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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.

Read on AO3

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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tmariea · 6 months

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I just never stop thinking about the fact that Hua Cheng is a ghost fueled by love, when most ghosts are fueled by resentment. Not to say he doesn’t have resentment in there because he sure does but that’s not the reason.

And not just any ghost, but an incredibly old, incredibly powerful ghost. Everything he has done and built, every time he has clawed himself back into the world, has been because of the enduring love he holds for Xie Lian.

#ohh this is so cool!!#poetry #hualian

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tmariea · 6 months

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All he ever wanted was to protect Xie Lian, and be in the same world as him, and give of his love. Receiving anything in return never needed to be part of the equation. Selfless love on a whole different level.

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tmariea · 6 months

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#tgcf #heaven official’s blessing #hualian #hua cheng #xie lian #hualian invented love

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tmariea · 7 months

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Wash Away the Weariness

Fandom: TGCF/Heaven Official's Blessing

Pairing: Hua Cheng/Xie Lian

Rating: G

Summary:

“San Lang is so kind for letting me borrow his bath.” “Actually gege, I was hoping you might let me help you wash.” ----- Or, Xie Lian comes home dirty and tired after a day planting in Puqi Village, and Hua Cheng takes this as the opportunity to spoil him that it is.

Written for day 12 of MXTX-tober: Hair

Read on AO3, or below the cut!

By the time Xie Lian made it back to the Shrine, the sun was well below the horizon. It had been a planting day in Puqi Village, an activity that most Heavenly Officials would have deemed beneath his dignity. Even if not Xie Lian’s particular dignity, then at least the dignity of his station. The locals at least were always grateful for extra hands, and he was grateful for a way to give his thanks; everyone here had allowed him to make a home for himself, the first real home he’d had in a while. He needed to at least repay the favor. He had spent several awkward conversations deflecting requests to bless the fields with good fortune in the coming season though, for fear of causing drought or blight instead.After all that work since sunup, he was entirely ready to collapse on his mat and sleep until noon - except, there was more planting to be done at dawn anyway.

What Xie Lian hadn’t been expecting was there to be light from the Shrine windows, but he wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t told Hua Cheng about the planting days on purpose. He would have wanted to drop all of his other obligations to help Xie Lian out, regardless of any indifference towards the village. But, he seemed to have a preternatural sense for when Xie Lian had a hard or tiring day.

The ghost king in question was sitting by the altar when Xie Lian opened the door, watching smoke from the incense he had no doubt lit drift into the air. “Good evening, San Lang,” Xie Lian said, and leaned down to steal a quick kiss. He wanted nothing more than to drop into Hua Cheng’s lap and melt into his hold in the way only an exhausted body could, but he had to admit he was completely bedraggled. He’d tied his hair up into a very messy bun, his robes were still tucked up into his belt and pant legs rolled to expose the mud smeared all the way from his knees to his toes, and he wondered if the dirt embedded in the whorls of his fingerprints would come out even if he scrubbed them with a brush. He knew Hua Cheng had personal experience stumbling back in such a state from planting days where he’d helped, but Xie Lian hesitated still. “Let me clean up a bit first.”

“Welcome home, gege. What have you been up to all day?” Hua Cheng asked, letting his gaze drift across Xie Lian’s body. There was a spark in his eye that made Xie Lian have to fight back a blush; he shouldn’t be appealing when this much of a mess, right?

“Planting water chestnuts. There’s more to be done tomorrow too. San Lang is always welcome to stay the night, but I’ll need to sleep before long.”

Hua Cheng only hummed, the light in his eye changing to the one from when he got an idea instead. “This one might have something for that then, if you would permit me to take you back to Paradise Manor for the evening instead.”

Xie Lian turned to hang his straw hat on it’s peg while he pretended to consider. He had a feeling he knew at least part of where Hua Cheng was going with this. Truly the draw of Paradise Manor’s real bath, in comparison to the basin of cold water he would have washed up in here just so he wouldn’t have to make a fire and heat it, was just too great. “Alright, so long as San Lang can have me back here by dawn tomorrow.”

