeping, and the gods-only-know how many faded days before. And so, sometimes it feels near-instinctual for the dragon to tend to not take into account the passage of it as it happens.
While he is very blessed to have forged the bonds he had with friends who keep him grounded in time, once the war against Sombron ended, it became all too easy to get lost in the other, more tame and relaxed priorities of Elyos’ era of peace.
Diamant, however, becomes all too aware, all too quickly.
At twenty-five, the crown prince attends his coronation as the new king of Brodia. Celebrations and travelling abound lasts the first several months before the slow return to peace, and calm, and mountains of paperwork that comes with leading a country.
At twenty-six, he is engulfed by the gentle touch of the Divine One’s hand in his, joined at a ceremony in a newly rebuilt Lythos Castle. The pact they shared a year ago did not need much time to quickly bloom even further than anticipated. How silly, Diamant thought, at his once fears of vulnerability.
“Dragons bond for life,” Alear had said once, swaddled in the silks of the Somniel altar and the legs of his warrior king, then laughed quietly under his breath. He never really quite felt much like a Divine Dragon.
“For life? What happens when I pass?” Diamant asked.
A sadness glints in Alear’s eyes. Diamant would have flinched a little if he weren’t genuinely curious about the answer.
“Don’t you think it’s a bit early to be saying such things?”
A small pause before Diamant chuckles.
“Forgive me.”
•••
Months of travel, years of duty, decades of growth and bonding — there is nothing quite like a true era of peace. It is easy to forget the passage of time as a mere human, let alone as an ancient dragon.
At forty-seven, Diamant stares at the reflection in the mirror. He tends to find it difficult to claim as his own, despite it being very much his visage. He doesn’t notice his grip on the vanity until he feels the dig of the pact ring against his skin and quickly loosens the tension of his whitened knuckles. He hasn’t known how to broach this topic for quite a while now, and every birthday gets more difficult.
A knock on his door. Three patterned raps that used to be much more timid, now carry a firmness. Alcryst.
As his brother — younger, he has to remind himself — approaches, Diamant struggles to face him, but does anyway. His own odd youth is met with Alcryst’s wear. The not-so-young prince will be thirty-nine soon, and it shows. Diamant, however, tries not to acknowledge his own age, but braces himself for Alcryst to do so anyway.
“Happy birthday, Diamant. As— as youthful as ever…”
Diamant scoffs, but there’s no malice behind it. He even manages a quirk of a smile.
“There’s no need for that, Alcryst.”
“Will you be travelling to Lythos this year?”
The Brodian king’s birthday celebrations have always been spent in the capital, loud and rowdy and joyous, but the last several annual events have had his appearances before the public swift and curt. He finds himself more inclined to sailing to a quiet and gentle Lythos with questions that he does not quite know how to ask, and waits for Alear to ask them first, but the dragon never does.
“I plan to.”
Alcryst shuffles around the invisible eggshells of the question that’s on his — on everyone’s — tongue. But the weight of responsibilities that the younger prince has been taking over more and more removes the question mark altogether and turns into a demand.
“Brother, you must speak to the Divine One about this. We must figure out where to go from here with your… circumstance.”
“And if this is just how things are?”
“Then Brodia will have her forever-king — and the greatest one she’s ever had, at that!”
Diamant shakes his head. “What would father say if he heard that?”
Alcryst flinches and clenches his fist in a way where an apology would normally immediately follow, but he manages to reign it back. He’s had years of practice.
“What would father say if he saw you as youthful as a baby at his age?”
“Well, for a start, I assume he would be quite jealous.”
Alcryst bites his lip to keep from laughing, but there’s really no hope. The brother’s shared laughter never fails to ease any immediate tensions. Diamant, however, cannot quite fully relax.
“What did you mean by ‘forever-king’?” he asks.
“If you truly are… you know… then why wouldn’t you stay as the permanent king of Brodia?”
Diamant hasn’t decided yet if he appreciates or not how Alcryst avoids the word for what it is. Besides the point, his brother is avoiding something else, and Diamant knows him too well to not notice.
“Alcryst… surely you cannot still be afraid of succeeding me by now?” he tried.
“It’s— it’s not about that! It’s— why should I take over when we have been— been blessed! Surely you can see this is nothing but a blessing. The Gods themselves would rather see you upon the throne, even if it meant permanently!”
