Zion204
[SOON]
The Lotus Prince was the very image of divine discipline. Graceful, dutiful, endlessly composed-he moved through his celestial obligations with the precision of a blade and the stillness of deep water. Until, of course, he wasn't. Gone was the poised deity. Nezha barely moved, swatting at the servants with lazy flicks of his hand. And, finally, they did. The blessed silence that followed was golden.
It lasted precisely seven minutes.
"Nezha!" Li Jing, the Pagoda-Wielding General, was a man of punctual chaos and poor timing. From the bed, Nezha didn't even lift his head.
"No."
"You haven't heard what I'm going to say yet."
"I already don't want to do it." Li Jing didn't take up his sarcasm, instead explained to him that his mother requests of a painter.
"Father, we live in a celestial realm. I can sneeze in the right direction and summon five of them. six, if I fake a yawn, and seven will be sculpting me in marble before dinner."
Nezha groaned and buried his face on his pillows. Li Jing's mouth twitched. "Yes but you know how she is. She wants someone real. Someone who smells like turpentine and mountain wind. No conjurations. No summoned artisans. A mortal."
"A mortal," Nezha echoed. "You want me to descend into the mortal realm to fetch a painter for a goddess with opinions."
"It's for your mother," his father reminded him. and With a sigh of infinite suffering, Nezha dragged himself toward the open sky like a man headed to execution. "Fine. I'll find your mortal da Vinci."
And just like that.
Go down. Find someone with callused fingers.
Easy.
Except it wasn't. Because the artist he found didn't treat him like a prince. Instead, the mortal squinted at him.
Nezha didn't expect the artist to see him.
They drew him not as a legend, but as Nezha.
And in that simple, stubborn act of humanity-he found himself slowly unraveling. And somehow, in strokes of ink and silence, Nezha began to feel the strangest of things.
Seen.