Since we’re already discussing Splash Free!, there’s another thing that has always bothered me.
This is a shot of the original ending. Makoto is holding this vase upside down to show us that there’s no water. There’s even a single drop hanging out of it. Ok.
This is official art. The vase Makoto is holding is the same vase, and now it’s full but… he’s still holding it upside down..? Which side is the top?! Does he have two identical vases? Did he fill the bottom of the vase with a little bit of water? What? I’m so confused.
for @paigyloli for the @makoharuflowerexchange!! Thank you to the mods for running this, and I hope you like your gift! ^-^
Flower: Peppermint, symbolizing fidelity and protection from illness.
read here on ao3!
“Let me pass, please.”
“Haru is not to be disturbed,” said the young man standing in the doorway, looking up at Makoto in a mixture of exasperation and pity. “Master Tachibana, he must rest if he is to get well―”
“Please,” begged Makoto, brandishing a bundle of sweet-smelling mint at him. “Please, Rei. I need to see him. Just once, before I go.”
“Go?” asked Rei, frowning. “Where are you going?”
“I―somewhere. Just, please―”
“Rei,” came a soft voice from somewhere over the manservant’s shoulder, followed by a hacking cough that sent an ache through Makoto’s own chest. “Rei, it’s all right. Let him in.”
“But Haru, you…”
“Have the strength for him, always.” The voice paused. “Makoto, sweetheart, come in.”
Rei stepped aside and waved Makoto past, letting himself out into the corridor before shutting the door behind him. Makoto was left alone just beyond the threshold, clutching his bundle of mint in worry as he saw his liege’s face―white and waxy where his cheeks were once pinker than fresh-cut blushroses, and thin as if he had not eaten for days.
For all Makoto knew, he hadn’t.
“Haru,” he breathed, stumbling the last few steps to the bed and sitting at the prince’s feet. “I―I’m here.”
“So you are,” hummed his friend, breathing the ghost of a laugh as he reached for Makoto’s hands. His eyes were still the same, Makoto thought: long-lashed and blue and clear like the sea at sunrise, blissfully tranquil and as much a source of comfort as they had been in Makoto’s childhood long ago. “With peppermint, too.”
“Oh!” he said, laying the sprigs of mint at Haru’s knee. “These were the best I found this morning, so I cut them for you to make the air fresher.”
“You remembered that I can’t have the windows open,” Haru smiled, taking the rain-damp leaves and pressing them to his nose. “So you brought the spring to me.”
“I wanted to see you so badly,” Makoto confessed, grasping Haru’s hands and kissing them. “When they called the physician, I thought you might―”
“Not yet,” his friend interrupted, bringing Makoto’s fingers up to his own white lips. “And there are worse things than death, sweetheart. I’ve seen them.”
He closed his eyes.
“So have you.”
Makoto thought back to the past year, the year that came and went without a drop of water from the skies, the year Haru broke the most sacred law of sorcery to keep the crops from dying and received a death-curse in exchange. The year Makoto resolved to lift it, only to be foiled again, and again, and again.
It had been nearly ten months since then, he mused. Ten months of Haru growing paler day by day, of his limbs losing the power to heft his broadsword and then to walk unaided, ten months of the wheat and barley and corn growing tall and full in the fields, ten months that had passed without worry for the kingdom or much thought to its prince’s recovery.
Watching it happen―watching the strength leave Haru’s heart and body―that had been a death of its own kind, he realized.
“You, certainly,” Haru observed, breaking him out of his trance. “And I am sorry for it.”
“Sorry?” gasped Makoto. “What―what do you have to be sorry for?”
“For keeping you near, when I’ll soon be so far away,” murmured the prince. “It’s been cruel of me.”
“I would have stayed even if you commanded me to leave your side,” he admitted. “You would have done the same.”
“But you’re leaving soon, aren’t you?” asked Haru. “I heard you, earlier. Where are you going?”
Makoto bit his lip and reached out again for Haru’s hands, pressing them flat to his heart.
“To the North Wilds. To find a healer, for you.”
“What?” Haru sprang upright, tearing his arms away and knocking the bunch of peppermint to the floor. “No, that’s where I went to get the rain spell, and they―they’re the ones that did this to me, they’ll kill you―”
“I’m still going to try.”
