#little grey flycatcher lets go

[sparkysparkspops]

Hoarder

We don’t laugh when we talk about how we used to live. I still swipe my hand across my arm when I think I feel something crawling on my skin. At the old house, cobwebs would grow into fine felts full of insects.

A house full of old shoes, children’s toys, and anything and everything you might need, but only two people lived there. I’d shuffle sideways through the narrow openings of rotting objects to the living room where I’d see my mother lying on the couch. She’d sometimes be like that for five days straight, with old black and white movies playing on the TV. After the fabric on the couch began turning brown beneath her, she started laying pages of magazines to cover the stained fabric. The smell of perfume ads and wet body odor spread all around the house. When she got up the magazine pages stuck to her thighs, giving the appearance of a half-plucked chicken. The collections of objects grew up the walls. Accumulated around her were fifty years of society’s expectations of what kind of woman she should be. So much “stuff,” that really had no use. 

I’d arrive to school, greasy haired and stale clothes. I saw a debate in the teacher’s eyes as I walked into the classroom. Do we report? Is it worth the trouble? Would that be better for the student? They can’t know you and your mother shower in the backyard with a garden hose because the bathtub is overflowing with mother’s darling findings. They can’t know the microwave is covered in such a thick coat of oil and grease that it works like an impromptu flycatcher. She told me to stay out of sight when the women in blazers came knocking, chipboards in hand. It wasn’t hard finding a hiding place. I’d peer at them from tiny spaces between cardboard boxes. The next day I’d tell my mother how they aren’t going to let me keep living here if she keeps all this in her house. She moved the furniture to block the windows.

One cloudy morning, a doe, with its long neck, peered over the furniture into the foyer window. She was curious about the decay happening inside. After a bad hurricane, the house seemed to sink a little into the soil. A week later I found a green vine sprouting through one of the visible floorboards. It wouldn’t be long now, till the house sunk below sea level and the walls would give in, buried. 

The day before I left for college, I walked barefoot in the heavy Florida air along the exterior and laid flat on the Saint Augustine grass, the top of my head against the house. Raindrops fell from the palmetto leaves. I felt them land on my body.  Grey clouds in the windows above me, and I could feel them drift into my eyes like two cool river streams. They waterfall from the back of my eyes, down my throat but, after that, I’m not quite sure where it goes.

Ten years later, I still can’t get clean.

[dansnaturepictures]

Rutland Water third blog: 21/08/21-Egleton Nature reserve, part 1 of 2: Ospreys, Great White Egrets, my first Yellow-legged Gull of the year and a lot else 

Today we completed our trip by coming into Egleton nature reserve at Rutland Water. We had a phenomenal day again seeing one of the longest and most varied lists of birds I ever recall seeing particularly in a summer and possibly ever as we went to all but four of the hides it felt brilliant walking between them and clocking up so many after getting into every hide at Lyndon nature reserve the other side of the water yesterday too. It means I think we have over the years been to every hide at the two stretches of this fantastic nature reserve now. And it was all the more rewarding given going to reserves where you go into the fairly confined hides with other people was something not possible for so long due to the pandemic. We have well and truly had our fill of going into hides again now which is great. We saw so many birds we would expect of this area today and other welcome additions were just ones that felt quite random and encompassed so many family groups which was fantastic.

After a lovely time in the hotel we set off for Egleton and took in the two charming and fantastic villages I love seeing Rockingham and Caldecott as well as some others this morning and I got the chance to take my obligatory photos of them taking the first in this photoset featuring the characteristic for this time of year brown fields before getting into Rockingham and second picture in this photoset in Caldecott. We then came into Egleton nature reserve and coming here for the Bird Fair on this weekend for so many years it was bizarre not being stewarded in to a field by the amazing fluorescently dressed volunteers going towards the visitor centre, but instead going into the car park an area I’ve probably never looked at here before. There were quirky moments initially though with farm animals being moved around including the sheep that roamed the fields here and yesterday at Lyndon always key parts of this rural landscape and ponies. I took the third picture in this photoset at the woodland hide by the centre. 

