He saw her.

Sneaking out in the middle of the night. Tucking herself under the shade of a nearby tree. Bare feet tapping down onto cobblestone, crunching down onto lush grass. Bare legs settling between patches of white, plump poppies. 

He saw her, and he certainly couldn’t un-see her. 

But he also couldn’t follow after her. 

He had rules one through five to abide to. More rules set by his Seeress herself. Less restrictive than the ones he grew up with. Easier to bend than the wooden door that once separated him from her. Made to be broken, as he pointed out to her last night. 

It goes without saying that he did indeed follow her. That he sat down beside her, watching her chest rise and fall, her breathing steady, as she slept. His own breath batting against his face within the confines of the black mask he dawned. He was sure he wouldn’t hear the end of it from Kris and Xiumin if they knew he knew she was sleeping here, yet didn’t watch over her in the least.

Not that he minded it: watching her.

He’d been doing it long enough to have grown used to it: to just watching her. 

“Just” taking the denotation of “only,” in this case. Of “simply,” in this case. Anything but easy and comfortable, in this case.

He couldn’t just watch her anymore.

After traveling for a week to catch up with her, his frustration and irritation and aggravation and more nouns he couldn’t be bothered to think up now just faded away. When he saw her, when he finally saw her, pacing back and forth. Tracing circles into the ground. Shoulders shaking just like his resolve to seek her out, he wanted to smile.

To just smile and play a game of words. 

Engaging in banter. Arguing over small things. Bickering over big things. 

He was left laughing as he procured a mask from Tao — allergies the reason the young Guardian needed it.

After 21 years of being blamed for mistakes he never made, he needed a chance to live like the others for once. Seizing up the opportunity upon the news that her highness, his Seeress, would be gone for who-knows-how-long, he believed he deserved to need it. To get mad at “the drop of a hat” and bend this or that or anything in his favor to prove he was different.

She was different.

They were different from their predecessors. 

Ela Nektor was gone now. Xi’s selfish acts were just that. And Luhan didn’t want to live in the shadow of two ghosts anymore. His mentor’s words aside, he wouldn’t let Ela’s fate become his highness’s. Not his Seeress.

“I won’t make you choose.” 

He made a promise she couldn’t hear. That he’d keep even if no one heard. Even if what he felt for her wasn’t “love.” Even if the way she’d said his name, achingly, like she needed him, like she “loved” him, the day Cera disappeared for good didn’t mean anything in the long run. 

Even if, it was enough proof for him. 

More than enough for him to stop just watching. To make up for the time he’s wasted being anything but what he is. Anything but what the green-eyed Zhoumi called him as he appeared then.

“Moon Guardian.”

And Luhan felt a sort of pride swell up in him. Hearing it in person, face to face, was so much better than through the fuzzy, static-filled world within those floating spheres he grew to detest with each new sight he’d beheld — and Flior was quite the marvel for prime beholding.

“Don’t wake her highness.” Zhoumi warned, loose white linen stained pale blue by the moon above, “She’s speaking with the Tree of Life.”

Luhan knew more than enough about him to know he was someone worth trusting. Hailing from the village of Alberos, where scholarly Exotians of tanned complexions and eye colors as various as the flowers surrounding them experienced perpetual spring, Zhoumi was a learned man. Specifically in matters regarding the Tree of Life.

Enamored by knowledge, no matter the form or subject it took, Luhan wondered out loud: “How?”

“She’s laying on nature the Tree spurned in anticipation of her arrival in Flior.” Zhoumi explained, a distant breeze swooping low, twinkling at the golden jewelry he adorned himself with, “The Tree of Life’s roots spread far and wide. As long as she can be near its children, she can hear its pleas.”

“Pleas?” Luhan was understandably confused by his word choice, “Is it in distress?”

“We’re all in distress, Moon Guardian.” Zhoumi lectured at him, reminding Luhan of his mentor more than he’d like, “It would behoove you to help her see what the future has in store for us.”

Taking in her sleeping form, still and peaceful, Luhan didn’t make a single move to touch her, “She doesn’t want me to.”

“It doesn’t matter what she wants.” Zhoumi corrected him, only to rephrase his words in a way that’d strike deeper at Luhan’s ego soon after, “It doesn’t matter what you want, Moon Guardian. You have a duty to fulfill.”

And no matter how much knowledge Zhoumi had between his deep green eyes, his feather-like clothes, and those golden piercings, Luhan firmly decided something. Something that most likely wasn’t smart. Most certainly wasn’t rational. 

He didn’t like him in the least.

After 21 years, Sehun seemed to have rubbed off on him more than he thought.

Long before the reign of the Seeress of EXO before me, Ela Nektor, the Exotians of Flior were anything but sedentary. During the spring and summer, they’d migrate south to the thick forest groves. During fall and winter, they’d go north, settling on the fertile grounds of the mountain ranges. They would pack up and move at the drop of a hat. “The Elusive town of Flowers,” was what people used to call it. Their nomadic lifestyles always kept them healthy and happy.