“I’ll throw you in the gaols if you do,” hissed Haru, turning three shades whiter. “Don’t you dare, Makoto―”
“Then I’ll die in the gaols, instead of out in the Wilds,” Makoto cried. “I’ve followed you everywhere, into wars and out of them, into places so dark and wretched that you had to carry me back because I was hurt too badly to walk alone―what makes you think I won’t follow you into your grave?”
“You will let me die at peace,” said Haru, suddenly becoming every inch the lord he was and speaking as a prince to a subject and not as a friend to a friend, and certainly not (though this last had never been right for them, even when they were children) as a boy to his brother. “I won’t lie here drowning in terror for you, I forbid it―”
“You’re not going to die at all,” vowed Makoto, meeting him eye to eye. “I won’t let it happen.”
“There’s nothing you can do.” Haru was weeping now, pleading with him, clutching at his tunic with shaking fingers like a child coming out of a nightmare. “I’m afraid to go without you beside me, can’t you see? You think Father hasn’t tried everything? He has, and you know it, so―”
He moved almost without meaning to, and when he next lifted his eyelashes he found his mouth pressed to the heart of Haru’s palm and Haru himself sitting two feet away, staring so hard that his eyes nearly fell out of his head.
“This hand,” he whispered, tracing its fate and marriage lines and wondering what a world without them would be―if the sun would remember to set in the evenings, if the moon would still stir the tides, if the crops would wither and die in mourning for the soul that had given them life. “I’ve always been holding it, always. What would I be without you? You’re as much of me as I am, and I’d rather die fighting to keep you than fade away grieving, after.”
“I know,” choked Haru. “I know, but for my sake, please―”
The prince turned away and coughed into a linen cloth (as he did more and more often, now that the year-anniversary of his curse was only two months away) before rolling it into a ball and stashing it under his pillow―but not quickly enough, for Makoto had seen the bright stain that bloomed between his thumbs like poppies’ petals, and as usual the proof of Haru’s suffering left him so deeply wounded that speech would not come to his lips.
“I’m sorry,” Haru told him again. “Forgive me, aynee. Forgive me.”
“I can forgive you for stopping my heart, Haru-chan,” he said, kissing Haru’s feet through the blankets. “But never for stopping me from preserving yours.”
“Those are the same things, aren’t they?” murmured his friend. “There was never a knight without his prince, or a sunbeam without his shadow. Not for us, at least.”
“No, not for us,” croaked Makoto. “Never.”
And then, because Haru’s eyes were still full of tears, he swallowed his worry and spoke again.
“Will you think about something for me, while I’m gone?”
“Anything, if you promise to come back.”
“Do you think you would like to be married, when you’re better?” Makoto asked him. “With crowns of mint for your hair, and a proper wedding-feast by the summer house. And then a month at the seaside, before coming back to the castle.”
“It sounds very nice,” sighed the prince. “Who would I be marrying? You’ve forgotten to mention that.”
“Whomever you like, aynee. No one could turn your love away, having known it.”
Haru parted his lips to argue, and Makoto brushed them once with his own before laughing and pulling away.
“What say you, my lord?”
“That a certain soldier would stay home, if he wants to make me happy. But that if he goes he must take a good companion with him, and whatever food he can carry and coin enough from the coffers. And medicine from the healing halls, just in case, and--”
“He’ll do all you ask of him, dearheart.” Makoto kissed him again, smiling as Haru pressed forward and sighed before closing his eyes. “Does he have your leave to go?”
“He does,” whispered Haru. “But you will come home?”
“I will come home, and you will heal. Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Then there’s nothing keeping me now,” he said, setting the injured peppermint in the vase by Haru’s bed. “I’m taking Strawberry, if you don’t mind.”
“Please, she needs the exercise.” Haru slumped back against the pillows and groaned, already half-asleep as Makoto kissed him for the third time and rose to depart. “Keep safe, my love.”
“And you, Haru-chan.”
“Twenty years,” murmured the prince, clutching a sprig of mint to his heart as Makoto slipped out and vanished. “Twenty years, and he still remembers the chan.”
You are a kid. And you are childish, okay? You’re fun and playful and optimistic, and we love you for that. But when it comes to these things, you’re not immature….Everyone goes on their own pace, the pace they’re comfortable with and some people….take the time they need to settle they’re feelings and that’s…that’s not childish. That’s responsible. I think, on that department, you’re actually very responsible.
