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tmariea · 11 months ago

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Sunflower Child

Fandom: MDZS/Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation/The Untamed

Characters: Lan Sizhui, Wen Ning, Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji

Rating: G

Summary:

Most young witches, the ones who live with their birth families, know that they are witches before their magic manifests. Most young witches don’t learn they are witches by turning their skin purple while trying to bake cupcakes for their best friend’s birthday. Lan Sizhui, as he is learning very quickly, is not most young witches.

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Written for this year's MDZS Secret Santa event!

Most young witches, the ones who live with their birth families, know that they are witches before their magic manifests. Most have watched their parents, or siblings, or aunts and uncles doing magic, just another facet of daily life. Many even have some rudimentary lessons when they’re young, so they know what and how to expect the day when their powers arrive.

Most young witches don’t learn they are witches by turning their skin purple while trying to bake cupcakes for their best friend’s birthday.

Lan Sizhui, as he is learning very quickly, is not most young witches.

He isn’t even the one who notices. When Sizhui’s a-die — a man of very few facial expressions for all he is a man of strong emotions — freezes in the doorway, eyes wide, and calls, “Wei Ying! I think you need to get down here!” that’s when Sizhui knows something is very wrong. He freezes, mouth full of cupcake and frosting, and takes quick stock. He doesn’t feel like he’s bleeding anywhere, he hasn’t knocked any of the glass bowls onto the floor and broken them, and the rabbits are visible through the door to the living room, perfectly safe and content in their pen.

Sizhui goes to put the cupcake down, and that’s when he notices his hand. He lets out a loud yelp and jumps hard enough that his stool tips over backwards and spills him onto the ground with a thump. A very small part of him, whichever part isn’t panicking at the moment, registers the sound of his baba coming down the stairs, and then beginning to laugh at him.

“Baba! What? I don’t know— how—? Baba it’s not funny!” Sizhui exclaims from the floor. He doesn’t mean to sound sulky, but it’s kind of hard when he’s also maybe a little bit trying not to cry.

“No it is not,” a-die agrees, kneeling down to help him sit up, and then running fingers through his hair to check for lumps.

“No, ah, sorry A-Yuan, Lan Zhan.” Baba stifles another round of giggles, by the way his ponytail shakes and his mouth is twitching around an attempt at a serious expression. “Are you OK? Does it hurt at all?”

Sizhui shakes his head, which has mercifully escaped injury by the feel of it. He lifts his other hand and finds it just as purple, all the way up his arm, but bizarre appearances aside it doesn’t feel any different. “What happened?” he asks, as if his fathers are any more likely to know. And then, hesitantly, “Is it everywhere?”

“Mn,” a-die confirms, with a solemn nod.

Baba crouches down in front of him, takes his hands and gives them a little squeeze. “It’ll be alright. Who knew our little radish would grow into a little witch, huh?”

“A witch,” Sizhui repeats. His voice sounds kind of far away and high pitched to his own ears. He leans back against a-die’s shoulder, hoping maybe he can absorb some of his perpetually-calm exterior.

Sizhui knows about witches of course. They’re not common, but there’s usually a couple in most towns, maybe a dozen or two in a larger city. He thinks that a lot of them even do the same normal things as everyone else, just with magic. And flying brooms. He can’t picture himself on a flying broom, no definitely not. That is something to freak out about later. “H-how can I be a witch? How did you not know?”

“Witchcraft runs in families,” a-die says from behind him, voice softer.

The adoption agency hadn’t had any information on Sizhui’s birth family. He nods; it makes at least a little bit of sense. “Then, I did this? But how? I don’t know any magic.”

“It doesn’t usually show up until you’re a teenager,” baba supplies, “and then can do some odd things if you don’t know what you’re doing. I went to school with a couple of siblings who were witches for a little while; some of the things that happened around them were so funny!”

Baba stands up suddenly, with a little, “oh!” and heads inexplicably towards the living room. He returns with Bichen, and deposits her in Sizhui’s lap, before pulling out his phone and wandering away again.

Sizhui instinctively begins to run his fingers through Bichen’s white fur, feeling himself start to actually calm down. His voice sounds less strange when he asks the next question on his mind, “If I don’t know magic, how do I undo it? A-die, am I going to be stuck like this? No one can see me like this!”

“I think your baba is working on that,” a-die replies.

As he trails off, they hear from the other room, “Wen Ning! Hey it’s been forever, how are you and Wen Qing doing?” A pause, and then his voice starts to get closer again as the loop of his pacing takes him back across the house. “Do you still live in the area, or know any witches who do? Yeah, my kid. No, no, nothing serious! But, I think he may need a crash course in magic.” Baba arrives back in the kitchen just in time to give them a wink and a thumbs up. “You’re the best, we’ll see you in a little while!”

Sizhui thinks he may disagree with the assessment that this is ‘nothing serious,’ but the rest sounds promising. Wen Ning lives in Dafan, a small town about an hour’s drive away, so they settle Bichen back in her pen and all three pile into the car. A-die drives, and baba sits in the back with Sizhui, like he used to do when Sizhui was six and would fall asleep on his lap on the way back from family functions. The words ‘I’m not a kid anymore,’ are on Sizhui’s tongue, but he swallows them back down when baba takes his (purple) hand. Which is still really weird, he’s not going to lie, but it’s not nearly so scary now that they’re going to see a witch his baba knows who can fix it. The witch thing in general though, maybe it’s kind of cool but it’s also so much; he’s not sure what to feel about it yet.

It seems Sizhui is destined to repeat the whole little-kid-backseat-thing, because he falls asleep on baba’s shoulder not ten minutes into the drive, lulled by the motion of the car and the traditional music a-die always plays through the radio. He wakes up to baba’s fingers carding through his hair, just as they hit Dafan. It’s a small town, nestled at the base of the mountains. Sizhui recognizes it from weekend markets his fathers have brought him to before, or hikes he’s taken nearby with classmates.

“There you are,” baba says, as Sizhui sits up to watch the traditional buildings of the town square slide past outside the window. “I think the magic might make you tired at first, until you get a handle on it. I always remember Wen Ning taking naps in the strangest places.”

“Ah,” Sizhui, replies simply, less comforted by that fact than slightly mortified by the possibility of falling asleep somewhere unintended. He changes the subject as the car takes a turn onto a smaller street leading back towards the edge of town. “Does he not live in Dafan?”

“Mn,” a-die confirms, “a few minutes out of town.”

The house that they pull up at is the only one along it’s stretch of road, on the last piece of flat ground before the land starts to rise up into foothills. It’s built of dark brown wood, with a roof of curved black tiles and large windows divided into many tiny square panes. All of that is secondary to the greenery bursting from the yard, and around the edges of the building. Ivies crawl the walls, so thick in places that it would be hard to tell what the house looks like beneath, and flowers take up almost the whole fenced area at the front of the house in a riot of color doing it’s level best to overtake the path.

Baba doesn’t seem to be intimidated by the chaos, leading them up towards the porch and setting roses and lavender swaying as he passes. Sizhui and his a-die follow at a more sedate pace. The scent is just as much of a jumble, but to Sizhui’s surprise it’s not overwhelming. Instead it smells as if someone bottled every scent memory he’s ever had of sun-drenched summers into one tiny patch of land.

The door to the house, which baba knocks on with two short, sharp raps, is a bright poppy red. It opens not a minute later to reveal a person who Sizhui presumes is the witch they’re here to see. He doesn’t get a good look though, before baba yanks him into a crushing hug with a cry of, “Wen Ning!”

“Wei Wuxian, hello,” the man says, slightly muffled from where his face is squashed into baba’s shirt. It sounds resigned, and Sizhui can’t help but laugh quietly; his baba is known to inspire that feeling in people.

Once he’s released, the witch stands up and straightens out his oversized gray sweater and cardigan, which he’s wearing despite the August heat. His long hair is only loosely pulled back from the front and out of his face, but the rest is left untied. He looks like he might be about Sizhui’s fathers’ age, but his round face and the swathed-in-blankets impression of his clothing makes him seem younger. He turns to Sizhui and his a-die, and bows. Sizhui wonders if it isn’t in part a ploy to hide his expression, as he can see the corners of his mouth twitch just a bit as he takes in the magical mess Sizhui has made of himself. He straightens and says, “I’m Wen Qionglin, local witch and apothecary for Dafan. Most everyone calls me Wen Ning, though.” His voice is a little slow and halting, and quiet, almost difficult to hear from where he stands on the porch.

A-die bows with the posture and formality as if he were greeting a great teacher. “Lan Wangji, Wei Ying’s husband and father to Lan Sizhui.” Sizhui does his best to copy his a-die’s bow. “Thank you for helping on short notice.”

“I really appreciate it,” Sizhui adds, with feeling. He figures there were probably witches who lived closer to them in Gusu, but there is something comforting about Wen Ning not being a complete stranger. Or perhaps it’s result of the softness the man himself seems to exude.

“And I’m Wei Ying, which you still won’t call me after all these years!”

Wen Ning just gives a small smile and a sheepish duck of his head in response to that. “Nice to meet you. It’s no trouble to help Wei Wuxian’s” - baba just pouts - “family. Come in, please.”

The three of them follow Wen Ning into the house. Sizhui is immensely interested to see what a witch’s home looks like. His first impression is that there are quite a lot of dark colored walls, the paint in the living room where Wen Ning settled them such a deep emerald to be almost black. But there are enough windows, and light wood furniture upholstered in cream and dusty-red fabric, that it feels still strangely open and airy. There are a handful of pictures on the walls, mostly Wen Ning with a tiny woman who looks a lot like him; Sizhui assumes this is the Wen Qing that baba had mentioned. Every other inch of the walls are covered in shelves packed to the brim with plants, and some random stands and side tables besides. There are leaves in every color of green, from the palest, almost-white to deep jewel greens, and even some in reds or deep purples. One corner of the room has been given entirely over to the strangest citrus tree Sizhui has ever seen, bearing what looks like lemons, limes, oranges, and some very bizarre thing shaped like a hand, all at the same time.

