Note:

Flashbacks and thoughts in italics

I do not condone or encourage any behaviors in this story. It is simply a fictional story.

CHAPTER 20

forget-me-not

.

Seven Hundred Years Ago

.

.

Dirt clung to his greaves and sabatons. His sword was bloody, and he needed a bath. He washed his face in the rippling water in the chatter of the peppy woodland. He saw her beneath his reflection, through the cold, balsamic water. The face of a woman beneath the surface, rising lazily to steal his breath away.

"I am Loke." He said, cupping her face in his hands. "And I choose you."

The woman swatted his hands away. "I belong to no one."

He didn't move an inch, transfixed, mesmerized. "Where do you live?"

"Here." She sighed, arms wading the water as she sank in once again. "Go away." Bubbles of air burst past the surface as she spoke. "You're not from here. I can feel it."

"Not without you." He declared. "I will make you mine." Strangely, the tone of his voice didn't make her feel threatened.

The woman snorted, unamused. "I've seen many men like you. Go away. I'm not a challenge."

The knight didn't leave. Days turned to months and years, and the nymph didn't bat an eye.

.

.

The knight sat on one of the hillocks skirting the river, mirrored green as the frogs croaked merrily at the brightening dawn. He narrowed his eyes, resting his chin on a knee, listening to a bird singing from one of the branches overhead for a female who would never come. "You have no one to love you." It was the last of its species.

"I have myself." She replied from behind, braiding her blue hair languorously. She dressed the waves in forget-me-nots with dainty suns in the middle. "You're staying for too long."

He didn't take the naked nymph for a shy one. Turns out, the nymph is quite shy behind all that braveness. How can someone be both brave and shy? He patted the grass beside him and wished she'd come a little closer. "Why is your hair blue?"

She liked oranges. They were warm and smelled nice. "Why is your hair orange?" She threw a pebble on the water, playing a game.

He touched his head with smiling eyes. "It just is."

"Same here." She knew he lived in a hut made of hay and bamboo on the banks of the river. He slept outside sometimes. When it got chilly, sometimes, she would pull his blanket over his shoulders. He would be sound asleep but not unaware, even if she's gentle like the wind and vanishes just as swiftly.

He arched his back and felt his muscles stretch. "Doesn't this world scare you?"

"I don't know." Her teeth grazed his ears. Her tongue was cold on the scar on his cheek. "Is there a better world?"

"Maybe not. Everyone's vile until they aren't." He leaned into her touch. She nodded and hummed. "Do you like me now?" He asked, all of a sudden. She traced a nail along his neck and pinched his nipple. He winced. A flush clambered over his chest, up his face like a patch of roses.

"You think you're in love, but what if these butterflies you're feeling is not love?" She kissed him on the scar, wetted by her tongue. "Nobody can endure one another for an eternity."

She knew he could overpower her in every way while she awaited his reply. The wilderness shrilled and smothered their silences. His hand hovered over the small of her back without touching. This was his chance. He placed his head on her chest and promised. "I'll cherish it while it lasts."

She shocked him with her flaring gaze. He felt exposed under the light that escaped her eyelids.

"I know who you are." She knew she might regret it. She might fall in love. But who doesn't make mistakes? "I need no empty promises. Make me yours. Inscribe the runes and bind me to your soul forever."

"Yes." He heaved himself up on one hand and kissed back, but on her lips. "Yes. Yes." She will be his.

.

The servants bowed their heads, quietened by an ill-humored furor. Aquarius rose like a tsunami, swinging her hands and twisting her mouth. "Why would you do that!" She shrieked. "Why would you erase that wretched nymph's curse?"

"Well well well, aren't we being a little harsh here." The Celestial Spirit King gestured with his hand for her to calm down and sit back in her seat. Blue gems gleamed on his armlets, earrings, and the necklace that hung from his neck. "Don't you think she has suffered enough in the name of love?"

"That woman is ancient—a half-dead, living corpse. You can't let her run rampage on Earthland." She argued, her golden circlet hiding the tense lines on her forehead.

"Oh, will she?" The king chucked and spoke slowly. His daughter, Aquarius, was projecting. Running rampage is something only The Water Bearer and certain other hotheaded zodiacs would do. "Ancient? Aren't we all just as ancient? Half-dead? Shouldn't we give that poor soul salvation?"

Her voice echoed on the pillars shrouded in white clouds of haze. "It will take another three hundred years to complete one thousand years."

"Time has arrived. You have to let go of your petty revenge, Aquarius." Aquarius flinched and turned her head away. "Don't you see. Leo needs to be freed from his misery." A long, long time ago, a nymph living in the forests of Earthland fell in love with a celestial knight, a zodiac from the heavens. It ended in tragedy. "His current celestial spirit mage can't have him, lest he live a loveless life for another eternity."

The zodiac was cursed to forget and never fall in love again for the next thousand years after he tried to save the nymph from her death, the punishment for her sin of keeping a zodiac in Earthland, for captivating him unintentionally. The other zodiacs couldn't believe what they heard. Nobody in all of the Celestial Spirit World had managed to seduce the great Leader of the Zodiacs, not even Aquarius, who was enraged that a mere nymph dared to desire something forbidden, seraphic.

Irrational. Isn't it? However, this insanity is fused with the essence of the celestial world, where the zodiacs look and behave like human beings. Not all celestial spirits are wise or holy. Aquarius folded her hands and crossed her legs, her eyes slanted in a frown. "Loke isn't in any misery."

"Are you sure?" The king asked, but she lowered her gaze, unsure. He snapped his fingers and chugged in the glass of sake one of his men brought him. He smiled, smacking his lips. "I thought he was your friend? It's a shame you didn't know. Unlike you, I could feel his pain through our heavenly bond." He continued, giving the glass back. "Dear, you don't know the gravity of what befell him. But you must know it's ugly and unbearable."

Aquarius wasn't convinced. "Closed chapters must stay closed."

"You are right. But these aren't closed chapters. These are open wounds." His daughter has always been an emotionally insensitive one. The drapes of the throne hall glittered, like heaven itself, adorned with the scent of prayers, stars, and blessings. "I am no god to rewrite time. But I am a responsible king." Amid the revered sublimity, the king seemed like the embodiment of light. "All zodiacs are my loyal knights. Who else will put out their blistering plight, if not me?"

.