More for 15_minute_fic.

Title: I See the Years Fading
Fandom/original: The Twelve Kingdoms
Characters: OC!King, OC!Kirin
Rating: G
Word count: 198
Notes: Yes, artimusdin, it's him. On a broader note, I seem to like writing about kirin a lot. Hrm.

Forever is a long time.

Tentei, in all his wisdom, granted the king, his saiho, and their court immortality to maintain a peaceful reign for as long as possible. Harmony for the kingdom was important above all. Few changes, if any, would be needed in a peaceful, perfect place.

His last king had promised to keep the two of them, king and taiho, safe and happy forever. The king promised that the kingdom would be secure forever.

No one could keep those promises. Forever is a long time, although some kings were inching closer. En and Sou were still the greatest examples, yet five hundred or six hundred years were not forever.

Thirty years were not forever. The secure kingdom grew the inevitable rot. The safe and happy king retreated from his failures and fixated, instead, on his taiho. The safe and happy taiho could feel with all his being how the kingdom suffered. The rot, the retreat, the fixation, and then the shitsudo. He'd survived all of it, and his king had not.

He'd been granted another thirty years to rebuild. Thirty years, and twenty were already gone.

Thirty years were not forever, so he'd keep looking.

---

15_minute_fic word forever.