Their host gestures for them to sit and disappears into the next room for a moment - presumably the kitchen - and returns with a tea set and a large wooden box. He sets both on the low coffee table. “Sorry, the tea selection may be a little overwhelming. I’ve got most anything you might want in here,” Wen Ning pats the top of the box affectionately, “magical or non-magical both! Oh, although most of the magical ones are medicinal, so ask me what they do first, or if they’ll interact with anything you already take. They have the red labels.”

Sizhui and his baba lean over the box to start inspecting. He actually reads the labels, while baba just starts grabbing things and smelling them. A-die asks for a simple ginseng, which Wen Ning puts aside while the other two continue their search.

“Butterfly pea?” Sizhui asks, pulling out a small jar that looks full of dried blue and yellow flowers.

“Oh that’s a fun one,” Wen Ning replies, with a little smile playing around the edges of his mouth. “It makes bright blue tea, but turns pink if you add lemon juice.”

“Ah, no thank you.” Sizhui doesn’t quite drop the jar as if it’s burning him, but it’s a near thing.

“I’ll have that one!” Baba exclaims, plucking the jar back up.

“Ba!” Sizhui groans, at the same time as his a-die says in his warning voice, “Wei Ying.”

Baba just sighs and puts the tea back, before handing over a different one that smells distinctly sharp and cinnamon-y. Leave it to him to find a tea that is somehow also spicy.

Sizhui just watches as Wen Ning scoops out the leaves into individual strainer baskets over each cup, and pours. He notices that the witch’s movements are a little stiff and stilted, like his voice, but he makes both cups without spilling any. “I have a nice chamomile.” He says once he’s done and waiting for the tea to steep. “Something simple and familiar?”

Sizhui lets out a breath. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

Wen Ning makes two cups of the chamomile, and takes the second one for himself, before settling into an arm chair across from them. “So you turned yourself purple,” he starts.

Sizhui thinks he might be blushing. He is also very glad there aren’t any mirrors in his immediate eye-line, because he does not want to know what that looks like. A-die makes a small gesture from next to him, not quite nudging, but a clear ‘mind your manners.’ “Yes, Apothecary Wen. I’d never done anything, ah, magical before today.”

Wen Ning gives a small, jerky nod. “Do you know what caused it? What were you doing before?”

“Maybe? I was baking. It’s Jingyi’s - that’s my best friend - birthday tomorrow, so I made some cupcakes. I was trying one when a-die noticed…” he trails off, looking at his purple fingertips. Blackberry cupcakes. The exact same color as the frosting.

“Cooking mishaps are pretty common. Qing-jie wouldn’t let me near the kitchen for a while. Until I got more control over my magic.”

“You turned yourself purple before too?” Sizhui exclaims. He’d definitely feel better if that was the case.

“Not that exactly. I made a chicken soup once that crowed like a rooster when we tried to eat it, though. That was really… disconcerting. And some cookies that made Qing-jie breathe out sparkles all day. That’s when she kicked me out.

“Magic, when it’s new and you don’t have anywhere to direct it, comes out in a lot of ways that are both weird and logical at the same time. It likes to follow the path of what we put into it - ingredients, materials, sounds or words, gestures - and what meanings we focus on for them. If that makes any sense? Sorry, I haven’t really taught anyone before.” Wen Ning had dropped his eyes to his lap partway through his explanation, but he raises them back up after he finishes speaking.

Sizhui risks a quick glance at his parents to see what they’re making of it. A-die has a blank, polite look on his face, so he’s probably not sure. Baba is nodding though. Which, baba likes a puzzle, or those mystery stories where you have to put clues together. “The frosting was this dark pink,” he muses, trying to think about it like a puzzle. “I added a few drops of blue color because I didn’t think it looked enough like blackberry. I was thinking it needed to be more purple!”

Wen Ning gives him two sharp nods and a smile. “That’s probably it!”

“So, does that mean you know how to fix it?”

“I have some ideas. Finish your tea, and then we’ll go out to the garden.”

Once all of the cups are drained, Wen Ning leads Sizhui - just the two of them, his fathers elected to stay in the house where it’s cool - through the kitchen and a room that was likely meant as a sun room but has been turned into a veritable tropical greenhouse instead. After walking through the heat and humidity, the summer sun is nearly a relief.

Stepping outside, all Sizhui can do is stare. Wen Ning had called this a garden. And while he doesn’t think it’s quite large enough to be a farm, it stretches hundreds of feet back from the house until it hits a copse of trees just before the land begins to rise towards the foothills.

“This is…” Sizhui starts, and then backtracks on just saying an incredulous ‘this is a garden?’ since it feels somewhat rude. “Do you take care of this all by yourself?”

“Mn. Mostly. I have an uncle that helps get things started in the spring. Qing-jie will pitch in if she’s in town, too.”

“It’s amazing. Is it all for your magic?”

Wen Ning shakes his head. “Some. I just eat the vegetables, and sell the extra at the town market,” he gestures towards a large patch where the red of ripening tomatoes stands out against a backdrop of trellised leaves, and winter squash vines sprawl over wide swaths of ground. He tilts his head to another section next, a riot of color even more chaotic than the front garden, “The cut flowers too, and the teas. I use a little magic on all of it though, to help it grow and keep the pests off. But we need the herb garden.”

He leads Sizhui not immediately to the herb garden, but instead to a wooden cabinet nestled up against the house, protected by the eaves. From inside he pulls a basket, a set of clippers, and two sets of gloves, and deposits all but his own gloves into Sizhui’s arms.

Sizhui follows him out into the rows between sections of garden, through the warm afternoon full of the sound of buzzing insects. It smells just as much like heaven out here as the front garden did, and there’s a breeze lightly stirring his hair and keeping it from sticking to the back of his neck. By all rights, it should be a perfect, relaxing summer afternoon, but he’s starting to feel unsettled again. “Apothecary Wen, you said you had ideas,” he starts. He really shouldn’t doubt Wen Ning when he’s so kind as to help, but part of him had thought that a trained, adult witch could just wave a hand and he’d be back to normal. “Is there not a spell in a book, or a potion recipe?”

Sizhui is more expressive of his a-die, he knows that. But everyone is always complimenting him on his maturity, a calmness and steadiness beyond his years. And it’s not quite that he tries to hide it when he’s scared or upset, but usually it’s only his fathers who can see it, his best friends every once in a while.

Wen Ning gets it right away, stopping and turning back, placing a hand on Sizhui’s shoulder and bending down a little so they’re on the same eye level. “No, but we will fix it, I promise. I have recipes for a lot of common things, headaches and stomach aches and anxiety. I also have a lot of tinctures and creams for psoriasis and acne and skin clarity, which we’ll draw on a lot of those ingredients and their properties today. But magic does weird, unexpected things sometimes, so as witches we learn to be creative.”

Sizhui takes a deep breath and lets it out, and decides that it is comforting, if Wen Ning is used to getting creative with magic. He’s even done a little bit of improvising himself before, playing around with tunes on his guqin or the piano, and they’ve come out OK. Maybe magic will be the same. He hopes. “Alright.”

Wen Ning studies his face for a moment more. Sizhui had noticed the witch looking at him slightly more than he might have expected while they were having their tea, but he’d figured it was the oddity of having a purple teenage boy on his couch. But now it’s almost as if he’s looking for something. Before Sizhui can start to feel uncomfortable, Wen Ning nods and straightens up again, then continues to walk through the garden. This time, they walk side by side. “Good. Plus, I’m very good at magical skincare. It’s my best seller,” Wen Ning says with a wink.

It startles a laugh out of Sizhui, and decides he feels almost all the way better.

As soon as they step off the gravel path and into the main body of the garden itself, it’s clear that this is where Wen Ning is most in his element. His soft face brightens up with excitement as he trails his fingers amongst the leaves and begins rattling off common names, scientific names, and properties. Enough so that Sizhui begins to worry about remembering it all, before Wen Ning stops and says with an embarrassed air, “Most of this we don’t need today. Just useful information, if you decide to shape your magic in similar ways. We actually only need the mint, it’s good for focus and concentration, so it should help you channel your magic.”

There are a lot of things in that statement that Sizhui has questions about, but he starts with, “My magic?”

Wen Ning looks down, a sheepish expression crossing his face. “Ah, sorry. I’ll go through the ingredients and guide you, but undoing the effects when our magic does unexpected things is one of the first lessons a young witch does.”

Sizhui wonders if that’s something he would have known if he had grown up with other witches, with his birth family. It causes a little pang in his stomach, part sadness part curiosity. One that he’s not entirely unfamiliar with, for all that he loves his fathers and wouldn’t trade them for the world. He shakes off the thought instead of letting it linger, and tells Wen Ning, “Alright, I’ll try.”

They pick the mint. It’s in it’s own little patch, surrounded by a thin brick border inscribed with runes that Wen Ning explains, with a laugh, are to keep it from taking over the whole garden. He points out some other plants as well that aren’t ready for harvest yet - fennel, red ginsing, licorice - which they’ll use dried from what’s stored in the house.

Then they circle around to the other side of the garden, to collect rose hips. There are roses in every color and size growing, red and pink and yellow and purple, solids and two-color, buds with loose, ruffly petals and ones with smooth petals packed tightly together. The rose garden is a little more orderly than the rest of the cut flowers too, and Sizhui thinks it looks like it’s straight out of a magazine, but Wen Ning makes a frustrated little sigh as soon as they approach a large, trellised bush covered with pink roses.

“Is everything alright?”

Wen Ning waves off his concern. “It’s just beetles. I’m going to go get something for them, if you’ll pick some rose hips from this bush. We’ll need 15.”

It doesn’t take long; the bush has plenty to harvest. It also has plenty of the iridescent beetles about the size of a fingernail which had so upset Wen Ning. He hasn’t come back yet with his beetle solution though, so Sizhui starts to walk down one of the paths through the roses while he waits. His attention is drawn instead to the tall stalks of sunflowers past the roses. Some are short enough to only be at eye level on him, others rise over a foot above his head. He can’t resist reaching out to touch the center of one, where all the little seeds point outwards. He has the faintest memory of looking up and up and up, all the way up to so many huge yellow flowers he could barely see the sky. He’d reached for them, in the silent begging of a small child, until someone with a face he can’t remember had clipped a flower as big as his torso and placed it in his lap.

