silver_sun (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silver_sun) wrote2023-07-11 07:54 am
silver_sun) wrote2023-07-11 07:54 am
New Horizons (3/6)
New Horizons - Part 3
After carrying the bodies back to Fuling, Song Lan goes to wash and change his clothes. He doesn’t want to leave Xiao Xingchen alone, not when he is clearly upset from learning about his shijie’s death. However, he knows that if he does not take the time to clean himself and to change his clothes, he will feel more and more unsettled himself, until he’s unable to think of anything apart from awful, filthy feeling on his skin. He can’t even put the sensation into words, it’s not only physical, in fact a lot of it he is sure is in his mind. It doesn’t make it any less real or any easier to deal with.
All the same he makes sure that Xiao Xingchen is safely back at the village not in need of anything before he turns his attention to himself. He doesn’t want to bother the Fu family, not when they have just brought home the body of their father. Instead he finds one of fast running streams that cut through the woods below the village.
Rain-swollen from the night before, the water it carries from the mountains is cold, almost icy on his skin. It’s a raw feeling scrubbing with cheap, harsh soap, his hands sore by the time he’s finished, but he feels better for it, cleaner and able to deal with things without the sense of abject wrongness on his skin.
He returns to the Fu residence to find Xiao Xingchen is absent. There is a moment of worry about where he might be before Fu Peng informs him that his friend had asked to see where the village graveyard was.
Although uncertain of whether Xingchen will want company or not, Song Lan asks for directions all the same and then goes to find him. He would rather be there but not needed, than needed and not there.
Xiao Xingchen stands alone at the edge of the graveyard in Fuling. Located on a small section of cleared hillside it has a view down the valley in one direction and up to the mountains in the other. He still looks a little too pale, but is otherwise composed.
“It reminds me a little of home,” he says, speaking aloud rather than to anyone in particular. The cold breeze catches his hair, fanning it out behind him as he turns to look at the mountains. “I think she would have liked it here.”
“Will you take her back to your sect?” Song Lan asks, wondering if he might be permitted to see the place where his friend grew up, perhaps even meet Baoshan Sanren herself. The idea of Xiao Xingchen having to make that journey alone, leaving him to go somewhere he likely can’t follow, he finds deeply unsettling. If it is what is needed he will allow him to go, but he is certain he will worry the whole time that they are apart.
Although still facing the distant peaks, he closes his eyes as if no longer wants to look upon that memory of home. “No. When we leave we know it will be for the last and only time. That is the rule. If we decide we want to leave we can never return.”
“Never?” The idea of never being able to go back to the Baixue Temple, to never visit or speak with those who raised him, those who grew up with him is horribly sad. “Not even in an emergency?”
Clouds drift overhead, wind-blown and full with the promise of rain, as he considers it, finally replying doubtfully, “Perhaps. I don’t think anyone has ever tried.”
It seems a too upsetting subject to discuss further, so Song Lan is about to suggest that they should find shelter before the weather breaks, when Xiao Xingchen speaks again.
“I’m the only one left now. The only one out here in the world who is still alive.”
For a moment Song Lan can’t speak, can’t think of what possible thing he can say that might even be close to comforting. Yet he can’t say nothing, can’t do that to him, in case Xiao Xingchen thinks that he doesn’t care. “I’m sorry.” It feels inadequate and he wonders with a growing fear just how many others his friend has lost.
As if in answer to his unasked question he says, “I didn’t mean to be dramatic, Zichen, please don’t worry. It’s just that few of us ever leave the mountain, only my shijie and myself in recent times.” He opens his eyes. “There were others, but Shifu was always a little vague on when it was. I suppose though when you have forever the difference between five years, fifty years and even five hundred is small enough not to matter.”
It seems impossible to Song Lan sometimes that Xiao Xingchen can speak of being in the company of and speaking to an immortal cultivator. It makes him all too aware that their lives, their understanding of the world around them is often very different. It also makes the fact that they have found so much in common in their hopes and dreams even more precious.
“What do you wish to do?” Song Lan asks. “Shall we take them to Yunmeng? Wei Changze was from the Jiang sect there, was he not?”
Xiao Xingchen considers it briefly, then shakes his head. “What news we had was that her husband had abandoned his sect for her. I am not sure they would welcome us.”
Song Lan is inclined to agree with that assessment, if Wei Changze walked out on Yunmeng Jiang he doubts they would look favourably on them arriving there with his body and that of the woman he’d abandoned them for. “What will you do then?”
“Here is a good place,” Xingchen replies. “She can rest here, her husband beside her. We can give them that at least.”
“You killed the yaoguai,” Song Lan says, hoping that there might be some comfort to be found in that fact. “They will know their deaths did not go unnoticed or unmourned.”
“Us.” Xiao Xingchen turns to him. “It was us. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Despite his sadness at what has happened there is still so much warmth in how Xingchen looks at him and in how he speaks to him that Song Lan cannot help but feel moved by it. To be there beside one another, to be there for each other in whatever way they might need is something that he wants more than anything else.
He hopes that Xiao Xingchen somehow knows that he feels this way, because as sure as he is of his own feelings in this, he is also certain that he has no hope of telling it to him in a way that makes any sense or isn’t profoundly awkward for them both.
“Nor I,” he says, then regrets it. It sounds strange, both not enough and too much all at the same time. “Together." He tries again. “We are at our best together.”
Xiao Xingchen doesn’t reply, but he moves closer, until their shoulders are almost touching. The blustery autumn wind still gusts about them, first from one direction and then from another. There is some protection from it now though, whichever way it blows one of them shields the other.
It feels right.
It’s not something Song Lan can put into words and for once he doesn’t mind. Sometimes all that is needed is to be there, to be each other’s shelter in the storms of life.
…..
There is no objection from the people of Fuling about burying Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze in the graveyard. Giving a resting place to two people who gave their lives trying to keep them safe seems like a way to make sure their spirits can rest peacefully and won’t return to disturb the village for being ungrateful for their sacrifice. With no other family to tend the grave, Xiao Xingchen promises them that he will return to Fuling in the Spring for Qingming, and will do so each year for as long as he is able.
Xiao Xingchen’s decision to take on this role and do this for his shijie and her husband doesn’t surprise Song Lan. What does, at first at least, is his insistence that he is the one who has to dig the grave, declining all offers of help despite the hard ground and stoney soil.
It’s difficult to watch him struggling, sleeves rolled up and clothes growing smudged with soil. Yet there is a logic to it that Song Lan can understand, the need to take an active response, to feel like you're doing something of use. He can’t force Xiao Xingchen to accept his help, there is a surprising stubbornness to him even under the best of circumstances, but this doesn’t mean he can’t help in other ways.
Were things different there would be more time to mourn, but the bodies are already decaying and they cannot intrude on the Fu family for much longer, not when they are also full of grief.
So while Xiao Xingchen digs, Song Lan carefully wraps the bodies of Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze in the blankets in which they’d carried them from the cave. There would be no comfort for Xingchen to look upon their faces as they are now. It is better, he decides, for any memories that he had to be those that remain from when they lived. He makes a simple grave marker too, something to bear their names, should any family for either of them ever be found.
