#*luta

[tinylongwing]

A true story:

Nighttime on Rota. It's very dark out. I begin to hear scratching at my hotel door.

I ignore it, but it continues. Eventually I decide I have to know what it is so I cautiously open up while keeping the chain in the door lock, ready to block the opening if it's a rat or feral dog.

I look down. And down a little bit more.

... Oh, good evening, sir! Yes, everything is fine here, thank you!

Just your friendly local hotel crab 🦀(Cardisoma carnifex, brown land crab)

[rinledraws]

Wuxi: in full "teacher" mode

Luta: in full "student" mode

Beiyuan: in full "my family is adorable! ❤️" mode

-

for the From Jianghu, With Love (@jianghuparty) event!

prompt: Holding Hands

(drawing video here.)

[oichrisee]

Sasha Banks 💰

n sei desenhar nota de dinheiro mas fds

[fox-from-malta]

Drew them to decorate my presentation slides, since I decided to do it on this precious film uwu

[brasilbrasilbrasil]

Marielle gigante

[evilfarmin]

I think JBY still goes grey early despite it all. It is funny how time flies. days continue.

BONUS SILLY AND BONUS SHAMANET EXPLORATION VVV

while I wouldn't deign to call Wuxi's relationship with his baby shamanet "contentious" he literally textually enjoys messing with people. see: gave jiuxiao IBS for a week unprompted.

give it up for the next generation's shamanet!!! ♥♥♥♥

[yeliuxi]

姻缘的天纹‌

Jing Qi takes his son to the market, and tells Luta of the palm reading he gave Wuxi when they were youths. Looking back now, it seems his predictions weren't actually that far off. (But not until Wuxi gets to tease him about it, of course.) (For Qi Ye Week Day 1: Fortune-telling/Poetry)

Rating: Gen Words: 1.3k Read on Ao3 (or keep reading below the cut :3)

Jing Qi brings his son with him to the market the next time he goes out, at Jing Qi's own insistence that Luta get to see the shadow puppet performers that will be in town for a week. Wuxi wasn't there to catch them sneaking from the Great Shaman's estate, but he's sure their household staff have noticed by now, and have already gone to tell Wuxi that they've left by themselves.

Luta, who has grown to now reach Jing Qi's upper arm, walks by his side, eyes wide as he takes in the bustling market around them. The days have started to grow hotter in this late spring, making the weather almost unbearable when combined with the humidity. Though they're not quite at the season for heavy rainstorms, the weather is still unpredictable this time of year. Jing Qi fans himself as he walks, keeping an eye on the cloud-dotted skies above.

"Diedie, look!" Luta suddenly says, pointing. Jing Qi follows his gaze across the crowded street. An older man has set up a stall with a low table, the large sign hung above it advertising himself as a diviner. The fortune teller is currently visited by a young man leaning over the small table with an eager expression, holding out his hand to be examined.

Palm reading.

Luta looks back at Jing Qi, almost hopeful. Jing Qi smiles. He's already well-known around the Great Shaman's estate for being indulgent and lenient toward Luta, and many would expect him to simply take him over to have his fortune told, but...

He listens a bit, enough to hear the old man cite all the correct palm characteristics and their meanings--but even Lao Qi could have spouted the same thing off. There's reading, but no true divination. Jing Qi crosses his arms, watching with Luta as the man rambles about having a marriage to a woman of great beauty and virtue, all due to his long heaven line.

Jing Qi huffs, shaking his head. "Don't listen to that man, Luta," he says instead.

Luta looks up at him, not quite disappointed, but clearly a bit surprised at his unasked question being rejected.

Besides, no one else is allowed to mess with his son except for Jing Qi.

"You don't need to see someone else to tell your fortune. Do you know why?" Jing Qi asks, letting his mouth slip into a conspiratorial smile as he leans over toward Luta.

"Why?"

"Because your Diedie is already quite skilled in divination," Jing Qi says, matter-of-fact. He straightens up again, nodding as he fans himself.

"Really?" Luta looks up at him with a hopeful gleam in his eyes.

"Really," Jing Qi says. "I once divined your teacher's fate when we still lived in Da Qing, and all of what I said came true, you know."

"But Diedie, what did you divine for him?" Luta asks, stepping closer as another person passes close by, a goat in tow.

"I read his palm, and could tell he was a very sentimental and infatuated person," Jing Qi says, smiling. "I also could tell that he would be very lucky in his love, and that it would come with many benefits. The one he admired would be very loyal and good-looking."