“Do you like sunflowers, Lan Sizhui?”

Sizhui jerks a little in surprise at Wen Ning’s sudden appearance, his thumb pressing roughly against the scratchy surface. “They’re pretty. And almost nostalgic? I feel like I may have spent time around a lot of them when I was little.” He turns around to see the witch smiling widely, at either him or the flowers, he’s not quite sure.

“I know the feeling,” Wen Ning replies. “My popo loves them, grows even more than me. So many that Qing-jie and I would play hide-and-seek among the stalks. It makes sense though; they’re my family’s symbol.” He steps up to the sunflower that Sizhui had been looking at, takes the clippers from the basket, and snips the flower from it’s stalk, before nestling it between the mint and the rose hips.

“Is it for the, for my uh…”

“No, just for you. So you can take something nice with you, not just a memory of your magic doing things you didn’t want.”

“Thank you Apothecary Wen!” Sizhui bows, the basket swinging at his elbow as he does.

“You’re welcome, but it’s nothing.” Wen Ning leads them back to the house, and Sizhui trails just a step behind, still brushing his hand lightly against the sunflower as he does.

Inside, they wave to Sizhui’s fathers - a-die has found a book on plants and herbs to read, and baba is sprawled across the couch and his lap, on his phone - and grab an orange off of the odd tree, for the peel according to Wen Ning. Then they go into a room which would be a home office in anyone else’s house. Instead it has been transformed with strings of drying herbs strung up across the whole ceiling, and open shelves full of big glass jars and metal tins against two of the walls. The another is taken up by a long wooden workbench, the surface of which looks like it has been stained frequently over the years. Wen Ning gestures for Sizhui to put the basked on the bench, and then begins collecting tools for their work.

“You mentioned something earlier about how I decide to shape my magic, what did you mean?” Sizhui asks, accepting a heavy mortar and pestle that Wen Ning passes him.

Wen Ning is quiet for a moment as he collects a few jars of dried herbs, a thoughtful look on his face. “Remember I said magic comes out of ingredients, and thoughts. Our thoughts and magic are the real catalyst, but the ingredients are like a framework to direct it.” Sizhui nods; he does remember even if he’s not sure if he understands yet. “I use things people do think of as ‘ingredients,’ herbs and flowers and stuff. Which,” Wen Ning measures out a few spoonfuls of fennel seeds into the mortar and pestle, “you’ll need to grind that fine. ‘Ingredients’ can be anything that might provide direction though. Lots of people work with sigils and talismans. I do sometimes, if I need something lasting - like the mint border. People can speak spells, or move their bodies - I’ve seen magic like sign language and magic like dance. You can do magic with sewing, or pottery - although that’s usually sewing or carving sigils into the cloth or clay - or with cooking, or music.”

“I play guqin,” Sizhui blurts at the thought of music. Although, maybe he shouldn’t play for a little while, until he learns some control. That’s a sad thought, but then what could he do with it later?

Wen Ning nods. “I can see if I remember anyone nearby who uses music. Or I can ask around, if that’s something you want to try.”

Sizhui is surprised. He’d thought maybe Wen Ning would be able to teach him magic. But he tells himself that it’s not as if they’d talked about it. He was only helping out in an emergency, not committing himself to being a teacher for however long it took to learn. “OK, thank you,” he says, and changes the topic. “So then, what do witches do?”

That startles a laugh out of Wen Ning. He tilts his head to the side as he looks at Sizhui, long hair spilling over the front of his shoulder. “For jobs?”

“Mn.” The question of what having magic means for the rest of his life has been one of the bigger ones knocking around in Sizhui’s head all afternoon. He doesn’t say it though; it’s the kind of question that usually causes an adult to say he’s really mature, when actually he’d rather they say something reassuring instead.

“Anything really. You could probably guess, but there’s something about magic that matches up really nicely with creating. A lot of witches are artists. Qing-jie is a doctor and a researcher. She studies combining magical medicine with science to use in her practice. Uncle Four is in construction. He uses talismans to help balance loads more safely, or write fire and earthquake protection into the frame of buildings. Some don’t use magic for a career, and want to just do it for fun. You’ve got time though, to think about any of that, after you learn. And after you’re not purple anymore. That looks fine enough.”

Sizhui dumps the fennel into a clean glass jar Wen Ning brought out, and then they work on chopping and grinding the rest together. The witch writes down all of the individual ingredients and the properties they’re trying to draw on for the tincture, too. Which, Wen Ning says would be better than a cream or a lotion so Sizhui doesn’t have to worry about missing spots, which is a mortifying thought if there ever was one.

Once all of the ingredients are prepared, Wen Ning clears off the table and places only the jar and the list of ingredients in front of Sizhui. “Now, to add the magic which will activate it. Have you ever meditated before?”

He nods, “A-die does, and I join him sometimes.”

“That makes things easier. Begin as if you’re meditating, and I’ll talk you through where to direct your focus.”

Sizhui pulls over a stool and gets comfortable, before starting to count his breaths.

Wen Ning’s voice, already soft and slow, becomes even more so as he instructs, “Good. Focus on the center of your chest, just a little lower than your heart. You know the feeling of warmth, or a good tightness, when you are very joyful or really love an activity that you’re doing? That is what you’re looking for in that place. That’s your golden core, where your magic lives.”

Sizhui pictures it behind his closed eyelids, a warm glowing ball in his chest. He’d felt it earlier today, what he’d thought was only just happiness that his baking for his best friend had come out so well. Maybe that’s how some of the magic had gotten mixed into it in the first place. “I think I have it.”

“Now try to feel that warmth flow through your body. Down into your stomach, and your legs, through your shoulders and arms to your hands.”

That part is less easy. He holds his fists to that little knot in his chest, and tries to feel as if they are grabbing hold of some piece of it and dragging it through his veins, but he keeps loosing hold of it. He grabs the thread again and again in an imagined hand, until he makes a frustrated noise and sways in his seat.

“That’s OK,” Wen Ning says from somewhere that feels very far away. “It’s a new skill. Let’s take a break for a moment, and have something to eat. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Sizhui hears footsteps retreating, and eases his eyes open against the late afternoon sunlight casting a pattern of panes through the window and onto the workbench. He picks up the jar and tilts it side to side, looking at the way all the powders and pieces of what is supposed to be his cure shift together. It smells pretty nice actually, if he pays attention to it. He starts a little when the door opens and closes again, and he puts the jar down quickly. “Sorry, I hope I didn’t disturb anything.”

“Not at all, it’s not a bad idea to interact more with your ingredients. Here,” Wen Ning puts down a plate of small, round cookies and another pot of chamomile tea on the table, and sits on the other stool. “Tell me about something other than magic, while we eat. Try not to think about it at all for just a few minutes.”

So Sizhui talks about the rabbits while they clear the plate of the cookies - surprisingly light in texture and flavored with cardamom. He even pulls out his phone and flips back to pictures of Bichen and Suibian when they were small.

“Is this you, Lan Sizhui,” the witch asks, about a picture where a nine-year-old Sizhui sits on the ground with both rabbits tucked together in his lap, and a radiant smile on his face.

“Mn, we’d only had them a few months, and it was the first time they sat in my lap.”

“You look like…” Wen Ning trails off, staring intently at the picture, and an odd quality to his voice.

“I look like what?”

He gives himself a little shake, and then says, “You look like you love them very much. A-are you ready to try your magic again?”

“Yeah, alright.” Sizhui puts his phone away, and closes his eyes again. He does feel better for the snack, and it’s easy to find the knot in his chest again. This time he forgoes trying to picture grabbing the magic, and instead thinks about the feeling of warmth from the first drink of tea and how it flows down his throat and to his stomach. He thinks of what it would feel like if it kept spreading throughout his whole body.

“There, you’ve got it!” Wen Ning exclaims. “Now, put your hand above the jar, and think about your ingredients, and what you need them to do. Think about pushing your magic into them, and waking them up. You can open your eyes and look at the list if it helps.”

Sizhui takes a deep breath, and opens his eyes. He looks at the individual pieces of mint and fennel and orange peel, rose hips and licorice root and red ginseng, remembers the smell. His fingertips feel tingly, the same way they might if his hand had fallen asleep, and then a red symbol blooms above the jar. It’s gone quickly, but Sizhui thinks it looked like a stylized sunflower, with a spiral as the base of each petal that then unfurls away from the center of the flower.

There’s a loud noise, like something smacking against the wood of the table top, and the feeling of the magic flickers away. “Ah, Apothecary Wen I’m so sorry! I lost it. Did I ruin it? Are you OK?”

The last is said as he looks over to see that the sound was Wen Ning catching himself with a hand on the worktop. “Tha-that’s Wen magic,” the witch stammers out. He looks a little dazed, staring at Sizhui but in an unfocused sort of way.

“Wen magic? What does that mean?”

“Each family has a magic signature, colors and patterns. They’re unique. Wen is a red sunflower, that red sunflower.” Wen Ning holds a palm up then, the one that’s not still supporting him, and above it blooms the exact same symbol that Sizhui just made, without thinking, over the jar. “Do you know anything about your birth parents?”

Sizhui shakes his head slowly, feeling confused and overwhelmed, and perhaps a little dizzy. He wonders if that last one is the magic, he did fall off a chair the last time he used it. “No, there were never any records.”

“What’s your given name?”

“Yuan, my given name is Lan Yuan.”

Wen Ning makes a punched out sound at that, and his eyes are starting to look a little wet. “I-I think you m-might be my cousins’ son. We weren’t very close; I didn’t think it was odd that we didn’t really have contact with them after they moved. But you look so much like my cousin when he was your age, and the magic... I have letters, and photos. Let me- let me go get them.”

Sizhui follows when Wen Ning leaves the workroom. He feels a little unsteady, and looks at his fathers without really seeing them.

“A-Yuan?” A-die asks in a questioning, concerned voice.

This alerts baba, who jumps up from the couch, and comes to take Sizhui’s face in his hands. “Is everything alright? You’re still purple, did it not work? Did something go wrong? Where’s Wen Ning going?”