Afternoon has faded into the dimming light of early evening by the time the grave is deep enough and wide enough to take two bodies. Exhausted, shivering slightly as the heat of exertion is lost to the cold breeze now that he is still, Xiao Xingchen stands at the side of the open grave. He holds his injured arm carefully, supporting it with the other, the heavy work of digging having made it ache.
He doesn’t speak as Song Lan approaches. The weary relief in his eyes convey all that he cannot and does not say.
They place the bodies into the grave together, laying Wei Changze’s broken blade and Chunfeng to rest beside their owners. Barely a word is spoken between them, even when Song Lan has to steady Xiao Xingchen from stumbling, his hand on his arm.
Song Lan takes the job of filling the grave with earth, picking up the shovel before Xiao Xingchen can. It is something he can spare him from having to do, freeing him to have time to rest.
Not that Xiao Xingchen uses the time to do this. Rather he takes incense and paper money that they carry with them for helping spirits to rest from their belongings, so he can burn them for his shijie and her husband.
Finally with the light almost gone from the sky, the sun low and on the edges of the hills, it is done. A low mount of earth, some fruit left in offering and a small bowl of ash that flies away in the wind - the incense and paper money burnt away.
Taking the grave marker he has made, Song Lan passes it to Xiao Xingchen. It doesn’t feel right to place it himself.
Xiao Xingchen holds it for a moment, traces his fingertips over where the names are carved into the wood, before he can bring himself to speak. When he does, it’s soft, unsteady with emotion, “Thank you.”
Kneeling, he places it into the marker into the earthen mound. Then, gathering stones dug out while digging the grave, he places them around it, making sure that it will not tip over or fall.
“You don’t have to wait for me,” Xiao Xingchen says, when it is done. Still kneeling, damp and mud seeping into his clothes, he barely seems aware that he is shivering. “I don’t know how long I will be.”
I want to. I want to know you are alright. I will always wait for you. If it is you, time does not matter. I want to stay by your side. I want to always be there when you need me. I want to be there even if you don’t. There are many words Song Lan wants to say, yet he can’t, nothing seems right, either it isn’t enough or it is too much. Finally he says, “I will stay.”
Night has drawn in once more when they leave the graveyard and return to the Fu residence. Sad and silent now, white mourning ribbons have been tied outside, the excited chatter of Fu Peng over getting to meet cultivators is absent. It is a grief that Song Lan has no wish to intrude upon, but it is damp and dark outside and Xiao Xingchen is shivering from the cold, tiredness and grief making it harder for him to bear.
It worries Song Lan to see him like this. Both of them have trained their golden cores to a level where the weather, while sometimes inconvenient, shouldn’t really be affecting Xingchen to any greater degree than it was himself. Yet they’ve had a busy few days. Travelling, with little time for rest, combined with fighting the yaoguai, getting hurt, even if it wasn’t serious, as well as the unexpected bad news regarding his shijie, would be exhausting for anyone. So was it any wonder that Xingchen was feeling things a little more acutely than usual?
The decision is made that they will eat with the Fu family tonight, but they will bed down in the workshop attached to the house, then tomorrow, after breakfast, they will leave. It is colder there than Song Lan would like, but Xiao Xingchen has often pointed out that growing up on a mountain meant that he was far more used to cold conditions than to warm ones, probably more used to them than he was. He tries not to be too concerned about what this means in terms of why he seems to be feeling the cold so badly at the moment. He tries, but isn’t entirely successful.
Well after the time when he is usually asleep, Song Lan finds that it is still eluding him, even his nightly meditation not having calmed him in its usual way. He tries not to give too much credence to thoughts had late at night - things and problems thought of in the dark often seemed far larger and more troublesome than they did once it was light.
Caught in his own thoughts he isn’t aware that Xiao Xingchen is also still awake until he speaks.
“No one I’ve known has died before,” he says into the stillness of the night, like the words are now too much for him to keep inside.
Rolling onto his side on his sleeping mat, Song Lan turns to face him, to look at the faint outline of him which is all that invisible in the dark. “Never?”
Sitting up, Xiao Xingchen draws his knees up, wrapping his arms loosely about them to keep his blanket in place. “There weren’t many of us on the mountain, not really. Not compared to the size of a lot of the sects out here.” Sad and lost, he adds, “I remember her, you know. Not well, but enough. She was just this happy young woman, always laughing and smiling. She was the funny shijie who never minded what you got up to. Now she is gone.”
“Xingchen,” Song Lan doesn’t know what else to say. What can he say, but to let him know that he is there and he will listen to whatever he needs to say.
“It feels so strange,” he says, arms tightening around his knees, seeking warmth and comfort. “I wasn’t close to her. I was five, maybe six when she left, but….” he trails off.
Getting up, Song Lan goes over to him, sitting down close enough to touch, but not yet reaching out to do so. “Are you alright?”
The only reply at first is a soft sigh. Then, when he’s about to ask again, Xiao Xingchen replies, “Yes, I think so. I just feel so sad. I’d thought that perhaps one day we would meet again. That we could talk of our time on the mountain, talk of what we’d done since. Of her and her husband, of you and me.”
It makes Song Lan’s heart ache to hear the loss in his voice, to know there is nothing but the passage of time that will ease the sting.
“She was so full of life, she wanted to see the world so much, know what was out there.” He rests his chin on his knees. “It’s so unfair that she had so few years to see it, to do any of it. It makes me want to cry.”
“You can,” Song Lan says. He doesn’t want to see Xingchen cry, but if it brings him any relief he will welcome them. “If you need to, you can.”
Xiao Xingchen sighs again, soft and weary. “Everytime I think I’m going to, in the end I just can’t. I wasn’t close to her, not really, so perhaps that’s why. I don’t even know if I’d feel any better if I did. I just feel so strange, like the world has tilted a little bit sideways and I can’t quite get my balance. That perhaps the world is going to stay that way forever now.”
“It will not. For now rest if you can,” Song Lan says, hoping he is doing the right thing. Taking his own sleeping & blanket, he brings it closer to Xiao Xingchen’s, and lays down. “Sleep will help. I will be here if you need me.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Xingchen says, lying down again as well, facing him in the dark. “I’d feel so much more lost without you.”
…..
Morning arrives cold and bright, a hint of frost in the air, although there is nothing on the ground. Song Lan wakes first to find that in the night Xiao Xingchen has moved even closer. Curled on the very edge of his own sleeping mat, he is holding the corner of Song Lan’s blanket.
Not wanting to disturb him, he lets him keep holding it, placing it over him. Perhaps if he is warm and is allowed to sleep, he reasons, it will help him when he wakes.
With that in mind Song Lan helps the Fu family get ready for the day ahead, offering to fetch water from the well for them and carrying wood in from the store for the fire, to help stave off the chill of the early morning.
