Wax

Fifty Eight

A/N: So this is a 9.2k word chapter I don't even know how I took so long to write (well, more than a month I'd say) and I have no excuses for taking so long except that I have very unfortunately been obsessed with these two characters from the game Genshin Impact by the name of Alhaitham and Kaveh -sigh-

So yes... I ended up writing a fanfic of these two on AO3. Distractions, distractions. HAHAHAHA. I'm sorry for the wait! And thank you for your patience, as usual. Some of you are just UNIMAGINABLY patient and I suppose it's because, well, I'd already served that massive amount of c a k e in the previous chapter hahaha. I'm still very proud of it because I did put in a lot of energy and work into a chapter that had, of course, been waiting for its debut for years. And I daresay meeting the expectations of you Beans is an extremely difficult task, let alone exceeding them. I can only hope you enjoyed the previous chapter of loving. Hehe. 

Enjoy.

_______________________ 

There is no magic in waiting.

Time escapes none; all life must necessarily include it. That does not mean that one should revolve their lives around the concept of time or have it dictate every aspect of their existence; the awareness of its passing can at times be enough of an acknowledgement.

And though there may exist certain fictional phenomena like immortal creatures, they too, cannot deny the passing of time independent of the mind. It is despite one's physical and mental circumstance that time passes, and thus the definition of wait.

Waiting implies the passing of time. If one does not experience the passing of time, one is not waiting.

To the fictional time-manipulators and hopefuls who preach the prospect of speeding up, slowing down, and travelling through time in the snap of a finger to overcome the trouble and expense of waiting, they are missing the point.

The nature of time changes according to the circumstance of the waiting mind. A mind that waits can be anxious; and for them, time passes slow. It can be excited and enthused; time skips forward at every moment of the wait in which they sometimes forget. It can grieve; and for those, time becomes hollow.

But above all, a mind that waits knows no magic. One could always wait alone. But two? Time on a seesaw is shared between a pair, and while one is always waiting for the other to rise or fall, the mere act of sharing a wait—the presence of company despite time—changes the nature of it. Of waiting together.

So there really is no magic in waiting.

Only patience. And love.

____________________

[Vanilla]

Someone was at the door.

The knocking was what did it; pulling me out of heavy sleep and dwelling briefly on the odd intimacy of the sound that resembled last night's fervor—rhythmic against the wooden headboard. Alas, to start the day with such a thought was alarming and did well for booting up a mind drunk from a night's worth of heated flames.