It starts with Haru trying to buy something nice for Makoto in his time of need and school deadlines. It goes wrong when Haru gets snowed in at a temple, and Tokyo grinds to a halt. It goes right again when Makoto comes to play fetch, a literal ray of bright light in the gloom.
(Literally.)
Or,
Haru and Makoto learn something new about each other, and all it took was a natural disaster. Elemental magic AU.
Written for @justjimei for the @mhsecretsanta2018! The prompts that I aimed to hit were special ornaments, unexpected detours, and fairytale AU. The elemental magic stuff is just my personal preference orz I hope you like this!
TAG A BEAUTIFUL PERSON! YOU'RE IT! Rules are: copy this message to 10 other beautiful people/blogs who you think deserve this message! Keep the game going and make everyone feel beautiful 💞 :)
aysuwedoijnkeforhiwefkn you sweetheart you know I’m going to tag you back don’t you
TAG A BEAUTIFUL PERSON! YOU'RE IT! Rules are: copy this message to 10 other beautiful people/blogs who you think deserve this message! Keep the game going and make everyone feel beautiful 💞
Illustration for ‘ thistledown, my darling ’ by @godmothertoclarion for the @makoharubigbang!! You can read the fic on her tumblr or on AO3 ! I’m super excited about how this came out and I had a lot of fun working on this! Now go read this amazing story!!!!
thistledown, my darling (makoharu flash bang 2018!)
Title: thistledown, my darling (on ao3 here)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: None
Summary: “Such is the thrall of the fae, my son. I never so much as touched your father with a spell, and still on the very morning we met he swore his life to me.” In which a half-mortal dryad prince meets a human boy.
I wrote this fic for the @makoharubigbang in collaboration with the wonderful @daikimine, who drew the breathtaking illustration! Find it over here <3
Long ago in the Forest Ailsa (or so the woodmen said) a blacksmith’s son had wandered far from his home in search of kindling for his father’s forge. He came when twigs and boughs alike were damp and green to the bark, and so he went further than he was obliged to do in autumn. It was thus that he came to the heart of the wood, and weary with his burden he lay against an aspen-tree and fell into heavy slumber.
In the village they never knew what befell him there, only that he did not return for many days, and when he did they found him greatly changed. He fled back into the forest whenever he had a morning to himself, vanishing for hours at a time before running back with his mouth turned up in a grin. His parents knew naught of his doings there, but the townsfolk guessed that he had run across some fey creature in the woods: a sprite in the shape of a woman, whom some of the villagers claimed to have seen in the trees by twilight.
At last the youth took his leave from the settlement and never returned again, gone to make his home in the green with whatever it was that so bespelled him. His family made nothing of his departure, and the townsfolk grew ever surer that he had met a faerie girl and taken her to wife―and by her had a son, quitting his kin to raise the child where it might be protected. It was true, if they had but known it; but by and by the boy was wholly forgotten, and now a bustling city stood where his settlement used to lie. But the forest was hale and living still, and so was the halfblood fairy-child in the thriving heart of the wood.
His mother called him Haruka, for the sweet breath of spring on the day she first laid eyes on his father. He had his father’s hair, thick and black like water by night, and his eyes were his mother’s: sweet and fair and blue as the heavens from the centuries he had passed beneath them. When he grew to manhood he found his human shape better suited for his power, and so he took the form of a mortal boy. None of his amai’s folk could follow in his footsteps, and so Haru was left to himself with birds and beasts for company. They spoke to him as they would to their own, but he took his greatest happiness healing the aged trees of their hurts whenever they called for aid.
At first he had gone through the forest unclothed, but at his mother’s urging he fashioned himself a shift from a bed of fallen oak-leaves. It covered him now from knees to shoulders, bound by a belt of blackberry brambles stripped of their needling thorns; his mother had laughed at the sight of it, certain that he would bewitch any maiden who happened to cross his path. But pleasing though he was to look upon no maiden had caught his eye; he wore his tresses loose and unbound to see them tangle in the breeze, and not to pay court to the dryad-girls whose friendship he held so dear. Of late his apai’s human blood had grown ever stronger in his limbs, and now he thought if love should come it might return him to the bustling realm his father once called home.