It isn’t long before Xiao Xingchen joins them. He looks pale and listless, exhausted despite the extra sleep to Song Lan’s eyes, but he eats his breakfast all the same, thanking the Fu family for their hospitality.
“I want to stop at the cemetery before we go,” Xiao Xingchen says, once he has packed up his sleeping mat and blanket and they are ready to leave Fuling. “We’re leaving and I can’t just go.”
Not without saying goodbye. It is an understandable sentiment, and Song Lan asks, “Will you go alone?”
“Yes, unless….” He stops like he’s uncertain if he should ask what is so clearly in his heart.
“I will accompany you,” Song Lan says. He knows how hard it is to ask for things when it truly matters, how the words aren’t always there or how you don’t want to feel like you are being inconvenient. He dislikes that he feels like this almost every time he asks for anything for himself. Dislikes how he cannot stop himself from feeling like that. Worse, it feels like a betrayal of those who raised him. They had never treated him in such a way that should make him act like this, yet he has those feelings all the same. It makes him wonder sometimes if his hesitancy and awkwardness to speak, combined with his dislike of touch and his issues with cleanliness, mean that there is something wrong with him.
“You will?” Xingchen asks.
The such hope and relief in his voice, that Song Lan knows that he has made the right choice. “Yes,” he confirms. “Wherever you go, so will I. Whatever you need to ask me, ask. There is nothing that we cannot say to each other.”
Xiao Xingchen doesn’t say anything else, but he moves closer and for a moment Song Lan thinks that he is going to put his arms around him.
He doesn’t.
It is only once Xingchen has moved away again, that Song Lan wonders if he should have been the one to make that move, if it had been expected of him. The opportunity is lost however, and they go to say their goodbyes to the Fu family and thank them for their hospitality.
……
The morning is cold and bright as they make their way through the village to the graveyard. Although the sun is shining, the clouds are gathering once more on the mountains, suggesting that rain will likely fall again later.
Xiao Xingchen is quiet as he neatens the low mound of earth over the grave and straightens the wooden marker. Song Lan waits silently, and he hopes reassuringly, as he takes his time gathering up more stones, placing them neatly around the edges of the mound.
They are almost ready to leave when they see a woman approaching. Wrapped up against the morning chill, at first Song Lan thinks that it might be Fu Furen. That she has followed them because they have left something behind or if she wishes to give them some food to take with them on their journey.
As she gets closer Song Lan recognises her as the woman who had lost her older sister to the yaoguai.
“Daozhangs.” She greets them with a small, nervous bow. Then she holds out a bag to them. “You should have this.”
“Guniang, we require no payment.”
“It isn’t payment.” She shakes her head. “It was given to me with A-jie, but…” she stops and wipes her eyes. “But it’s not hers. I know it’s not. I think it must belong to the lady cultivator who tried to help us.”
Beside him Song Lan hears Xiao Xingchen take a shaky breath.
She holds out the bag to him. “You said outside the cave that she was your shijie, so you should be the one to have it or her family if you know where they are.”
Carefully, he takes the bag from her. “Thank you. You didn’t have to.”
“It wouldn’t be right keeping it.” She looks a little nervously at the grave beside them. “It’s not meant for ordinary people like me. It’s only a small bag, but it holds more than it should. It’s too strange for me.”
Opening the qiankun pouch, Xiao Xingchen carefully takes out a small book, its pages spotted with ink and smudged fingerprints. He looks at it for a moment, then with trembling hands he takes out a small pair of shoes. A young child’s shoes.
On the book’s cover, Song Lan can just make out a child’s first attempts writing their name, messy ink laden brush strokes - Wei Ying.
“We have to go back to the cave,” Xiao Xingchen says, sounding as shaken as he’d done when he’d found Canse Sanren’s jade token. “We have to. We have to look again. Zichen, please.”
“The search was thorough. No other bodies remained.” While it is the truth, speaking it aloud feels impossibly cold and unfeeling in the face of Xingchen’s obvious distress.
“Nothing left.” There is a soft, breathy quality to Xiao Xingchen’s voice, his hands starting to shake. The idea that the child must have perished, must have been eaten whole by the creature is too much and the tears that he hadn’t been able to shed the night before begin to fall.
Anything that they have dealt with that involved children has always moved Xiao Xingchen greatly, that this involves his shijie child is more than he can bear.
It is more than Song Lan can bear as well. Seeing Xingchen cry, silent tears rolling down his cheeks, is awful. At the cave he hadn’t been able to comfort him, his hands filthy with rot and corruption from having to move decomposing bodies. Now, even with the young woman there to witness it, he had no such concern.
He feels Xiao Xingchen tense for a moment, as he puts his arm around him, the unfamiliarity of it startling him. Then he sags against him, tears still silently falling as he shakes, hands holding tight to Song Lan’s robes as if he is afraid he will fall if he lets go.
“They didn’t have a child with them. Daozhang, I promise they didn’t,” the young woman says, sounding almost in tears herself. “When they arrived here, I saw them. I was down at the stream collecting reeds. I thought how pretty the lady’s clothes were, how I would never have anything half so fine. They were green and had flowers on them.”
“Not with them,” Xiao Xingchen says faintly, barely sounded comforted by this at all. “We have to find him. Zichen, please. We have to look.”
There was nothing at all to indicate that the child hadn’t been left with a trusted friend or family member. That the child is safe and being cared for is far more likely in Song Lan’s opinion than them being left to fend for themself while his parents went night hunting. He can’t bring himself to voice such an opinion however. Not when Xiao Xingchen looks more fragile and upset than he has ever seen him. Not when the tears are still wet on his cheeks and he can feel him shaking in his arms.
“We will,” he says, holding him a little tighter, not certain Xingchen will remain on his feet otherwise. “We will make sure he is safe.”
“I have to go, I’m sorry,” the young woman says, starting to cry, her own grief at losing her sister becoming too much. “I hope you find the child. I really do.” Wiping her eyes, she hurries away before they can reply to her.
Song Lan isn’t sure how long they stand there until Xiao Xingchen, still shivering slightly, stands a little straighter and releases his grip on his robes.
Pale from the shock of what he’s heard, eyes wet and red from tears, he seems suddenly aware of how he’s left a damp patch on Song Lan’s shoulder. He touches it, fingers still unsteady. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” Song Lan wipes the remaining tears from his cheeks with his fingers. If he lingers a little too long about it neither of speak it aloud. “Do not apologise. You have done nothing wrong.”
“I hadn’t thought I could feel more upset than I did last night, but somehow…” he stops and shakes his head. “I feel so strange. I don’t even know how to describe it.”
“You do not have to explain yourself to me,” Song Lan says, putting his arm around him once more, and drawing him in closer. This time Xingchen flinches, a small hiss of pain escaping him.
Releasing him, not able to keep the worry from his voice, Song Lan asks, “Xingchen? What’s wrong?”
“My arm, it’s still a bit sore,” Xingchen replies, protectively covering where the wound the yaoguai had inflicted is. “I think I overdid it a little yesterday, that’s all. Don’t worry.”
