Ballads of the Desert

On his wedding, Donghae carries the weight of his conquered nation and people on his shoulders. It’s heavy and suffocating, the knowledge of the burden on him, despite the cool air of the open plains of Neired and the comfy and warm dau he is wearing.

The wedding headpiece of the Deyuca’s dau is enormous on his head, it’s feel much too large for one of his age and even with the tightly bound slash at his waist, the garment barely even fit him properly him. It swallows him and he is lost among a sea thick silk layers of colorful pleaded panels, beaded ts, and gold and silver jewelries hangs on him like a decorative ornament.

Nothing sits right with him—not the myriad of the disjointed group of Deyuca and Adresh people gather around him, not the chilly and airy environment of the Neired, and especially not the joyous occasion.

His queen-mother could barely look at him from her spot among the powerful women of Deyuca, without despair seizing her once again and his father is sullen and quiet as he converse with his delegates and Deyuca’s king and council. He knows they are discussing the contract of this marriage and Donghae forcibly looks down at his lap, remembering the price they pay for this marriage, their defeat. 

His dowry alone consists of ten chests of gold, two ward states in the Epral Peninsula, the Port of Monei, the access to the Adresh’s eastern border and the complete complacent of the Adreshan people.

It’s not much but it’s more they can afford to lose after the futile war with Deyuca.

Donghae was born a prince and destine to be a king but that was ripped out of his hands when his people went to war with the wild people of Deyuca and lost severely. And now, he still get to keep his crown—a paper crown that holds no power—but he is chain to the throne of a foreign land and a husband not of his own choosing.

He feels no drop of happiness, just a cold endless emptiness that sweeps him under and he can’t help glancing at his future husband seated beside him at this dinner, who looks comfortable and at home in this tense and stiff atmosphere.

Hyukjae, undaunted, eats the food on their table happily and unbothered, and perhaps that is because he is too young to understand the magnitude of the situation before him, while Donghae’s food lay uneaten and cold. The situation made him lose any appetite but the strange and unnerving food—staring back at him with its huge eyes—certainly doesn’t help either.

He takes that moment to closely examine Hyukjae and it gnaw at him to think that his future husband is a lanky awkward little boy who looks more like street urchin than a prince of a warmongering people but the dau fits him more than it does on Donghae despite the severe different in height between them and abruptly he is gravely reminded that Hyukjae is younger than even Donghae and already his life is not even his own. 

He turns away—Hyukjae is maybe in the same position as him but he is not the one sold into marriage—looking out at the assortment of Adreshan, stiff and uncomfortable among the festive party, and the Deyuca are obnoxiously drunk and boisterous in their reverie.

He bites his lower lip, bitterly pondering his plight. 

The Deyuca are loud and rough and lack any manners, they move about in the plains and don’t even claim a single place as their home and Donghae is expected to live among them? How is he supposed to even adapt to this people way when they disgust him completely. Savages, barbarians, and uncultured swine—these are his people now.

His eyes burn and he’s choke up by the frustration and the unfairness of it all, that while his father and his councilmen were the one to command for war but it is Donghae and his people that pay the price of it.

He fists his hand on his lap, the nails cutting him and he hopes it hurt. He resents his father, his country, and just about everyone who put him in this situation but all he could do is silently bare it all because anger does not become a prince of his stature and he will let embarrass himself and Adresh by crying here. And isn’t that grand, even in his emotional state he does not own and that shakes him the most. 

There’s a nosy and sudden shift beside him that jerk him out of his turmoil, he tilts his head up to see Hyukjae staring at him, eyes bright and b with understanding.

Hyukjae, stronger and kinder at eight than Donghae was ever at thirteen, grabs Donghae’s trembling hand and squeezes it reassuringly. “You can cry,” he says, his voice gentler than Donghae deserves. “It’s okay. I won’t allow anyone to tease you about it.”

Donghae’s tongue is tied in his mouth, the words escape him for once, but Hyukjae just offers him a soft tentative smile and a nod of go ahead. “You’re going to be my husband now, and if I can’t offer you something as simple as that I clearly don’t deserve you,” he says as if it was that easy… and just maybe it is.

Donghae look down at their joint hands, Hyukjae hand is small but the grip is firm and warm, and in this moment it holds up the weight of Donghae’s world.

After that, the wedding is a blurred of grim face adults and treaties and promises but all Donghae remembers is his quiet but uncontrollable sobs and Hyukjae never once let go of his hand throughout the festivity.