Sizhui glances at where the witch had just turned the corner into the hall, and shakes his head. He takes his baba’s hand and leads him back to the couch, where he sits between his parents and says, “Apothecary Wen says I have Wen family magic. He thinks my birth parents might be his cousins.”

This pulls a startled, “What?” out of both.

“When I did magic, it looked like a red sunflower. He said that’s the Wen family symbol and color. He’s gone to get pictures. E-even if it’s true, you are still my parents, and I’m still your son!” Sizhui blurts out, suddenly anxious. They’ve talked about ways to try to find his birth family before, if he ever wanted to, but he hadn’t decided what he wanted to do yet, or when. He wasn’t expecting to have an answer sprung on him like this.

“Ayah, of course you’ll always be our little radish!” Baba cries, flinging his arms around Sizhui and a-die, to squash them both together in a hug.

“We never doubted,” a-die reassures. “A-Yuan shouldn’t doubt either.”

That’s how Wen Ning finds them when he comes back with what looks like a shoebox that’s been covered in nice paper. He sets it on the table, and kneels down to flip through the papers inside. “Ah, here!” He hands over a postcard, covered in photos like what someone might send for a holiday card; the address is from Dafan.

Sizhui’s hands are shaking just a little bit when he takes it, and stares at what is probably his own birth announcement, and baby photos. It reads ‘Wen Yuan, born January 12th,’ and dated 17 years ago. There’s him wrapped in a blanket in the hospital, in a crib in what must have been his childhood home, held between a man and a woman that he doesn’t know. Except, he’s looked at nearly the same face as the man’s in the mirror for years. It’s a little older, and Sizhui’s nose is a little wider and flatter - like the woman’s - but the eyes and the mouth are so, so similar. He brushes his fingertips lightly over the glossy paper, and blinks hard against the moisture in his eyes.

When he looks back up at Wen Ning, he’s offering him a letter this time, with a photo sticking out between the folds. There’s a date on the back of the photo - his third birthday - and it shows him sitting between the same two people on a couch. He has cake crumbs on his face, and is waving a paper butterfly on a stick with a big grin. Sizhui remembers, ever so faintly, that paper butterfly.

From where he’s looking over Sizhui’s shoulder, baba says, “this looks so much like when we brought you home.”

The letter itself is addressed from Qishan this time. Qishan was the city his fathers adopted him from, when he was four. The first line reads ‘A-Yuan is still having some trouble getting settled into our new home, but his birthday party certainly helped that along.’

“We got that shortly after they moved, and didn’t hear much after,” Wen Ning clarifies, as if wanting to fill the silence. As if not wanting to ask the question hanging in the air.

Sizhui swallows hard. “I think you’re right. I think this has to be me. Do you-do you know what happened?”

Wen Ning looks down at that, his face clouding over. “No. But I can ask Popo, or some of my aunts and uncles, someone may be able to help us track down an answer.”

“OK, OK that would be. Good. Maybe not right away though, this is all a lot.”

A-die runs a hand up and down Sizhui’s back.

“That’s understandable,” Wen Ning replies

“Then, you said you and my birth father were cousins, that would make you my tang-shu?”

“I think that would be right, but,” Wen Ning’s smiling, but it looks a little shy, “I don’t have any nephews, if you wanted to call me shushu?”

“Yeah, alright, I can do that shushu. And you should call me A-Yuan.” The tears break at that point, and Sizhui passes the picture and letter to a-die, at risk of ruining them. “C-can I hug you?”

Wen Ning gives two sharp, enthusiastic nods, and stands. Sizhui comes around the table, and throws his arms around him. Wen Ning’s hug is much stronger than Sizhui might’ve guessed from his appearance, but like just about everything else he’s experienced with the witch, inherently comforting.

“All this time, we weren’t even far from each other, and never knew,” Sizhui mumbles into Wen Ning’s shoulder.

He lets himself cling for a moment, before he steps back to rub his eyes and then bows formally to Wen Ning. “Shushu, will you teach me magic!” He had felt disappointed at the thought of going to a different teacher before, but now that he knows Wen Ning is his shushu, that he could learn magic from a member of his family the way witches have for hundreds of years… “I know it’s asking a lot, and I don’t know if I’ll want to do magic like yours, or with music yet, but I want to learn your magic, our family’s magic! Please.”

“I would love to!” Wen Ning tells him with a big grin, but then it twists up in amusement at one corner. “But maybe you should hold off on deciding until we see if your tincture works.”

“Ah.” Sizhui had almost forgotten all about it in this new excitement. That’s a good idea though, he would really like to stop being purple. And then maybe go home and curl up with Bichen and Suibian and a movie that has absolutely nothing at all to do with magic.

His newly minted witchcraft teacher returns to the workroom to fetch the tincture and Sizhui’s sunflower, and then shows them some old family photos while they wait for it to steep, from holidays or family reunions when he was a child. It seems Sizhui's birth father had only attended a few of the larger functions so there's not many, but the resemblance is striking.

“That picture of you with your rabbits really made me suspect. But I didn’t think it was possible, I didn’t know—” Wen Ning trails off, but Sizhui can guess the rest of the thought; he hadn’t know Sizhui had been adopted, hadn’t known he wasn’t living with his birth family anymore. “There wasn’t anything else it could be though, when you had the family signature. Which,” he pours a small cup from the kettle, and holds his hands around the bottom, just the faintest red light spilling between his fingers and the porcelain. “This feels like we’ve got it right. Give it a try.”

Sizhui takes the cup, and feels that some of the heat has been drained off, enough that he can drink all of it in one go without burning his mouth. It tastes a little muddled up, with all of the things they added, but not bad. That same heat that he’d felt when he called his magic spreads through him though, gentle and easy. “Did it work?” He jumps up from the couch again and goes to a mirror that he’d seen on the wall earlier. Staring back at him is his normal self. He tilts his head from side to side, and inspects his arms and legs; there’s not a hint of violet anywhere. “It worked! I did magic! Thank you shushu!”

Sizhui gives Wen Ning another bow, and his fathers stand to do the same. Since that’s about all the excitement it seems anyone is up for in one day, they decide on a good time for more magic lessons, and prepare to make their goodbyes. Wen Ning even suggests with an amused smile that with some training Sizhui might be able to come out here by himself on a broomstick, which is starting to sound more like a fun prospect than a scary one.

He leads them out to the porch then, and bows Sizhui’s fathers. “Thank you, for caring for A-Yuan so well. He’s grown into a fine young man, and I look forward to teaching him.” They bow back, and Sizhui does too, feeling his face flush under the praise, and feeling much better now that he won’t have to worry about what a purple blush looks like anymore.

A-die heads down to the car first, baba trailing a little behind. Before Sizhui can follow, Wen Ning hands him the jar with his tincture. “I don’t have any need of this,” he explains, “And we shouldn’t let any of your hard work today go to waste. Any of it,” he adds again with a wink. Sizhui hears his baba, who is still just barely in earshot, snort at that.

Sizhui imagines the look on Jingyi’s face when he eats the cupcake, and then sees the result. “I’ll have to find a good use for it, then.” When he gets down to the car, he turns back around to wave back, with the hand holding his sunflower. “Thank you shushu, I’ll see you next week!”

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #the untamed #lan sizhui #wen ning #witch au #tmariea writes

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magicmindless · 2 years ago

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Do you have any hcs about Fitz? I liked the hints you gave of his and Petrona's relationship and I wanna know more :b

Here yah go. I don’t think about this man much but I tried

A HC list but it’s just Professor Fitz

- Hardworking and eccentric but means well, though he can be a bit snarky or easily frustrated sometimes

- He has the appearance that he doesn’t get phased by bad things but he just keeps his bad feelings inside

- His full name is Isaac Fitz

- He hates schedules because he has a hard time with being decisive and tends to change little things so often that they don’t work for him

- Has a crazy high spice tolerance none of his children can beat

- After some investigation, he thinks there could be a way to make replica warp coins which work exactly like the real thing, however, the ethics of this are questionable at best since these are very sacred objects which the technology shouldn’t be messed with so the project is on hold

- Petrona is his daughter and they have a close relationship. Fitz checks in on her at work whenever he can and worries about her a bit excessively which annoys her sometimes but she knows that he just does it because he loves her

- He’s also very close with Iggy since he spends a lot of time with him when Petrona is at work, which is pretty often. They practically live together which is… actually a little depressing, but they’re never unhappy with each other

- Radley was his son but… well, y’know. He’s a radish now

-NuMarcus is also his son but he has no feelings towards him after all the questionable stuff he’s done

- He likes small mammals like rabbits and hamsters and raccoons. When he saw Skip with Pastrami the rat during Mocharia he asked him if he could hold Pastrami and Skip allowed him to. Fitz was very happy

- He actually seems to like all types of animals. Reptiles, amphibians and he even used to capture and collect bugs as a kid

- He doesn’t know what furries are but he might be one, and his fursona would be a skunk

- He doesn’t believe in ghosts but the concept of them scares him

- Pop songs on the radio are kind of his guilty pleasure, and will sometimes sing to them alone, even doing the typical thing where he’ll pretend to sing into a microphone when it’s really just a hairbrush or something (Once Iggy walked in on him doing this)

- Disney songs are also something he loves. He hasn’t bothered with watching all of the movies, he’s mainly watched the old classics but some of the songs he likes even from movies he hasn’t seen

- Despite his limited knowledge he’s an LGBT ally all the way. He even bought Iggy a pride flag when he found out he was a demiboy (he’s trying his best okay?)

