Su Lan

1302 years after The Long Night

Huichâng

Sometimes Su Lan wonders if he had died that night in Yan Tan, when the boulders fell. If he died and that this was his new life. Everyday with Yaeon, he learned something new, discovered pieces of himself and the world that had been invisible before. They had a routine together, a safe place… a home.

He stopped feeling guilty when he glanced at the tally marks on the wall. It had been another three months, but what did that matter when it felt like he’d lived more these last months than ever before in his life?

Yaeon had started memorizing some of his words. Su Lan could tell she understood when he said her name, and when he spoke about feelings.

“It’s cold in here, I feel cold.”

She blinked at him. Then the next day, Yaeon brought him to a spring at the junction of the forest and the sea, where volcanic steam rose from the water.

Su Lan fell asleep there that day, enjoying the sensation of not being cold. He woke up to Yaeon dangling from a branch above his head, enjoying the steam on her scales more than the water…

“You don’t like the sun, huh?” He’d asked once when she’d refused to leave the shade of the cave on a particularly hot day.

She cast the sky an angry glare and Su Lan smiled.

“I’ll come back soon… if I find any shells I’ll bring them.”

Su Lan held up the fishing line around his neck that held one of Yaeon’s favorite shells. She’d given it to him to wear once, but looked sad to part with it. He decided to make it up to her and bring her even better ones.

Yaeon made a pleased chirping sound and watched him long after he made his way down to the sea. Su Lan had always been a great swimmer. Growing up in Hei’an City, there was only Darkling Lake nearby, and that had deterred almost everyone from the activity, but not him and definitely not Yi-jun.

Diving underwater for crabs and clams and shells for Yaeon, Su Lan found himself remembering all the… “swimming lessons” with Yi-jun from their youth.

They’d jumped in together for the first time on the Prince’s twelfth birthday after he snuck out of the palace. Su Lan told the boy scary stories about the monsters lurking under its depths until Yi-jun scampered out and cursed at him, shivering and moping.

Su Lan recalled the summer after the Prince turned eighteen. Su Lan had told him that night, all about the daughter of the local innkeeper, and how she’d looked so beautiful the evening prior, sprawled out on Su Lan’s bed with her inky-dark hair, then how she’d looked even better the next morning when they’d met in secret in the attic of her father’s establishment.

Xie Yi-jun had turned bright red, but Su Lan prodded, managing to coax from him that while the already of-age Prince had had no lovers, too afraid of his mother’s wrath if he did, Yi-jun had looked at both men and women in the past, finding he was equally as interested.

Su Lan remembered teasing his best friend-

“If you ever got the chance, would you wanna do it outside?”

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The Prince had gasped, scandalized.

“Have you?!”

Su Lan just scoffed, “Of course. It’s fun… you have to experience nature while doing a natural act. C’mon, where would you do it? Out here, on the beach?”

Yi-jun had thought for a while, and didn’t dare to meet Su Lan’s eyes when he whispered; “Maybe, in the lake?”

“Aha! So daring, that’s my A’Jun! I need to watch my back-”

“Shut up! I hate you…”

The memories, the people, recalling the sounds of the church bells and the lightning storms, Su Lan’s parents whom he didn’t understand but loved anyway, and everything he was now consciously leaving behind, it made him sick to his stomach with guilt. Yet somehow it wasn’t enough to make him want to return.

I’m safe here, I’m happy… I wake up everyday and everyday Yaeon shows me some new magical thing. I can’t take her with me back to Hei’an City, but how could I leave her here alone?

Su Lan returned to the cave that night thoroughly exhausted. Swimming was easier on his body than walking, but it was still exercise and it felt like every muscle was on fire. He sat the handful of sea creatures he’d found on the cave floor and when Yaeon approached, clearly interested, he rifled through the pile until he found the oyster.

“Do you know what this is?”

Yaeon blinked at it, then reached out, chirping as if asking to hold it.

Su Lan grinned and nodded, placing it in her palm.

Watching her fascination with things was like discovering them for the very first time… Su Lan relished it.

“Here, let me show you-”

Su Lan gently took it back, picking up the piece of obsidian he’d found at the springs that day and carefully sliding it between the oyster’s shells. The halves split open with a bit of force and then he poked through the slimy contents of the sea creature, finding the pearl and rubbing it on his shirt a few times before he gave it back to Yaeon.

She froze. She didn’t blink or breathe or move an inch for what felt like an eternity. Su Lan wondered if maybe she’d gone into a trance, when suddenly a low rumbling sound filled the air around them and Su Lan watched, highly amused, as Yaeon brought the pearl very close to her face and narrowed and widened her eyes repeatedly.

The rumble turned into her usual chirping and the tip of her tail swished across the cave floor as she stared at the pearl and talked at length, probably about how it shimmered just like her tail did. Su Lan only thought this, because as she ‘talked’, she brought the pearl to the back of her hand and compared it to her scales, then chirped louder in excitement.

“Mhm,” Su Lan was glad she liked it. “It does resemble your scales. It’s very pretty, don’t you think?”

Yaeon’s tail wiggled as a response and he laughed…

Suddenly, Yaeon’s golden eyes fixed on him. Su Lan enjoyed the way she lit up when she was staring at something she loved, and his breath caught in his throat when he realized she was looking at him now in that very same way.

Yaeon scanned his face, like she did sometimes when she was trying to figure out what he was feeling, if he was okay. Then she came a bit closer, and this time Su Lan was prepared when she leaned in to bump their foreheads together.

Now that he knew it was a sign of affection, he felt his heart grow unimaginably warm. As Yaeon chirped and sang about her joy, he felt her song wrap around him, nestling deep inside his body and cradling him against the harsh storms of the world.

Yaeon brought light and life into everything around her. Su Lan would rather let the world burn than watch that light be extinguished. All he wanted was to tend to it, to stoke it, make her happier, as happy as he could…

Feeling Yaeon’s breath ghost against his skin as she sighed contently, still butting heads with him gently, Su Lan was faintly aware of his body responding in a way that seemed so crass for a moment like this.

Skin tingling, heart pounding, he tried to push it back, this tsunami of desire that was suddenly gathering inside him. Su Lan’s patience and resistance and sense all vanished in a heartbeat however, as he felt Yaeon pause, as if sensing something, then she bent forward and her tongue flickered out across his lips.

“Mph!”

Su Lan held her cheek gently and crushed his lips to hers. Yaeon seemed to still for no more than half a second before, to his elation, she responded in kind.

Tears were already spilling down his face as Su Lan went rigid, pulling Yaeon into an even deeper kiss with a hand on the back of her neck and another around her waist. She wasn’t still or silent either. The little chirps and breaths she made whenever they parted spurred him on… then her hands came up and Su Lan inhaled sharply when he felt her tangle her claws into his hair.

They parted only for the time in which it took to look at each other. Golden eyes mirroring emerald ones. Yaeon roughly yanked him back, and that, for Su Lan, felt like sealing his fate.