zhiyuan was never the sentimental type. it's hard to be, afterall, when your life spans over six thousand years, when you seem to outlive the very world around you. days blend into decades, memories become a distant blur; feelings of once was are entirely lost to time.
he remembers his first mother, barely. her face, her laugh, nothing more than some hazy dream by now. and yet, he finds bits of her in his everyday: she is his confidence when he talks, she is the deep breathe of humid air during the rain, she is his favorite shade of red, she is his strength itself.
zia was nothing like her. he knows from the way he doubted how zia accepted him so warmly, how he flinched each time he made a mistake expecting something to come that never did, the way he's surprised each time she spoils him, how unfamiliar her love feels each time she offers it unconditionally.
if his first mother is the bones that make him, then zia is his heart now opened.
there were whispers going around the bar that night: ' i bet she did it, ' they'd say, ' it has to be her, they say she's the hungriest for blood. ' the exact words were never spoken, but he knows the target that's been placed on his mother's back since the news broke. it breaks him, little by little.
if it were his first mother, he thinks, he'd let the words break him until he was nothing but scattered pieces. but it isn't – right now it's zia. so he decides to visit her, give her the love no one else is willing to, just as he did for him all those millenia ago
the sign outside the flower shop reads HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY in a soft pink, and he picks up a small boquet on his way. "i'm sure you're mom will love it," the florist says to him, and a small blush paints his cheeks in embarassment. "it's for my sister, actually," zhiyuan lies, as he always does, finger scratching the back of his ear. his compromise, their little secret; it didn't matter to him if the humans didn't know the truth of their relationship – he'll play whatever game he has to to keep the peace of his daily life.
he meets her on secluded part of the beach, a place away from the prying eyes of outsiders. "a little birdie told me it's a human holiday today," he still whispers, just in case, finger scratching the back of his ears again. "happy mother's day," he says, feeling a bit awkward as he hands her the bunch of tulips. it's so unlike him, to let himself be this unrefined; it's like 5 thousand years have disappeared, and he's nothing more than just a little boy again.