“Anything for you Dianxia,” Hua Cheng intoned, and Xie Lian did a bad job of concealing his snicker at the muscle that twitched in his cheek. He knew Hua Cheng would be loath to give him back so soon.

Xie Lian kissed that cheek in silent apology, and took Hua Cheng’s hand, letting himself be whisked back to the Manor. As soon as they stepped into in the main hall, he felt some of the tension he hadn’t even noticed relax out of his shoulders. It was still early spring, and the Shrine had been colder than he had realized. “San Lang is so kind for letting me borrow his bath.”

“Actually gege, I was hoping you might let me help you wash,” Hua Cheng said has he began leading them in the direction of the master suite.

Xie Lian felt his cheeks start to heat, and raised his free hand to press it against the side of his face. Being comfortable even just changing or otherwise being nude in front of Hua Cheng as something he was still very much getting used to, much less any kind of touch in that state.

Hua Cheng gave his hand a comforting squeeze, no doubt picking up on his hesitancy. “Only if gege wishes. I can wait for you to come to bed if you would prefer to bathe alone.”

“I think I would wish,” Xie Lian replied, taking a steadying breath and squeezing the hand back. Hua Cheng was never anything but respectful of him and how far he was comfortable progressing their relationship. He doubted this would be any different. He looked back up at Hua Cheng with a smile, just in time to catch a pleased look on the ghost king’s face.

“After you then.” Hua Cheng opened the door to his suites and gestured forward.

Ghost City had many bathhouses, beautiful and well-appointed with amenities. However, Hua Cheng’s station and wealth afforded him his own private bath, a fact that Xie Lian was grateful for. It wasn’t even just a bronze tub, which would have been luxury enough, but instead a small pool sunk into the floor and lined with stone tiles. It was also already full of steaming water; Hua Cheng must have called ahead on a private array to have it filled before they’d even arrived. Xie Lian thought he could just about melt at the sight.

He stepped over to a bench near the wall to begin undoing his robes, only to be stopped as Hua Cheng said, “Allow me.”

All Xie Lian could muster was an, “Ah, okay,” and then let his hands fall to his sides. He hardly knew what to do with them while Hua Cheng stepped up so they were only standing with inches between them. Xie Lian had been dressed and undressed constantly in his life as a prince, but that was so long ago it almost felt as if it had happened to someone else, or something he’d read in a book once and only imagined. He’d fallen completely out of the habit.

Hua Cheng reached for the edges of Xie Lian’s robes, which made the god’s heart rate pick up with momentary nervousness (ridiculous, you take off your outer robe every night to go to sleep with him), only to settle back down as those hands lingered, caressing his shoulders in a calming way. Each piece of clothing was the same, gentle hands brushing up and down at his waist, his hips, until he was bare before Hua Cheng.

“Is this alright, gege?”

“Yes, this is fine.” And actually, it was. Hua Cheng’s touch had spoken of slowness and care, in a way that had assuaged much of his self-consciousness. It still burbled along under the surface, but at a level that he could set to the side. Xie Lian gave him a warm smile, and stepped up to the edge of the pool.

The water was so hot when he first stepped in, that he had to pause for a moment standing on the bench halfway into the pool, before easing the rest of the way in with a groan. He could hear Hua Cheng’s delighted laughter from behind him. “San Laaang,” Xie Lian said with only a touch of a whine in his voice. He turned around so he could drape his arms lazily along the edge of the bath, and rest his cheek on them, while he watched Hua Cheng finish folding his white robes neatly onto the bench.

“Yes, gege? Is the water nice?” he asked, while removing his rings and bracers to place on the bench too.

“Very nice, thank you. But you, you are enjoying this too much.”