“If you are sure.” Song Lan doesn’t like leaving it at that, but he can hardly ask him to allow him to check the wound right now. Tonight, he decides, he will check that it is healing well. They can stop at an inn, pay for somewhere warm and dry for the night, and before they sleep he’ll make sure Xingchen puts more of the salve on it and rebandages it if necessary.
He nods slowly, then moves away, footsteps still a little unsteady. Placing a hand on the wooden grave marker, Xiao Xingchen says softly, “I’ll find him, shijie. I’ll make sure he’s safe. I promise.”
Mindful of Xiao Xingchen’s arm, Song Lan places a hand on his shoulder instead, leaving it there until finally they are ready to leave.
They pass the He family home as they leave Fuling. White ribbon like that on the Fu residence is now tied to the door, marking the death of He Zhou.
Song Lan hesitates for a moment as he sees it, uncertain if they should stop and speak to He Zhou’s wife and family. In the end he decides against it. There is no aid they can give them, beyond the news that they have already been given that the yaoguai is dead. Xingchen doesn’t seem to have noticed, lost in thought as he walks beside him, and he doesn’t want to cause him any further upset.
The rain starts again as they leave the village behind them, the droplets pattering steadily on the leaves overhead, the peaks of the mountains behind them beyond lost amidst the clouds as they take the road back towards Yiling.
Xiao Xingchen is quiet, his usual travelling conversations about what they have seen and where they are going are absent. Song Lan tries to tell himself that is only to be expected, that he is grieving for his Shijie, even if he has only a few memories of her. Yet it worries him all the same.
There are few other travellers on the muddy road, but they ask each one that they meet whether they have heard of Cangse Sanren and her husband, if they travelled this road a lot, if they had had a child with them. The answer in every case is no. They thank them for their time and move on.
Damp and disheartened they arrive at a small town early in the afternoon. Breakfast is many hours behind and despite Xiao Xingchen wanting to continue on, to keep looking, Song Lan decides that they have to stop. Going without food or rest when there is no pressing need is unwise, in case that need arises later.
It feels somehow underhanded, duplicitous even, to take him to the tea house on the suggestion that perhaps someone there will know something. Yet Song Lan decides he is justified in doing it, even if it is unlikely any information will be found, if it means Xiao Xingchen might take the chance to rest.
To Song Lan’s relief he does sit and drink some tea, although his worry only increases when Xiao Xingchen declines getting food, even soup, with a weary shake of his head.
Although he should probably eat, Song Lan cannot bring himself to do so if Xingchen is not. A single missed meal is nothing given their current development level of their golden cores.
It is hard to watch him being so silent and sad, so unlike his usual self, that Song Lan tries to fill some of that silence by talking, by trying to reassure Xingchen that if they keep asking that eventually someone will know who they mean.
“Are you looking for other cultivators? We don’t get many that come here, it’s a quiet town. We don’t have any trouble.”
He turns to see who has spoken. A very elderly man, his thin wispy beard the only hair left on his head, is sitting with two others of a similar age at the next table.
“But there are some?” Xiao Xingchen asks, a fragile hope in his voice. “Do you know who they are?”
“I don’t remember any names, but there were two back at the start of autumn. They didn’t stay long. We don’t get many passing through here.”
“You did? Did they say where they were going? Or where they’d come from?” Xiao Xingchen asks. “Did they have a child with them, a young boy about four years old?”
He strokes his beard, thinking for a moment before he answers. “It was just the two of them, husband and wife, I think. They wanted directions to Fuling, they said that was where they were going. As for where they’d come from they didn’t say, but it was morning, so I don’t think it could have been too far.”
There are murmurs of approval at his reasoning from the other two men. One joining in and adding, “They probably came down from Yiling. There’s enough strange goings on around that place that cultivators come and go all the time.”
They thank them for their help, pay for their tea and then they are on their way again.
“We can be there before dark if we hurry,” Xiao Xingchen says, once they are outside, looking up at the cold, grey sky. “Yiing isn’t too far if we fly.”
While there is no doubt that taking to the air on their swords will be faster, Song Lan can’t help but notice how tired he is looking or how he keeps shivering. “You should rest first.”
“I can rest in Yiling, Zichen, please. Don’t try to talk me out of it.” He rubs absently at his arm, trying to ease the lingering ache. “If you want to rest here you can. You can find me there later. It’s alright. I don’t mind.”
“If you go, so will I.” The idea of letting him leave when he is clearly so much not his usual self isn’t something that Song Lan can contemplate. “I will not let you face this alone.”
There is a slump to Xingchen’s shoulders, weary and lost. “I keep thinking the worst and I don’t know how to stop. I don’t quite know what to do with myself. I didn’t know her well enough for this, or her child at all. I didn’t even know about him until this morning. I feel awful.”
“It is because you are kind.” There is more to it than that, but Song Lan can’t quite put it into words. At least not without baring the feelings he has for him, feelings which he’s not entirely sure he understands himself.
“It’s because I’m scared,” Xingchen says softly. “You know I didn’t have a family growing up, only my sect.”
“We both lost ours very young,” Song Lan says, a little confused at where he is going with this. It is something that they have spoken of before, although not in any detail. For himself Song Lan has just the haziest memory of a woman who might have been his mother singing while she fed chickens. He’s not even sure sometimes if it is real or just something his mind as a child had created. What memories, if any, Xiao Xingchen has of his family, he doesn’t know.
“I was left on the mountain,” he voice shakes ever so slightly. “Just left there in a blanket, discarded, a baby no one wanted. If one of Baoshan Sanren’s disciples hadn’t found me….” He trails off, arms wrapping about himself, as he shivers. “What if no one ever finds him, Zichen? What if he isn’t as lucky as I was? What if we’re already too late?”
Whatever Song Lan was expecting to hear, it wasn’t this. It’s awful. That he had been orphaned from own presumably loving parents is sad, but to find Xiao Xingchen had been unwanted, abandoned without a thought to his safety or survival is too much to take in, and he can’t find a single word to say. Normally it doesn’t matter too much that he isn’t good at talking or touching or doing anything without thinking about it first, now it feels like an abject failure.
He breaks out of his moment of inaction when he sees Xingchen shiver again. This at least he can help with. Taking a cloak from his bag, he wraps it around him, hands lingering as he fastens it.
Xiao Xingchen looks at him, surprised and touched. Then he takes his hands in his, holding on tightly as lifts them, pressing them against the centre of his chest. Finally he leans in against him, resting his head against his shoulder, saying very softly, “Just for a moment, then we can go.”
“For as long as you need.” How his voice remains steady, Song Lan isn’t certain. Xingchen’s revelation about how he might not have survived infancy has shaken him more than he thought possible. The idea of a world where he never got to meet him, where he never got to see him smile or hear him talk, or feel the warm weight of him in his arms is unimaginably awful.
Closing his eyes, Song Lan rests his cheek against Xingchen’s hair. He can ignore other people’s stares if he cannot see them, if he can pretend that they are not there. For Xingchen, he thinks, there are very few things he would not do or suffer.