Alcryst is starting to bluster, and Diamant shakes his head firmly, crossing his arms too for good measure. Holy expletives never really sounded that strong coming from a Brodian mouth.
“You are better than this, Alcryst. You know this.”
He does. As much as some part of him deep down still hates to admit it, he does know. He also knew that he could not escape his own time on the throne eventually either. He’s been quite relieved with this odd turn of events for giving him more, well, time. And then it hits him.
“Oh… oh, Gods, I’ve been so selfish.”
“Alcryst—“ Diamant drops his head with a humored exhale.
“I have! Diamant, I have! All this time I was happy about your situation, thinking you could keep the responsibilities I am so incapable of being a successor to, while not even considering how unhappy you might be! And how unfair that is! Even after all this time, I manage to be such scum—“
“Alcryst, that’s enough!” Diamant laughs. It has been quite a while since his brother has had an outburst like this. “You know that is not true. And it is a good thing — being selfish! It is good to see you be a little selfish for yourself like this. Believe me, I would be more than happy to remain Brodia’s king to keep giving you your freedoms to travel and enjoy your life to the fullest. But I just… I just believe… that this may be what is best.”
Diamant places a strong hand on Alcryst’s shoulder. It still somehow astounds him how just-short of his own height his brother is now. Diamant has gotten to understand how, underneath everything, his father always seemed to look upon the pair of them as the young sons they always were to him, regardless of their age. Diamant smiles, and it’s this smile that cuts off whatever Alcryst was about to say in response.
“Listen, Alcryst. We have time. There’s still plenty of time. To discuss this, our futures, Brodia’s needs. But questions come first before answers. So, I entrust the rest of the celebrations, and the people to you. It also goes without saying, that you are not alone. I trust you to do a fine job, as you always do.”
“Thank you, Diamant.” Alcryst stifles his hesitation instead with his secretly not-so-secret infamous crystal-clear determination. “I will.”
The setting-sun hours alight the squares of Brodia’s capital with hues of warm spices, made even warmer by the merriment of her people celebrating another successfully promised year of peace and good health of their king.
Diamant, tries to make himself look older, or rather, his actual age, for the onlookers as he rides through the city, but has a sinking feeling he is doing nothing but scowling at them and very quickly stops. He instead opts for half covering his mouth behind the large collar of his uniform and wraps his red cape a little tighter across his front. He’s thankful for his people’s busyness in drinking and cheering rather than whispering gossip about their oddly youthful old king.
He spots the Solmic prince and his entourage of retainers and sentinels single-handedly in charge of much of the city’s partying and smiles to himself with a shake of his head. Alcryst has formed very strong bonds with very good company — his future has already been set in stone in excellent hands. Diamant spurs his horse and rides the rest of the way down winding cliffside roads to Brodia’s docks where a ship awaits him.
•••
He never does manage to ask what he needs to ask, hoping once again that the Divine Dragon would notice and bring it up first. He’s not sure what he is scared of, or rather, if that is even what the problem is.
It is so easy, he thinks, to just forget. Somehow, here, in Lythos, time eludes him even more than it already seems to do everywhere else.
When he watches Alear reel in a catch from the pond using a technique he taught him with focus on his brow and a — no other better way to put it — divine smile, time seems to move in half-time, while the calendar and clocks of the world outside the bubble of Lythos feel like they pass at triple speed. One thing he knows for sure, though, is even if it were the case, he finds himself quite content with the idea.
Alear holds him, and then he’s back in Brodia, signing papers and easing his brother more and more into a throne he feels he has more than enough warmed the seat of.
•••
Many more years pass, and Diamant stands once more in Lythos castle, leaning against the railing from a balcony facing north-west, where if he squints he could pretend he could see Brodia’s distant coastline.
This has been his longest stay by far, of several month’s length, and while there were plenty of concerned questions met with reassurances, neither he nor Alear certainly complained. Don’t let the people of Brodia hear this, but I quite like having you to myself, Alear said.
He admits, he likes it here a lot. He recalls the first time he stepped foot in Queen Lumera’s holy garden. Alcryst had just been born and the Brodian royal family travelled to receive his newborn blessing. Diamant had felt a stranger, no matter how familial Lumera strived to be with the monarchs of Elyos. Somehow he felt the need to remain guarded in the last place that would ever have required it.
