Grief
Disclaimer: Saiyuki belongs to Kazuya Minekura and associates.
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The king is ailing or so the courtiers say. Weak and sick. Confined to his bed in his sorrow. He is, by the standards of youkai still young, mores the pity. Hayakugen Maoh who has but ruled for less than a thousand years. Whom prophecy said would be the greatest of his age.
He can hear them whispering outside his chambers as he staggers to his desk. Always whispering and plotting and scheming, believing that they are beyond his hearing. He slumps in his chair and reaches for a goblet of some warm liquid to aid the clearing of his senses. He’s aware that he lurches like a drunken youkai, is perfectly understanding of why his people murmur their malcontent at the present time. It’s just that he can’t quite bring himself to care.
Hayakugen Maoh. Great king, among the most powerful of youkai. It all means nothing to him now.
His beloved wife is dead. Not from any particular illness untreatable or even the oft tragic accident of childbearing but because for all her beauty she was a frail as the weakest human.
She bore him a son. He tries to remember that. A son and heir to continue his line. The boy is being cared for as befits his heir-apparent and yet for the moment Hayakugen Maoh can not bear to look on him. This child, his successor, the son he must now raise alone.
It’s not as if he will be alone in the literal sense now that she is gone. He’ll not advocate abdication because of his grief and yet the urge is there, to wallow in his misery, his suffering, his pain.
His advisors are already clamouring for his attention so soon after her death. Already talking excitedly among themselves about the prospect of a new alliance. There is a princess, the daughter of a nearby clan who would make him a suitable wife they say.
His own wife, his Queen hasn’t even been buried yet. Her body is somewhere else in this palace being embalmed and robed as befits the beloved wife of the great Hayakugen Maoh. He doesn’t want to see it. Doesn’t want to witness the ultimate proof that she is gone from his side. Can’t quite bring himself to acknowledge the pure facts of the matter, that she is gone and that he will inevitably marry again.
He is young, too young some say. Not so old as his father was before him, nor his grandfather.
His wife was not someone he had expected to love when first she became the proof of an alliance. She was a little older than he. Quiet, unassuming, wise and beautiful beyond all imaginings. It was she who taught him how to rule, how to become the king that his people demanded. He was little more than a spoiled child when he ascended the throne. A prince who had never truly cared for his duty, who had never quite realised the gravity of it in his own mind. She changed all that. For her he would be the great king that she would have him be.
And now she is gone.
He knows there is some idea of Heavenly teaching that might give him the slim hope of finding her again but in his heart he knows that she is gone from him for this and perhaps all other lifetimes. If she is to be reborn he will not be worthy of her. Her progression along the great wheel of life and rebirth is far more advanced than his.
And a few days prior, on a whim he sent messengers to make
offerings discreetly at the
He is or at least was primarily a scholar and perhaps in another life might have found himself a sanctuary of scrolls and parchment instead of a cold stone citadel. Not that it changes anything. His wife is dead, his son is but a babe in arms and he is still the ruler of his people.
Hayakugen Maoh. Great king, centipede youkai, the crux upon which a thousand lives hang. He can no more choose to indulge his grief than he could ask the sun to fall from the Heavens. He has no choice. He is their king, his duty is to rule.
Hayakugen Maoh. He has become his title and with his wife gone from him, at last he will forget his own name.
He stands and calls for his servants. He has a kingdom to rule and a new Queen to claim.
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Inspired a great deal by Brokenworld01, on LJ.