Eternal Love Oneshots & Snippets

Bai Qian/Ye Hua [肆]

A/N: So I wrote a prompt book and ItsMimerz was the one who suggested this prompt, really, and I just wrote along to it. I forgot to cross post it here, but here it is, anyway, and I'm working on her third suggestion currently (I haven't started on the second one because it's FengJiuDiJun and it's been a long time since I've brushed up on their personalities and it won't be accurate to write their personna out without rewatching some parts of TMOOB/ELOD again so yes bear with me). And so...anyway, for those of you who didn't check my prompt book, here's the update!

Prompt 1:
What if Su Su died that time when she had set the bamboo hut on fire?

...

Her sweat was enough to fill buckets and buckets full of salty water. The heat emanating from all around her...the lines blurred and snatched at her vision, parts of it starting to blacken as she coughed violently again, frantically trying to find an exit from her barricaded kitchen. "Help!" A scream issued from her throat as she begged the air around her, "Help! Fire! Somebody? Help!"

But of course no one would answer. Ye Hua...Ye Hua, he was probably deep in the woods, hunting for another animal to kill, for them to eat. Eat...to talk about eating, she'd wasted that precious pheasant. It had taken Ye Hua so long to hunt that. And gone it was, licked by the orange tongues that glowed, as quickly as her bamboo hut had lit up when the flames had escalated beyond her control, consuming the pheasant and the bamboo hungrily, like a demon that had not eaten for years.

The heat was suffocating. It was stifling, it was killing. Her gasps grew weaker as she slid down to the floor, struggling to breathe against the pieces of her clothes she had thought of ripping away to cover her mouth, drenched in her sweat to keep the air she breathed in moist. The remaining of her clothes clung to her like a second layer of skin, her hair plastered against every inch of skin it could touch, and Su Su remembered vaguely that Ye Hua would not have a house or any state of living if the house had burned down. And it had been her only dowry, other than that red blanket that the kind store owner had given her out of pity and concern.

I'm so sorry, Ye Hua...It was nice meeting you...

But it seems...that I will be leaving you a widow...

...

"Su Su? Su Su, I'm back-"

The Celestial Crown Prince of the Nine Heavens stopped short of where their bamboo hut used to stand tall.

"Used to" was the keyword.

Blackened, charred remains of their hut laid everywhere, collapsed into one pile, and Ye Hua dropped all his prizes of the hunt as he stared at the debris that burned away, the flames still dancing and prancing around them. "Su Su!" He vaguely remembered himself shouting for her as he used his magic - what was a little backlash to him as compared to her? - to extinguish the flames, before he dashed into the smoking, sodden pile of burnt bamboo, "Su Su!"

He found her body beneath the whole pile of bamboo, her dress burnt crisp and yet her skin untouched. But there was no breath, no sign of pulse.

He took her body in his arms, and he let out a cry of anguish.

He had barely known her, but the love had been sweet, albeit short. And it had been his first and true.

The Crown Prince bowed his proud head and crowed a long, drawn out howl of sorrow, and his tears fell freely, despite his foreignness to the emotion he had always ignored or suppressed for far too long.