Part 4 = https://silver-sun.dreamwidth.org/270375.html
After carrying the bodies back to Fuling, Song Lan goes to wash and change his clothes. He doesn’t want to leave Xiao Xingchen alone, not when he is clearly upset from learning about his shijie’s death. However, he knows that if he does not take the time to clean himself and to change his clothes, he will feel more and more unsettled himself, until he’s unable to think of anything apart from awful, filthy feeling on his skin. He can’t even put the sensation into words, it’s not only physical, in fact a lot of it he is sure is in his mind. It doesn’t make it any less real or any easier to deal with.
All the same he makes sure that Xiao Xingchen is safely back at the village not in need of anything before he turns his attention to himself. He doesn’t want to bother the Fu family, not when they have just brought home the body of their father. Instead he finds one of fast running streams that cut through the woods below the village.
Rain-swollen from the night before, the water it carries from the mountains is cold, almost icy on his skin. It’s a raw feeling scrubbing with cheap, harsh soap, his hands sore by the time he’s finished, but he feels better for it, cleaner and able to deal with things without the sense of abject wrongness on his skin.
He returns to the Fu residence to find Xiao Xingchen is absent. There is a moment of worry about where he might be before Fu Peng informs him that his friend had asked to see where the village graveyard was.
Although uncertain of whether Xingchen will want company or not, Song Lan asks for directions all the same and then goes to find him. He would rather be there but not needed, than needed and not there.
Xiao Xingchen stands alone at the edge of the graveyard in Fuling. Located on a small section of cleared hillside it has a view down the valley in one direction and up to the mountains in the other. He still looks a little too pale, but is otherwise composed.
“It reminds me a little of home,” he says, speaking aloud rather than to anyone in particular. The cold breeze catches his hair, fanning it out behind him as he turns to look at the mountains. “I think she would have liked it here.”
“Will you take her back to your sect?” Song Lan asks, wondering if he might be permitted to see the place where his friend grew up, perhaps even meet Baoshan Sanren herself. The idea of Xiao Xingchen having to make that journey alone, leaving him to go somewhere he likely can’t follow, he finds deeply unsettling. If it is what is needed he will allow him to go, but he is certain he will worry the whole time that they are apart.
Although still facing the distant peaks, he closes his eyes as if no longer wants to look upon that memory of home. “No. When we leave we know it will be for the last and only time. That is the rule. If we decide we want to leave we can never return.”
“Never?” The idea of never being able to go back to the Baixue Temple, to never visit or speak with those who raised him, those who grew up with him is horribly sad. “Not even in an emergency?”
Clouds drift overhead, wind-blown and full with the promise of rain, as he considers it, finally replying doubtfully, “Perhaps. I don’t think anyone has ever tried.”
It seems a too upsetting subject to discuss further, so Song Lan is about to suggest that they should find shelter before the weather breaks, when Xiao Xingchen speaks again.
“I’m the only one left now. The only one out here in the world who is still alive.”
For a moment Song Lan can’t speak, can’t think of what possible thing he can say that might even be close to comforting. Yet he can’t say nothing, can’t do that to him, in case Xiao Xingchen thinks that he doesn’t care. “I’m sorry.” It feels inadequate and he wonders with a growing fear just how many others his friend has lost.
As if in answer to his unasked question he says, “I didn’t mean to be dramatic, Zichen, please don’t worry. It’s just that few of us ever leave the mountain, only my shijie and myself in recent times.” He opens his eyes. “There were others, but Shifu was always a little vague on when it was. I suppose though when you have forever the difference between five years, fifty years and even five hundred is small enough not to matter.”
It seems impossible to Song Lan sometimes that Xiao Xingchen can speak of being in the company of and speaking to an immortal cultivator. It makes him all too aware that their lives, their understanding of the world around them is often very different. It also makes the fact that they have found so much in common in their hopes and dreams even more precious.
“What do you wish to do?” Song Lan asks. “Shall we take them to Yunmeng? Wei Changze was from the Jiang sect there, was he not?”
Xiao Xingchen considers it briefly, then shakes his head. “What news we had was that her husband had abandoned his sect for her. I am not sure they would welcome us.”
Song Lan is inclined to agree with that assessment, if Wei Changze walked out on Yunmeng Jiang he doubts they would look favourably on them arriving there with his body and that of the woman he’d abandoned them for. “What will you do then?”
“Here is a good place,” Xingchen replies. “She can rest here, her husband beside her. We can give them that at least.”
“You killed the yaoguai,” Song Lan says, hoping that there might be some comfort to be found in that fact. “They will know their deaths did not go unnoticed or unmourned.”
“Us.” Xiao Xingchen turns to him. “It was us. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Despite his sadness at what has happened there is still so much warmth in how Xingchen looks at him and in how he speaks to him that Song Lan cannot help but feel moved by it. To be there beside one another, to be there for each other in whatever way they might need is something that he wants more than anything else.
He hopes that Xiao Xingchen somehow knows that he feels this way, because as sure as he is of his own feelings in this, he is also certain that he has no hope of telling it to him in a way that makes any sense or isn’t profoundly awkward for them both.
“Nor I,” he says, then regrets it. It sounds strange, both not enough and too much all at the same time. “Together." He tries again. “We are at our best together.”
Xiao Xingchen doesn’t reply, but he moves closer, until their shoulders are almost touching. The blustery autumn wind still gusts about them, first from one direction and then from another. There is some protection from it now though, whichever way it blows one of them shields the other.
It feels right.
It’s not something Song Lan can put into words and for once he doesn’t mind. Sometimes all that is needed is to be there, to be each other’s shelter in the storms of life.
…..
There is no objection from the people of Fuling about burying Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze in the graveyard. Giving a resting place to two people who gave their lives trying to keep them safe seems like a way to make sure their spirits can rest peacefully and won’t return to disturb the village for being ungrateful for their sacrifice. With no other family to tend the grave, Xiao Xingchen promises them that he will return to Fuling in the Spring for Qingming, and will do so each year for as long as he is able.
Xiao Xingchen’s decision to take on this role and do this for his shijie and her husband doesn’t surprise Song Lan. What does, at first at least, is his insistence that he is the one who has to dig the grave, declining all offers of help despite the hard ground and stoney soil.
It’s difficult to watch him struggling, sleeves rolled up and clothes growing smudged with soil. Yet there is a logic to it that Song Lan can understand, the need to take an active response, to feel like you're doing something of use. He can’t force Xiao Xingchen to accept his help, there is a surprising stubbornness to him even under the best of circumstances, but this doesn’t mean he can’t help in other ways.
Were things different there would be more time to mourn, but the bodies are already decaying and they cannot intrude on the Fu family for much longer, not when they are also full of grief.
So while Xiao Xingchen digs, Song Lan carefully wraps the bodies of Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze in the blankets in which they’d carried them from the cave. There would be no comfort for Xingchen to look upon their faces as they are now. It is better, he decides, for any memories that he had to be those that remain from when they lived. He makes a simple grave marker too, something to bear their names, should any family for either of them ever be found.
