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They say love is like a flower. Blooming and flourishing with great care. Tender like the petals of the most delicate blossom. Beautiful in its arch, always stretching to reach the sun. Yet no one prepares you for the thorns, the vines and the roots that nestle in your whole body. Those thorns piercing your heart every time it beats, the veins suffocating your lungs, making it hard to breath. And roots pooling in your stomach, clawing till nausea settles like a chronic disease. Still all you see is a shining flower, hidden are its parts that are tinged in red.
Jing Yuan had experienced all of it. His love for Dan Feng unbearable at some point, but still flowering nonetheless. In the beginning he felt the flower blooming, nourishing its beauty, tracing its petals in delight. Until one day he choked and a shining white, nearly translucent petal emerged from his mouth. Fascinated Jing Yuan stared at its ethereal beauty. He pressed that first petal between his scrolls full of ancient poems, wanting to keep it for eternity. The petals became more frequently after that until they emerged as full grown flowers. The lotus blossom came up with blood, that smeared its otherworldly white the moment Dan Feng was sentenced to molten rebirth. And Jing Yuan realised he might die with him. What he didn’t realised whatsoever was, that his condition didn’t go unnoticed. The day Dan Feng died and rebirthed, Jingliu brought the healer who had prepared a potion for him to drink. He couldn’t recall why he didn’t protest and just drank it without even asking what it was made for. The moment the potion reached his insides, it burned and he cried out in utter agony. He heard Jingliu whispering that it would be over soon, that the flowers would wilt. But they didn’t wilt, fade or wither, they just burned. Every petal scorched up in flames, vines and roots blackening. He could feel them being branded in his entire being. Yet he endured, mourning the one he wished to trace until his body went unconscious and he emerged from the ashes of his heart. Leaving the lotus buried in his lungs and a pressed petal between lines of adoration and longing.
🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷
Jing Yuan stirred awake in a bed of the hospital grounds at the alchemy commission. His body felt numb and tired. Yet his throat was burning. The room itself was dark except for some moonlight illuminating some furniture in the shadows. He tried to sit up, reaching for the bedside table in search for water that surely had been placed there. He found it and also saw Yanqing dozing in a chair beside his bed. The boy looked exhausted, dark circles under his eyes even while sleeping. Jing Yuan took a careful sip of the water, only to choke immediately. The sound of coughing woke Yanqing from his slumber. Panic filled his eyes as he saw blood and something white coming from his master’s mouth. He rushed to Jing Yuans side without a second thought, knocking over the chair and shattering something in his wake. „Master, are you alright!“
The tumult as well as the sound of Yanqings frantic crying, made Lady Bailu come running into the room as well as Dan Heng, March, Stelle and Welt on her heels. Lady Bailu tripled over to her patient, pushing Yanqing aside after accessing the situation. Jing Yuan was still coughing, a hand covering his bloodied mouth. The moment the coughing fit subsided Lady Bailu gently took his hand and revealed a white lotus flower in full bloom. Nearly translucent petals, veins that looked like molten gold adoring their wake. Unnaturally though, the blossom looked even more eerie where it was speckled with droplets of blood. A gasp echoed through the room. March whispered shocked “Is he mara struck?” and clutched onto Stelles arm. Welt only looked at the flower, enthralled by its otherworldly beauty. “When did the flowers took root, General? It must’ve been a while.” Lady Bailu asked rather concerned.
Jing Yuan looked at the flower with a sad smile forming on his lips as he traced it in a rather lovingly manner. „It‘s been centuries, although I have been cured once…“ There was something bitter in his tone. He looked up and his eyes went straight to Dan Heng, who had been rooted to a spot at the food of the bed since he had entered to room. Something arched deeply in the Vidyadhara’s chest and a single tear pearled over his face unnoticed, translucent and shimmering in the distant moonlight, like a memory he didn’t know he possessed. The General was still bearing the same sad smile, his eyes so full of yearning. It was the same expression he had at the shore, Dan Heng realised. He remembered it from before as well now – from moments of his long lost life. When the sun was still shining lustrous onto him, beckoning him to reach out and marvel in its glow. Still he never tried, afraid of his own slowly fading light and the ever growing sorrow in those golden eyes. Doomed to darkness, shackled by a past and regret.
When the General spoke again, his voice sounded broken, as he could feel a new flower forming in his throat.
„It seems I might love you in every form you take… Dan Heng“