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Magnolia Blossoms
Category: Stories
// Drabble inspired by the "The Untamed Verse" (and Hou Xin´s backgroundstory I created for this verse) and the picture of Magnolia Blossoms below //
The night still carried with it the last remnants of wintery frost in the height of the mountains – yet down here in the lush valleys of the east the vast bamboo forests sprouted already and the first blossoms of the ancient Magnolia trees once part of the former residence of the effaced Chang´an Hou Sect delicately as much as majestically craned their white blossoms towards the warming sun of a new spring.
It was a time of renewal and returning of life – and to him most ironically the month of reminiscence and remembering.
It was the time when the small, remotely located Sect had been obliterated, slaughtered, erased from existence due to not having been willing to obey to back down to the tyrannical Wen Sect.
Karma caught up with them a few years later when all the remaining clans united and subdued and destroyed this scourge among the Cultivator Sects… too late for Hou Xin and his brothers and sisters.
He survived as one of only a handfull of survivors, even despite their tormentors planned a particularly gruesome death for the young son of the deceased leader – a punishment for speaking out loudest against joining the rampant Wen sect. Blinded and badly wounded they left him for dead among this murdered brothers and sisters, supposed to find a slow end filled with suffering.
Had it not been for two merciful souls, to this day unknown to him, who found him and nursed him back to health he would have joined his family, his Cultivator brothers and sisters back then on their journey to the other side, would have met his ancestors already.
Since then every springtime when the blossoms were giving forth their beautiful, gentle scent, when their appearance announced the new beginning of a new cycle of life Hou Xin returned back to the place of his childhood, of his years as a young scholar and where he officially ascended to Masterhood, becoming a Qi-Master, a Cultivator… where he faced destruction and murder and his own near-death experience.
The beautiful, pearly-white blossoms always had been his favourite – as a boy he loved it to watch them swaying in the breeze, gliding elegantly and quietly through the air and eventually flowing down the small rivulets running through the valley like shiny, tiny boats. The scent held the meaning of a new dawn, the returning of life… - and he was determined to keep these pleasant memories, not allowing the bad that happened to lessen their splendour.
Savouring the flowery scent pervading the warm air of the valley Hou Xin dropped to his knees in front of the stairs leading up to the shrine which had been built on the fire scarred foundations of the Sect´s former residence by the locals.
The sight of the place, the beauty of the trees in full bloom forever denied to him. Yet still every time he came here to converse with those who went before him a sensation of deep peace overcame him, held onto him while he knelt there for hours, engulfed in the blossoms´ fragrance, his mind in deep concentration and dialogue.
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