Scions of Heaven - Calamity

Chapter 12

Qing Qiu - Fox Den

-----------------------------------------Gungun-----------------------------------------------------

Everyone's emotions had been tumultuous and so overwhelming he could hardly figure out which flavour of grief he was feeling was his own.

He was grateful he had the excuse of taking care of his newly born little sister. It was a reprieve from the near relentless assault of emotions on his senses. It was hard for a baby to have much more feeling than 'tired' and 'hungry' so it was not taxing for him.

Reality felt fuzzy, far away and strange. Had it truly been less than a day since his mother had passed?

Gungun remembered one event from when he was a very small child. He had been perched on a tree branch that overhanged a lotus pond in the Nine Heavens. He had been so utterly engrossed in reading his newly acquired book titled 'philosophical theories of existence' that he had no sparse awareness for the outside world. His older cousin, through use of illusion magic and aura dampening, had finally been able to sneak up on him and scare him. This event had occurred so long ago that this older cousin had not yet been given his proper name of Bai Chen and at the time was still called 'A-Li' or 'Dumpling' by the adults.

The thousand-paged philosophy book, newly gifted and only half read, had plunged into the pond below. After a moment of dismay he had used magic to reclaim the now waterlogged book, the ink had bled, the book was ruined. He remembered very clearly his very next thought after accepting A-lis' apology and reassuring them it was okay, was to find his father. This was because Gunguns' father could help him restore the book. And his faith was rewarded when his father had managed to repair the book instantly.

His father could do anything, fix anything. This had been a fundamental constant of Gunguns understanding of the world, an immutable fact.

Gungun knew better now. There were some things that could not be repaired once broken or lost. He just hadn't expected to learn this fact in such a cruel fashion. His childish understanding of how things worked had been shattered. He could not deny his anger at the world. Wasn't losing his mother a bit too harsh of a lesson? To destroy his worldview in such a cruel fashion, Heaven's Will really was heartless.

For all his vaunted maturity, the research he'd done, the history book he'd almost finished writing and even the court documents his father had allowed him to look at, he had been very much still a child. He realised this fact only now his mother was gone, his father too. The ever present and loving, supportive factors in his life were no longer there.

Gungun had requested to see his mother, and the adults had allowed him to do so. Bai Chen had also wanted to go, but as he was facilitating between anger, disbelief and shock he could not be trusted to enter the room. To help mollify the situation Gungun had asked Bai Chen to look after their little siblings Fuzan and Xueyu while he was visiting his mo...his mothers body. After listening to the long list of things that he needed to be alert for when looking after Xueyu, Bai Chen was quite proud to be given the task, and promised to look after both very well. Even if realistically he would just be in the room as both children slept, it was enough to stop Bai Chen from attempting a fifth escape attempt from the Fox Den. Bai Chen had also been caught trying to read the report that had been left on the table in the main room, so he could know where to go and whom to 'enact vengeance' upon. Gungun had not asked to read that report, even though it was likely the adults would let him to, he did not need to know such details right now, he knew he would not handle them well.

After a careful warning on what to do and not to do, so as not to disturb his grandfather's precarious state, Gungun had been allowed into the room where his mother...his mother's body was being kept. His mother's death was strangely easier to accept, the body he'd seen was not his mother. He'd wanted to believe it was a statue, but his grandfather's hands were covering his mothers hand too tenderly for it to be made of stone.