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Humans had been given the greatest gift of all, mortality, the underlying force that should drive them to embrace life with every fiber of their being if they but could. Their faces recorded their unique stories in every line and wrinkle, standing testimony to the nature of their all too brief sojourn.
Oddly, what they should have embraced as badges of honor, of a life thoroughly lived, were condemned even by their most fledgling societies, youth’s blank slate held up as the goal they should aspire to above all, often by means dangerous in themselves. Belladonna and lead ultimately guaranteed youth’s blank slate by killing people long before they had the chance to grow old.
He'd been bemused by it all, incapable of feeling their emotions himself, until he’d met Feng. He’d been carving lines into his face when Feng had, much to his astonishment, turned to look at him.
“You need to carve deeper. I’ve earned them.”
He did, admiring how they complimented the grey at Feng’s temples, the work of his brother the Time Coiffeur.
Admiration was the first human emotion he experienced but thanks to Feng, not the last as he’d dared to lean forward and kiss him.
Through Feng, he’d come to understand his charges better, as he’d taken him out into the human world to experience their joys and sorrows, their holidays and traditions, his favorite of which was the Dongzhi festival. Of course it was his favorite, its very nature intertwined with time, marking as it did the longest night, celebrating rebirth and the returning balanced nature of Yin-Yang as the days lengthened. Though he didn’t need to eat, all the dumplings and tangyuan weren’t bad either. The dichotomy of Yin-Yang was the only way he could make sense of his intense relationship with a mortal.
He’d wanted to seek immortality for Feng, to keep him with him always but he’d declined, fully embracing the transitory nature of life, finally dying in a swordfight at aged 60, a ripe old age at that point in time.
Initially, he’d been inconsolable, with nothing but his duty left to him. Yet Feng had proved true to his name, reborn every 100 years on the day of the Dongzhi festival, as a different person with a different life in a different place but always with Feng’s memories of him.
He’d never failed to delight in the moment when a human he’d never seen before would turn to him and greet him: “Engraver, my love, how I’ve missed you.”