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magisecretsanta2016-blog

Dec 25, 2016

[Favorite Faded Fantasy], for Ultra-ugo

@maqicai‘s gift to @ultra-ugo

hi @ultra-ugo! i’m your secret santa 💓 i was super nervous when i got my assignment because… you’re you!! ah!!! you’re such a lovely person and i hope you like this…uhm, kinda weird little fic. have a great holiday!! 😊

The moon sets gingerly that night, slow and full of feeling. Hakuryuu wanders the garden in quiet comfort; the breeze comes in and he closes his eyes, tipping back his head in welcome of the cool air to relieve his sweat stained skin.

He’d arrived to the village with cracked, bloody hands and tired laugh lines, formed by the past two years of happy days with his friends.

The dust from the desert was harsh in his eyes, unforgiving, leaving his sight in poor tatters. Thankfully, the introduction of tall clay houses (a shade of gold he was unfamiliar with) and blown tents sheltered him generously, and after some stopping, he’d caught his breath and could stand again. Then, some ratty children with water hoses had run by in laughter, caught up in their own games, stopping to wash him down. Stopping was all he needed right now. A halt in time to catch a few breaths. The village chief found him wandering soon after. Even with strange clothing, she offered him a place to stay.

The netsumegusa reacted to this place quite strongly. Maybe that’s why he wants nothing more than to rest here.

It was a small village, but brimming with people. Like the big puzzles Kougyoku used to spend her time on, or the paintings and murals littered with occupied persons, all jammed against each other yet absorbed in their own day to day routines. Except, here, everyone was very used to each other. There seemed to be no strangers, Hakuryuu noticed as he entered his inn that day; everyone knew each other, no sweeping eyes, no unshared smiles or waves. Family. Family in a way he never knew. He could tell these were kind people, the kind Hakuryuu would have liked to rule over. Not that he could, now.

Now he wanders in the night-brushed garden, singing with midnight blooms of vivid, violent, and vicarious auras, roses and lilies and vines sending puffs of redolence into the air like perfume. He crosses his arms behind his waist, a bit chilled in the wind. What would Aladdin do now? Alibaba? Morgiana? These people, his friends, always had ropes and ladders to climb hanging from every shadow, pulling magic tricks from their sleeves at every corner. Hakuryuu wasn’t like that. Now that he’s come this far…what’s next? How do you find a person born from magic and light? Various times he had struck his staff into the ground, hoping to pull out a rooted Magi from the earth. Every time, the vine had been cut. He isn’t sure if Judal is doing the cutting, or something else from behind the scenes. Either way, it’s beginning to make him anxious.

Hakuryuu stops. He feels eyes burning into the back of his neck, watching him from some distance. The hairs of his arms raise; still, he doesn’t move. For some time, the gaze continues and Hakuryuu pretends to be absorbed in the anatomy of this night-shone garden. He returns to the inn feeling offset but not frightened. After all, he is used to having eyes on him.

“Will you go greet him?” asks the village chief. “It is your job, after all.”

“…No. We’ll meet soon anyway.”

“There’s something about that boy that’s troubling you.”

“…it’s nothing. He’s just…someone I knew before.”

“A special someone?”

“…just a someone.”

The village chief tosses her head back in laughter, thick black curls bouncing around.

“Where do you come from, child?” asks the village chief. They sit together at a fountain in the village square, spewing a strange amount of water for a place so reserved in the mountain-littered desert.

“Kou.” Hakuryuu is unsure of how much he should disclose to strangers, but for some reason he feels at peace in this peace. It’s nearly discomforting.

The chief regards him curiously. “The empire on the horizon. What a far off place. You are very far from home, child.”

“You could say that…” Hakuryuu watches children run amok in the square. Many of the villagers, despite their friendly vasages, stare at him with inklings of curiosity.

The chief leans in close to him. “Do not mind their wary gazes.”

“No, I understand the risks of allowing a strange person into your home. More than you could know, even.”

The chief smiles wryly. Hakuryuu looks away. “I will return to my home, after I find something important to me. I…lost it, some time ago.”

“Oh!” The chief seems amused. She motions to the sky. “But we never let go what is most important to us. Everything is here, all around us, sharing the same sky. Nothing is ever lost, child, simply elsewhere.”