- Back in school his favorite subject was, of course, science though his least favorite was literature. He’s traumatized from analyzing William Shakespeare, just hearing the name gives him Vietnam flashbacks

- Whenever he gets transmissions back from Ripley in Munchmore he has to use a thesaurus or Petrona to help him understand what the hell she’s saying. (He asked for in-depth detail but not like this)

- Speaking of Ripley, they didn’t really interact much at Truffleton, but when they started collaborating for the Munchmore expeditions they got to know each other better and he sees her as another daughter

- Okay so going for the angst part of the Fitz family AU he’s gotten nightmares about his wife dying and Radley turning into a Radish

- Him and Louie have been friends since they were young and dumb. He still sticks around to help him with restaurant and food ideas and such, however, because of other reasons he thinks maybe the dumb is still retained in him sometimes

#papa louie #papa louie headcanons #flipline studios #asks #aronora #papa Louie Professor Fitz #fun fact: the pop song hc was made because I was listening to Shawn Mendes #don’t ask why

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ladysunamireads · 11 months ago

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#AO3 Link #FanFiction #AO3 Wangxian #♥#Wangxian #Jiang Yanli #MDZS #⚣#⚔️#A:Lepotatoe25

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thecastcompany · 2 years ago

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Question of the Week

The Cast Company asked the members a question of the week!

What is your characters favorite food and least favorite food? Here are the responses we got!

Huwanuus favorite is watermelon and least favorite is radishes

Quin's favorite food is Wine, her least favorite food is not wine

Jo likes pancakes. She dislikes peas. They look and taste like radioactive Gnomeregan goop

Ranek's favorite food is venison stew, it reminds him of home and family. His least favorite is frog legs. @ranekvilmas Seranthe's favorite food is a meal that doesn't involve El making a giant mess. Least favorite is carrot cake. @seranthedross

Caele’s favorite food is chocolate. Her least favorite food is rabbit, because they are too cute to eat

Telani's favorite food would be a bloody steak. Least favorite food, probably something vegetative

Creature: Favorite? Cinnamon rolls; Least? Salt

Ordella: Favorite? Shrimp and feta with rice. Least? Anything with onions

Zane's favorite food is her mothers Sunfruit Tarts and her least favorite food is Forsaken Wings from Wings n Metal, they are too potent @zaneryne

El's Favorite Food is Seranthe.... I mean Hot Wings and her least favorite food is unseasoned potato salad @elrosil

What is your characters favorite food and least favorite food?

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biglisbonnews · 2 years ago

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Asian and Asian American Artists on Celebrating Lunar New Year Lunar New Year is the single most important date on the calendar for billions of people in East and Southeast Asia, including China, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and Singapore. Observed this year on January 22, it marks the end of winter and the arrival of spring, with families journeying to their hometowns for weeks of festivities. With over 18 million Americans of Asian descent, the holiday — called Chūnjié in Mandarin, Seollal in Korean and Tết in Vietnamese — is celebrated in the United States as well as globally. And though it’s not officially observed in most Western countries, many in the Asian diaspora keep their heritage alive through traditional foods and rituals. Often, it’s the only tangible connection to culture we have in terms of a true celebration.As we prepare to ring in the Year of the Rabbit (or of the Cat, if you’re Vietnamese), PAPER caught up with some of our favorite Asian artists and creators from around the world to hear what the holiday means to them — and how they plan to celebrate. Lexie Liu, singerGrowing up in China, Chinese New Year is THE New Year for families to get together and celebrate with gourmet food, beautiful blessings and red packets. Ever since my parents divorced, I haven’t found a good way to attend both of their family dinners in New Year because they are in different cities, but this year we are all celebrating in the same city so I can finally be there for both of the families.The foods I loved are Fried Stinky Tofu with lots of spicy radish from Changsha Hunan. I need it in my holiday life. For the Year of the Rabbit, I wish I can eat more vegetables than a rabbit. (I probably do already.) Also, I wanna be as energetic as one, too.Related | Lexie Liu's Got Tricks and Tracks You Need to HearRuoyi Jiang, founder of Chop Suey ClubLunar New Year has always been about family time, relatives getting together and gossip. It means a BIG dinner together, endless amounts of food, giving and receiving red envelopes, watching a national TV program while poking fun at it, and enjoying the fireworks.The past many years I haven't been able to go back home for LNY, so this holiday for me is about celebrating with our chosen family. We are throwing a big party on Jan 21st (LNY Eve)! I do this type of parties because many people like me cannot be home to celebrate with their families. This time we wanna bring street food like skewers into the mix with soup dumplings. My favorite food for the season is 糖葫芦 tanghulu (candid hawthorn stick), it's not a LNY food per se but it's a Beijing winter specialty. My family is very small (just me and my mom), so we normally go to someone else's house for this holiday. My favorite memory is getting dressed with my mom, she would criticize my fashion while trying to have color-coordinated outfits with me. My wish for this year is that China can return to normalcy soon, so my mom and I can resume our annual trip together. I haven't seen her for three years now.Twaydabae, chef and influencerLunar New Year has always been about spending time with family & celebrating traditions to me. It's a time to reflect, wish each other well and set intentions for the future. I plan to celebrate with my family: It's going to be a big get-together this year and I'm really looking forward to having my mom's thit kho and my Stepdad's pho.My favorite memory of Lunar New Year in my home would have to be the games that are played, especially the dice game aka the Bau Cua Ca dice game. And my wish for this year is to welcome more peace into my life and to practice mindfulness in everything I do.Related | Twaydabae Is Viet Girl MagicEden, producerGrowing up in Ireland, Lunar New Year always felt like a nice family ritual — there was never much notice of it in the world outside. My biggest memory is of red envelopes. My granny would give them out to us on New Year’s and it always made it feel like a special time. I actually keep them in my house now and use them sometimes when gifting things to my friends. This year, I will be on tour somewhere in Texas doing my best to find some dim sum. Kim Nguyen, founder of Nguyen IncSometimes I go back home to Houston to celebrate with my immediate family but this year I’m staying in NY and planning on cooking with my friend SK Lyons at their home. Both of us have never cooked pho before so we are going to attempt my mom's recipe. I love literally everything my mom cooks. She is hands-down the best chef I know! Memories that immediately come to mind from when I was younger are playing bầu cua tôm cá with my uncles and cousins (because I was very lucky and always won a lot of money), cleaning every inch of our house before the festivities and playing hide and seek with all my cousins with back-to-back episodes of Paris by Night blaring from the TV in the living room. I read somewhere that this year's water rabbit (or cat) is supposed to be the year of hope, so I'd like to keep that in mind throughout the year.Related | Nguyen Inc Is Making Runway Fashion Statements From Upcycled TeesThuy, singerLunar New Year means family and tradition to me. It means being able to ring in a new year with the people who mean the most and enjoy traditions that have been passed down for decades together. I plan to celebrate by being surrounded by close and extended family. I want to be in conversation with family about our past and future plans while enjoying all the delicacies and treats! I especially love bánh tét! My favorite memory is staying up until midnight to light the fireworks! It was so much fun and we didn’t have to clean up the mess. We would leave the red residue all on our front porch for weeks. The only thing that scared me was how loud they were as a kid! My wish is to live peacefully and wholeheartedly. I want to continue doing what I love and enjoy every moment of it.Related | Thuy Is in Her BagAlex Porat, singerI’m going to spend most of my Lunar New Year days with my family. We’re going to eat a lot of food, especially Tang Yuan, which is my favorite dessert on this earth. I’ll probably also do a lot of cleaning and potentially rearranging of furniture so that I can have a new perspective in my living space as I turn into a new year. This might be pretty silly, but in general, I like moving furniture around way too much. My favorite memory is from whenever I was in Asia as a kid celebrating. Every time I was there around Lunar New Year I would see all my relatives and it was always such a big celebration. Now, living and growing up in North America, it’s such a different experience but I still have such a great community here of friends and family that celebrate. So there are a lot more memories yet to be made.Su Lee, musician and podcasterKoreans eat a lot of savory pancakes on Lunar New Year and my favorite is Mom’s specialty potato pancake that she makes at home. (Speaking of which, I would probably ask her to make some in advance before I leave Korea.)When I was in kindergarten, my grandpa would take me on a ride in his car and buy me toys whenever my family visited him for the holidays. I remember he always had a picture of me stuck by the front seat. This was a very long time ago and yet I still remember it all so clearly. I miss my grandpa a lot whenever I look back on this. One of my biggest wishes for this year was that my sister would pass her nursing exam. And this one has come true already – she passed! I hope this means I’ll have my other wishes come true. I hope I can go on tour again and maybe even be able to play at some festivals this year! I also hope I can get to meet and pet more cats this year.Related | Su Lee Forgot How to Make FriendsSamantha Tan, race car driver and team ownerLunar New Year is similar to [Western] New Year’s celebrations at the end of the year. It’s about celebrating the next cycle and next rotation in the Zodiac, family gatherings and wishing for health and prosperity for the years to come. Honestly, after growing up in a small Canadian town, Lunar New Year celebrations felt like one of the only times I got to experience something from my culture, so it allowed me to connect with my heritage. Today, it’s a celebration that reminds me to be proud of who I am and where I came from.This year, I am spending my Lunar New Year with my mom’s side of the family. My grandparents are planning a big dinner with all our favorite foods, complete with noodles, lots of dumplings, steamed fish and nian gao! Sometimes, when the whole family is able to get together in Toronto, we’ll go out to a restaurant and my favorite dish has always been the Peking duck with pancakes.Dolly Ave, singerLunar New Year always gives me fond memories with my family. It’s a celebration of a new chapter and a special occasion to be with your loved ones and take in all the blessings and future blessings the year may off you.I’ll be performing for the Vietnamese community here in California at a Lunar New Year festival. For me, that’s a special moment to bring to people music to dance to and celebrate to. I love sharing a big Vietnamese spread but specifically the large roasted pig that is commonly eaten during this time. My favorite memory is taking our red envelopes and, in good fun, playing games for each other's money.Photos courtesy of the artists https://www.papermag.com/lunar-new-year-celebrations-2659287111.html

#Asian #Asian american #Lexie liu #Twaydabae #Eden #Kim nguyen #Thuy #Su lee #Alex porat #Samantha tan #Ruoyi jiang #Chop suey club #Lunar new year #Dan Q. Dao #PAPER

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incorrectly-quoting-mxtx · 2 years ago

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Lan Wangji: We’re having a baby.

Lan Sizhui: Oh, congratulations!

Wei Wuxian: *slamming down adoption papers* It’s you, sign here.

