some things never sleep

a breath of smoke

camellias are the three petals for love and affection and admiration

as for sweet peas, they are the adieu: the goodbye.

the departure.

°°°

"You should never, ever smoke," suggested Hirotsu after drawing on his pipe.

Yumeno tilted his head in a birdlike manner, hugging his doll tight to his chest. "Then what are you doing now?"

"Precisely what you shouldn't."

"Then when should I?" When the boy received no reply, he pulled on the heap of the old man's coat, over and over parroting: "Come on, tell me, Hirotsu. Hirotsu, Hirotsu, Hirotsu, Hirotsu, Hirotsu, Hirotsu, Hirotsu." He inhaled a deep puff of air before resuming. "Hirotsu, Hirotsu, Hirotsu-"

Hirotsu was seconds away from voluntarily choking on his own smoke. Instead, he cleared his throat and a gray tendril slipped from his lips. "If I pull one of my tricks, would you keep quiet, child?" He requested kindly, yet close to imploring. This was why he had never bore any lineage, though decades later he would find himself on the spring splendor, begging for a devilish boy's silence. The bitter, lovely irony was prone to spit on his face. He had already resigned, he supposed.

Yumeno directed a playful smile. "Nope."

"We shall see about that." Hirotsu taunted back, perched the button of the pipe nicely on his lip, and dragged on a breath of smoke. Tobacco swept inside, a saccharine singe on his tongue soon to cool, and he let it out. From the end expelled a spiral of smoke that danced in the air, in accord to the movements of his index finger. It tumbled in the air and rushed down to graze Yumeno's cheek, which provoked a giggle from the child. The smoke rose back and shifted, shivered its shape into the varied petals of a camellia, and hung midair for display.

Yumeno scrunched his lips and looked closely at the flower. "It has no stem. Hirotsu, you once said that if something has no stem, it has no source. And with no source, then how will it grow?"

"Ah, that. I recall that I said so because you just don't seem to grow any bigger. See, you won't even reach my hand at this pace." To prove his point, Hirotsu extended his palm past his waist's level. Yumeno reacted simply, sensibly: by tipping his height up with his toes.

A smile crinkled the corners of Hirotsu's lips and he gazed straight ahead.

Far too deep into the countryside, past the rise of young tulips and the quiet orchestra of the banks of a river, they resided together. The old, dust-brimmed home hung over them like a dead mother -painstakingly barren, except for the souls of the antiquity and the youth. Yumeno never rushed out, especially during times of relentless rain. Hirotsu could only infer that the child quaked upon the rage of thunder. As for him, he trembled when the remembrance of isolation festered his veins like a plague: there were only the two of them.

No man, no woman, no child breathed the fresh air no more.

They had long been consumed by the twirling shadows at their feet or the green corpses knocked down or the waves lashed upon. Who knew? Hirotsu, of faint resolve for any other than the child's and his own, wasn't up to answer that. All that was astray to mourn for was the inevitable death of tobacco if Hirotsu didn't learn anytime soon how to concoct it.

Each night demanded of practice, of exhaled smoke from pulsing lungs. Yumeno uttered during the witching hours, rubbing one sleepy eye, that he often caught a glimpse of the dance of smoke, slowly puppeteered to the rhythm of hazy figures. He claimed, even when the old man was dormant, his sleep and his smoke worked hand in hand. Exhaustion weighed on brittle bones, therefore Hirotsu had nothing more to offer than a slight nod of understanding -followed by Yumeno's demands for his attention.