Lumera had spotted him standing sheepishly by the dragon statues in the garden and made small talk easily enough. A lily, gently withered, swooped downwards from its spot on one of the hedges in a cry to get noticed by the dragon monarch. She apologized and excused herself from their conversation about dragons and heroes, and moved to caress the withering flower in the same way somewhere within the castle Diamant’s mother was soothing a small crying bundle of tears in her arms.
Almost instantly, the lily’s decayed patches twisted and curled and rose once more, the dry, brown crinkles restoring themselves back to its immaculate, smooth white. Satisfied with a smile, Lumera returned to the young prince with more stories of hero-kings and princes-to-be and of national flowers.
He silently wished, for Alear’s sake, that he got to speak with Lumera more than he ever actually did.
A hand on his shoulder rouses him from his mindless thumbing of the pact ring on his finger.
“Is everything alright?”
“Ah, Divine One — you’re here.”
Alear smiles that all-encompassing good smile of his — all eyes, all heart — and Diamant never fails in being reminded of how smitten he is. Alear knows it well.
“‘Divine One’,” Alear parrots. “Really…” He reaches to brush Diamant’s unruly bangs to the side only for them to fall right back into place the moment he removes his hand. The rest is left unsaid, but understood.
“You really are staying quite long this time,” Alear says it more like a question, out of habit, always hopeful with a glimmer in his mismatched eyes.
“Actually, I…” Diamant swallows. “I have been considering… retiring.”
Alear stares at him incredulously, before breaking out into a smile. A joke, he thinks.
“Look at you, pinnacle of health and you’re retiring… what will the people of Brodia think…” Alear can’t keep his hands to himself, like invisible strings keep pulling him to reach out and touch his warrior monarch.
Maybe Diamant could wait a little more, but… no. No, he’s kept this off long enough.
“It was my birthday a week ago…” he starts.
While Alear’s smile doesn’t fall quite yet, his eyes do.
“Turned, ah… turned quite a number…”
The smile joins the dragon’s eyes.
“You didn’t say anything…” Alear says weakly.
Diamant responds by silently searching his eyes, and an answer he finds.
“Oh Gods, I’m completely mindless aren’t I… how could I forget…”
Diamant smiles, overcome with the gentleness the dragon always manages to pull out of him. “Time truly does not phase you, does it?”
Alear joins him fully now at the balcony railing, resting his head into his own hands with an apology so deeply honest that it tightens Diamant’s heart with fondness.
And then it all dawns on Alear like the crash of a tidal wave, all at once and relentless. All the unchecked years that he had missed, not just the one from a week ago. He could not believe how weak of a grip he had on the passage of time.
That being said, something about Diamant had hardly helped, either.
Alear turns to face his non-aging partner, taking him in wholly as he often does. Again, he reaches out a chaste and always gentle hand to touch his cheek, his jaw, to thumb his chin, and back again. An excuse of an examination, really.
“But… how—” he begins, trying to understand, and then a more important question dawns.
“Diamant… how— how old are you?”
“Sixty-one.”
Alear’s eyes widen, mouth forming a thin line.
“You… don’t look a day older than when we first met.”
Diamant smiles, though unsure if he should. Alear is still touching him as if he were a fragile clay doll. Citrinne and Amber have been custom to do this too, gawking in awe and wonder and curiosity as they do, to which Diamant, exasperated, started finding it quite cumbersome. Yet he caves and curls and leans into Alear’s touch as much as he can physically and possibly reach it, lidded eyes flitting between the Divine monarch’s and the golden collar of his monarch’s regalia.
Alear is lost on words. Is this okay? Do you wish it were another way? Do we fix this? Are you regretting this? This… Us? He wants to ask. But the many cats of Somniel have got his tongue.
Then Diamant laughs. Hearty, and bold, and true, with crinkled eyes.
“Getting to live longer, or forever, looking like this at this age — believe me, there are worse things to complain about.”
“Yes, but—“
“And there are worse fates than spending an eternity with the Divine Dragon.”
“You almost made that sound like an eternity with me is bad.”
Diamant falters and holds a straight expression before cupping the side of Alear’s face.