…Simply elsewhere. Simply elsewhere seems to perfectly encompasses Hakuryuu’s entire relationship with Judal. It had been quite the relationship. Hot nights spent in tents under starry skies, waiting for his Magi to return. Days of training in his younger years, talks of the Magi disappearing when the King needed him most. Hakuryuu held a small sword while the magician took to other worlds. Judal was always elsewhere.

“…that is…one way to think of it, I suppose.”

“Have you any gods you worship, child?”

“Gods?”

“At heart, all of us are capable of dying. The Rukh encompasses such an idea; we return to the Great Flow once our hearts cease their treacherous beating. During that beating, mortals reach up to the heavens and find whatever superior lights they can, and mooch from the power they give us during our short time.”

Hakuryuu nods tentatively. The wind beats into his hair.

“There was once a god I knew of. Sesha of the far westlands. She was tall and would bury herself in the desert sands, uncovering rich gold stones and crystallized, amber plants from before her time.” The chief nudges Hakuryuu’s shoulder with a smile. “She loved the game of hide and seek. Growing up surrounded by other children, I’m sure you know of the game, hmm? She would trick her sisters into wandering desserts for centuries in search of their lost things. She would make her brothers swim for a thousand miles before letting the waves push them in the right direction. She hid their most prized possessions, their jewels and magical gems, and the prize for playing her game would be their lost prizes. She played for many dozens of millennia, never unthrilled by watching her family crumble under anxiety and fear of losing what matters most to them. Until one day, she hid a daughter, her own sister, from her own mother. The daughter grew old in such a cage, the mother passed of age, and they were never reunited. But they met again in the Great Flow. Sesha lost the thrill that day, realizing what bonds she had severed. Do you see, child of the red horizon? What’s lost is never gone, when the prize lives forever inside and all around you both.”

“…”

Hakuryuu didn’t quite understand, but he saw Judal in his mind, unlost, reborn, always recycling as a spirit of the Rukh. He had a thought—We’ll find each other again, whether it be in this life or the next—flow across his mind as if he was not the one to think it.

But he could feel the netsumegusa burning deep inside his chest. He wasn’t that far away. Judal had to be close. If not, Hakuryuu isn’t sure how much longer he can last like this. He’s starting to feel quite sad and a little lost.

To add to the discomfort in his heart, the air seems to be changing. The winds, shifting from left to right. The Rukh, burning all around them. Something is happening at home, and he’s very very far from it.

The sun sets like a rose blooming to the soundtrack of a garden lullaby. Or, like blood blossoming across an arrow-struck rib cage. Either way, reds and oranges and periwinkle hues shine down on the village. Sand finds its way into Hakuryuu’s boots, crunching and bothersome between his toes, as he enters the square. The fountain sparkles with cascading waters; lanterns full of fire float on and between every surface, covering the tops of stone houses and marketplace shops, all closed for festivities. A backdrop of higher mountains and clouds makes this place seem much closer on the ground.

He smiles slightly, reminded of Sindria’s Marhajan. People everywhere, wearing smiles and colorful drapings. The women pinned up their hair with designs unfamiliar to him, and wore much more bared clothing than he was used to. Whole, roasted animals line tables with grapes and honey-drenched stone fruits; rustic banners waver in the breeze. This place is much smaller than Sindria, just a little town in the mountain crevices. I guess, Hakuryuu thinks, that all people have a place they call home.

“Have a drink, sonny son.”

Hakuryuu puts his hand up sheepishly to the man offering him a clay pot fizzing with something. “Sorry.”

He stays a wallflower, a bit tired, sitting with one foot under himself, letting the breeze take his mind away. He drifts as people approach him curiously, one after the other, until night and stars settle up above and dancing takes precedence. Bubbly laughter and conversation accompanies leaping feet and swinging arms, all forefront of string instruments filling the air with native, lively music. His heart clinches a little, wishing to see his own family.

Eventually, he comes back to himself. A crowd has gathered up by the fountain, cheering in some awe-struck tones. Curiously, he leans forward. The crowd is mostly younger and older men.

There’s a women there. She dances in the water spray, all pale skin and blithe, rosaline silk, billowing all around like like clouds and air as she spins to the rise and fall of music. A veil masks her face from the audience, but her eyes somehow peer through, shining like gold at him.