Afternoon has faded into the dimming light of early evening by the time the grave is deep enough and wide enough to take two bodies. Exhausted, shivering slightly as the heat of exertion is lost to the cold breeze now that he is still, Xiao Xingchen stands at the side of the open grave. He holds his injured arm carefully, supporting it with the other, the heavy work of digging having made it ache.
He doesn’t speak as Song Lan approaches. The weary relief in his eyes convey all that he cannot and does not say.
They place the bodies into the grave together, laying Wei Changze’s broken blade and Chunfeng to rest beside their owners. Barely a word is spoken between them, even when Song Lan has to steady Xiao Xingchen from stumbling, his hand on his arm.
Song Lan takes the job of filling the grave with earth, picking up the shovel before Xiao Xingchen can. It is something he can spare him from having to do, freeing him to have time to rest.
Not that Xiao Xingchen uses the time to do this. Rather he takes incense and paper money that they carry with them for helping spirits to rest from their belongings, so he can burn them for his shijie and her husband.
Finally with the light almost gone from the sky, the sun low and on the edges of the hills, it is done. A low mount of earth, some fruit left in offering and a small bowl of ash that flies away in the wind - the incense and paper money burnt away.
Taking the grave marker he has made, Song Lan passes it to Xiao Xingchen. It doesn’t feel right to place it himself.
Xiao Xingchen holds it for a moment, traces his fingertips over where the names are carved into the wood, before he can bring himself to speak. When he does, it’s soft, unsteady with emotion, “Thank you.”
Kneeling, he places it into the marker into the earthen mound. Then, gathering stones dug out while digging the grave, he places them around it, making sure that it will not tip over or fall.
“You don’t have to wait for me,” Xiao Xingchen says, when it is done. Still kneeling, damp and mud seeping into his clothes, he barely seems aware that he is shivering. “I don’t know how long I will be.”
I want to. I want to know you are alright. I will always wait for you. If it is you, time does not matter. I want to stay by your side. I want to always be there when you need me. I want to be there even if you don’t. There are many words Song Lan wants to say, yet he can’t, nothing seems right, either it isn’t enough or it is too much. Finally he says, “I will stay.”
Night has drawn in once more when they leave the graveyard and return to the Fu residence. Sad and silent now, white mourning ribbons have been tied outside, the excited chatter of Fu Peng over getting to meet cultivators is absent. It is a grief that Song Lan has no wish to intrude upon, but it is damp and dark outside and Xiao Xingchen is shivering from the cold, tiredness and grief making it harder for him to bear.
It worries Song Lan to see him like this. Both of them have trained their golden cores to a level where the weather, while sometimes inconvenient, shouldn’t really be affecting Xingchen to any greater degree than it was himself. Yet they’ve had a busy few days. Travelling, with little time for rest, combined with fighting the yaoguai, getting hurt, even if it wasn’t serious, as well as the unexpected bad news regarding his shijie, would be exhausting for anyone. So was it any wonder that Xingchen was feeling things a little more acutely than usual?
The decision is made that they will eat with the Fu family tonight, but they will bed down in the workshop attached to the house, then tomorrow, after breakfast, they will leave. It is colder there than Song Lan would like, but Xiao Xingchen has often pointed out that growing up on a mountain meant that he was far more used to cold conditions than to warm ones, probably more used to them than he was. He tries not to be too concerned about what this means in terms of why he seems to be feeling the cold so badly at the moment. He tries, but isn’t entirely successful.
Well after the time when he is usually asleep, Song Lan finds that it is still eluding him, even his nightly meditation not having calmed him in its usual way. He tries not to give too much credence to thoughts had late at night - things and problems thought of in the dark often seemed far larger and more troublesome than they did once it was light.
Caught in his own thoughts he isn’t aware that Xiao Xingchen is also still awake until he speaks.
“No one I’ve known has died before,” he says into the stillness of the night, like the words are now too much for him to keep inside.
Rolling onto his side on his sleeping mat, Song Lan turns to face him, to look at the faint outline of him which is all that invisible in the dark. “Never?”
Sitting up, Xiao Xingchen draws his knees up, wrapping his arms loosely about them to keep his blanket in place. “There weren’t many of us on the mountain, not really. Not compared to the size of a lot of the sects out here.” Sad and lost, he adds, “I remember her, you know. Not well, but enough. She was just this happy young woman, always laughing and smiling. She was the funny shijie who never minded what you got up to. Now she is gone.”
“Xingchen,” Song Lan doesn’t know what else to say. What can he say, but to let him know that he is there and he will listen to whatever he needs to say.
“It feels so strange,” he says, arms tightening around his knees, seeking warmth and comfort. “I wasn’t close to her. I was five, maybe six when she left, but….” he trails off.
Getting up, Song Lan goes over to him, sitting down close enough to touch, but not yet reaching out to do so. “Are you alright?”
The only reply at first is a soft sigh. Then, when he’s about to ask again, Xiao Xingchen replies, “Yes, I think so. I just feel so sad. I’d thought that perhaps one day we would meet again. That we could talk of our time on the mountain, talk of what we’d done since. Of her and her husband, of you and me.”
It makes Song Lan’s heart ache to hear the loss in his voice, to know there is nothing but the passage of time that will ease the sting.
“She was so full of life, she wanted to see the world so much, know what was out there.” He rests his chin on his knees. “It’s so unfair that she had so few years to see it, to do any of it. It makes me want to cry.”
“You can,” Song Lan says. He doesn’t want to see Xingchen cry, but if it brings him any relief he will welcome them. “If you need to, you can.”
Xiao Xingchen sighs again, soft and weary. “Everytime I think I’m going to, in the end I just can’t. I wasn’t close to her, not really, so perhaps that’s why. I don’t even know if I’d feel any better if I did. I just feel so strange, like the world has tilted a little bit sideways and I can’t quite get my balance. That perhaps the world is going to stay that way forever now.”
“It will not. For now rest if you can,” Song Lan says, hoping he is doing the right thing. Taking his own sleeping & blanket, he brings it closer to Xiao Xingchen’s, and lays down. “Sleep will help. I will be here if you need me.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Xingchen says, lying down again as well, facing him in the dark. “I’d feel so much more lost without you.”
…..
Morning arrives cold and bright, a hint of frost in the air, although there is nothing on the ground. Song Lan wakes first to find that in the night Xiao Xingchen has moved even closer. Curled on the very edge of his own sleeping mat, he is holding the corner of Song Lan’s blanket.
Not wanting to disturb him, he lets him keep holding it, placing it over him. Perhaps if he is warm and is allowed to sleep, he reasons, it will help him when he wakes.
With that in mind Song Lan helps the Fu family get ready for the day ahead, offering to fetch water from the well for them and carrying wood in from the store for the fire, to help stave off the chill of the early morning.
It isn’t long before Xiao Xingchen joins them. He looks pale and listless, exhausted despite the extra sleep to Song Lan’s eyes, but he eats his breakfast all the same, thanking the Fu family for their hospitality.