We then set about visiting every hide north of the visitor centre. I took the fourth and fifth pictures in this photoset early in. In the early hides Osprey and Great White Egret dominated proceedings with brilliant views of them particularly an Osprey as it soared like a barn door spectacularly over the water. Sweet brown Sand Martins and the noisy Common Terns which were a huge star today were seen well at this point too.

At the sandpiper hide young birds and waders dominated initially, with a fairly grown up humbug Great Crested Grebe chick looking great and another Mute Swan family with cygnets after yesterday I had not seen many cygnets this year as a whole so it’s felt good to catch up with them whilst away this weekend. Then a fresh clean plumaged Greenshank scuttled about on the shore of a shingle island on the lagoon it was great to see this star of the Bird Fair for us in the past I took the ninth picture in this photoset of a Greenshank at a hide further around the lagoon later on. Then spectacularly an Osprey flew in, mobbed by some of the Common Terns that were swirling around everywhere today which was interesting to see quite a big bird for any other to take on and it eventually made its way onto the Osprey post. We enjoyed some cracking views of this exceptional raptor at this hide and the next one along the Dunlin hide and I cherished this supreme species so much. Some of our best views of the whole trip of the principal species of it and some of the best chances for photos of one this weekend.

This lagoon also is the best spot at Rutland Water I feel to spot a charming and prominent landmark which I liked checking out a lot at Lyndon yesterday which looms in the distance in all weathers the stately house Burley-on-the-Hill. A familiar sight whenever we come to Rutland and it was great to take it in and take photos of it as well as put it in landscapes too like with the sixth picture I took today in this photoset. 

We reached the Dunlin hide and on the way in had a brilliant few moments for birds seeing a stunning Spotted Flycatcher in trees with a pretty charm of Goldfinches. An exceptional and strong species to see, the first I ever saw was at Lyndon when up for the Bird Fair in 2009 our second fair and this is the first I have see at Rutland Water since. It’s the third I’ve seen this year which I am very pleased with. A Redshank flew over to in front of the hide and it transpired when in here that it was one of a pair of Spotted Redshanks. A monumental sweet plumaged bird to see I’d never seen these anywhere but the coast before and never at Rutland Water before so this was very special.

In this hide also we were very fortunate as we were with a year tick yesterday at Lyndon that some very kind fellow watchers picked out a Yellow-legged Gull with a group of Great Black-backed Gulls and let us look at it in their telescope. I was over the moon to spot the striking yellowness of its legs and greyness of its back for a little bit. A brilliant bird to see as I hadn’t seen one since January 2019 at Blashford Lakes, last year breaking a five year chain of me seeing them in years since 2015 with four years running at Blashford. But there are only two places I have ever ticked and indeed even seen this bird as the first we saw was in Bird Fair 2015 during a celebrity cruise on the Rutland Belle with David Lindo the urban birder. It was fantastic to record another year tick for the trip getting one each day to take my year list to a figure I am so pleased with 175 with two I was not guaranteed to see this year. We were very thankful to the kind people some of many we saw this weekend. I also found out when home our first ever Yellow-legged Gull was exactly six years prior to Saturday another great moment! 

On the way from this hide to the Plover hide at the other end of the lagoon and before getting into Dunlin hide we had a foray into the insect and flower world with rich meadows like the bit shown in the seventh picture in this photoset attracting a Small Tortoiseshell one of the butterflies of the moment with so many about. We saw so many of these today as well showing nice continuity with some last weekend a big butterfly weekend we had I loved seeing their exotic red glow. We also saw on the wooded areas by the hides pretty female Common Darters and Common Blue damselflies. These strong bits of meadow habitat is one of my favourite bits of the reserve. So many beautiful and special wildflowers I saw here and all around the reserve today included; field scabious, viper’s-bugloss, bird’s-foot trefoil, yarrow, cow parsnip, carrot, self-heal, agrimony, hemp-Agrimony, buttercup, bellflower, thistle, teasel, black-mullein, the recently learnt by me pineappleweed, bindweed, ragwort, wood avens and Herb-Robert in the woods and great willowherb and rosebay willowherb next to each other by a path.