They barely get to exchange a farewell before Donghae is whisked away high on top a mountain with a slew of guards and servants as his only company. Far from his homeland and separated from his family and people, safe and protected where war and the internal conflict of Hyukjae’s people won’t be able to reach him, Donghae lives a cold and lonely existent high atop a mountain as he waits for his prince to grow up and the world to be less cruel.

Confine within the walls of his gilded cage, Donghae only comfort are the letters from his husband that is delivered to him once a full moon. The courier would trek through the treacherous path and unforgiving mountain ascent just to hand deliver the package of letters to Donghae, who held them as carefully and reverently like it was a gift from the gods.

For many years, their only form of the contact were the letters that he read by the candle light every night. When there were no new letter for him to read, he rereads the old ones again and again as if he can find traces of Hyukjae in those scratchy mark of his penmanship and Hyukjae’s word come alive around him and he can imagine the sky Hyukjae is under and the sight he see and the beauty and horror of his world as Donghae is locked up in his palace of winter.

Hyukjae,

The nights are long and cold here that I often find myself having trouble sleeping whenever I think if I close my eyes I will never wake up again as though the cold will take me hostage. The only warmth I have are your letters that I read by the candlelight long into the night, and though your words fill me with great joy how I wish I was there to see it all but my only consolation is that we are under the same sky and perhaps if you look up at the night sky you too can see the stars that hang over me.

I feel like I'm annoying for being too insisting about this, but it had been a season and a half since I have recieved a letter from you. I know that you are busy with your uncle, whom you mention several times in many of your past letters whose greed and ambition have lead you to be concern, and though I tried to offer advice to you but I, who never left my palace nor had stepped upon the battle ridden world that you lived in, I am of no help to you. How often I wish I was stronger and braver like so I can be of aid to you in some way, and that thought keep me up at night, thinking if you see me again would you want such a useless husband? So I swear to myself several nights ago, I will be endeavor to make you proud, to be someone whom you can rely on.

But I must confess, my prince, sometimes, I feel like I'm but a wisp floating in the air, intangible and insignficant in the grand scheme of things, that I wonder if my parents even thought of me these past years, that my people even gave a passing thought of me as that prince that they had married off to some foreign land, and that I am but a footnote in history. I worry I would be forgetten, that I soon disappear like a passing rain.

Just please do not forget me too, my prince. You're all I have left now.

Yours truly in heart and soul,

Donghae

The letters eventually dies off in his twenty-one winter and for months he locks up in his room and keep writing hoping to hear back from Hyukjae but once it hit him that Hyukjae won’t reply back, he tears up his room and runs out of his palace in the middle of the frigid winter and nearly freeze to death before the servants had finally found him. Deserted by his family, his people, and now Hyukjae he got nothing left to cling to but—to die this way is not him and Hyukjae had asked him to wait in his last letter so he must, he must patiently endure the long and aching wait.

In his twenty-three winter, an army of Deyuca are at his door. They are here to deliver him to Hyukjae and Donghae nearly collapses with relieve. From them, he learns of Decuya’s civil war and Hyukjae’s power hungry uncle and the small but powerful fraction that stand in opposition of Hyukjae. He listens how Hyukjae nearly lost his throne and for those two years he was fighting a nearly unwinnable war until he was able to take his uncle’s head and claim his rightful place two lunar cycles ago.

When they finally meet again, Donghae feeling shy and nervous on his horse as he looks down at this stranger who had become his entire world at thirteen and Hyukjae, grave-face and much older now, holds his hand out to help Donghae down.

That awkward little boy had grown into himself and his hand are now as big as Donghae’s but is fill with untold calluses and scars that etched onto his skin like a mark in history.

"Donghae, welcome home," he says, his voice rough and deep now but kind and gentle just like Donghae remembers. 

"I’m home," Donghae responds, smiling back because home is always going to be Hyukjae.

His prince is now a man, older and more battle harden, but still noble and sweet as back then and Donghae thinks this is where they shall begin anew.

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a/n: another repost! how many ways i can have arrange political marriage, the answer is a lot; ugh donghae’s snobbish attitudes are one of the reason i love about culture differences so much b/c oh boy am i going to enjoy getting through donghae’s ignorant head and in an effort to explore different setting that isn’t steep in european roots, the idea for the diyuca is based on the nomadic people of the plains or a fictional culture similar to the mongolia empire.