The fire in the grate had burned down to ash in the night. Seiryuu steeled himself, before extending a foot gingerly out from underneath the warmth of the fur. Ao had sewn together some soft rabbit skins for him, grumbling all the while about how Seiryuu would have to get used to the cold, sooner or later. But still he had wrapped Seiryuu in the furs and gone to cook the rabbits he had skinned in a stew for their dinner.

Seiryuu wrapped the fur around his shoulders like a warm cloak and buried his nose in it. He winced as the cold stones kissed the soles of his feet before he quickly pulled on his shoes. There, that was a little better. He sneezed in the cold air, stirred the ashes in the grate with the iron poker, and peered through the wall sadly as he waited for Ao. Outside the world was still cold and iron grey, the darkness before dawn after the moon had set. None of the villagers were up; he could see them, a little, curled up in their warm houses. Some of them held each other in their arms, and he felt something unexpected - something like an emptiness, an ache in his chest - when he saw that.

He hadn’t been able to see that much the day before, Seiryuu thought vaguely, before his mind flickered back to the present, and the question that had been bothering him since he had awoken; where was Ao?

He would come back. He had to.

After a while he stood up again, scrambling up onto the bench under the window and pushing the curtain aside, more to feel the wind on his face than anything. The curtain caught in it and stirred a little, swinging from where it was nailed roughly to the beam above the window.

Seiryuu reached out with his sense of the blue light that was Ao, almost before realising what he was doing. He frowned. He could sense something far off - and was it his imagination, or did it feel fainter lately, more of a washed-out sort of blue? - and it was hard to pin down, but… yes! there it was. Seiryuu swivelled his head to where his sense of Ao told him to look, squinting into the cold pre-dawn light. He was looking past the village, and the people sleeping with their arms entangled and their hearts beating together as they dreamed. He ignored all them, looking beyond to the field of long green grass that sloped down from the village.

He half expected to see a battle, Ao fighting some bad men like the ones who came sometimes. Ao was quick and agile with his heavy sword, and he could fight them easily, or send them running in fear. Seiryuu didn’t dare say it, but he knew how they felt sometimes; if Ao hadn’t said they were bad men who Seiryuu wasn’t allowed to feel sympathy for, then Seiryuu might well have done just that, for Ao really could be frightening sometimes.

But for all that Ao had never hurt Seiryuu, that was true enough, and Seiryuu believed with his whole heart that Ao never would.

Seiryuu’s eyes were caught by a black outline against the grey, waving grasses. A tall man with a sword slung across his shoulder, a curtain of wild hair tumbling down his back, the silhouette of the horns of a mask confirming what Seiryuu already knew.

He clapped his small hands together in delight. “Ao!”

Ao was there. Ao was close by, and that meant he would be back soon. That was enough.

Seiryuu was just about to curl up again under his fur and go back to sleep, when something else caught his eye; something he had not noticed before, intent as he had been on Ao.

A dim red glow, casting the whole scene in warm light from the sky above. Had that been there a moment ago? Surely then Ao had merely been a black shadow, but now he had colours; they weren’t the usual ones though. This light was red-pink, like the light of the dawn.

He swivelled his head around to his left. He could see the dawn though, an orange line like glowing embers on the horizon, the sun soon to rise over the ragged line of the mountains.

That was, in the other direction.

He looked back to Ao, peering up into the sky above him.

Seiryuu’s eyes widened at the sight of that brilliant glow of red suddenly blooming above him, and for a moment he simply sat there curled up and frozen, transfixed.

After a while, he found himself standing up, jumping to his feet and pulling the fur back up around him, starting in the direction of the door. That light…. Seiryuu didn’t know what it was, that brilliant warm wash of light, as vivid and vital red as the blood that pumped through people’s hearts, as the markings on Ao’s cheeks that crinkled up with his rare smiles. Red like apples and sunrises and flowers and all the prettiest red things that Seiryuu had ever seen, and yet somehow better than all of them combined. It hung in the air above Ao, like a new star, as Seiryuu ran through the village’s silent, empty streets before dawn, the fur still streaming out behind him as he held it close about his neck against the bite of cold in the air.

It was like a blazing star, he thought. But how could there be a new star? He had never seen a new star before. He hadn’t known they could just be born like that.

He would ask Ao; Ao would know. Ao knew everything there was to know, Seiryuu was certain.

