"Don't touch me."

 

 

Out of breath, Amari climbed the last stairs. The moons had risen to their peak, and even the endless choir of music faded away with the late darkness.

Amari had been intercepted—he could not find it in his heart to turn away the hospitality of the townsfolk, so he answered their endless questions as they arrived. The last few people trickled past, leaving Amari alone to survey the plaza. Locked carts and an empty platform where the musicians once stood. The outstretched twinkle of the lanterns throughout the kingdom matched the sky in crowdedness.

Leishan—neither human nor fox—was around.

Amari made his way to the ledge rails. He squeezed it tight. His gloves stretched thin and strained against the shaking of his hands. After the gusts made their way through Amari's hair, the turmoil in his chest began to settle.

It was reasonable to leave after so long. Amari didn't know how early Leishan might've arrived. How long he had been kept waiting.

To be left...waiting alone in expectation...

Amari laughed at his own crippling insecurity. In the end, he really would end up doing nothing but hurting Leishan. One by one, Amari let reason snuff out every flame of possibility.

It wouldn't have worked out.

The one he loves isn't you.

You could never love someone else.

Amari turned away, pulling his hands away from the railing with a lurch. His shoulders were heavy, like lead. He stared at his gloves, before biting his lip and tugging them off.

Halfway through, white jumped into the corner of his vision. When he looked up, he found Leishan—wind-blown silver hair, eloquent silver gloves, and the amber glow of his eyes. Amari froze mid-glove pull. To take off his glove where only one person around was the one before him was—

Red suited Leishan's face, like a softening hue around his sharp nose bridge and sloped jaw. Really, really adorable. Amari drank in the sight, before clearing his throat.

"I just was... planning to take them off since the night is almost over."

Leishan nodded, "Of course. I understand it...yes, it's a deeply meaningful ritual."

Shrugging off the pervading embarrassment, Amari spun on his heel and paced back to the plaza edge, smoothly jumping over the rail and on its ledge. Leishan followed and sat beside Amari with an obedient disposition, waiting for Amari to finish fixing his gloves.

"I left to check on the person I arrived in Beijie with, so I had to climb the stairs. I didn't think you'd arrive right after I'd left," Leishan said.

Leishan's smile was gorgeous, yet cautious–as if built on a million unasked questions Leishan knew would shut down the conversation.

"Once the sun fell past the lowest building rooftops, I already gave up on the notion of you arriving. So this is a surprise," he laughed.

"I came... I don't know why I came," Amari admitted, meeting Leishan's piercing eyes. I thought you'd be upset—maybe even cry if I didn't."

Leishan coughed and fidgeted with his gloves. "I'm glad you came. This was enough—I won't coerce any further interaction between... us. So, I won't try and commune with you when you call upon my power."

"No," Amari sharply interjected, "don't!"

The anxiety in his voice surprised them both. Looking on at the neverending world of buildings past his own slow-swinging legs suddenly jump started a dizzy nausea. A tight, uncomfortable feeling clung onto the walls of Amari's stomach.

Alone.

Amari was alone.

He took Leishan's presence for granted. The intense, inexplicable relief that resulted after their conversations. Without fail, Leishan would speak with him at every chance he got while Amari lived at the temples—ask him about his day, pester him, and even openly worry and scold him. There was a certain point... where it no longer mattered the motivation of Leishan—if it was only toward the soul of Leishan's past lovers.

There was no one else like Amari in this world. And there was no one but Leishan, his Holder, who was as unique.

Amari slipped his hand into Leishan's own, the silken buzz of fabric rubbed light and pleasant as their fingers, although at first limp and uncertain, eventually curled up around the core warmth connecting them.

"I don't hate it when you talk to me."

Please don't ever stop, Amari wanted to beg. He hinged his jaw shut, knowing how easily his raw words were able to rip out of his throat, tearful and desperate. Leishan squeezed Amari's hand once.

"You're like fire and ice, Amari. Hot and cold. I can never read you. I always tried to put up an impressive front for you."

"You thought to impress me with the mental appearance of a fierce dragon, again and again?"

"Foxes aren't grandiose, intimidating, and heart-palpitating," Leishan whispered, as if expelling a disappointing truth.

"I think it suits you better. Your fox form. I like it. Don't complain about it... because mine is nothing in comparison..." Amari trailed off. He lifted his legs parallel from the ground, seeing the chitin glow beneath like phosphoric runes.

"Is what animal?"

"A tortoise."

"I like tortoises," Lesihan smiled. "You've always been a tortoise, in every life. We've never had a tortoise Caller before."

"A tortoise is no good at running away. I could never run from the temples."

I could never run far from you.

"But you're steadfast. In tune with the land, closer to it than I'm supposed to be as its carrier. You're honest, witty."

Amari pressed his lips thin, before finally speaking lowly.