Hua Cheng only made a humming noise in his throat, one which sounded suspiciously like a self-satisfied agreement, and moved next to collect a towel and rummage about on a set of shelves. He pulled down bottles and brushes and soap beans, before coming to kneel on the towel next to the bath and lay out his finds. “Of course I am enjoying a chance to spoil my Dianxia. It’s my favorite activity. Aside from holding my Dianxia, or kissing my Dianxia, or—”

Xie Lian cut him off by sitting up and pressing both of his hands to Hua Cheng’s face. “You are too much! And all of that is too much too.” He took away just one hand to gesture to the row of tools and products. Hua Cheng just kissed the palm still over his lips, causing Xie Lian to squeak in surprise at the same time as he felt like sparks were shooting up his fingers and down his wrist. His reflex was to pull the hand away, but Hua Cheng gently caught his wrist and lowered it to his lap to begin cleaning under the nails with a pick.

Xie Lian felt he could hardly protest a second time; he had agreed to let Hua Cheng help him bathe after all. What had he expected that to consist of, a quick wash of his body and hair with rice water? There was no way it was going to be that simplistic. So he sighed and relaxed back against the edge of the pool, letting all of his muscles slacken against the tiles - slightly warm from the proximity to the water - and his hand lay still in Hua Cheng’s lap.

Once the nails on his first hand were cleaned and an attempt had been made on the dirt in his fingerprints - as expected, there was still a little bit between the creases but also Hua Cheng had been gentler with his scrubbing than was truly necessary - Xie Lian passed over his other hand willingly. “What is San Lang thinking about?” he asked.

“I was wondering if gege would let me paint his nails. I expect gege wouldn’t want black, but I could get pale peach, or gold, or,” and Xie Lian couldn’t help but notice the faint flush nearly hidden by the bowed angle of Hua Cheng’s head, “would you wear red?”

“Ah, I don’t know, it seems so impractical for me! You know I work with my hands all the time,” Xie Lian replied with the first thoughts that came to his mind. It had always been the same when he was Crowned Prince; even though painted nails were fashionable with the nobility his cultivation training had made it impractical. But then he paused to considered it further. There was something really beautiful about Hua Cheng’s black nails against his pale hands. What might it look like against his own? What would it look like to so boldly wear Hua Cheng’s color? “… maybe someday.”

“I’ll have to find a few colors gege might like then, for someday.” Hua Cheng did a bad job of disguising the excited light in his eye behind a self satisfied grin.

Xie Lian couldn’t help but smile back as his heart did funny things in his chest at the sight of Hua Cheng so happy. But then remembering the ghost king’s particular penchant for going over the top, added, “Just a few. A pale peach sounds nice. And San Lang can pick out his favorite red, too.”

It was Xie Lian’s turn to be satisfied with himself as Hua Cheng let out a breathy, “Gege,” with a gob-smacked expression on his face. He recovered quickly enough though, giving Xie Lian possession of his hand back and asking for a leg next.

The position that required made Xie Lian laugh at first, with his hands braced on the seat so he could rest a foot on the side of the pool. It remained funny, and a little ticklish, while Hua Cheng scrubbed at the dirt on his foot and up his shins from ankle to knee. It became less so, the anxiety he’d kept at a buzz so low he had nearly forgotten it bubbling up again, as the hands attending to him moved up to his thigh. Xie Lian’s hands clenched almost without his notice around the edge of the bench, and he bit the inside of his lip. How had, through all of this so far, he failed to notice the distinct presence of each of Hua Cheng’s fingertips?

The anxiety spawned frustration, his mind pulling in two different directions by the emotions. This was Hua Cheng, he would never touch him in a way Xie Lian didn’t want. And he did want that kind of touch to mean something more someday, to be comfortable with that, but not now, not now. And it wasn’t that now, the hands gentle but not insistent so why couldn’t the rest of him believe—

“Would gege tell me how to plant water chestnuts? I’ve only ever helped with the rice.”

Xie Lian snapped out of his spiral with an inelegant, “Huh?” When he looked back up into Hua Cheng’s eye, that gaze was locked onto his face and held a different question, ‘are you still alright?’ Xie Lian took a calming breath and shook the competing thoughts out of his head. “Oh, ah, yes of course.” He launched into a description of water chestnut bulbs and how to bury them in the flooded fields, while Hua Cheng’s hands resumed their task. It was easy enough to throw himself into the distraction; Hua Cheng’s hunger for knowledge was vast, and wonderful for knowing his full attention was fixed on Xie Lian’s words and only his words.