#source: tumblr #incorrect mdzs #incorrect quotes #mdzs #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #mo dao zu shi #wei wuxian #lan sizhui #lan wangji #wangxian #radish rabbit family

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wonderfulworldofmaeth · 1 year ago

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Getting Acquainted With: Anshelinah Circe

Full name: Anshelinah Maia Aurelie Circe

Age: 25

Birthday: February 29th

Sexual orientation: Asexual, Biromantic (Feminine Leaning)

Familiar: Honey the Lop-Eared Rabbit

Personality:

Birth chart (big three): Pisces Sun, Cancer Moon, Aquarius Rising

MBTI: ISFP-A

Patron Arcana: The World

Upright: Completion, Fulfillment, Sense of Belonging, Wholeness

Reversed: Lack of Closure, Emptiness, Incompletion

Minor Arcana: Five of Cups

Upright: Loss, Grief, Self-Pity

Reversed: Finding Peace, Acceptance, Moving On

Likes: brushing horses, the sound of roosters crowing in the morning, the color palette of the desert, the way mud feels between her toes, abstract artwork, finger painting, keeping succulents and cactus plants in her room and studio, letting river water wash over her skin, the slickness of wet clay, dew on the grass, sunsets that paint the sky seven different colors, sitting shoulder to shoulder at the bar with her friends, the way "Berlusconi" rolls off the tongue, vanilla ice cream, the sensation of picking off a scab, buttermilk baths, group hugs from her family and friends, wearing a lot of bracelets, when kids at the Art Academy ask her questions, dancing Cumbia with Isabella and Sisi, linen sheets, deep talks in the art studio with Ophie, building birdhouses with her father, plum jam, when Cole traces her bare back in the morning, lukewarm showers, people thinking she's tough, helping her family with things around the house, when paint and clay get on her clothes, curling up in her parents' arms at the end of the day, the taste of honey, sitting by the Vivarium fountain, farmer's markets, the soft feeling of her rabbit's fur, stargazing in the desert, hiking, cathartic time alone, the ocean

Dislikes: small spaces, salt in her rice, bug bites, constricting or large amounts of clothing, getting sick, people who feel entitled to her time, hospitals and mortuaries, moving someone's things out of a home or house, pumpernickel bread, people who disregard or disrespect nature, empty rooms, greasy hair, leaving the stems of a bouquet uncut, unflavored beer, persistent men, talking casually about lost loved ones, strangers who touch her, feeling sleepy when she's trying to stay awake, when her dad goes on long trips without her, clients who complain that she overcharges for her work, feeling like she doesn't have enough time, limes, arguing with people she loves, overwhelming environments, having to choose her battles, when her friends don't reach out for a while, the taste of clear liquors, when her clothes stick to her body in the summer, radishes, a stuffy studio, trashing an art piece and having to start again

Abilities: Anshelinah loves art and she's taught herself a lot of what she knows. She leans towards creating pottery and crafty sculptures, however, she also likes to paint and make collages using flowers and newspaper. With her Somraldic heritage, she's been taught how to ride horses and tend to a garden. She speaks a creole or hybrid language of Somraldic and Maethisse with her family, and she speaks Maethisse with her friends. She can also read Somraldic Rune and write with various calligraphy pens. Anshelinah loves to cook different foods, especially ones that hail from Murik Valley, and often prefers to make these recipes over Maethisse food.

Favourite food: Grilled Cheese Sandwiches with Bacon and Sour Cream (With a cup of Chicken Noodle Soup on the side)

Favourite drink: Iced Cafe con Leche with Cinnamon

Favourite flower: Gerbera Daisy, Magnolia

Magic: Anshelinah has a blessing that applies to all of the firstborn daughters of her father's Somraldic family. The blessing grants uncanny luck, seeming to always watch over her and guide her decisions, never allowing terrible trouble to befall her, and is called Aurelie's blessing.

Appearance:

Height: 5'10 or 178 cm.

Weight: 161 lbs or 73 kg

Hair: Anshelina has dusty brown hair that falls in curls and coils. Her hair is often not uniform on its own and requires a lot of effort on the side of styling. She loves her hair texture, a general mix of her father's coarse locs and her mother's fine waves. She often keeps her hair short, a bit above shoulder length, and likes to keep it back in a half bun or ponytail, which is her signature style when working on her artwork. In the summer, her hair lightens easily, adopting light brown streaks. She sometimes will braid her hair into two braids on either side of her head with a middle part and fluffy curls in the front as bangs.

Eyes: Anshelinah has her father's eyes. They're down-turned, and appear droopy and sultry. Despite her hair being lightly colored, her long lashes are a deeper brown than the rest of her hair. Her lashes are interesting, as she has a few white lashes on her left eye. Her eyes are so deep brown, they're nearly black, as is the dominant trait of the people of Murik Valley. She uses kohl eyeliner as one of the only parts of her daily beauty routine, making Anshelinah's eyes a seductive centerpiece to her face.

General description: Anshelinah could be compared to a doe. Her skin tone is a beautiful dark honey, lighter in the winter, while deeper in the summer. Her shoulders and hips are about even in their narrow width, her waist is a complimentary measurement. Her whole body can be considered lithe. Just because she is slim doesn't mean she is delicate. Anshelinah has strong arms with light muscle definition in her biceps and triceps from carrying supplies and her everyday activities. Her legs are toned as she does a lot of walking, running, and swimming. Anshelinah has a soft stomach, with most of the weight gathering in the lower abdomen. The shadows of her ribs can be seen in her torso. Her breasts are a modest size, and her chest is adorned with various spots and small moles. Anshelinah's nose is quite straight like her mother's and her lips are full like her father's. Her top lip is equally full and prominent compared to her bottom one, and she has a soft, barely there, cupid's bow. Her brows are fluffy and full, normally combed upward. They're set in a serious line when Anshelinah's face is at rest.

As a person, there are many different facets to Anshelinah's personality. To strangers, she's quiet and demure, even a little standoffish and aloof. She's not eager to take part in frivolous conversations with people she doesn't know or particularly like. That being said, however, she is always courteous until given a reason not to be. To her family, she is loving, compassionate, and energetic. She can let loose around her family without the worry of being judged or criticized. To her friends, she can be confident, adventurous, and fun. She loves to participate in group activities with the people close to her, whether that be a grand escapade or a quiet evening by a bonfire. She's helpful, kind, and patient, once you're acquainted with her, making her a great mentor and teacher. Despite what strangers think.

Fashion Sense: Anshelinah has a practical style. She often wears a pair of baggy pants that hang off her waist and a smaller shirt on top for shape. She likes to wear things that bare her midriff and arms like tank tops, crop tops, baby tees, and tube tops. She likes denim overalls and coveralls that have the jacket hanging by her hips. They're functional for painting, working in the garden, and tending to animals, so Anshelinah likes the versatility of these clothes. She mostly prefers a clog or sandal, with simple leather bands and brass buckles. In the winter, she likes to wear loose-fitting denim or trousers with a high waist, with a slim-fitting long sleeve on top. She likes sweaters, but she avoids layering as it's uncomfortable for her.

Anshelinah has a collection of western wear, as is typical dress in Murik Valley. She likes to incorporate these pieces into her style for comfort as well as the cultural significance it has to her. She has a few pairs of boots of various heights in neutral colors. Her closet also dons denim shorts, bootcut jeans, flannels, and linen western dresses. She wears these clothes often in the summers and when she returns to her father's country to visit her family.

Although Anshelinah's style is practical, that won't hold her back from wearing things she thinks are beautiful. She does like to get dressed up in something slim fitting when she goes out on a date or with her friends. She likes short dresses with long sleeves, or long dresses that hug close to the form. She's not extremely picky or uniform with these outfits. If she happens to be in the mood for it, she will wear it.

A brief look into her life:

Occupation: Anshelinah works as an artist. She gets commissions from residents of Maeth and eventually even beyond the country. Before her talent is recognized and her hard work pays off, she worked at one of Maeth's restaurants as a waitress. During her years at Maeth's Art Academy, she mentors students there and offers classes and lessons in her free time. Once she graduates, she becomes a student teacher at the Art Academy.

Love Interest:

Cole Berlusconi

Family and friends:

Thaddeus (Tadeo) Circe, father

Claudia Vasquez Circe, mother

Nazir Circe, older brother

Hera Circe, grandmother

Estefana Cortes, intimate friend and girlfriend (deceased)

Ophie Zieragh, intimate friend and junior

Isabella Zieragh, close friend

Salice Halloway, close friend

Matias, close friend

Emilio Taylor; Marcos; Thomas Zieragh, friends

Miscellaneous facts.

Anshelinah's Maethisse is very stylized, as she's used to speaking in the creole language created by her bicultural family. She was often scrutinized by her teachers for her improper way of speaking.

Anshelinah is very self-assured. She's been loved by her family and has had a confident way of thinking for as long as she can remember.

Anshelinah isn't afraid to make mistakes.

Anshelinah has a septum piercing and a soft blush birthmark on her stomach, resembling a port wine stain.

Anshelinah is very particular with dating. Because of that, a lot of the men her age deem her intimidating, rude, or even demanding.

Anshelinah goes to Murik Valley almost every summer with her family, as her father thinks it's very important to keep her connected to her heritage and family.

Anshelinah has had to work very hard to become an artist, as she was never naturally gifted.

Most of the pieces Anshelinah creates have practical uses, like bowls, cups, and dishes.

Anshelinah legally added her late girlfriend's name to hers so she could "live along with me until the end". Her full legal name is Anshelinah Maia Aurelie Estefana Circe.

Anshelinah spends long periods of time doing absolutely nothing, which was worrying to her family and friends. She will lie in bed or pick a place outside to sit or lay still. Estefana described it as "communing with the museful spirits".

Anshelinah has only one tattoo: A Somraldic Rune on her thigh. Nobody in Maeth knows what it means.

#anshelinah circe #cole berlusconi

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pearlsephoni · 2 years ago

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At the End of the Sun, Chapter 8: Ghosts of the Past

Can also be read on AO3!

Rating: This Chapter: T; Whole Work: E

Fandom: Haikyuu!!

Pairing: Kagehina (Kageyama/Hinata)

Characters: Shoyo Hinata, Tobio Kageyama

Word Count: Chapter: 4,168; Whole Work: Estimated 100k+

Summary: Summer slowly fades into autumn, bringing with it shorter days, changing leaves, and confessions whispered in the dark.

