AN: I wrote this in class when I was supposed to be revising. Experimental and meh. I really don't know what to think of it.
What Weathers Away
She was the lush green of a pool of water in the predawn, the green of a still forest, the colour of quiet.
He was a wisp, she a breath of air – invigorating, but brief.
After six years, that cool morning breeze was blighted by midday summer wind, and he began to fade with the quiet. She began to fade with her sense. As the calm projection of her face on the surface of the water dispersed into glimmering remnants, so too did his breaths wither and dissolve. Her name was a shallow wheeze where his memory cried out in bird-and-water song. His pale skin became discoloured by Sitsudou, the golden hair of the holy beast inflected with death's pallor.
He calls his new mistress Shu-jou, like the first. But he never considered it her real name – 'Joukaku' still trills and quivers with the hush of trees and streams. Posthumously, she is the Prophet-King, cold as a stone memorial. To him, she is preserved in the gardens of hundreds of kings past. Her palms have drawn their pink tint across the camellias. From between the overlapping leaves of the elm, he glimpses the glint of her eyes. And over cascades of leaves, emerald upon peridot but morphing with the transformational power of the passing seasons, their rush and drop in the breeze gives way to her short, low laugh.
And then he realises that it is warped. It is louder now, and warmer, an androgynous hum. The greenery becomes subsumed in a red shroud.
Shu-jou. With firestorm hair and untamed, overgrowth eyes, Sekishi, sun-child. Youko. She eviscerates the air like a heat wave. Her brown hand on the table, unclothed to the elbow, is the hue of earth tilled beneath the touch of the sun. And her gaze on the documents between them ploughs for an answer.
Such similar young eyes he remembers low-lidded over the image of a world beyond the palace windows. Swimming in those eyes are the sighs of a suffocated creature, a simple beauty weighted down by gold-plated responsibility.
But Shu-jou searches the unfamiliar characters with intent. Sometimes her gaze lifts to the cloud sea buoyant just outside the glass, but only long enough for her to catch her breath.
