memory prompts | accepting (ish, since it’s not friday anymore)
witchescourge asked: purple...!
Send [ purple ] for a melancholy memory.
“-Do you think it was too much? I mean, I’m not going to leave him there permanently, just until he cools off and, you know, until I’m ready to face-” Monkey King pauses in his ramblings to make a vague gesture. “-all that again.”
The shrine stays silent, save for the wind rustling the trees outside the temple.
“Yeah, you’re right, he’ll be fine.” He clicks his tongue, rocking back and forth a little. His armor was left at the entrance so he could move freely for now - or the foreseeable future. “Princess Iron Fan is going to be super mad at me when she finds out I buried her husband under a mountain though. Good thing I already moved the Flower Fruit Mountain into the middle of the ocean so she doesn’t even know where to find me now, right? She or anyone else.”
He chuckles and leans back against the stone. There were quite a lot of offerings he had to move aside to get this close, which was definitely rude and probably in some way blasphemous, but he hardly cares about that. If anyone deserves to be close to the Great Monk’s last resting place, it would be him.
“Maybe it was a little too showoff-y,” He admits, turning his head to look at the shrine. “But I had to make it a spectacle, you know? It had to be the dramatic ending of the Monkey King’s tale, the last fight where he loses his staff and disappears into the unknown. Where could he be now? Nobody knows! Maybe the legendary hero is biding his time, waiting for a moment when he’s needed again and not spending most of his days sitting on the floor of his house, feeling too down to do anything because all his closest friends are-”
He cuts himself off, lowers the hand he used for gesturing with a heavy sigh and curls up on his side against the hard stone.
“I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that at all. I know I have responsibilities and stuff but I just-- I can’t. Not right now.” Not when all he wants to do is sleep for a very long time. His voice raises just a little, bouncing off the wooden beams of the temple’s interior. “If I’m making a mistake here, now’s your chance to gently scold me about it and tell me I should do better or whatever, otherwise I’m sticking to it. Three, two, one...”
Slowly, very slowly, he pulls himself up again. He feels... heavy. Everything feels heavy these days: his body, his name, his armor, the carefree smile he’s supposed to always wear, people talking to him, people talking about him. He thought maybe letting go of his staff will lessen the weight that tethers him to the ground, but now his hands just feel empty.
“Well, I’m off. Don’t get too lonely without me, okay?” He pats the stone one last time. “I know, I know, ‘That’s rich coming from you, Sun Wukong.’ But, you know, do as I say...”
He’s already halfway out the entrance before he pauses, looking back at the shrine for only a moment. Smiling seems pointless and hard, but he does it anyway, for his friends’ sake.
“If you decide to reincarnate again and need my help with anything, you know where to find me.”
A colorful bird with a long tail flies out of the temple and it is, once more, silent.