It was interesting to note today there was a lot more leaves of autumnal colour especially the birches which can be the first to go with their yellow colours but some other trees like red dogwood and others with red too than at home. I enjoyed other more towards autumnal sights today such as berries on trees and enjoyed trees generally a lot again yesterday and today.

At the Plover hide it was amazing to get another view of the Osprey flying and still. I saw another of my favourite birds flying into a great position to view and as heard just before and yesterday too as a beautiful Green Woodpecker darted across the lagoon. From this lovely hide we witnessed one of few wasps seen this weekend meet a perilous end at the hands of two spiders with a web around something I have seen before. There were loads of Lapwings here which was great to see and that other Greenshank seen well too. And I was thrilled to see our first of a few Egyptian Geese of the trip today here one of four new birds when we first visited the Bird Fair in 2008 like Osprey and they weren’t common Hampshire back then so it’s always a fond memory seeing these and was great to get them seen this trip I took the eighth picture in this photoset of them. 

Visiting the remainder of the hides north of the visitor centre with Common Terns noisily wheeling overhead on the path and from the hides and we had some of our best moments of the trip. Firstly at one of the hides the scrape it overlooked was covered in waders. A strong group of Snipe, Green Sandpipers a bird I have relied on this reserve to see in past years seeing a few well with an interesting moment when a Lapwing came up behind one with them both creating reflections in the water/mud as I was taking a photo a picture I tweeted on Dans_Pictures, the first Avocet I’d ever seen at Rutland Water alongside Ringed Plovers two more I am more used to seeing on the coast seen today and three intricately marked scrumptious Ruffs at the water’s edge added a further injection of variety into today and our trip I got the tenth picture in this photoset of one of these. The Ruffs meant a lot as one quarter of the four life ticks we got in our first ever Bird Fair too. This hide also presented a stunning view of a Great White Egret probably one of the best, most intimate and best photo opportunities I got of this incredibly numerous ghostly white star of the trip and place. I was able to get a DSLR with big lens shot of this one I often need the greeter zoom of my bridge camera to capture them so this made a change. There were some more of my favourite birds around in the form of sweet brown/grey female and ruby headed male Pochards.

[azaisya]

That One Burial Mounds Miscommunication but daemon au. Wangxian, 3k.

Daemons: Lan Wangji — Lan Lian (snow leopard) Wei Wuxian — Wei Qiu (maroon leaf monkey)

Lan Lian stopped in the entrance to the Demon Subdue Cave and turned to raise her nose to the wind. Lan Wangji and Wei Ying were already inside, the latter’s voice bright and warm as he led the former deeper into the cave that served as both a makeshift bedroom and workshop.

Neither Wen Qing nor the newly revived Wen Qionglin were in sight, and Lan Lian didn’t recognize any of the other Wens. She must have seen them before, but she’d been so focused on Wei Ying and Wei Qiu during that rainy encounter that she would’ve been more surprised if she had recognized any of them. One of the Wens’ daemons—a flycatcher with burnt rust feathers—noticed her watching and shied away, ducking behind her person as he steadfastly plucked weeds from a plot of land.

Lan Lian just looked away. She didn't hold it against her; most daemons were skittish around her, and she’d long since grown used to it. She was the most dangerous daemon here, and they all knew it.

She wanted to go after Lan Wangji, wanted to see for herself how Wei Ying had been living. But Wei Qiu was not with them, and Lan Lian would rather be with her.

[keep reading on ao3]

The wind smelled mostly of dirt and ash. The scent of death—rot and decay and worse—that hung over the rest of the mountain was distant here, masked by the smell of life: freshly turned dirt, smoky cooking, and humans at work. It took several long moments and a considerable concentration to track down Wei Qiu’s scent, distant and even higher up the mountain. Wordlessly, unhesitatingly, Lan Lian gathered her hind legs under her and leaped, making it from ground to roof to mountain with only the slightest pulse of spiritual energy.

