Notes:
These drabbles were written for the Hetalia Writers' Discord drabble-games event.
The Sacred Earth and Divine Land (Chixian Shenzhou) is an alternative name of China which originates in the Warring States Period.
Since he could remember, China had dreamed about flying. He had imagined the freedom of leaving mortal worries behind on the steadily shrinking land, replaced by the cloudy heavens in which the gods lived.
He had not imagined that at the age of three thousand, he would finally reach the sky riding a monster of metal and steam. And that there, he would find not a splendid, immortal realm, but a cold, grey and smoke-filled emptiness with no palace and no trace of gods.
Up in that dream-turned-nightmare, he was granted the vision of a god, looking down upon his vast lands and seeing them as they truly were - a mass of destruction caused by years of war and famine. His treasured cities and temples were burnt, his beautiful natural landscapes polluted and consumed. It was a sad, broken land, which mirrored his old and weary soul.