He was so lost in his own mind-web, that he couldn’t help jump with a startle when the door finally opened again. And then there he was, filling the entire doorway, the dark monster that had dragged him from his cold prison all the way to Wei, and had threatened to kill him more times than he could count.
Halting by the doorway, the impressive mass of darkness didn’t give another step forward, his bright-blue eyes glancing towards him for a split second, before they looked away again.
Well, VinWei was right, Snow realized with a heavy heart. He wasn’t acting like himself at all. On any other occasion ZaiWin would have already stormed the room, scolding him for having slept on the floor again. Which reminded him. He was still sitting there! Which was hardly the best place to sit, if his goal was to have a serious conversation with someone. Not to mention that it would probably only worry ZaiWin even more, if he kept cowering like that, like some small scared child.
Instead of uselessly mauling over what to say, he should have spent his time getting up and trying to look as recovered as possible, Snow reprimanded himself, and immediately tried to get back on his feet. He didn’t go far, though. The instant he leaned forward that piercing, burning pain returned to his chest, and he could only wince and cough repeatedly. The more he coughed the worse it hurt. The worse it hurt the less he was able to breathe. And so it didn’t take long before he started wheezing instead of breathing, his eyes watering from the effort.
A warm hand on the back of his head made him lean his forehead against something equally warm, allowing him to at least relax his tense body.
“Calm down … Breathe slowly. There’s plenty of air,” the already familiar, calm voice told him, and Snow closed his eyes, focusing solely on that gentle sound. “In and out. In and out.” Snow felt the chest he was leaning into raise and fall at the rhythm of those words and tried his best to keep up with it. Even though he couldn’t clearly recall last night’s events, he had the feeling that this wasn’t the first time ZaiWin had patiently breathed with him.
“You’re doing great. Just breathe slowly.”
The warm hand that kept slowly caressing his head and the low voice that kept marking that rhythm, allowed him relax even further. And, for a moment, he wished he could just stay like that and sleep. Even though now he couldn’t see him, ZaiWin still smelled the same. He still felt the same. Those warm hands were undoubtedly his. As was the voice that kept soothing him. But the moment he managed to get his coughing and breathing under control, those same gentle hands grabbed his arms, helping him straighten his back and released him. And all Snow could see was a huge mass of dense, deep darkness.
Led by pure, sudden desperation, Snow reached out and grabbed something, anything. His clothes, he knew by the way they felt, though he didn’t know exactly which part he’d grabbed. It didn’t matter, anyway. As long as it would stop him from leaving. The monster’s blue eyes seemed to look at his hand, even though now Snow couldn’t see it anymore, half his arm devoured by pure darkness.
“VinWei told me you were refusing to eat. You need to keep your strength, if you’re to ever recover.”
Snow blinked in confusion for a moment, until he realized the reason behind her lie. So it had gotten to the point where she had been forced to make something up, in order to convince him to come and see him.
“Help me up, first,” he simply demanded, though his traitorous voice sounded even more whispered than normal. Now his throat was also aching from coughing so much.
Releasing a deep sigh, the black monster did more than simply help him to his feet.
Slipping an arm beneath his legs and wrapping another around his back, he simply raised him from the floor, forcing Snow to release his clothes and to hold on to his shoulders instead. And yet he still didn’t utter a single word of condemnation, for the fact that Snow had spent the whole night sitting there, with his back against the cold wall. In fact, now that Snow thought about that, if VinWei was telling the truth and ZaiWin had really spent the night watching over him, he had simply allowed him to sit there. By now, Snow had already lost count of the number of times he’d chosen to sleep on the ground, only to wake up lying on the bed, after ZaiWin had secretly moved him from one place to the other in the middle of the night. In fact, the last time he had simply allowed him to do as he pleased and sleep on the floor, had been during their visit to the Temple of Wei, after he had learned what it meant to be a bounded Tien’Elhar3Literally tien (Heaven) + el (supreme) + har (girl child). The Heavenly Beings also known as Celestials in the common language..
Gently siting him on the bed, the dark monster released him again, standing up to his full height, a huge column of darkness that easily towered over him. The darkness around him had become even darker, Snow realized, and his heart couldn’t help worrying about that. VinWei had said ZaiWin wasn’t exactly like other people. That much he had concluded by himself. And he knew that the golden-haired woman that had watched over him all those years had seen this darkness with bad eyes. Snow also felt that there was something wrong about it, something abnormal. He had known it from the first time he had laid eyes on him. Which didn’t necessarily meant that it was bad or evil, like he felt while in the presence of the feimao. But still, something inside him kept telling him that, even though there was no evil in it, it still shouldn’t be allowed to grow.
Since he was bluntly being stared at, the blue eyes looked away from him, and Snow couldn’t help wondering if ZaiWin was feeling bashful about the fact he kept staring at him.
“I’m not afraid,” Snow simply blurted out, and the mass of darkness in front of him went immediately very still, as if his voice had frozen it in place. “In fact, I actually feel that seeing you like this is more … truthful. It’s true that, like this, I can’t tell what you’re thinking unless you tell me. Because I can’t see your face. I can’t tell if you’re scowling in anger. I can’t tell if you’re losing your patience. I can’t tell if you simply want me to shut up and do as I’m told. I have to wait until you put all these things into words. But, on the other hand, I have a clearer idea of what you’re really feeling. When you’re feeling safe, like when you’re talking with ZenTar for example, there’s much less darkness around you and I can almost see the contours of your body. When you’re really angry it gets more agitated. When you’re using your daitai4Literally dai (light) + tai (mark), or Holy Markings, considered Heavenly Blessings. They’re the source of power. it grows so much that I can’t even tell where you are anymore. When you’re fighting those things, when you kill them, it gets a lot darker. Like now …”
The cold blue eyes turned to look at him and Snow squeezed both hands together, nervously. He was trying very hard to do as VinWei had told him, to honestly say what he thought, what he felt. But being honest like that was much harder than he had thought, while sitting there, on the floor, trying to useless decide what he wanted to say. Somehow, he felt very vulnerable, putting his thoughts into words. As if he were simply handing him all the secret weapons he collected for his own protection, over the years.
Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to face that bright-blue gaze.
“I always thought that your darkness got darker because you were fighting those things, almost as if their darkness, somehow, mixed with yours. But now I can see, that’s not true. In truth, even though you know that feimao must be destroyed, you actually hate having to kill them. You hate having to use your power to hurt other living things, even if those living things should be eradicated from the face of the earth. Your energy gets darker, not because it’s contaminated by your surroundings. It’s you. It’s always you. You make it lighter. You make it larger. You make it darker. Like now … Because you’re blaming yourself. Because you’re regretting what happened.”
The blue eyes escaped from his again, and Snow took a deep breath that immediately made him wince in pain. He had completely forgotten that he had to be careful with the way he breathed, he reminded himself, clenching his tunic over his aching chest.
“So, you see … There’s nothing to be afraid of. You are always you, no matter what you may look like,” he still managed to squeeze out before he was forced to press his lips shut to avoid another coughing fit.
Language:
VinWei:
ZaiWin:
Wei:
Tien’Elhar:
Daitai:
