Chapter Text
A clearly defined beginning and end was a rarity in the neverending river of time. Often, it was more like the sand grains the waters carried. Each and every one of them had an impact, but nobody could say which was truly responsible when the rocks at the river bank bottom turned to sand themselves.
The same could be said for the start of the less than perfect relationship India had with China.
Nations have premonitions. They were vague, confusing, and rarely ever made sense. Sometimes, they were significant, sometimes they weren’t. But they predicted the future, and that was valuable in the time of warring clans and unstable kingdoms.
It was a dream where India first saw China.
He slipped into oblivion, and suddenly, he saw past the rivers that fed him and his people, saw past the heavenbound mountains of the east, saw past the lush hills and jungles beyond, and he saw a river. It was not any river he had ever seen.
And then he saw him. He was a child, like him. He didn’t know who at the time, but thousands of years later, another lifetime away, he would.
The child was short, and had skin paler than he’d ever seen on a human, and wore dirty, scruffy robes. He was also covered head to toe in blood, as he gripped a spear red as he was.
Despite that, what was most striking about him was his eyes. They were cloaked in shadow, his brows furrowed deep; blood dripped from his temples into the corners of his eyes, but instead of wincing, like India imagined he would have, he just narrowed his dark, wrathful pupils.
He was so, so different from anything India had ever known, yet he felt remarkably, incredibly, terribly familiar.