"You're not talking about me, Leishan. You're talking about them. Cedric, Li, Elijah and Eli—those are the qualities they have. But I am nothing—I'm a coward and a murderer. You just don't remember that part."

"You speak down to me as if you know any more than I do about our past," Leishan interrupted, his voice dropping to a chilly octave. "You always do this, Amari. Whenever I bring it up—you avoid it. You avoid talking about us. Amari, what are we? What am I to you?"

"Nothing, see–I am cowardly. I always have been. And soon enough you'll see I'm a heartless murderer too," Amari said. He stood up—and their hands fell apart. The warmth congealed within crumbled away with the heavy winds. Leishan watched him with a pained expression. Amari clenched his fists, before stepping over the guardrails.

"We are this world's Caller and Holder. Connected by our powers. Our past lives are not our present. Here, we are nothing."

Let's maintain the status quo. Let's be as we always have, a few seldom spoken words here and there, the brushing of our consciousness, our energies colliding past, soaking in the warmth of something we don't have, and finding solace in each other.

"Why are you so scared," Leishan called out.

Amari halted.

"I can see it, Amari—the chains. You may have left those temples, but they follow you. Not because someone has kept them clasped to your throat, wrists, and ankles, but because you hold them in place—you lock yourself away when no one is as powerful as you are.

"Amari, what are you so scared of?"

The hard shell Amari shielded himself within was dismantled and turned over by Leishan in an instant. Amari looked down. Blood bubbled from his hands, dripping down his hands like a faucet unable to be turned off. Then he looked over—and a sharp vision of scenery collided against the world. The ancient twisted trees all crumbled to the ground, where fire scorched the earth. The clearing was a graveyard of the battle. Spears and swords were plunged deep into the ground, pinning flesh in between. Metallic blood wet his split lip, and his chest heaved, as he pulled out the sword from a warrior's chest, causing it to spurt with a limp shudder. Blood stained the mop of silver hair of the corpse, soaking into the tall, furred ears.

He killed everyone–including Leishan's closest friend.

And ahead of him, stood Leishan—a different Leishan.

The original Leishan.

Silver hair cropped at his nape, dried in blood. Cuts running up and down his side. The trembled heaving of his chest. And the pure, insipid hatred—like a monster ready to swallow Amari alive.

The silent, poisonous anger stripped away at Amari's skin. His fingers gripped his sword, one handing shakingly clutching the other, ensuring it wouldn't drop. He couldn't drop it—his master would not hear of it if his sword was dropped, if he did not finish his duty of avenging the sacred forest he lived in for all of millenia. The agonized cries of the melting flowers and bright green crumbling to ash circled him, chanting and crying out, asking for more—for blood to quench the thirst of the cracked land.

A scream ripped from his mouth, as Sen charged at General Lin, unable to handle the steely heartbreak lurking atop the hatred in his gaze like a bright, stabbing sheen.

The scene suddenly melted away.

The scent of ash gave way to the burning scrapes Beijian vendors had dumped into the garbage blocks nearby. The crackling of flames dispersed to the unmoved gust, where far beyond, thunder rolled in a grandiose announcement of the next storm. The copper taste of blood disappeared with a dry swallow.

Leishan stepped forward with a concerned caution. He caught the foggy transience passing through the movements of Amari's closed eyelids.

"What did you see? Are you alright?" Leishan asked, reaching out a gloved hand.

Sweat dampened Amari's palms. He whipped his chin up and slapped the hand aside.

"Don't touch me," he hoarsely whispered.

The blood seemed to stick tight underneath the thin gloves—itching and crawling with the lifeline of the people in the past. He couldn't let Leishan touch him. It was dirty. Amari panicked. He backed off from Leishan, who's outstretched arm lowered slowly. An understanding passed over his face, like the shadows passing over the gleaming moonlight.

"I'll take my leave," Amari finally said. "Goodbye."

There would be no next time.

Leishan's lip trembled. He turned away, suppressing the tears in his eyes. By the time Amari glanced over before he descended the stairs, only a bushy white tail waved out of his sight, darting up a different stairwell.

With a shaky breath, Amari made his way through the spiraling low arches. He tugged off the intricate gloves. Their forms flattened down into a crumpled ball, condensed by Amari's stirred emotions. Amari chucked it down a random archway. It hit the floor with a dull thud, not even rolling before the spherical shape fell apart.

The chance of gifting a glove to Leishan was impossible.

Even if Leishan accepted it, he would one day be ripped apart by the memory of Amari's past self—the carnage Amari had once inflicted on him.

A little girl with pigtails, upon returning home late from the festival, peeked down the compact path to see a person throw down their gloves. It was the Caller—she recalled pinning a cute baby blue ribbon to the very corner of his cape. By the time the pigtail girl grabbed the gloves, he had already disappeared down the maze of stairwells.