A/N: Written for the Kagehina Big Bang 2022! Further author’s notes can be read on AO3.

Time passed. The days became shorter, and the heat became more bearable with every post-midsummer week. Shoyo’s physique became leaner, more wiry. He began to heat up the water before bathing again. The vines that had crept up the wood barrier and reached around the freshly-repaired notches became heavy with dark, glossy leaves. He and the wolf continued coming home with more game and eventually added fishing to their hunts. Shoyo’s slowly-growing garden finally began yielding radishes and peppers and mature herbal leaves, allowing the wolf’s sister to ease her horse’s load when she came to visit.

After two months, however, her poor horse came carrying a full-load once again.

“It’s going to get cold soon,” she explained, biting back a smile at the way Shoyo struggled to see around his armful of blankets. “Figured it would be better for you to have thick blankets and clothes sooner than later.”

Shoyo had been confused, until he noticed the first changing leaves in the forest while hunting. When he rejoined the wolf, he carried an orange leaf along with the birds he’d shot. “Look!” he cried out with a smile. “Nee-san was right, fall’s almost here!”

“Oh…it’ll be nice to not feel so hot, I guess.”

“Yeah, but then it’ll be winter and we’ll be super—” The reminder of what the wolf would be doing then abruptly cut off Shoyo’s words.

The wolf didn’t question his sudden silence. He didn’t say anything at all. He just picked up his rabbits and led the way back to the house, his lowered tail the only sign of his displeasure. Shoyo didn’t know what it meant, that he didn’t express any of it to him.

Not that he had much right to be confused or hurt by that, not when he was hiding something himself. He’d hoped that the flush he’d felt after that messy tussle would be a one-time sensation, one that he would forget after some time, just as the wolf had seemed to forget that heated night.

The opposite happened. It was like that night had unearthed feelings and desires that Shoyo hadn’t even known about himself. During the day, he let himself forget about it all, finding comfort in the familiar bickering and teasing and fun he had with the wolf.

Then night fell, and the shadow laid next to him, and a single low greeting from him was enough to make Shoyo flush hot beneath his thin blankets. It was the same voice he heard during the day, but it was one thing to hear it coming from a big wolf. It was an entirely different thing to hear it at night, aware of what the body it came from felt like, and how much his own body had enjoyed that feeling.

These new emotions were strange and surprising and not worth disrupting the hard-earned comfort they’d built at their little home. So he shoved it all down, fought to keep his voice steady, and continued getting their home ready for the winter.

There were still a few months left before the wolf could fulfill his promise to gather the yamakumo, but he was at least able to keep a different promise: every month or so, usually after his sister visited, he continued making his own visits to Shoyo’s family. The trip was shorter every time, until he was able to leave and return within the same day. Sometimes he let them actually see him, other times he watched from the shadows, but he always came back with reassurances that they were alright. The news didn’t wipe away the ache of missing them, but Shoyo could at least rest easy, knowing they were safe.

The trees were outlined with orange beneath a dusky sky when the wolf returned from a visit with a scarf and pouch around his neck. “Oh no,” Shoyo sighed with a laugh. He could recognize that deep green material. “Did my mom give you that? I told her I already had a scarf.”

“I don’t think that would’ve made a difference,” the wolf huffed as he joined Shoyo on the engawa. “She was pretty stubborn about making me take this. So was Natsu.”

“Natchan?” Shoyo paused in unwinding the scarf from the wolf’s neck. “What did she have?”

“It’s in the pouch.”

Short answers weren’t strange from the wolf, nor was the way he gazed steadily at Shoyo. But something about the way he sat—the barest twitch of his ear, the stillness of his tail against the wood—made Shoyo’s stomach give an uneasy curl. He finished unwinding his mother’s scarf and set it aside without looking away from the wolf’s infinite eyes, only breaking their gaze to peer at the knot keeping the pouch hung.

When it came loose, the soft cloth of the pouch fell into his hand and collapsed around its contents, which clicked quietly against itself. Shoyo recognized the sound immediately, but he was still slow in untying the pouch, tilting it upside down over his hand once it was open.

A bracelet of woven leather and wooden beads fell out. It looked like the perfect length for Shoyo’s wrist, and both the leather and beads had been buffed to be completely soft and smooth, with no snags or splinters. “Oh,” he breathed.

“She said she wanted to have it finished for your birthday,” the wolf said quietly, “but it took longer than she expected because…well.” His paws kneaded uneasily into the wood. “Apparently it’s been her project for the past few months. Anytime she’s too tired to help around the house but doesn’t want to sleep, she’s been working on this.”

Shoyo ran his fingers along the smooth wooden beads and soft leather. He could imagine Natsu sitting in her futon, with bad lungs and restless fingers, painstakingly carving the beads from spare sticks their mother gave her. She had always been better at the delicate work of skinning and deboning than Shoyo was, and her careful fingers were just as capable of carving out bits of beauty from coarse materials.

He didn’t notice his throat tightening nor his eyes stinging, too busy admiring the bracelet and trying to tie it on his own wrist. His chin was tilted down towards his wrist in his lap, until a black nose slid into view and nudged at his cheek. “Hey…you okay?”

Shoyo opened his mouth to answer, only for his voice to catch in his throat, leaving him only able to shake his head with a quivering lip. He lifted his head to meet the wolf’s dark gaze, catching sight of those ears leaning back in concern. “I…,” he began, with the intent to reassure the wolf, “I…”

His words faded into silence, a silence that was soon broken by a sound he’d never heard before: a low, rumbling croon, like a growl, but so much gentler. It was almost musical, and only grew louder as the wolf stepped in close and fit his large head into the curve of Shoyo’s neck. The sound rumbled through Shoyo, dislodging the lump in his throat and easing the tension in his shoulders, until he melted into the warm, furry wall of the wolf’s body. “Thank you,” he whispered into his neck, draping his arms around him to hold him close.

The wolf didn’t say a word, didn’t do anything that might disrupt his soothing rumble. He just pressed in closer, until Shoyo found himself with a lapful of the wolf’s heavy, grounding weight.

He didn’t say anything when he felt his legs begin to fall asleep beneath the wolf. The prickling needles of pain were nothing compared to the comfort and warmth he found in the embrace.

———————~☾~———————

Shoyo had always thought he was made of pretty stern stuff when it came to the cold. His body ran hot, letting him depend on fewer blankets and thinner coats. During colder treks and journeys, his friends would usually argue over who could sleep next to him, just so they could leach off his warmth.

So he was surprised, even a little embarrassed, to already be taking out the thick yogi the wolf’s sister had brought. He’d thought he’d be able to wait until the first snowfall, but being so close to the mountains meant it got colder faster. It’d only been two months since she’d brought the blankets and coats, and there was Shoyo, spreading the comforter over his futon.

He also spread out an extra yogi on the shadow’s futon. It was bad enough he’d been sleeping in a smaller, thinner futon for the past several months. He didn’t need to freeze as well.

“Oh. Thanks,” the shadow murmured when he found the comforter, his surprise coming through his soft words.

Shoyo drowsily turned towards the sound of heavy rustling—he’d just managed to fall asleep when the shadow entered. “You’re welcome,” he mumbled, his face still half-buried in his pillow. “Didn’t want you feeling cold. ‘Specially without all your…um…”

“Fur?”

“…Yeah.”

He flushed at the snort he heard. “How many months has it been? Why are you still weird about that?”

“I’m not being weird about it!” He was. “I know you’re…you, but I still can’t think too hard about it all.”

“You barely think at all.”

“Hey!” Shoyo’s snap was dulled by his surprised laughter, and the sound of a familiar huff told him that was exactly the point of the taunt.

Neither of them said anything else once his laughter died down, until Shoyo piped up, “Your fur matches your sister’s hair.”

“I…guess?”

“So you have black hair, too?”

“I guess so, yeah.”

Shoyo hummed thoughtfully. “Your eyes match, too.”

“I guess.”

“Did you forget how to say anything else?”

“Shut up.” Shoyo giggled as the shadow’s blind poke landed harmlessly on his arm. “What about you?”

“Huh?”

“Your hair,” the shadow muttered, “it doesn’t match your mother’s.”

“Mm…Natsu and I got it from my father. My mom likes to joke that our hair was the greatest gift he’d given her, because it made us impossible to lose.” He smiled at the memory, even as his heart gave a dull squeeze at the thought of his family.

There was a quiet laugh, then silence, stretching long enough that Shoyo thought the shadow might have fallen asleep, but then he suddenly asked, “Do you…do you miss him?”

“Yeah…everyday.” The smile grew across his face despite the stinging in his eyes. “He was everything I wanted to be. He let my mom continue her work, let me train to become a samurai even though he didn’t really want me to…he taught me how to hunt and fight, and he pushed me to learn how to sew and cook and clean, too. He told me my mom had just as much to teach me, if not more. He…he died before he could teach Natsu, but he always talked about looking forward to teaching her, so I taught her when she was old enough.”

His thoughts drifted to the dreams that had been haunting him ever since he’d taken on the responsibilities of his father: the perpetual chase after him, the urgency he felt to catch up with him in the forest, and the unnerving mix of fear and relief that pumped through him when he realized the shadowy form was never his father. “I still feel like I’ll never live up to him. I try to do everything I can to help take care of the family the way he did, but it’s not the same, especially for my mom. She says I look and act just like him, and I used to feel proud of that, but now I…” He swallowed around the ache in his throat. “I wonder if I remind her too much of him.”

“What do you mean?”

“She never really stopped grieving for him. Apparently she started getting proposals from a few men after I left home to start my training, but she turned them all down. Said it wouldn’t be fair to marry someone when she still loved her first husband.” A different ache settled in his chest, a dull throb in time with his heartbeat. “I never really believed in soulmates, but if I did…I think my parents would be the perfect example.”

“She was lucky,” the shadow said, a bittersweet note in his low voice, “to have a love like that in her life. Even if he was taken from her too soon.”

