Your smiling
(I originally intended this to be some speculation/theory post but it turned into some weird metafic idk I was half-asleep 😐)
Your smiling, watching your Shikigami bicker among themselves as your entourage moves across the land, never far from Kyoto,
always chasing malevolent Youkai.
You bring peace to others,
but your heart remains unsatisfied.
You’re smiling—
when your proclaimed rival, your closest friend, challenges you again.
You accept.
Because there is fire in him— a fire you’re no longer certain burns in you.
You admire that passion.
You love it, because it reminds you what it feels like to want something.
You’re smiling— even as you sleep,
because the Sight never rests.
It shows you everything,
but never what you choose.
It sees all.
And that—
that is what makes it so suffocating.
Your smiling, even as you cry silently though you do not understand this melancholy,
soon, you will but not now,
Let this moment be a reprieve
Your smiling, watching the small kindnesses exchanged between your rival and your Shikigami - and for moment you you wish it could always be this way but the Visions come and you know they won’t last.
They never do.
Your smiling, because you are being watched.
The Red Bird is clever— sharper than he lets on. He hides brilliance behind thievery,
insight behind mischief.
Your smiling, as you dodge the truth without telling a lie. He is confused. He thinks he understands.
He doesn’t. But he will.
It'll take him a thousand years to even think of you without that bitter resentment.
You’re smiling—
and there is blood.
All of it, yours.
You’re smiling—
and a sword has pierced your body.
A parasite drains your powers.
You’re smiling—
and your rival is not.
You’re smiling, Abe no Seimei—
even as death claims you.
You’re always smiling.
Because how else would you release the emotions you were never allowed to show?
Smiling is easier.
Smiling is safer.
Smiling is the only thing left.
You feel.
Of course you do.
But you are bound—
by status, by era, by etiquette, by expectation.
You—
Abe no Seimei—
the most powerful man of your age,
will never be free.
You are smiling,
but you are not happy.
You are smiling,
and you are human—
but you are not allowed to be.
You are trapped by what will be,
and never permitted to live in what is.
Perhaps the other you—
in another story, another life—
will do what you could not.