“I want to stop at the cemetery before we go,” Xiao Xingchen says, once he has packed up his sleeping mat and blanket and they are ready to leave Fuling. “We’re leaving and I can’t just go.”
Not without saying goodbye. It is an understandable sentiment, and Song Lan asks, “Will you go alone?”
“Yes, unless….” He stops like he’s uncertain if he should ask what is so clearly in his heart.
“I will accompany you,” Song Lan says. He knows how hard it is to ask for things when it truly matters, how the words aren’t always there or how you don’t want to feel like you are being inconvenient. He dislikes that he feels like this almost every time he asks for anything for himself. Dislikes how he cannot stop himself from feeling like that. Worse, it feels like a betrayal of those who raised him. They had never treated him in such a way that should make him act like this, yet he has those feelings all the same. It makes him wonder sometimes if his hesitancy and awkwardness to speak, combined with his dislike of touch and his issues with cleanliness, mean that there is something wrong with him.
“You will?” Xingchen asks.
The such hope and relief in his voice, that Song Lan knows that he has made the right choice. “Yes,” he confirms. “Wherever you go, so will I. Whatever you need to ask me, ask. There is nothing that we cannot say to each other.”
Xiao Xingchen doesn’t say anything else, but he moves closer and for a moment Song Lan thinks that he is going to put his arms around him.
He doesn’t.
It is only once Xingchen has moved away again, that Song Lan wonders if he should have been the one to make that move, if it had been expected of him. The opportunity is lost however, and they go to say their goodbyes to the Fu family and thank them for their hospitality.
……
The morning is cold and bright as they make their way through the village to the graveyard. Although the sun is shining, the clouds are gathering once more on the mountains, suggesting that rain will likely fall again later.
Xiao Xingchen is quiet as he neatens the low mound of earth over the grave and straightens the wooden marker. Song Lan waits silently, and he hopes reassuringly, as he takes his time gathering up more stones, placing them neatly around the edges of the mound.
They are almost ready to leave when they see a woman approaching. Wrapped up against the morning chill, at first Song Lan thinks that it might be Fu Furen. That she has followed them because they have left something behind or if she wishes to give them some food to take with them on their journey.
As she gets closer Song Lan recognises her as the woman who had lost her older sister to the yaoguai.
“Daozhangs.” She greets them with a small, nervous bow. Then she holds out a bag to them. “You should have this.”
“Guniang, we require no payment.”
“It isn’t payment.” She shakes her head. “It was given to me with A-jie, but…” she stops and wipes her eyes. “But it’s not hers. I know it’s not. I think it must belong to the lady cultivator who tried to help us.”
Beside him Song Lan hears Xiao Xingchen take a shaky breath.
She holds out the bag to him. “You said outside the cave that she was your shijie, so you should be the one to have it or her family if you know where they are.”
Carefully, he takes the bag from her. “Thank you. You didn’t have to.”
“It wouldn’t be right keeping it.” She looks a little nervously at the grave beside them. “It’s not meant for ordinary people like me. It’s only a small bag, but it holds more than it should. It’s too strange for me.”
Opening the qiankun pouch, Xiao Xingchen carefully takes out a small book, its pages spotted with ink and smudged fingerprints. He looks at it for a moment, then with trembling hands he takes out a small pair of shoes. A young child’s shoes.
On the book’s cover, Song Lan can just make out a child’s first attempts writing their name, messy ink laden brush strokes - Wei Ying.
“We have to go back to the cave,” Xiao Xingchen says, sounding as shaken as he’d done when he’d found Canse Sanren’s jade token. “We have to. We have to look again. Zichen, please.”
“The search was thorough. No other bodies remained.” While it is the truth, speaking it aloud feels impossibly cold and unfeeling in the face of Xingchen’s obvious distress.
“Nothing left.” There is a soft, breathy quality to Xiao Xingchen’s voice, his hands starting to shake. The idea that the child must have perished, must have been eaten whole by the creature is too much and the tears that he hadn’t been able to shed the night before begin to fall.
Anything that they have dealt with that involved children has always moved Xiao Xingchen greatly, that this involves his shijie child is more than he can bear.
It is more than Song Lan can bear as well. Seeing Xingchen cry, silent tears rolling down his cheeks, is awful. At the cave he hadn’t been able to comfort him, his hands filthy with rot and corruption from having to move decomposing bodies. Now, even with the young woman there to witness it, he had no such concern.
He feels Xiao Xingchen tense for a moment, as he puts his arm around him, the unfamiliarity of it startling him. Then he sags against him, tears still silently falling as he shakes, hands holding tight to Song Lan’s robes as if he is afraid he will fall if he lets go.
“They didn’t have a child with them. Daozhang, I promise they didn’t,” the young woman says, sounding almost in tears herself. “When they arrived here, I saw them. I was down at the stream collecting reeds. I thought how pretty the lady’s clothes were, how I would never have anything half so fine. They were green and had flowers on them.”
“Not with them,” Xiao Xingchen says faintly, barely sounded comforted by this at all. “We have to find him. Zichen, please. We have to look.”
There was nothing at all to indicate that the child hadn’t been left with a trusted friend or family member. That the child is safe and being cared for is far more likely in Song Lan’s opinion than them being left to fend for themself while his parents went night hunting. He can’t bring himself to voice such an opinion however. Not when Xiao Xingchen looks more fragile and upset than he has ever seen him. Not when the tears are still wet on his cheeks and he can feel him shaking in his arms.
“We will,” he says, holding him a little tighter, not certain Xingchen will remain on his feet otherwise. “We will make sure he is safe.”
“I have to go, I’m sorry,” the young woman says, starting to cry, her own grief at losing her sister becoming too much. “I hope you find the child. I really do.” Wiping her eyes, she hurries away before they can reply to her.
Song Lan isn’t sure how long they stand there until Xiao Xingchen, still shivering slightly, stands a little straighter and releases his grip on his robes.
Pale from the shock of what he’s heard, eyes wet and red from tears, he seems suddenly aware of how he’s left a damp patch on Song Lan’s shoulder. He touches it, fingers still unsteady. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” Song Lan wipes the remaining tears from his cheeks with his fingers. If he lingers a little too long about it neither of speak it aloud. “Do not apologise. You have done nothing wrong.”
“I hadn’t thought I could feel more upset than I did last night, but somehow…” he stops and shakes his head. “I feel so strange. I don’t even know how to describe it.”
“You do not have to explain yourself to me,” Song Lan says, putting his arm around him once more, and drawing him in closer. This time Xingchen flinches, a small hiss of pain escaping him.
Releasing him, not able to keep the worry from his voice, Song Lan asks, “Xingchen? What’s wrong?”
“My arm, it’s still a bit sore,” Xingchen replies, protectively covering where the wound the yaoguai had inflicted is. “I think I overdid it a little yesterday, that’s all. Don’t worry.”