At him. While her arms and cascade around her in dance, her eyes always loop back to Hakuryuu. Senses hazing, he stands up. Why is she looking at him? With gold eyes like that, and riches pouring from her wrists and neck and ankles, why is she watching him like a hawk taken flight.

She jumps from the ledge. The clutter of men, despite their pleased cries, form a bubble around her respectfully. That’s interesting. Hakuryuu sees the village chief in corner of his eyes, off to the side, laughing chaoticly with a drink with her hands.

The dancer approaches him full of purpose. Magic oozes from her pores. Hakuryuu wants to touch her, all the sudden. His eyes are wide, breaths a little shallow. He feels nervous. The red dress reminds him suddenly of Morgiana, tangled in wild, euphoric movement, holding onto Alibaba like a last hope.

And then the dancer is right in front of him and the world goes back to normal. The crowd has dispersed, no longer suffocatingly thick. It’s just him and the dancer under the shade of a massive tree. He can’t bring himself to speak.

The dancer brings her hands up to his face, acting as though she were caressing his cheeks, but a thick layer of air lingers between the touch. They seem to be the same height; from a distance none could tell the difference. Her hair is probably dark under that veil, and her eyes glow like paper lanterns. Hakuryuu…has no idea what’s happening.

Until she whips her body around him, reacting like a bullet flying past, and flicks something from his hair. The hairpin. It has to be. The one Judal crafted from obsidian in the deep caverns of Kou so long ago. The one he only wears when no one is looking. He reaches around but the dancer has taken many a step back, peering at him in a taunt.

“Hey…don’t—”

The dancer takes off.

Hakuryuu shouts and goes after her. Pushing through the throngs of people, he can only keep his eye on her because of the bright fabric so vibrant, against all the red clay and burlap-colored clothing.

She dissolves into the narrow village streets, leaving dust clouds in her wake.

Hakuryuu chases her through the dark alleys between abodes, skinning his fingers on rough, unpolished walls. He loses track of her at every turn, having to halt to find the direction she went in. She stops every time she pulls ahead, turning back to watch him run with amusement twinkling in her eyes, tossing the hairpin between her hands like a game of toss and catch, before grabbing her skirts and returning to the run.

He grimaces, pushing his legs harder.

Dark night falls on him inevitably and he loses track of the wisping footprints. Still, he follows his gut and travels inwards through the maze until he reaches the infamous dead end. To the side, however, is a creaked open wooden door, fresh sand thrown up from feet rushing past. How obvious.

Hakuryuu enters the house as silently as possible. There’s nothing inside but a long hallway, leading to another door wide open. He tiptoes forward, staff held out like a sword. The air lacks any noise, no rummaging, no curtain calling, no fluttering of footsteps. It’s silent.

The room is lit by crystalline, silvery moonshine. The back wall opens up into a patio overlooking the ground from a hundred meters up. They’re on a cliffside. They’re. The woman sits on a mattress shoved into the corner with her legs crossed.

“Are you looking for this?” She says, holding up the hairpin listlessly.

She. She. She.

Hakuryuu’s mind goes blank.

The women unlatches the veil and it falls away like mist revealing a thundering wall of falling waters.

Hakuryuu closes his eyes, trying to maintain steady breaths.

“Is this a joke.”

“Absolutely not! It’s me—” Judal motions to himself proudly. “—your favorite person, Judal.”

Hakuryuu slams his staff into the ground and budded tree limbs shoot from the floor, wrestling the hairpin from Judal’s hands, bringing it back and dropping it into his own hands.

“Well that was rude—”

“Judal. I can’t believe you.”

“Ah.” Judal taps his chin. “Was it that surprising? I thought you might think it was funny—”

“It’s not funny.” Hakuryuu, with a wave of his hand, has the wooded vine shut the door and disperse back between the floorboards. “Have you been here the whole time? Did you know I was here?”

“Obviously, obviously.” Judal waves his hands stubbornly, dismissing Hakuryuu’s annoyance. “To be honest, I thought you would know.”

“Know you were pretending to be a women?”

“That too. That I was here. I felt you like a lightning strike the moment you took a step into this village.”