By the time he was done with the miniature lesson, both of his legs were clean, and Hua Cheng instructed, “Gege, turn around so I can wash your back.” That he could do with a contented sigh. Even if the hands against his bare skin was new, there was an easy familiarity from Hua Cheng running his hands up and down Xie Lian’s back as he fell asleep, any time they spent the night together. This time it was accompanied by a harder press of fingers, thumbs tracing with intention in an arc from the top to bottom of his shoulder blades, then down the middle of his back on either side of his spine. When Xie Lian made an inquiring noise, Hua Cheng answered, “Gege did such hard work bent over all day; this lowly one couldn’t possibly let him go back out sore tomorrow.” And then he really set to work on his back, section by section, devoting knuckles and the heel of his palm to the task in addition to his thumbs.

“San Lang,” Xie Lian groaned as Hua Cheng dug into a particularly difficult knot. He felt like he was only being held up by the shape of the bathing pool and those hands.

“Yes? Is there something you wanted to tell me?” asked his mischievous ghost, as if he was completely unaware of the absolute puddle of god that was about melt all over his bathroom floor if he kept that up.

“Feels good. That one had been bothering me actually.” Xie Lian momentarily dislodged the hands as he rotated his shoulder a bit to test the improved mobility, and then leaned back again.

“I couldn’t let gege hurt,” Hua Cheng said, voice softer than before and touch fleeting. It took Xie Lian a moment to recognize that it had been the gentlest kiss to the spot. But then the insincere tone was back. “Should I give gege more massages then? Maybe next time on the bed so I can give better pressure?”

“Heavens yes,” Xie Lian said with another moan. He recognized the irony of getting so worked up about his legs and then egging Hua Cheng on in this. But his beloved teased him so much that it was always a great pleasure to fluster him in return. This time apparent in the way his hands stuttered where they had continued with the massage. He grinned thinking of the faint cracks he knew would be on Hua Cheng’s face - the almost imperceptible widening of his eye, the slight slackening of his jaw. Xie Lian would would let himself be teased forever if only he could see that expression too.

It seemed the massage didn’t just stop with his back, because as soon as Hua Cheng got his hands into Xie Lian’s hair, he started rubbing circles into his scalp. If Xie Lian had thought he couldn’t get any more boneless, this just about proved him wrong. Hua Cheng laughed at him as he obviously fought to keep his head from lolling. “Come, lay your head on my lap,” he instructed.

“Ah, I’d just get San Lang wet,” Xie Lian protested, not even mentioning the obvious impracticality.

“We’re about to get into sleep clothes anyway. Please, gege?”

Xie Lian gave in, because that really did sound nice. To still give access to most of his head, he turned a little to rest the side of his face on Hua Cheng’s knees. He did have to turn his head back just a bit to try to see Hua Cheng’s expression, such a soft smile. Xie Lian loved knowing that he was the only one who got to see Hua Cheng like this, something special just for the two of them.

He stopped considering such things pretty quickly though, as the hands returned to his hair. This time Hua Cheng’s fingers seemed to just be absently rubbing, without any particular goal. It still felt good, and Xie Lian found himself drifting with his eyes half-shut for a little while, until the dig of the tile into his shoulder reminded him where he was. “Alright, enough of that,” he said, far too sleepily for the admonishment to mean anything, “I’m about to end up spending the whole night in your tub, and then I really will be sore in the morning.”

“Apologies gege. I guess I will have to find a better place next time, so you can fall asleep in my lap comfortably.”

Xie Lian’s cheeks felt warm at the thought, and perhaps if he was lucky Hua Cheng would assume that was just from the heat. He was only ever lucky when it came to Hua Cheng, so maybe he could convince himself it was working. He did want to do this again though, so he gave an affirmative, “Mn,” in reply.

