Reborn To Be The Imperial Consort [BL]-Chapter 126: Dancing Daffodils — VII

[Bonus Chapter 11]

Warning: This Chapter was written in a more traditional style so take your time!

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[Fear not oh brave heart of bleeding gold and flames. It awaits, it awaits.]

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Was he so little worthy of affection that by the hour he came to, the man—who had taught his ignorant self but all that he knew—was gone. Vanished, the man was gone like a gust of wind. And so, he never saw the seemingly benevolent taoist again.

That too, not until after his death upon which he stumbled into that cold corpse.

Delicately, the refined hands reached up in a plea. With long slender fingers curled in a gentle curve, they sought the salvation deemed they were unworthy for. One hand, palm faced up, spread out as though capable of grasping the secrets well-hidden. The other, however, remained curled around a flower.

Frozen with delicacy the flora gleamed in the dark cavern frosted over in ice. Perhaps, perhaps, it was the only source of light after all. A weighted exhale released, noise made plenty bereaved. The faint noise echoed. Ricocheting off the iced over walls returned the cry in reminder of the loneliness—

—That devoured, devoured and devoured.

Along the weighted sighs that trembled with each fleeting moment, the out-streched, pleading hands fell.

Soulless, hopeless, they thudded against the frozen cave floor. Even so, the owner of those limbs, trapped in a daze, seemed not to notice.

How long has it been since he had been touched by human enterprise? He could no longer remember. He bore a memory so clouded over by the time’s fog. So much so the years of his childhood and adolescence seemed ever so distant.

By no definition was his childhood or adolescence pleasant. But he would have liked to know more than a cloud of moving blur. With another great breath expelled, he shifted whereupon he laid wretched. The frozen floor beneath his person was cold, yet no cold could be more than himself.

Likened to a pitiable and deformed foetus, the man curled up to himself. He wished not for the first time that he could simply disappear.

Vile was he alone of his race, and shunned by mankind. Still forsaken by the only compassionate hand reached to him centuries prior. What truly was his fault, being an orphaned, parentless abomination? Someone who rose from nothing but cold suffering of the cruel snow?

When a mere urchin, ignorant and abandoned, he was alone. He knew not how to control the essence of his strength. With no one to guide his frost heralding hand, he froze everything within the limit of his place.

Lamenting, he isolated himself from the foreign world he knew not. Cautious as he was, he resided in the snow-capped abode that was the highest of mountains. For a hundred years and then some, he lived unperturbed.

But it changed when a taoist, as lonely as his own abandoned self, chanced upon his solitary cave.

He recalled not much else of the man but the benevolent voice with which he spoke to him. Blissfully unaware was the taoist of his hideous reality; treating him with such kindness that he was unmerited.

Not only had he banished the harrowing desolation of his existence, but also taught him ways of a civilised human. Be it the knowledge of their vices or their virtues.

However kind he had been, the essence of the taoist’s nature too was revealed. In the fear he thereafter displayed upon discovering the true nature of his wretched existence.

In terror, the taoist—he too a man—fled from the cave they had called home for decades. Hitherto, he had gazed into the frozen pond and seen the monster, the disaster, he was.

Pristine white fur faded into icy blue towards the ends, luminous sapphire eyes, a sleek snout. And he stood on all four of his paws. Behind him swished his two tails as though possessing a mind of their own.

All he had committed was the sin of language the taoist had spoken. How dare an abominable fox spirit like himself speak a language not belonging to his kind?

At the faint rush of memories, the snow-like delicate man curled deeper into his person. Desperately clutched was the frozen white peony close to his chest.

White peony of purity and innocence, none of which was he. How unworthy, how much of a wretch he was... He could not even control his power and stop the cursed winter he had started in despair.

Pathetic a sob clawed past his tight throat, a wave of nausea brewed in his gut and threatened to spill out of his maw.

Since after his lonesome birth, he who was oblivious to the world. Innocently, he sought companionship in any form he could receive. Desperate, desolate and miserable as he was, upon the taoist’s arrival within his cold abode he rejoiced.

And feebly so, he dared to foster, and to hope that perhaps he too could forge a companionship. A meaningful existence of his own that he was doubtful of.

Ruthless, but that hope was dashed and broken whence the same man fled at the first sound of his wobbling words. Alone, alone, alone; such was his contemptible destiny.

Perhaps, it was nowhere that he—!

"Where is it that I belong?" He wept, bitter as the snow pelting outside the cave he was too fearful to leave. "Is there no place in this world wherein I belong?"

Akin to a dying flicker, his voice shivered and tumbled out of his lips. Escaped fatefully from the constriction of his throat, the words knocked against the icy walls in frenzy.

Drowned in his grief, the fox spirit heard none of the silent footsteps he should have.

The footfalls drew closer and closer and closer.

Tap, tap, tap.

As urgent as the steps were apprehensive, they encroached rapidly.

And the oblivious man, fair like the flakes of snow, continued to weep to himself. Even the drops of his liquid grief glimmered like polished gems.

Centuries had passed and he had yet to feel the warmth of the flames that taoist had made long ago.

His vessel cold, withered, and deplorable in the accursed blizzard curled, alike a crumpled foil vying to disappear.

The white peony constructed of ice glimmered quietly. Akin to a beacon, it called upon the intruders to draw closer. Like a guiding light, it seemed to claw through the dark veil and lure them to the heart of grief, of contempt and miserly subsistence.

Broken from the bottomless lake of his despair was the fox when his flesh prickled upon the nearness of a blistering warmth. So similar was it to the crackling flames he had seen once upon a time.

Uncaring, his neck whipped towards the encroaching live pyre. His eyes widened in a folly of surprise. His sapphire gaze, wrought with tears, shivered as it affixed on the path he faced.

With a voice of feigned strength, and dressed in a foil of false confidence, he spoke in a demand. "Who goes there?"

The steps, though hesitant, did not come to a halt. Forthwith, a voice replied, male, confident, and full of strength.

"A beneficiary and a victim of your twisted design." Sneered the voice that made him cower to his very core. "Why, do you not recognise this voice of mine?"

He flinched, taken aback by the blazing hatred dripped in every syllable of the question.

"I... I have done no such thing." He said, no, moreso, beseeched to he who may as well be his executioner. "Nor do I recognize you."

"..." A voided and suffocating silence resounded as the answer. The longer the void stretched, the deeper the shadows of apprehension dragged him with itself. "Unrecognizable am I, so you say?" Disdainful, the man’s drawl scorned him. "How ruthless."

Ice flowed similar to a deliquescent fear in his veins. A shiver crawled down his flesh as though a thousand spiders were journeying nether. Flinching, he scrambled backwards to flee the burning malice felt through that radiating presence of the man.

"I fear I do not fathom your words nor your hatred. Have I done something to incur your animosity?"

Thud. Heavy with indignation, the steps drew close til’ the great and dark shadow of that tall silhouette fell over him. The darkness it brought along rankled the fox spirit’s heart. He feared, oh how greatly he was afraid.

But no darkness nor fear could surpass the absolute terror digging its claws in his heart. And those amber eyes stared down at him. The eyes, filled to brim yet overflowing with a concoction of violence and hatred. If gaze could kill, his wretched self would be dead long since.