She maneuvered over the rocks with ease, tail raised high in the air as she climbed ever higher, wary of the gaps between the stones that would send her plunging back towards the ground. The first hint of tension began gathering along her bond with Lan Wangji, a quiet warning of pain soon to come.

She ignored it.

Down below, from the Demon Subdue Cave, Lan Wangji sent a gentle query along their bond.

She replied with a wave of reassurance and promptly brought up her walls, blocking him firmly from her mind. He tapped against them with a thread of spiritual energy, letting her know I’m here, before he retreated entirely from their shared mindspace. She didn’t bother replying.

Ahead of her, something red caught her eye, a startling spot of color amidst the subdued greys and browns of the Burial Mounds. The part of Lan Lian that would forever belong to Wei Ying and Wei Qiu came to life with an excited oh!

Wei Qiu was perched on an outcropping of rock, absentmindedly scooping pebbles up with deft fingers and tossing them down the mountain. Her dark eyes followed them as they rained down, although she was careful to avoid the Wens, working so far down below.

Wei Qiu had always been able to travel remarkably far from her person, even for a cultivator. Lan Wangji and Lan Lian could only part a hundred feet without meditation and preparation; Wei Ying and Wei Qiu could do almost twice that. She’d constantly been wandering during their days at Cloud Recesses, puttering about the classroom instead of listening or sneaking out of the dorms to keep a lookout while Wei Ying made trouble. It would’ve been impressive, if they’d bothered to use the skill for anything useful.

Lan Lian remembered thinking that at the time, and she regretted it now. The days during the Sunshot Campaign, when Wei Ying and Wei Qiu had reappeared after months without a word, wreathed in resentful energy and brittle with fury, had made her long for those careless days. During the war, the monkey daemon had refused to part from him, clinging constantly to his side or curling in his arms.

She’d looked awful, back then: limbs skeletal and fur dull.

She still looked awful.

Lan Lian leaped up to her and let out a chirp to announce her presence.

Wei Qiu flinched, jerking upright and whirling around, sending her little pile of stones scattering. “A-Lian!” she exclaimed, “What’re you doing here? Lan Zhan’s all the way down there.”

Lan Lian settled down on the rock and folded her tail demurely over her paws. The bond between her and Lan Wangji was stretched tight, but she ignored it. Their pain tolerance was better than most; they could stand it for a while longer. “So is Wei Ying.”

Wei Qiu must have seen the tension in her movements, because she immediately abandoned her rocks and leaped over to tug at Lan Lian’s scruff. “You’re hurting yourself!” She grabbed at Lan Lian’s tail and tried fruitlessly to pull her down the mountain. “Come on, A-Lian, don’t be stubborn. Let’s go back.”

Lan Lian just put her head down on her paws and blinked languidly at the monkey daemon. It didn’t matter how much Wei Qiu pulled; Lan Lian was almost four times her weight and stubborn besides.

Finally, Wei Qiu groaned and collapsed against Lan Lian’s side. She jabbed a finger into her shoulder, irritably. “You’re so stubborn.”

Lan Lian blinked, surprised. Wei Qiu hadn’t acted nearly so tactile when they’d run into each other in Yiling; it was strange and jarring to receive the careless affection that Wei Qiu had been so generous with during their days in Cloud Recesses. During the war, she wouldn’t let anybody touch her but Jiang Yanli’s duck daemon. She’d nearly bitten Lan Lian when the leopard daemon had tried.

Now, to feel Wei Qiu curled up against her flank, was an unexpected blessing. She was warm and satisfyingly alive, but she was also worryingly thin.

Unthinkingly, Lan Lian brought her tail up to wrap around Wei Qiu’s body.

The monkey daemon huffed and buried her fingers in the fluffy fur at the tip of Lan Lian’s tail. They were silent for several long moments, basking in each other’s company and content to merely sit after all the chaos of the rushed lunch in Yiling and Wen Qionglin’s resurrection.

Finally, Wei Qiu whispered, “Is Lan Zhan listening?”

Lan Lian shook her head.

