A/N: I hope the new decade is treating you well, even if everything seems a bit crazy.
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine, yes, thank you.
In the soft evening light, the gravestone looked quiet and serene despite the bitter chill of winter enveloping all. He drove his hands deeper into his pockets and released a sigh that turned white and floated away with the trailing wisps of incense from the other graves.
He had not understood his mother while she lived. She had trained him and raised him for his curse, but she had died long before he had grown enough to realize the meaning behind everything she said. She had only been preparing him as best she could.
He would never understand her now, not fully, but he had begun to learn in her ever-present shadow. The desire of every Hikari born into the world haunted him still.
For so long, he had thought he knew what she would have told him if she stood there with him, seeing him struggle and fight to complete the mission of his life.
But had he truly known?
The Hikari longed to create life, to bring that power into their grasp, but they only ever made counterfeits. No matter how beautiful the artworks, how strong the power within the different creations, their masterpieces never attained the life of mankind. Art was inferior; art was only a manifestation of the ones who wanted to take life into their own hands and know it fully; art was only the striving to let life breathe.
His mother had made her masterpiece: true life. Her hand had not controlled it, and she could not force her own breath into its lungs, but he stood there before her grave and wondered if she would understand why he felt what he did. He did not want to destroy, and his desire to create did not overwhelm him like before. Instead, he only wanted to cup life in his hands. He wanted only to see it reflect back to him in a certain smile.