Su Lan

1302 years after The Long Night

Huichâng

She slept more than usual. Su Lan didn’t disturb her except once early on, when he thought she might be ill. He put a hand on her shoulder but Yaeon just mewled and pushed him away, burrowing her face further into her own tail.

All around the cave were remnants of her shedding skin, papery and thin and coming away to reveal newer, even brighter blue scales underneath.

Su Lan also thought that Yaeon’s moods had changed. She started going outside less and less, ate sparingly, and treated her prized objects with little to no interest. He didn’t know what had caused such a shift, but whatever it was only grew more noticeable as every day passed.

When she wasn’t in her corner sleeping fourteen hours a day, Yaeon slept in Su Lan’s arms, her head upon his chest, eyelids fluttering softly. He wished to know what she dreamed about…

Su Lan was more than willing, more than pleased to be the one taking care of her for a change, after everything she’d done for him. Everything she continued to do. Sometimes, before they fell asleep, Yaeon would bump her forehead against his, kiss him gently, quietly chirp in satisfaction, and then go on to look deep into Su Lan’s eyes. He found he had no issues staring at her like that, for so long, so closely, in fact Su Lan was beginning to realize that more than anything else, he had begun craving as much of her as he could get, her closeness and her company and her warmth.

After returning late one night from the beach, Su Lan entered the cave with a few decent sized fish. He’d been getting better and better at holding his breath while diving, and wanted to show off his skills with their newly made spear to Yaeon. Anxiety curled though his chest however, upon seeing her lying on the floor.

Yaeon had gathered all the snakeskin, moss, kelp, leaves and bark nearby and appeared to be sleeping atop it. But, unlike herself, she wasn’t coiled up. Her tail was tossed haphazardly to the side, her arms tugged close and her eyes closed tight.

“...Yaeon?”

Heart turning ice cold, Su Lan rushed to her side, dropping to his knees and reaching out. A single touch to her pale skin and he almost froze in terror. She was never this still-

With shaking hands, he moved to cradle her in his lap, feeling tears blur his vision as he tried to search her face for any sign that she was just asleep

“Yaeon?!”

What could have happened?! Su Lan didn’t know much about nagas. He wasn't even sure how long they lived. There were myths that the creatures were semi-immortal, meaning that as long as they were uninjured by an outside source, they could technically exist forever. So why wouldn’t she wake up?

“Yaeon,” he cried. “Please open your eyes… please come back-”

I don’t think I can go on without you now…

Su Lan sifted his fingers through her long dark hair, horrified by Yaeon’s ashen face and cold skin. Lying limply in his arms, there was nothing about her that gave him hope she was alive. To be so suddenly taken from him, Su Lan’s mind and heart were struggling to catch up, part of him refusing to believe it was true, and another part feeling as if he was a ship unmoored, and slowly sinking.

Yaeon was so beautiful, even now… Su Lan bent to press his forehead to hers, a sob escaping his throat as he recalled just how gentle she’d been, how kind. There was so much he had yet to learn from her, and more he needed to somehow tell her. What were the cruel twists of fate that had stolen her life all at once?!

“Yaeon…” Su Lan’s tears dripped down onto her face as he whispered; “Take me instead. If you need life, energy, a body, whatever it is, take mine… it’s all been yours since the start anyway. I’ve been yours, I always will be-”

Water trickled down into the corner beside them. The cave felt especially cold tonight. Silent. Su Lan sat there and held Yaeon and thought about how many more times he’d be willing to live through that rockfall, if it meant meeting her. Even if she was taken too soon.

“...you took my heart in your hands, my heart which had given up all hope without me even noticing. You held it and you breathed life back into my soul. I wish to exist in a universe where you are the world for me to explore, the ground to cradle me, the sky to cover me. I wish to exist in an eternal state of loving you, of being loved by you. Yaeon… can’t you give me just one last gift?”

As the minutes turned into hours, and he started to think about what he was supposed to do now, the thought crossed Su Lan’s mind that he should give her a proper burial.

Should I build a casket? Or, does Yaeon want to be laid to rest right here… should I lay by her side and fade when she does-

“Mn-”

“Yaeon?!”

Su Lan’s breath caught the instant he felt her move. Gasping through tears and grabbing her face, he caught sight of Yaeon’s glorious golden eyes, and all it did was send him into further torment.

“Yaeon!” He cried, trembling as he held her. “Y-you were dead, I thought you were dead! Please tell me this isn’t a dream…”

Knowing she couldn’t answer him, she did the next best thing. Yaeon’s hand came up, and Su Lan felt her physical weakness as she touched his cheek and gently stroked it. Seeing how pale she still was, and her distracted expression, like she might fade back away into nothingness if he so much as blinked, Su Lan gripped her body tighter and fumbled out one useless question after another.