This is what the Tree of Life showed me. 

Year after year of relocating. Generation after generation born large and muscular in stature. The blessings of flowers and rich soil following wherever they went. 

A stark contrast from the countless pale, thin bodies I saw on my way to the Mayor’s home this morning. It was on this path that I spotted browning sunflowers, bending under their own weight. It was impossible to ignore the look of dejection that crossed Tao’s face when I plucked the tallest one from the ground for him.

“We’ll put it in water when the meeting ends,” I promised him, the fate of the flower’s brethren already sealed. It was an easy fix that would keep it alive for a week at most. It was an easy fix that the two Exotians, who’d joined our meeting with the Mayor, before us were looking for — the Mayor, built with a wide frame and a head full of gray hair, himself not saying a word.

“We have enough fertilizer to last us through two winters,” a woman, salt and pepper hair pulled back into a bun, argued, “so why should we have to go anywhere?”

“The soil here,” needs time to have its natural nutrients restored to it again, is what I wanted to say. Is what I was beginning to say before a lanky man with a nose that came to a point interrupted me.

“Has finally started to bloom flowers again. Why would we leave when things are looking up?”

“The Tree of Life forced the plants to blossom again because it wanted me, it wanted all of us, to see what your lives could be like,” if you return to the way you used to do things. If you return to your nomadic roots in exchange for this sedentary lifestyle that’s not working anymore, is what I wanted to say. But the man seemingly had a grudge he’d been in the process of figuring out how to alleviate recently.

“So just because you happen to show up at our doorstep now, of all times, you’re claiming our success to be your own doing?” He laughed at me, right in my face. And while the way I phrased my words could’ve been better, his vile, demeaning jeer succeeded in its stab against my ego.

“Your highness,” the older woman pleaded in a weak voice, slim fingers smoothing back wire-like flyaways, “you’re suggesting we leave behind our homes. The places we’ve lived and thrived for over a century now.”

Turning back, I held my hand out to Tao. He understood the gesture immediately, producing the sunflower I had picked. Placing it on the table, knowing I would need proof of some kind to convince them, I asked, “You call this thriving?” Pointing at the leaves, a once vibrant yellow just yesterday stained dark green and rotting brown today, I asked again, “You call this living?”

Yet, again, my words were misconstrued.

“We, as Exotians who have cultivated this land for generations, have our own definition of ‘living.’” The man rounded the table that separated me from him, eyes sharp, tongue sharper, “And a little prepubescent girl who’s grown up in the sheltered apartment complexes of Sector A, in the cushiony heart of the Capital, has no right to question the values we maintain and the morals we hold.”

It was when he was within mere feet of me that he suddenly stopped, his body lifting and propelling itself backwards into his original position despite his yell of protest. And I heard Luhan speak up from behind me, voice poised yet even more pointed.

“We were under the assumption this would be a meeting dedicated to bettering the future of Flior under the Council’s rule. Are we wrong regarding this? Or is the way you’re conducting yourself what’s truly wrong here?”

Henry, who had been enjoying the back and forth, attempted to mediate the heated situation, stopping the man from approaching me a second time — as he’d thought of doing. Xiumin and Chen stepped in front of me, my first line of defense. Kris and Tao stood deafly still behind me, my route to an easy escape. 

It was while Lay was pulling me back, keeping me out of danger, that I chanced a glance in Luhan’s direction. And I read the thoughts hidden behind eyes so brown they were almost black, thin eyelashes failing to hide a single thing. 

“He’s right.” I accepted it, swallowing down on the lump of twisted, misunderstood words in my throat, “I don’t.”

Sure enough, by the next morning, over half of the plants in Flior had wilted. Henry forbade me from speaking on the fact. The citizens of the town were of the rare variety — supporting both his cause and mine. Thus, it would be “unwise” to stir trouble. What a tree told me in my dreams aside, what mattered was keeping people happy. Keeping them on our good sides. Pandering to them with empty “Good jobs” and “Keep it ups” when all I wanted to do was yell, “Look! Just look!”

It was hard to let go of the fact that I was “right.” But, after a few days of clenched facial expressions, I did. I was able to accept the hard truth that change, no matter what shape or form it took, isn’t always welcome.

By the time we left for Dunai, the city surrounded by sand, the flowerbeds in Flior were as gray as the Capital’s. The Tree of Life took away its gift as easily as it gave it. And no one was smiling at the gates to say goodbye. No one was smiling at all.

The insults issued to me aside, I believed they’d understand me someday. I believed in the words I heard the Mayor of Flior think in that dimly lit board room before I left.

I believed because I had to.

Because if I didn’t, who would?