Luta looks him up and down after he finishes, eyes growing as round as full moons.

"Really?" comes a deep, familiar voice from behind them. Jing Qi feels his smile widen as he turns around, watching Wuxi approach. Wuxi, despite the heat, has been at the temple, and is dressed in black for the occasion. He carries his staff with him as he comes to a stop beside Jing Qi and their son. "You told me that the person I married would be a very loyal woman..."

Jing Qi shrugs as he continues to fan himself, smile turning indulgent. "Ah, Wuxi," he says. "Does it matter the gender? Everything else is true, except for one minor detail."

"You said that our journey would have many benefits, not my marriage," he says.

"Did it not?" Jing Qi asks, closing his fan to gesture around with it.

Wuxi kind of smiles, then, his lips curling ever so slightly upward. "Of course it did," he says, his gaze landing upon Luta.

"Care to join your very loyal woman and the benefit of our journey, then?" Jing Qi offers, gesturing to the path ahead through the market. Luta beams when he realizes, belatedly, that he must be the "benefit."

"Laoshi," Luta says, abandoning Jing Qi's side to attach himself to Wuxi's. "Come on! Diedie said he would take me to a shadow puppet show."

"Yes, yes," Jing Qi says. "We should get going."

Though Wuxi has taken the role of the stricter teacher in their current arrangement, he is, nevertheless, just as helpless to do anything but allow Luta to lead him away and down into the heart of the city. Jing Qi trails after them, lagging just a bit behind.

Yes, one could say there were many benefits to this... Especially for Jing Qi, it would seem.

He's loved children since his first life. Or he thinks he did; though it's a bit hard to remember, Jing Qi doesn't believe that he ever disliked them, or found them to be nuisances. But he's not so sure when having a child started to appeal to him. He wants to say it was before this lifetime, some part of some other life he no longer remembers clearly, but he does know, with certainty, that he has wanted a child since before he swore off marriage.

Refusing to marry would, of course, mean no children, unless adopted. But it was much too dangerous. Jing Qi could not raise a child in the capital. He certainly couldn't take Jiang Xue in...

"Diedie," a voice calls. "Are you coming?"

Jing Qi looks up, realizing that at some point, lost in his thoughts, he stopped walking entirely. Some of the passersby have split paths around him, no one seeming to pay him much attention.

"I'm coming," he says, walking quickly to catch up. Beside him, Wuxi shoots him a questioning glance.

"What were you thinking about?" Wuxi asks, voiced hushed, while Luta is distracted by the street vendors calling out to the crowd, drowning out the conversation around them.

Jing Qi hums. "Just that we're lucky to have Luta," he says. It's only half of a lie.

Wuxi returns his smile. It seems private, somehow, even walking in the most crowded part of the city, pressed close to each other to squeeze through the rest of the pedestrian traffic. "And he is lucky to have us."

Jing Qi sighs, turning it over in his head. Though the Great Shaman would have to select a child, chosen out of an entire generation, to be his student eventually, it was Jing Qi that happened upon an orphan one day, almost pleading with Wuxi to take him in.

(It felt like a second chance, in a way. And who knows how many of those he'll be given in this life? He's already had too many.)

It was an untraditional way for the Great Shaman to choose a student, he was told. But it was also, as far as he can tell, untraditional for the Great Shaman to take a male consort. Why should this be any different?

Jing Qi smiles and takes Wuxi's hand as they continue through the market.

He couldn't have foretold how his life would be now, how lucky he would be, even as Lao Qi. But that brat Wuxi might have, even as a teen, with his convictions that he would get Jing Qi to come with him to Nanjiang.

And he did. Wuxi wasn't so far off after all, but Jing Qi was still pretty close.

[standreamy]

Doodle Inspired on the comment post Uta Live, where she says that when children, she had to feed Luffy tangerines, because he wanted to eat them as a whole with peel and everything...

[questintheskies]

[graciedart]

starting 2024 the same way i spent 2023: asking you to look at my ocs

[filhadoeusou]

Você tem liberdade na minha guerra interna Senhor, pois no final, só somos eu e você.

[tinylongwing]

I've just wrapped up a short trip to Rota in the Northern Mariana Islands as prep for a longer research project that starts this spring. What an absolutely magical island.

[turtsmcgurts]

outlines of my next gen kiddos and in birth order~

[tamiresranna]

[jesusreidamisericordia]

Talvez Deus não exija prestação de contas delas no dia do Juízo. Diário 496.