“Never.”
Alear holds Diamant’s tense gaze and feels the way the king compensates for his slight uncertainty. But it is an uncertainty that comes as a small side effect, and Diamant finds it is something he has long made peace with without actively realizing it.
“Quite truthfully, I am happy,” Diamant continues. “Not many kings get to experience the futures they spend their lives trying to build.”
It is just then that Alear notices the Brodian circlet crown missing from his head. Diamant may have just said so, but Alear cannot help but ask again:
“Are you happy?”
Diamant nods with the gentle smile Alear easily fell into all those years ago.
“Brodia could not be in better hands. Besides, it seems as though I will not be going anywhere anytime soon. As long as I am able, I will always be doing my part.”
Alear’s proud smile returns and grows as he speaks.
“But for the time being…”
“Retirement?” Alear finishes for him with a quirked brow.
Diamant fights a grin. “I’d say I earned it.”
Alear wonders how he held back from kissing him this entire time, and then immediately cuts the wondering thoughts off by pressing against Diamant’s mouth. The first of many steps to making up for forgotten, fleeting years that feel like passing seconds to someone as ancient as he is.
He breaks off with a gasp.
“Alcryst has been the acting king this entire time?!” His eyes are glittering with the same pride and love Diamant had to endure from the dragon at his own coronation.
Diamant, flushed, blinks and nods. “Though, we have been holding off on the coronation.”
Alear groans, dropping his head on Diamant’s shoulder, jostling his monarch crown slightly askew.
•••
At sixty-two, Brodia’s Forever-King and the Divine Dragon Monarch attend the coronation of King Alcryst — a celebration made longer than expected due to the Prince of Solm’s insistence on a repeat of the union he and the new Brodian king had shared quite a while ago. Any excuse to keep the good energy flowing as long as possible, he always says.
At sixty-two, Diamant retires to Lythos, and enjoys his long-earned peace he had helped curate with all four nations and allies.
He often finds himself thumbing the pact ring he received from Alear, mindlessly and comforting, getting the most out of it now that there’s no need to protect it within a pouch by his heart.
•••
At one-hundred, Diamant’s crinkled eyes from smiling start to stay defined now, despite his persistent youth. Alear notices, draws them out with the gentle pads of his fingers, envelops Diamant with touches just like the silk of the Somniel Altar did for him.
A century is impressive. It is certainly no thousand years, but it’s not like it’s a competition.
With time aplenty, there is joy in counting days as they come, Alear adopting it as a sort of personal ritual. His mind drifts to his mother and wonders how she approached time, or how time approached her.
It dawns on Alear one day, why Lumera apparently never had her own pact, or her own children. Ironically, it comes when he’s thumbing his ring from Diamant: golden, sturdy and inlaid with Brodian gems. A medal from his father, a token of his father’s love and pride, a symbol of a tradition to pass on love from one to another to as far along as it can possibly go.
Alear gently clinks his and Diamant’s rings together. Morion gave Diamant the key to share his love and life in the way any good parent would wish for their child, and Lumera gave the same. Her life, her ring, her divinity, her power, and the emblems, all for Alear to make the most of and succeed. And with that, her sacrifice made sure Alear would not have to bear the heartache and loneliness that comes with being a dragon.
Alear laughs sadly to himself. The heartache unfortunately never really does get any easier. Selfishly, he wished time spared them all like it did Diamant. So he loves, and loves, and never stops forging bonds, passing it onwards and outwards the way his mother Lumera did, the way Morion did, the way his friends and allies did with their families that he know proudly looks over like an eternal guardian, the way he knows deep down that Diamant’s eternity will not be as long as his own and what precious immortality he was given was only fleeting. Diamant, stoic as he remains about the fact, seems to be aware of it too.
“What happens when you go?” Alear can’t help but ask. What am I going to do? is what he really asked.
Diamant is brushing fingers through vibrant half-and-half hair, circling an ear, dragging a line down the back of his neck. He burrows into the top of Alear’s head, who’s tucked into the crook of his own chest. His smile is audible.
“It is a bit early to be saying such things.”
Alear hums, not necessarily in a specific response to anything.
“Someone once told me dragons bond for life, so,” another kiss, “there is nothing for you to worry about.”