Work Text:
The kingdom was a lush, green place.
Perhaps too green, if one looked closer - plants that grew so closely they should have choked, trees with an impossible amount of greenery, plants that flowered before the fruit fell.
Crops that never quite fully ripened.
Nearly invisible trails through too-thick, waist-high grass.
The traveller saw all of it and more.
People might have noticed that the grass in his footprints didn’t spring back all the way; that the twig he snapped in passing didn’t regrow immediately. The traveller paid them no mind. He had an appointment.
The city was just as rich in life. Flowers lined each cobblestone, and window boxes and gardens were explosions of colour and scent.
Some might have called it charming.
The hedge surrounding the palace grounds had nearly consumed the long stone arch marking the entrance. The traveller’s hand cleared a small indent as he ran it along the foliage.
He told the guards that he had an appointment with the King and was waved through a maze of rooms and halls, each with their own overgrown vases and windows.
One might question how the land supported so much growth.
The room was small and dim. The windows were completely covered in foliage, purple-flowered vines reaching between the panes toward the bed. Lamplight glinted off lenses as the caretaker, holding a damp cloth and surrounded by bottles and empty dishes, looked up when the door opened, but the traveller only had eyes for the thin figure lying on the bed - trembling, sweating, eyes and fists clenched.
A king burning himself away so his land would not be overrun.
Vines rustled in retreat as the traveller sat opposite the nurse, who reached over and gently nudged the young king. Saddened green met exhausted purple, and the traveller reached out and carefully lifted the other close.
“It’s alright, Hajime. I’m here now.”
Somewhere in the kingdom, a blossom fell.