Mother always did say I speak when I’m nervous-

“What happened?! You aren’t sick, are you? You… you won’t die, you can’t die, right?!”

He saw her features soften gently, a small smile forming on her rose-red lips as she stared up at him. Su Lan always wondered what she saw in him that made her save his life, and what he did for her to allow him to linger.

Her hand on his cheek was warming softly. Seeing his own tears pooling on her face, Su Lan quickly reached up to wipe them away, only to have his hand caught by Yaeon. She closed her eyes and smiled, contently turning her cheek into his palm and rubbing. A soft mewl, like a sigh, left her lips, and even as a huge weight lifted off Su Lan’s shoulders, another slammed down just as hard.

“...Yaeon, you’re-”

Looking down, seeing the slight blue glow of her tail, Su Lan held his breath. It started slowly, the pulse turning into a bright shine that somehow seemed as if it was illuminating every part of her body, both internal and external. Su Lan watched in astonishment, the brightness and frequency of the pulses as it grew. It was… beautiful, but it frightened him all the same.

With Yaeon conscious, still rubbing happily at his palm, Su Lan tried once again to speak with her-

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“Are you really okay? Is there something you need?”

As her eyes opened and fastened on him, Su Lan felt at once that his question had hit the mark. Yaeon had somehow… deprived herself of something vital, something that was now harming her, but the look on her face, in her eyes, told him she’d been ignoring it until now.

That will not do-

Su Lan swallowed. “Yaeon… is what you need… something I can give you?”

If it was, he wouldn’t hesitate. Blood, or life, or years, or form-

Su Lan was convinced already that this magnificent creature was both his savior and his fate. If there was something he could do for her, for her comfort or happiness or existence itself, there would be no question about it in his mind.

Yaeon blinked up at him. There was obvious hesitance in her expression, but then she glanced down at her own tail, which had started shaking softly, the tip flicking back and forth across the ground as it sometimes did when she was anxious or exhausted and grumpy. She seemed to frown, seeing the glow of it. Su Lan held his breath again.

Yaeon chirped once, a clipped sort of agreeable sound. Su Lan’s breath left him immediately, a deep sigh of relief.

So… there is something!

“I love you,” he said with a firm nod. “Please take anything you need, let me save you now. Yaeon, I want to spend my life with you, no matter what that looks like-”

In a heartbeat, she had twisted her upper body into his lap, both hands around his neck, gently holding him in place. Yaeon’s breath gusted over his jaw, his cheek, and he heard her deep inhale. A strange anxiety fluttered to life just under the surface of his awareness. It was as if she was a cobra about to strike and a lover about to kiss him all at once. Su Lan was lost in it.

He swallowed once more and closed his eyes. Something deep inside told him she was still holding back. He needed her to have no second thoughts. He needed her to understand he needed to do this, whatever it was. He would see it through.

“My love, my life… Yaeon, if you killed me right now, I would be happy. If you took from me everything, anything you needed, I would be fulfilled-”

Su Lan felt her fangs on his neck a split-second before they sunk into his skin. It was a deep bite, but for some reason he felt no pain at all, only an assurance that this was what he should do, what Yaeon needed from him.

He closed his eyes, holding her tight as she seemed to exhale, and then only after making sure the bite had fully pierced his skin and was drawing blood, did she pull away.

Su Lan felt her withdrawal as a blow to the chest, exhaustion suffocating him suddenly the moment he felt her fangs slide out.

Taking Yaeon by the shoulders, he coaxed her gaze up, those brilliant golden eyes, wide and watery with unshed tears. Su Lan’s heart ached at the sight. He kissed her without a second thought, listening to her breathy gasp of surprise and then her sweet chirps that followed.

After a while, he pulled away panting, watching as Yaeon’s eyes shone with warmth for him. Soon, Su Lan began to feel something. A kind of pressure, mostly through his first meridian and expanding. It wasn’t painful, just a little odd…

Yaeon was hugging him so tight, still pressed against him, and Su Lan was so lost in their own beautiful word, in his own love for her, that he didn’t even realize that the pressure had already dropped all the way down his spine, into his lower back, and there it was getting even stronger. Su Lan held Yaeon tighter and breathed, knowing that she would lead him to right where he belonged in this world… right to her-

Slowly, carefully, he laid down on his back and allowed her to assume her sleeping position, curved across his body, arms hugging him close. Yaeon began to nose at him, as she often did, chirping softly as if she was trying to comfort him somehow.

The sweeping exhaustion that he felt was accompanied by the strange ache in all his bones, deep inside his muscles, and he knew that if he allowed it to overtake him, he would fall asleep.

Just before he did, he took one last look at Yaeon. Su Lan saw the way her eyes shown with tears, though they were only grateful and her gaze was full of awe. He drifted off, desperate to be able to prove he was worthy of such a love.