“If you are sure.” Song Lan doesn’t like leaving it at that, but he can hardly ask him to allow him to check the wound right now. Tonight, he decides, he will check that it is healing well. They can stop at an inn, pay for somewhere warm and dry for the night, and before they sleep he’ll make sure Xingchen puts more of the salve on it and rebandages it if necessary.
He nods slowly, then moves away, footsteps still a little unsteady. Placing a hand on the wooden grave marker, Xiao Xingchen says softly, “I’ll find him, shijie. I’ll make sure he’s safe. I promise.”
Mindful of Xiao Xingchen’s arm, Song Lan places a hand on his shoulder instead, leaving it there until finally they are ready to leave.
They pass the He family home as they leave Fuling. White ribbon like that on the Fu residence is now tied to the door, marking the death of He Zhou.
Song Lan hesitates for a moment as he sees it, uncertain if they should stop and speak to He Zhou’s wife and family. In the end he decides against it. There is no aid they can give them, beyond the news that they have already been given that the yaoguai is dead. Xingchen doesn’t seem to have noticed, lost in thought as he walks beside him, and he doesn’t want to cause him any further upset.
The rain starts again as they leave the village behind them, the droplets pattering steadily on the leaves overhead, the peaks of the mountains behind them beyond lost amidst the clouds as they take the road back towards Yiling.
Xiao Xingchen is quiet, his usual travelling conversations about what they have seen and where they are going are absent. Song Lan tries to tell himself that is only to be expected, that he is grieving for his Shijie, even if he has only a few memories of her. Yet it worries him all the same.
There are few other travellers on the muddy road, but they ask each one that they meet whether they have heard of Cangse Sanren and her husband, if they travelled this road a lot, if they had had a child with them. The answer in every case is no. They thank them for their time and move on.
Damp and disheartened they arrive at a small town early in the afternoon. Breakfast is many hours behind and despite Xiao Xingchen wanting to continue on, to keep looking, Song Lan decides that they have to stop. Going without food or rest when there is no pressing need is unwise, in case that need arises later.
It feels somehow underhanded, duplicitous even, to take him to the tea house on the suggestion that perhaps someone there will know something. Yet Song Lan decides he is justified in doing it, even if it is unlikely any information will be found, if it means Xiao Xingchen might take the chance to rest.
To Song Lan’s relief he does sit and drink some tea, although his worry only increases when Xiao Xingchen declines getting food, even soup, with a weary shake of his head.
Although he should probably eat, Song Lan cannot bring himself to do so if Xingchen is not. A single missed meal is nothing given their current development level of their golden cores.
It is hard to watch him being so silent and sad, so unlike his usual self, that Song Lan tries to fill some of that silence by talking, by trying to reassure Xingchen that if they keep asking that eventually someone will know who they mean.
“Are you looking for other cultivators? We don’t get many that come here, it’s a quiet town. We don’t have any trouble.”
He turns to see who has spoken. A very elderly man, his thin wispy beard the only hair left on his head, is sitting with two others of a similar age at the next table.
“But there are some?” Xiao Xingchen asks, a fragile hope in his voice. “Do you know who they are?”
“I don’t remember any names, but there were two back at the start of autumn. They didn’t stay long. We don’t get many passing through here.”
“You did? Did they say where they were going? Or where they’d come from?” Xiao Xingchen asks. “Did they have a child with them, a young boy about four years old?”
He strokes his beard, thinking for a moment before he answers. “It was just the two of them, husband and wife, I think. They wanted directions to Fuling, they said that was where they were going. As for where they’d come from they didn’t say, but it was morning, so I don’t think it could have been too far.”
There are murmurs of approval at his reasoning from the other two men. One joining in and adding, “They probably came down from Yiling. There’s enough strange goings on around that place that cultivators come and go all the time.”
They thank them for their help, pay for their tea and then they are on their way again.
“We can be there before dark if we hurry,” Xiao Xingchen says, once they are outside, looking up at the cold, grey sky. “Yiing isn’t too far if we fly.”
While there is no doubt that taking to the air on their swords will be faster, Song Lan can’t help but notice how tired he is looking or how he keeps shivering. “You should rest first.”
“I can rest in Yiling, Zichen, please. Don’t try to talk me out of it.” He rubs absently at his arm, trying to ease the lingering ache. “If you want to rest here you can. You can find me there later. It’s alright. I don’t mind.”
“If you go, so will I.” The idea of letting him leave when he is clearly so much not his usual self isn’t something that Song Lan can contemplate. “I will not let you face this alone.”
There is a slump to Xingchen’s shoulders, weary and lost. “I keep thinking the worst and I don’t know how to stop. I don’t quite know what to do with myself. I didn’t know her well enough for this, or her child at all. I didn’t even know about him until this morning. I feel awful.”
“It is because you are kind.” There is more to it than that, but Song Lan can’t quite put it into words. At least not without baring the feelings he has for him, feelings which he’s not entirely sure he understands himself.
“It’s because I’m scared,” Xingchen says softly. “You know I didn’t have a family growing up, only my sect.”
“We both lost ours very young,” Song Lan says, a little confused at where he is going with this. It is something that they have spoken of before, although not in any detail. For himself Song Lan has just the haziest memory of a woman who might have been his mother singing while she fed chickens. He’s not even sure sometimes if it is real or just something his mind as a child had created. What memories, if any, Xiao Xingchen has of his family, he doesn’t know.
“I was left on the mountain,” he voice shakes ever so slightly. “Just left there in a blanket, discarded, a baby no one wanted. If one of Baoshan Sanren’s disciples hadn’t found me….” He trails off, arms wrapping about himself, as he shivers. “What if no one ever finds him, Zichen? What if he isn’t as lucky as I was? What if we’re already too late?”
Whatever Song Lan was expecting to hear, it wasn’t this. It’s awful. That he had been orphaned from own presumably loving parents is sad, but to find Xiao Xingchen had been unwanted, abandoned without a thought to his safety or survival is too much to take in, and he can’t find a single word to say. Normally it doesn’t matter too much that he isn’t good at talking or touching or doing anything without thinking about it first, now it feels like an abject failure.
He breaks out of his moment of inaction when he sees Xingchen shiver again. This at least he can help with. Taking a cloak from his bag, he wraps it around him, hands lingering as he fastens it.
Xiao Xingchen looks at him, surprised and touched. Then he takes his hands in his, holding on tightly as lifts them, pressing them against the centre of his chest. Finally he leans in against him, resting his head against his shoulder, saying very softly, “Just for a moment, then we can go.”
“For as long as you need.” How his voice remains steady, Song Lan isn’t certain. Xingchen’s revelation about how he might not have survived infancy has shaken him more than he thought possible. The idea of a world where he never got to meet him, where he never got to see him smile or hear him talk, or feel the warm weight of him in his arms is unimaginably awful.
Closing his eyes, Song Lan rests his cheek against Xingchen’s hair. He can ignore other people’s stares if he cannot see them, if he can pretend that they are not there. For Xingchen, he thinks, there are very few things he would not do or suffer.
Part 4 = https://silver-sun.dreamwidth.org/270375.html