Hakuryuu had felt something different, which is why he had stuck around here for so many days. He would’ve passed right through, and something told him not to.

“Did that hurt your feelings?” Hakuryuu snaps, watching Judal’s face fall.

“Just a smidge.”

Hakuryuu, feeling defeated and dejected, leans his staff against a wall and goes to the balcony with tired footsteps. “Sorry.”

Judal laughs. “I’m not hurt, Hakuryuu. I just didn’t want you to find me.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’d tell me things I don’t want to hear about.”

“So you were ignoring me? Even though you knew I’d find you?”

“I was. But I can’t ever stay away from you long.” Judal sounds faraway. “I missed you too much already.”

Hakuryuu looks down. It’s a long way down. He lowers himself onto the boards and swings his feet over the ledge. What a strange place for a house, on the edge of a mountainside. After a moment, Judal surprisingly takes after him. Hakuryuu watches him as he sits down. There’s a noticeable gap between them.

Hakuryuu had grown up a little in the time they’d been separated. His features had sharpened out, his bones had taken to the sky a bit, his muscles defined themselves. Judal was basically the same. Lithe but still defined and full of ridges. Now he’s seeing that exposed stomach as more masculine than feminine. In hindsight, he really should have realized that this was a man and not a woman. Well, not that Magi took after one of the sexes at all…

“Hi Hakuryuu.”

“Hi Judal.”

Right. Here’s Judal. Suddenly Hakuryuu’s thoughts take a shift. He sees shiny arrows pointing all around. Here’s Judal. Right in front of him. After all this time. Hair braided loosely for once, touching his ankles like waves coming in and out of the shore.

“This is your home village?”

Judal nods sullenly. “This is where I was taken. Where Al-thalem robbed me. Coincidently, it’s the only place I can escape them now.”

“Is that why you didn’t come back? So you could escape?”

“I came back for various reasons. That was one of them.”

“…and the others?”

“To bury my parents finally. To come back to my roots. That jerk Ali-cactus—” Ali-cactus? “Put some weird thoughts in my head, let me tell you Hakuryuu. People like that are dangerous.” Judal shivers melodramatically. “They, like, try to be friends and shit. It gives me chill. You should stay away from him.”

Hakuryuu wants to scold him but doesn’t say anything. True, Alibaba could be a little overwhelming…

Judal looks up to the moon, letting its light drape over his features. “And then for the obvious reason.”

“…”

“You belong on a throne. You had it, and you gave it up. So. No reason to go back.”

Hakuryuu looks away. “That’s not a good reason.”

“Okay then. We belong on that throne together.”

“We belong…” Hakuryuu shakes his head. Hair falls across his forehead like a shield. “I don’t want that anymore. I know where I belong now.” Images of Morgiana flash across his mind, a bit in grayscale, and then his sister, shining in bright crimson sunlight and donning a crown of roses. Ali-cactus…how ridiculous.

The prince turns back to the Magi, breath stopping at wistful and faraway glimmers in his eyes. He sees cogs and wheels turning past them.

“Hakuryuu.” Judal sounds tired. “…Ugh. Gross.”

Hakuryuu’s nose crinkles. “What do you mean?”

“Your father is the rightful emperor of Kou.”

“He was.” Hakuryuu nods, watching Judal’s face fall and rise like the moon, curiously.

“He was. And you were his heir.”

“I know. I won’t say I wasn’t. But things have changed. You disappeared, my sister proved to be a righteous ruler, and I lost the war.”

“We won the war.”

“I lost the war.” Hakuryuu snaps. “I lost you. I lost my family. I lost to Sinbad.”

Judal closes his eyes, and sarcastically bites, “But all of that is behind you now, isn’t it?”

Is it? He avenged his brothers, his true mother, his friends. He justified the scar on his face. He learned that the color of one’s Rukh doesn’t really matter at all. “It is. I don’t care about that anymore. I’m glad I lost. If I hadn’t, Kougyoku wouldn’t be where she is now, and Kou wouldn’t be prospering like it is…”

“And yet here you are, seeking me out.”

“…I didn’t come to start another war. I came to find peace.”

Judal chokes on a laugh. “Me? Peace? An oxymoron. And you, plus peace, equals…well, nothing I’ve ever seen before. We’re war-people, Hakuryuu. We were driven by our darkness.”