“Oh, good.” Wei Qiu laughed, the sound too strained to be truly humorous. “I still think it’s weird that you keep secrets from each other. A-Xian and I tell each other everything.”

Lan Lian hummed tonelessly, because they both knew that wasn’t what she’d really meant to say.

Wei Qiu grumbled good-naturedly, “I mean, you’re literally the same person. What kind of secrets can you even have? It’s not like you can wander around without him.”

Lan Lian just made that same sound. Wei Qiu’s fingers scritched at her tail, right in the middle of the last dark splotch at its tip. It felt strange, but Lan Lian hoarded every touch Wei Qiu chose to give her with the selfishness of one who knew such touches were limited.

Finally, Wei Qiu mumbled, “A-Xian’s not gonna say it, but thank you for stopping by and letting us know that Shi— that Jiang-guniang is getting married. It means a lot.”

Lan Lian nodded. “We came for you,” she confessed. It was a secret that Lan Wangji would keep, poorly, for as long as he could, but it slipped out effortlessly from Lan Lian’s lips. It didn’t feel like a secret at all, really. It just was.

Wei Qiu laughed again, but this time it was delighted—and shocked in its delight. “A-Lian! You’re not even going to try pretending you were out night hunting?”

Lan Lian wanted to flick her tail irritably to fully express her disdain for that absolutely terrible lie, but Wei Qiu was still holding it. Instead, she said simply, “Lying is forbidden.” She paused, and then added, “Wangji is not a good liar.”

“He’s not,” Wei Qiu agreed easily, “Besides, you can find much more exciting prey closer to Cloud Recesses.”

Immediately, Lan Lian said, “Would you like that?”

Wei Qiu stiffened, all of the levity dropping away from her face. She looked dangerous, despite her little claw-less, fang-less body. Lan Lian mourned the loss of their easy rapport even as she felt herself tensing for a fight. Wei Qiu’s voice was sharp as knives as she hissed, “Really, A-Lian? Is that what you’re here for? Is Lan Zhan down there to convince A-Xian to turn in the Stygian Tiger Seal and return to Gusu meek as a defanged kitten?”

Lan Lian was not Lan Wangji. They were one, but they were not the same. Lan Wangji would freeze up at such an accusation, would fall back to powerless pleas and helpless horror, would spiral into guilt and self-hatred at the reminder of his ever-loathed desire to hide Wei Wuxian away in the Jingshi.

“What are you going to do if we say no again?” Wei Qiu continued, “Are you going to drag us there?”

Lan Lian was not Lan Wangji. She should, probably, bite her tongue and do as he would. But she was a small, wounded thing borne from a woman with a scavenger for a daemon.

A snarl curled around her lips before she could stop it, and Wei Qiu reacted immediately, throwing herself away from Lan Lian and muscles already half-prepared to flee further. She looked, now, like a true prey animal: tensed to flee at the slightest provocation, certain that she was staring death itself in the face.

Unable to keep her voice from rising dangerously, Lan Lian growled, “Stop it.”

Wei Qiu laughed, but it wasn’t one of her real laughs. It was too loud and too desperate and too afraid. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Lan Lian bared her teeth and tried not to notice how Wei Qiu skipped back a few more feet at the sight of them. She wanted to get up, to chase after her, but her bond with Lan Wangji was pulled tight enough as it was and she knew that Wei Qiu would never forgive her if she forced this now. And so she just laid there, head stretching ever so slightly towards her friend, and tried to remember patience. “You do.”

Wei Qiu scoffed. “Well, I say I don’t, so—”

“Why do you fight us?” Lan Lian interrupted. She shouldn’t have, but Wei Qiu’s voice was going loud and mocking in a way that meant she was about to deflect anything and everything and Lan Lian was just so very tired of not understanding why.

Wei Qiu’s expression contorted into a sneer. It looked terribly out of place on a face that wore smiles as masks. “Why should we? We already know what you and Lan Zhan think.” She leaned forwards, a taunting streak of red against a dull grey backdrop. “You think we’re unhinged. You think we can’t control it.” She waved a hand at the Wens, still working down below. “Does this look like the work of an unhinged demonic criminal to you?”