Su Lan’s dreams were… strange.

For a while, he dreamed of the sea, and the stars on that night they traveled through the desert. Then, it was all fiery, searing pain, and he thought he screamed himself hoarse remembering his shattered bones and shredded skin.

It softened, as he dreamed about Yaeon, about her gentle care, her tail twining around them both, her fascination with sea creatures, and birds, and then how her kisses felt, her fangs-

Su Lan dreamed of the water again, it trickled in through his mind’s eye, gathered him up, held him together. He realized that in his dream, he was swimming through the ocean, diving deep, not needing to hold his breath. When he tried to come up for air, his legs refused to work properly. It was as if, like in so many dreams he’d had before, he was stuck in place.

Unable to swim up, only able to go deeper, Su Lan pushed aside the doubts he had, diving further down into the murky sea and watching as bubbles fluttered past him, bursting open on his skin and feeling like little jellyfish stings.

The deeper he went, the more his body ached, as if the pressure of the deep sea was causing all his muscles and bones to rebel against him. Su Lan felt the bubbles, exploding all around him, their heat easing all of his pain, so much that he tried to reach out to them, capture them.

Their heat grew so intense, that Su Lan felt as if he was shaking, sweating, a headache starting just behind his eyes as he grappled with both how good it felt, and how much his body felt… somehow, wrong-

Being underwater this long, it was too huge an adjustment all at once. All he could do was try to seize as many bubbles as he could, burning himself alive in the darkness while he fought to wake himself up, or at least swim to the surface.

Su Lan’s eyes snapped open as a desperate groan spilled from his throat. There was… so much light filtering through the cave, everything seemed as if it was in vivid shades, some so loud, that was all he could do to describe it, that it made his ears ring.

Sweat poured in rivulets off his entire body, and it was with only a brief sense of panic, that Su Lan realized the feeling of being unable to move his legs in his dream, was indeed real…

His eyes were still so blurry that the shape of his tail, bright green and pulsing with light just like Yaeon’s, wasn’t so much of a shock to him. Instead, the shock came when Su Lan noticed that beside him, writhing and whimpering on the floor, Yaeon was clawing at his chest and biting his shoulder viciously.

The warmth that was threatening to drown him roared into a fire. Su Lan felt a need unlike anything he’d ever known in his life sweep over him now. And there was no denying that he was not only feeling his own body's needs, but that of Yaeon’s too.

Su Lan hissed, his muscles complaining at him trying to move, but he fought it. Able to finally move onto his side to face her, he caught Yaeon’s cheek and coaxed her up so he could slot their lips together.

Teeth and tongues clashed together, brutal and unashamed in their demand of each other. Su Lan heard a strange snarl slide from his lips as he felt Yaeon’s claws rake across his back…

Yaeon was impatient, and with every flicker of her tongue, Su Lan felt her desperation only grow stronger. Her soft urgent sounds, turning louder and louder, more incessant, until it was almost as if she were trying to tell him, ‘No! No, it’s not enough-’

Pretty soon, a new kind of pressure caught his attention, and it wasn’t until he physically looked down that Su Lan realized, Yaeon had wrapped her tail around his, and he had done the same.

A part of his body that he was already so familiar with, yet felt foreign at the same time now, begged for immediate attention. Su Lan stifled another hiss upon realizing that his cock had somehow slid free from a slit in his lower abdomen. Yaeon shifted against him, chirping incessantly and clawing at him all the while.

Instinct taking over, blurring his vision entirely, Su Lan slid against her, pushing and pressing his tail incessantly against hers until finally, finally he felt himself slip inside. The relief and absolute crushing need he felt was so intense, Su Lan actually heard himself hissing, snarling ferociously as he and Yaeon’s limbs and tails entwined entirely, until they fit together like one being.

There was something… something inside Yaeon, inside the part of her that held so much heat it was drowning him. That something seemed to wrap around Su Lan’s cock and pull him even deeper inside, sealing them together as teeth and nails continued to ravage and soothe each other equally.

Never in his life had he felt so out of control and yet perfectly in tune with what his body and his partner’s body wanted and felt. Su Lan was almost brought to tears at how he’d somehow been deprived, or gone without this feeling for his whole life. He couldn’t be away from Yaeon… he couldn’t part with her.

And now, he’d never have to. They’d be together, like this, forever. And she’d keep showing him her world, gradually making Su Lan a part of it.

As they moved together, repeatedly switching positions and urging each other on with equal amount hisses and claws, Su Lan sunk deeper, tears of gratitude and love and life stinging his eyes as he nosed his way into the curve of Yaeon’s neck and let out a small desperate whimper before sinking his fangs into her soft throat. Her responding sigh was almost a laugh.

They lay like that, as one, until the sun rose. Until Su Lan was content with drowning, and until it was all he existed to do.