“This is your home village isn’t it? Didn’t you come here to find peace?”

Judal frowns. “I came back here to be renewed. To find what was taken from me long ago. You of all people should know that. I came here because you gave up the throne. If I returned to the capital, it would have been for you. Apparently, you didn’t want me anymore.”

“I want you.” Hakuryuu regrets that a tad when Judal looks over him, full of doubt and slightly flushed. “You were my only real friend. I was the only one who could have found you at all. You carry my Magoi still. You should know that.”

“I loved you.”

“…you left. And you didn’t come back. For two years. It doesn’t matter how you felt. But I’m here now—”

“To lure me back to playing Mr. Nice Guy? Hakuryuu, it looks like you forgot something very important.” Judal stands up, a silhouette in the moonlight. “I’m the bad guy.”

“You’re not—”

“My Rukh is black. I don’t blend in with all of you happy go-lucky types. I can’t—I won’t go back to a world where nobody appreciates my kind.”

Hakuryuu bites back a curse. “Your kind? You aren’t—you aren’t some evil entity, Judal.”

“Said who?”

“…Aladdin-dono said—”

“Ah! Chibi-chan.” Judal’s eyes sour. “I’m glad he’s apart of this now. He should be here. That guy loves stealing my limelight. Almost killing me, that was a real show-stopper—”

“Judal. It doesn’t matter if your Rukh is black.” Hakuryuu says, probably unconvincing. “If you’re better than them, prove it. To them, all it looks like now is that you’re running away.”

“As if—”

“It’s what they think. Prove them wrong.”

Judal stops and looks down at him, eyebrows raised and irises full of ire. “…You’re making me reevaluate why I fell in love with you.”

“…and why was that.”

The Magi leans against the wood sliding doorway. “Because you spoke your mind. Never held back. You had a fire in your heart, slow burning, very slowly, waiting for a spark. I wanted to light that spark for years. And finally I did…I wanted someone to help me burn down the world. Now that someone wants me to build it back up.”

Hakuryuu doesn’t know what to say so he doesn’t say anything. His blood is a little cold.

“…you sat on that tindering for years and years. You had so much patience, so many ideas, plans, hopes…you were brave in a way I’ve never seen before. It’s not often someone like me meets someone like you. But I knew from the moment I saw you, you were special. Important. You would change the world. And I would be apart of it if it got me killed. And what do you know,” Judal laughs a little in the shadows. “It almost did.”

Hakuryuu sits there a little listlessly, unsure of how to move forward. There in the moonlight they both remembered some cold nights on the plains of war, brushing skin and pinning each other’s hair, loving in the small, still moments that came so far and few between.

“And you don’t love me anymore?”

“…that’s the problem…right now, you seem to be lighting a different fire…to come here like this, to find me, you’re trying to protect the ones you care for deeply. You’re being brave and becoming stronger to fight for them. You’re not the same person, but you are. You’re no longer avenging, but protecting. All at once, you’re all of these things. And you’re here, fighting for me as if you’re the same little prince I always watched from the sky.” Judal sighs. “You say it doesn’t matter if they hate me. It does. It affects you. And I’m not sure if I can stay with someone who no longer shines in my shadows.”

“I’m always on your side. You should know that. We’ll stick together until the end, remember? When nothing else is left…we’ll fight for each other. Always. We said that.”

“I remember. Like it was yesterday.”

Hakuryuu stands up. The wooden floors creak under him quietly. Judal’s chest rises and falls like the tide at midnight, slowly and full of terrors.

“I’m happy you found home again.” They both know why Judal is really here, even crushed under a thousand years of sadness and twists. “But I can’t leave you here. I need you back with me. The colors of our Rukh don’t interfere with matters of heart. And the world is falling to pieces. I need you.”

“I’m ugly.”

Hakuryuu moves closer to him.

“I value your face more than I could ever value a throne.”

“I don’t want to help them.”

“Help me.”

Judal hesitates. Hakuryuu takes his cheeks between his hands gently. They’re the same height now, all these years later. “I still love you. I’m happy I found you. Even if you’re wearing a dress.”

“Pfft. Are you going to kiss me? Because I’ll need a moment—umph.”

~ FIN ~

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