Lan Lian was so shocked that she could only stare. Their eyes were level, with her lying on her belly and Wei Qiu on her feet. She could see every shadow, every reflection, in Wei Qiu’s dark eyes, but she could see nothing to explain the nonsense that had just come out of her mouth. Helplessly, she said, “What?”

Wei Qiu shifted in place, dancing backwards and then forwards again as if unable to decide whether to flee or stay. “Look, A-Lian, I’m sure that you and everybody else think that it’d be safer for everybody if the Stygian Tiger Seal wasn’t here—” And here she let out another too-false, too-loud bark of laughter. “—but I really fucking doubt everybody else’s motives are as righteous as yours! We don’t want this any more than you do!” She looked down the mountain, eyes dark. “All we want,” she continued, quieter, “is to see how many fucking radishes we can convince this mountain of corpses to give us.”

Lan Lian couldn’t tear her eyes away from Wei Qiu. The monkey daemon looked suddenly small, as if her outburst had stolen something vital from her. She just sat there, spine curling inwards and head bowed. Lan Lian had no choice but to say, “That’s not why.”

Wei Qiu’s eyes drifted back towards her, slow and suspicious. “What?”

“We don’t think you’re unhinged,” Lan Lian corrected.

Wei Qiu just sighed, the sound heavy with exhaustion. “Whatever. You know what I meant.”

Lan Lian shook her head, tail lashing with distress. “We just want to help.”

Wei Qiu uncurled, just slightly. “Oh.” There was no joy in her gaze. “You can’t though, A-Lian. You know that, right?”

“Why not?” Lan Lian demanded.

Wei Qiu laughed. This laugh was neither fake nor real. It was just a subdued, tired thing, much like Wei Qiu herself. “Can you help all of them too?”

Lan Lian didn’t bother looking down at the Wens. She didn’t care about them. That was wrong, she knew. She cared about them on an abstract level, in the vague way that she cared about all injustices that she couldn’t do anything about. Lan Wangji cared more; he was the better of the two of them. But she loved very few, and she would defend her few with her dying breath. It was mean of her, she knew. But she also knew that there was nothing she could do for the Wens. Instead, she said, ““Wangji has spent months learning and practicing new music.”

“Really? This again?” Wei Qiu demanded, without any heat. Her voice was so very tired. “They don’t deserve this, you know.”

Lan Lian didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what she could say.

Down below, she could feel the faintest hint of Wangji’s own distress. She doubted his conversation with Wei Ying was going any better than this one. She didn’t lower her mental walls to check, though. This was not a conversation she wanted to share with him.

Still a good dozen feet away, Wei Qiu frowned at her. “What’s with that look? What’re you thinking?”

Lan Lian tried not to stare quite so intensely. It was hard; her eyes couldn’t help but trace the contours of Wei Qiu’s bones beneath her skin. Lan Lian had never seen a daemon look so haggard unless it was dying. The thought terrified her. After a beat, she said, “I want to help you.”

Wei Qiu stared at her. There was something strange in her expression, some deep note of longing that meant that she’d heard Lan Lian’s words. Lan Lian wanted to help Wei Qiu. Not Lan-Lian-and-Lan-Zhan. Lan Lian. “Oh,” Wei Qiu said again, faintly.

Encouraged, Lan Lian continued, “I won’t tell Wangji.” And Wei Qiu could not tell Wei Wuxian, could allow whatever strange wall that existed between their people stay between them.

But Wei Qiu shook her head. “I don’t keep secrets from A-Xian.”

“Let me try,” Lan Lian said, just barely managing to keep herself from pleading, “Perhaps I can cleanse some of the resentment from you.”

For some reason, that was what made Wei Qiu’s expression close off. She shrank in on herself, twitching away. “It won’t help.”

Lan Lian had no idea what she’d said. “Why not?”

