∴ A Transient Peace∴
The garden is awash with moonlight, like a sea of silver mist, rushing over ornamental bridges before you, flooding every tangle of flowers and cluster of blossoms, casting a light that is both soft and stark on the small beauties that you might otherwise have missed.
This is a time outside of time, you think, pausing to admire a cluster of delicate bell flowers trembling beneath the moon’s benign indifferent gaze. It is not true night, when darkness serves only to obscure, nor does it hold the bold certainty of dawn. Rather, it is a liminal space that drifts between the two, perhaps lasting only seconds, perhaps lasting an eternity.
To your family, asleep in their beds, this time does not exist at all. It is only you, sleepless and driven by duty, drifting through the watercolour world that the moon has painted for you.
There is a peace in that, in the brief and brittle solitude that you share with the moon and the flowers. A silence broken only by the paper-thin whisper of warm breeze in the blossom-laden boughs as a confetti of petals crosses your path.
And then it is gone. That wordless, transient feeling that the moment was written for you. Another enters the garden as if summoned by the wind, striding purposively from behind the temple, silk robes flowing in the moonlight, slippered feet silent on the stone. They pause on the other side of the wooden bridge, waiting wordlessly.
With a deep sigh you turn on your heel to face them, giving a short, sharp bow before slipping your hand into the welcoming hold of your rapier hilt.
The time for peace is over.
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