His words surprised away the ache in Shoyo’s chest and throat—he’d never heard the shadow say something so…sentimental. “Yeah,” he managed to say after a beat of startled silence, “yeah, she was. So was he.”

More silence followed his words, interrupted by the shadow’s soft, shallow breaths. Then, in a low voice that melted the silence instead of breaking it, he asked, “Have you ever loved someone like that?”

“No,” Shoyo scoffed automatically, before a memory pricked at him. “Well…maybe. There was…there was this boy, when I’d just started training as a samurai. I think I was seven or eight. He wasn’t one of the trainees—I’m still not sure who he was—but he would always show up during our drills and watch us. I would smile at him every time, and he would just frown back at me, so I figured he didn’t like me for some reason.

“Then one day, when I was staying behind for extra drills, he showed up, grabbed one of the training swords, and told me to fight him.” Shoyo couldn’t help the laughter that started to color his words. “I thought he was crazy, or some spoiled rich kid who would throw a tantrum if he didn’t get his way, so I just went easy on him. And then the little jerk beat me! He could actually hold his own with a sword, and that pissed me off. After that, all of my most exciting spars were against him.

“I don’t…I don’t know if I fell in love with him. Even if I did, I wouldn’t have known what that even meant at that age. But I do remember wanting to kiss him, and that scared me. The only other thing I’d ever wanted so much was to be a strong samurai, like my dad. I couldn’t understand myself, couldn’t understand what I was feeling. Maybe…maybe I would’ve acted on it, if I had more time. But a few months after I turned nine, he just stopped showing up. I don’t know what happened. And the worst part is, I can’t remember his name. I don’t even remember what he looked like, only that he had black hair, like almost everyone I’ve ever met, and soft hands, nothing like the other samurai. That’s it. No name, no clues on where he went. Just his hair and hands.”

It wasn’t until he fell quiet that he realized how much he’d been talking. “Sorry, I, uh…didn’t mean to ramble for so long.” Silence met his words. “Um…what about you?” More silence. “Have you ever been in love?”

It was unnerving, how quiet the shadow had become. Maybe he had fallen asleep, but his sleeping breaths were usually a little heavier. Shoyo didn’t know what to make of this total silence, and he was about to mutter a sheepish good night, when he suddenly heard a hoarse, “Once. A while ago.”

“Oh.” Shoyo was at a loss. Conversation hadn’t been this awkward since he first started living with the wolf. “Well…I’m sure you’ll find someone else someday.”

“I…I’m not so sure.”

“Why not?”

“Just…” There was a deep, shaky breath, unlike anything Shoyo had heard from the shadow. He realized with a jolt that it was the sound of the shadow trying not to cry, something he’d never done around Shoyo. He felt confused and guilty that a conversation about love and family was what had finally broken the wolf.

“Just…,” the shadow tried again, “I’m not…missed. When…when all this happened, the only people who worried about me were my sister and my grandfather. Nee-san only learned what happened out of pure stubbornness and nosiness. I made her promise not to tell my grandfather what had happened, even when he was trying to find me.”

“Why?!”

“Because…I dunno, I was ashamed. Maybe it was selfish of me, but I couldn’t handle him knowing how stupid I’d been. But then he stopped looking, and I realized that…that he must’ve thought I’d run away or died or been kidnapped.” With every word, his low voice grew thicker, shakier, his hold over his tears weakening more and more. “I hate the idea of him thinking any of that, but it’s too late now. The only way I can tell him the truth is if I…fix things, somehow. He’s the only reason I want to go back. I don’t have any friends, except— I dunno, there’s really…there’s no one else who would have worried about me, no one who would miss me. I’m just— I’m a ghost, I’m not—”

Shock froze Shoyo when the shadow’s words broke into a sob, the heartbreaking sound bouncing around the room before it was muffled, probably by his hands. Even in tears, the shadow was quieter than Shoyo—after the first sob, Shoyo could only hear his tremulous gasps for air, with only small hiccups betraying that he was still crying.

Shoyo was heartbroken, but he was also furious at the injustice of it all. He didn’t know what the wolf had done to end up like this, but the awkward, caring, strong person he’d come to know deserved to be missed, deserved to be loved and know it. “That’s not true,” he muttered, just loud enough for the shadow to hear over his tears.

“…W-what?”

“That’s not true,” Shoyo repeated, turning towards the sound of quiet crying. “You have me, Okami-san. You have me and my family and your sister, and I just know your grandfather will be overjoyed to see you again one day. And you will see him again, because you’re strong and loyal and selfless and you will figure this out, I know you will.” A hand slid out from beneath his thick blankets, reaching blindly towards the shadow. His passionate words were met with silence, broken only by the sound of shaky breaths slowing down. “You deserve to be loved, Okami-san. And you are loved.”

“I…I dunno…”

“What should I do?”

“What?”

“How can I make you believe me? How can I help you feel better?”

There was a long pause punctuated by another shaky breath, before Shoyo heard, in the smallest voice, “Can you…hold me?”

“Hold you?”

“Yeah. I just…your hugs feel nice when I’m a wolf, and it’s been a while since I’ve had one as a human, so I thought…never mind, it’s stu—”

“Come here.” His interruption made the shadow lapse into a surprised silence as Shoyo shifted over and lifted the thick blankets. “Okami-san, c’mere.”

“To…to your futon?”

“Our futon now. Come on.”

“Are you sure?” the shadow asked, as though Shoyo couldn’t hear his slow shuffles closer.

“Yeah. I want this.” He’d noticed a guilty note in the shadow’s voice, but it had nothing on the guilt pumping through Shoyo: guilt for all the times the wolf had comforted him through tears, for not showing him how much he cared for him, for feeling the slightest bit lucky for the chance to share the futon and hold him.

He didn’t just want this. He wanted him.

But when he felt the futon dip under the shadow’s weight and the blankets warmed from the added heat, he didn’t feel any of the arousal that had coursed through him during their blind wrestling. No, he only felt guilt and affection, mingling and blooming into a bittersweet longing that almost choked him as he felt the shadow’s arm brush his sleeve.

“I’m here,” he whispered, running his hand up the shadow’s arm to find his shoulder. “Come closer.”

There was a rustle and the shoulder beneath his hand shifted, before he felt calloused fingertips bump against his collarbones. A tremor ran through him from the sudden touch, and he immediately regretted it when those fingertips paused. “Tell me to stop,” the shadow breathed.

“I won’t.” Shoyo covered the shadow’s hand with his own, guiding it up his neck and to his jaw. “I don’t want to.”

The shadow fell silent after that, seemingly focused on curling close to Shoyo without bumping into him. His hand continued gliding over his body as a point of reference, and it took everything in Shoyo to keep himself from shuddering again beneath the light exploration.

Eventually the hand returned to Shoyo’s neck, gliding past where his pulse was strongest to cup his jaw. Then it was gone, replaced by smooth strands of hair brushing Shoyo’s chin. It didn’t make sense, the way Shoyo felt more relaxed as the shadow pressed in. His leaping heartbeat slowed as the shadow’s head nudged his chin, his arms wrapped around his waist, and their legs brushed together. Slowly, carefully, trying not to jostle the shadow, Shoyo pulled the warm blankets back over them, before settling his arms around the shadow’s shoulders and holding him close.

“I’m here,” he whispered, his chin sliding against silken hair. “I know neither of us chose this, but…I’m glad you’re the one I’m doing it with. I like our life here. I like getting to know you, and…I care about you. A lot.”

Silence fell when his words ended, but Shoyo knew, now, that the shadow needed more time to find his words that night.

He didn’t get words. No, he got the feeling of warm tears seeping into his yukata and brushing against the exposed skin of his chest. “Hey,” he cooed, stroking his fingers in a soothing rhythm through soft hair.

“Me, too,” the shadow finally choked out against his wet skin. “I’m happy it’s you.” He didn’t thank Shoyo, nor did he apologize, a detail that made the corners of Shoyo’s lips tick up despite himself. The shadow already knew he wouldn’t accept either from him, not like this.

He listened to the shadow’s quiet sobs fade away, and felt his tears slow to a stop. He didn’t stop holding him tight and stroking his hair until his breathing evened into the deep, slow rhythm of sleep. Only then did Shoyo allow himself to drift off.

———————~☾~———————

He was in the woods. He didn’t want to be in the woods. He didn’t want the bow in his hands, the arrows at his back, the futile search for his father, none of it.

He was tired. He was confused. He wanted the wolf to show himself already, wanted to ask him what he was going to say, wanted to fall to his knees and bury his face into his fur again.

But the wolf wasn’t there. Years of this dream, and for the first time, there was no mysterious creature, no figure of black creeping towards him. He couldn’t see the familiar shape of the wolf. He wanted nothing more than to see those dark eyes, and they were nowhere to be found. The wolf was nowhere to be found.

The hands came suddenly. A warm hold at his waist made him gasp, his bow creaking dangerously in his tightening fingers. “O-Okami-san?” he whispered.

The invisible presence didn’t say anything, but the hum that escaped it told Shoyo everything he needed to know. He melted into the shadow’s arms, letting him take his weight as one hand skated up Shoyo’s body to rest over his leaping heart. Almost immediately, he could feel his pulse slow under the steady warmth of the shadow’s hand. “Okami-san,” he repeated on a shaky breath, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…to feel like this. I’m sorry for wanting more when you’ve already given so much, I know you don’t—”

Soft lips brushed his ear, letting him hear the shadow’s quiet shushing clearly. Shoyo obeyed, lapsing into a hopeful silence—maybe the shadow would finally say something in a dream.

But he didn’t. He just held Shoyo, letting him lean against a strong body and rest in strong arms. It should’ve been frustrating, but Shoyo couldn’t resist how comforting the embrace really was. “Okami-san, I…I wish I…”

Shoyo awoke shivering, his futon and blankets feeling unusually cold. He couldn’t understand why, until he caught the escaping threads of his dream—the shadow, his hands, his quiet hushes—and remembered falling asleep with the shadow in his arms.

He didn’t feel panicked. He didn’t even feel embarrassed. He just felt an icy understanding slip beneath his shivering skin.

He was in love with the shadow, with his wolf. He was in love with a man he’d never seen.

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