Immediately, Wei Qiu sprang to her feet. Resentful energy flickered from the ground around them, black and hungry as it swirled over her fingers. “It’s none of your business! You can’t help me, A-Lian.”

Lan Lian knew, suddenly, that the conversation was over. She wasn’t sure if it’d ever really begun. But she still had to say, “It’s hurting you.”

“We have it under control,” Wei Qiu snapped.

Lan Lian snarled at the we, because that wasn’t what Lan Lian was talking about. “Have you looked at yourself?” she asked, meanly.

Wei Qiu sneered back, just as mean. “My health is my own business.”

Stung, Lan Lian said, “A-Qiu—”

“Fuck, A-Lian!” Wei Qiu cried, springing to her feet, “Don’t you know when to stop? There is nothing you can do for us.” She leaned forwards, eyes dark and resentful energy sparking around her. “Get lost.” Without another word, she whirled around and leaped from the mountain, vanishing into the trees below.

Lan Lian sprang to her feet and made to follow, but her bond with Lan Wangji wrenched painfully tight before she managed to go more than a few steps, freezing her in place with a throbbing, white-hot pain. She could do nothing but watch, bewildered and disbelieving as the tiny speck of Wei Qiu’s red fur shrank ever further into the distance.

—

A-Qiu heard the low moaning of A-Lian’s roar as it echoed down the mountain, heard her pain and anger and fear as clear as day. But she didn’t turn around. She swung from tree to tree, further and faster than A-Lian could, until there was nothing but her and the sky and the dead earth beneath her fingers.

She knew, somehow, that that was the last time she’d ever hear her friend’s voice again.

With a choked scream, A-Qiu fell to the ground and curled tightly around herself, letting the grief for all that she could have had spill out of her. The Burial Mounds—the place that had broken her and saved her all at once—drank it in.

—

Later, after Lan Zhan and A-Lian were far enough away, A-Qiu emerged to throw herself at Wei Wuxian.

He startled, badly, and dragged her from his shoulder into his arms. “Where have you been?” he demanded, grumpy because it was better than being sad.

She bit at his thumb for that. There were no lies between them. “I didn’t want to watch them leave.”

Wei Wuxian’s fingers tightened around her narrow frame. “I don’t think you’ll ever have to,” he murmured, melancholy dragging at his words.

A-Qiu buried her face in his chest. It was for the best, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. It made her feel small and sad and slimy to realize that her last conversation with A-Lian had been an argument. She wondered if Wei Wuxian and Lan Zhan had argued. She hoped not. They didn’t deserve their last memories of each other to be tarnished by that.

“Qiu-jie,” A-Yuan called, as unphased as ever by her sudden appearance, “Qiu-jie, don’t be sad! There’s going to be a fancy dinner tonight.”

A-Qiu emerged to grin down at the boy. She didn’t even falter when she saw that A-Chen was in the form of a tiny leopard cub, white-furred and dark-spotted to match A-Lian. It would’ve been cute, if A-Qiu’s heart hadn’t been a bruised, soft thing. “Well then!” she declared, voice pitched bright with a cheer she didn’t feel, “Now we have to go back for dinner.”

Wei Wuxian laughed, the sound as sorrow-bright as her voice. “Aiya, but we’re so far? How will we get back without getting lost?”

Immediately, A-Yuan’s expression settled into the fierce concentration of a child given a mission. “Don’t worry!” he declared, “A-Yuan knows the way! Follow A-Yuan!” With great importance, he spun around and began walking back up the hill with his tiny, careful steps, A-Chen following behind with her black-tipped tail raised like a banner.

“Ah, our A-Yuan is so intelligent and grown up now!” Wei Wuxian declared, lips twitching into a genuine smile at the adorable picture A-Yuan and A-Chen made.

A-Qiu snuggled into his arms, comforted by the familiar rocking of his gait as he followed behind A-Yuan. If she pretended hard enough, she could almost pretend that she could still feel their bond thrumming in the back of her mind. She could almost pretend that touching him didn’t feel the same as touching anything else.

(Could almost pretend that they were still whole and unbroken)

[ao3]

[mdzs daemon au]