Behind him and unheeded, the sun was rising as Seiryuu ran down the sloping meadow where Ao stood, still frozen in place and staring at the sky. Once, Ao might have turned to look at him, but this time he did not, his attention fixed on the light in the sky.

“Ao!” Seiryuu called, tripping over a tussock of grass and sending himself sprawling to the ground, his hands cold and muddy and grass-stained where they had broken his fall. He felt tears in his eyes and his nose beginning to run, and he wiped them on his sleeve, wrapping the fur around himself nervously as a new thought occurred to him. What if Ao really was angry with him? He had simply run outside, and Ao had told him never to do that; Seiryuu had even forgotten to wear his mask. But surely…. that light…

“A… Ao?” he mumbled, coming up behind Ao and tugging on his tunic cautiously. Ao turned, slowly, and in that time, Seiryuu could barely draw a breath, half bracing himself for anger.

But no reprimand came. Ao had slipped his mask off and it hung by its ties in one loose hand at his side. Ao merely stared down at Seiryuu for a long, long time; it was as though he were seeing him for the first time, almost.

Seiryuu had seen Ao look like that before, of course; it was often that Ao seemed like he was looking through Seiryuu to see something else on the other side, and often, of course, he probably was. But this was different; this look was blank, and strange, like the feeling Seiryuu got when he tripped and fell, like the ground wasn’t where it should be and the world was upside down.

And he looked sad, Seiryuu realised with a slight gasp. Not angry at all. There were even tears in the corners of Ao’s eyes, the brilliant red light streaming down and casting them as bright jewels against the iridescent gold of Ao’s eyes.

“Seiryuu….” Ao’s familiar voice rumbled low in his chest, a little cracked, somehow. Suddenly, he dropped his mask and leaned down, and Seiryuu flinched back almost involuntarily; but Ao did something truly unexpected then. He scooped Seiryuu up off his feet, furs and all, into his strong arms and held him close to his chest. Seiryuu’s head fitted under Ao’s scratchy chin, his hair falling all around like a net of bright blue. Seiryuu immediately relaxed in his arms, kicking his feet a little and tentatively snuggling closer, cautious though he still was.

Ao, on the other hand, did not seem inclined to any more gestures of either affection or disapproval. In fact he did nothing else at all, merely held Seiryuu in his arms, his eyes fixed back on the brilliant red light in the sky, as Seiryuu looked too.

“Ao” he said, frowning, as he placed a small hand on Ao’s chest, feeling the warmth of him and the comforting beat of Ao’s heart as he watched it through his clothes and the layers of skin, muscle and bone. “The light… what… does it mean?”

Ao did not look at him, and for a while Seiryuu thought he had not heard. He was just about to repeat the question, when Ao sighed. “I don’t know” he said gruffly. “Nothing, probably.”

Ao was still staring at the light in the sky, and Seiryuu wondered why, if he really thought it meant nothing. He didn’t dare ask this though; besides, he wouldn’t really know how to put something like that into words. “It’s… pretty!” he said instead, reaching out a hand towards the sky.

For a while, Ao was silent again. Then, he let out a bark of laughter; or Seiryuu thought it was laughter. It may just as well have been half a sob. “Yes” Ao said. “I suppose it is.”

After that they were silent, watching the brilliant red light burn in the sky as behind them the sun rose, the whole sloping grassy meadow bathed in brilliant shades of red and pink.  

Too soon, the red star was gone. They had waited there for it to burn away, Seiryuu’s eyes as round as the moon, forgetting even that it was getting to the later morning and his stomach was rumbling with hunger, as he’d been awake since before dawn.

It was Ao that broke out of his reverie first, tearing his gaze away from the sky where the light had been and setting Seiryuu quickly back down on his feet in the grass. Ao looked him up and down critically.

“Ao….” said Seiryuu, already missing Ao’s touch; Ao was always very warm, and even though it was full light now, the cold was beginning to bite again. “Please…. let’s go home.”

Ao said nothing for some time, his heavy blue brows drawn together in his customary frown once more. Seiryuu hung his head and braced for a lecture, for Ao to shout and tell him what he had done wrong.

And maybe, another day, he would have received just that. But instead Ao merely sighed, picked up his mask where he had dropped it on the ground and put it back on again, hiding his golden dragon’s eyes from all but Seiryuu, as he turned back towards the village.

Without looking down at the child, he extended a hand to Seiryuu at his side, who took it happily, smiling as he felt the familiar fingers, skin roughened by sword calluses imparting warmth to Seiryuu’s smaller, colder hand.