The Librarian and the Fox Princess: a Donghua Dijun and Bai Fengjiu story, V.I

Chapter 38 - Pain is Relative

The effect of having eaten one of the rarest and strongest Celestial mushrooms, while soaking in a hot bath in upwards of twenty of them, had enhanced her strength. Her grip was strong even to the almighty god, but he didn't care. He would let her squeeze him for however long she wanted to. He hadn't felt this much unabashed affection from her since he was moonlighting as Dream Dijun.

Due to the specific mix of blossoms and herbs he had used in her bath soak, he thought she smelled like a fragrant field of flowers with contours of crisp mentholic sweet mint from the peppermint oil.

She had pounced on him with the agility and strength of a determined fox. The side of her face was snuggled into his shoulder, her arms wrapped around his midsection and her legs folded neatly underneath her on his lap. 

To the little fox princess, this was the first time in a long time she was able to truly hug the Dijun she knew from the Fang Xu Realm, her librarian. In her reality, she had last left him in the courtyard in Tai Chen Palace after feeding him her last bite of sweet potato. She then gave him a sweet kiss on the side of his lips before she aura-traveled back to Qing Qiu.

Emotionally, she felt like she had never seen him again until tonight. Their separation was extremely painful and confusing to her. The Dong Hua who had extracted himself from her life and who had emerged from seclusion wasn't the librarian she knew. She had been guarded around him this whole time. While she was becoming more comfortable with Real Dijun, this Dijun in her embrace was her Dijun.

Somehow torn threads became retied and she couldn't even fully make sense of it. She just knew she had missed him dearly. She would safeguard him to the best of her ability. To her, there was no longer a boundary between his safety and hers.

I must keep him safe ... from everything ... even from ... 

She smiled into his shoulder before she could finish her thought and became distracted from the sandalwood, ginger, and eucalyptus scents from his hot soak. She was curled up in his arms, comfortable and content until she was met with a disturbing sensation. 

It was as if someone had come from behind her, pinched her sharply in the arm and then ran away, leaving no trace when she turned around. Being uable to pinpoint what was amiss started to saturate her awareness. She felt a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. She immediately pulled away from him and pushed back on his chest to loosen his hold around her. She shuffled off of his lap, onto the bed and she stared at him. 

He could not help but mirror her look of uneasiness and muted panic.

"What's wrong, little fox?"

"Is this a dream?" she asked quietly. Her eyes searched his vacant face for the answer.

"Why would you think it's a dream?" He knew it was happening again, but this time it was happening with him. The real him.

"Because ... most of my comfortable, carefree, and happiest moments recently have only happened in my dreams." She shook her head. "They weren't real."

Hearing this made him sad. A bittersweet remembrance of their time with him as Dream Dijun melted into his consciousness. She broke her eye contact with him and started balling up some of the fabric of her robe in her fist.

"You don't know this about me because we really haven't spent that much time together after you came out of seclusion but I've ... had this problem. Sometime I have ... I have trouble knowing when I'm dreaming or when I'm not."

She had rushed out the last part of her sentence in one breath as if she was afraid he'd actually hear what she was saying. The shame on her face was evident. Watching her painstakingly and mistakenly try to take ownership for the effects of the emotional injustice he had done to her was simply too painful for him.