But beyond the Forest Ailsa the world of men was changed, and it was this that startled Haru so when he found himself drawn out to the edge of the wood one night, for his mother’s dryads stood watch by the cedars there and kept them green and firm. As he looked about he found nothing amiss, and yet the fragrance of wounded leaves beckoned him down the gully to the sparkling city below.
“Do you wish to go out, Haru-chan?”
He turned and saw a slender osier fanning her limbs in the wind, laughing as he pointed to a little house that glowed from within like the moon. Mortals could not see in the dark, or so his father had said, and since his apai’s death Haru had dearly missed the warm golden light he made with sticks in the underbrush to ease his work in the evenings.
“Go, then,” smiled the osier, lifting the veil to let him slip out beneath it. For a while he stood and wondered at the scent of the late spring air, finding it sharper than what he was used to in the wood, but then he rose and made his way to the cottage he saw from the Ailsa’s border. Though the air was chill he felt nothing, and careless of the breeze on his arms he walked down the lane until he came to a garden filled with roses growing unchecked and ivy lining the walls.
“You do not need my care, I think,” he chuckled, kissing a crimson bloom as he passed. “Where am I called for, then?”
The rose directed him to the nearest window, where the sun-colored warmth lay fair and unfaltering before a pane of glass. Set against the sill was a row of earthen pots, painted in cheery colors by a careful and loving hand; some bore the portraits of stars and planets, while others were pink and scarlet like a cherry tree in blossom.
“Mortals keep seedlings indoors,” laughed Haru, pressing his nose to the window-frame. “How funny! I have never seen shrubs like these, with thorns on their petals and silken-smooth at the stems. They are black, too―are they meant to be so?”
Foolish little halfling, said the ivy kindly. Our keeper minds us faithfully, but for the life of him he cannot manage those plants within. They come from a barren wasteland, and he waters them far too often to keep them well.
“How curious,” he mused, standing on his toes to undo the latch. Once it was open he pushed back the glass and passed his gaze from wall to wall, searching the place for flowers until―
“Oh,” he gasped, clutching at his breast as he glimpsed a bed draped in white. Upon it a boy lay slumbering with his long hands folded on his chest, breathing at ease as he dreamed like a child in its mother’s arms. His skin was the hue of light made solid, as if it were colored by the fiery lamp or by the heavens at sunrise, and the locks on his head were the color of rain-damp sand: soft and brown like sugarcane made into drinking-syrup. At the sight of him a ruddy flush crept into Haru’s neck, and forgetting the plants entirely he pulled himself nearer to brush the gentle face. The young man woke at the touch and smiled, unveiling a pair of eyes as fair as any fae’s; it seemed he still thought himself sleeping, for he did not move at all as Haru slipped away and passed his hands over the shrubs near the windowsill. They flushed and brightened at once, and finished with his work the half-dryad fell back to the grass below. At the sound of the ivy’s snorting he turned and fled like the wind, only daring to look back when he came to the lane by the gate. The boy had risen from his bed, and now he sat staring into the night with a puzzled frown on his brow. He bent down and looked at his desert-plants renewed, breaking the hush with a cry of joy as he saw them living again.
“Thank you,” he called, leaning out over the open frame with his emerald eyes alight. At the sound of his voice Haru stilled and pressed his lips together, fighting a sudden smile as the lad withdrew and shut the window behind him.
But eager though he was to depart Haruka saw that the pane had been left unlatched as if to give him the promise that it would remain so, and as he flew back to the Ailsa he thought of the name he had read in the mortal’s dreams and the laughing roses in the garden. It was a goodly name, he thought, and fitting for one who loved all things fresh and growing though he had no power of his own. Truth, the ivy had called him, and cradling the word between his palms like a lily’s bud he lifted the forest veil and vanished back into the gloom. In the city below Truth’s cottage was lighted still, though nothing this side of the wood could sway the half-faerie to forget where it lay. Perhaps some night the plants by the window would call to Haru again, and perhaps when he returned Truth would wish to see him.
With that he smiled and went to lie beneath his mother’s aspen-tree, taking his rest in a starlit vision of roses and leaf-green laughter.
“But there had never been any touch of fire in Makoto, not as there was in Haru. Like his father before him he took up arms for the sake of the city, and not for his own; if the choice were left to him he would have passed his days running through the dusty streets to lend his might and comfort wherever they might be needed. For his was a gentle soul, gentler by far than the man he had taken to husband, and struck by his grace his people began to call him the heart of Sardahan.”