He had to lift his head back up then, so Hua Cheng could actually get to the task of washing his hair. After that, he stepped out of the bath to let Hua Cheng bundle him up into the biggest, warmest towel he’d ever felt, pinning his arms to his sides and all. Xie Lian laughed. “San Lang, I look like one of your butterfly cocoons.”

“Sure,” Hua Cheng replied with a grin, “but usually it’s the pretty thing that comes out of the cocoon, not what goes into it.”

Xie Lian snorted dramatically, to prevent himself from dissolving into giggles at his ghost’s shameless flirting. He wiggled a hand out from the towel and pushed against Hua Cheng’s chest. “You said you were about to get into sleep robes too. Go on, while I dry off.”

“But I was supposed to get to help gege with his whole bath.”

“I think I can do just this one thing, so you’re not still wet too. Go on, and then I’ll let you comb my hair.” Xie Lian had a feeling that would be a good enough exchange, and it was at least one that Hua Cheng accepted. He turned back to the bench and handed over a set of white sleep robes, before starting to strip off his own outer robes. Xie Lian set to his own task, cheeks heating. ‘Ridiculous, he’s been seeing you naked all night,’ he tried to tell himself, promptly realized that that was just making matters worse, and decided it was best if he just stopped thinking.

Dressed and dried, Xie Lian sat down on the stool set out before a bronze mirror. Examining his own reflection, especially in a stable surface rather than in a stream or a basin of water, was also an activity he’d fallen out of practice with. Time was, the figure in the mirror was always proud and tall, impeccably dressed and convinced of his own invincibility. The Xie Lian who looked back at him now still had an upright posture, but a little tired, a little worn around the edges. But then he watched the reflection of Hua Cheng step up behind him, saw the way his own face changed. Hua Cheng had always been the one to remind him what it meant to be happy, and what did a little wear compare to a gift like that?

“Would Dianxia let his San Lang braid his hair?” Hua Cheng asked, shaking the god from his minor ruminations.

Thinking of a day in his little shrine, when their positions were reversed, Xie Lian said, “What, you don’t want to give me a crooked ponytail?”

“No, I think that one is better suited for me, don’t you think.” Hua Cheng’s eye was sparkling as reached around to the small table and picked up a vial of hair oil.

They were surrounded by the scent of honeysuckle as he began to work it through Xie Lian’s hair. It was a different scent than Hua Cheng usually wore - a little musky, a little like roses - so he must have bought this oil with Xie Lian in mind. As much as Hua Cheng liked to insist that everything he had was Xie Lian’s, this kind of little thing was what made him feel most like he belonged in Hua Cheng’s home. Not everything handed over to him, but the thought of his hair oil on the shelf next to Hua Cheng’s. Something for each of them, next to, not subsumed by.

He felt like those thoughts, all of his thoughts since he sat down before the mirror really, were too weighty, too complicated, to voice in the state of sleepy relaxation that was taking him over again courtesy of the hands in his hair. So instead he said, “This scent is nice. Thank you for picking it for me, San Lang.”

Hua Cheng was good at understanding him without words anyway. “Of course, gege,” he said out loud, but the slower stroke of his hands against Xie Lian’s scalp before he separated the hair out for braiding said that he knew.

Xie Lian stood once the braid was tied off, and Hua Cheng took his arm again, as if leading him to a grand procession, not just through the door to the bedroom. He even held open the door, and pulled back the sheets. Xie Lian could protest, but at this point he felt like there may not be any purpose left to that.

“You know, maybe I should come out to help with the planting tomorrow, now that gege has so kindly taught me how to plant water chestnuts,” Hua Cheng suggested as he rounded the bed and slid beneath the blankets on the other side.

“Hmm, but I thought San Lang said he had important ghost city business to attend to. I thought he said it might take all week. Have you finished already?” It was the reason Xie Lian had made a point of not mentioning the planting days in the first place.

Hua Cheng groaned and turned his face into the pillow. “It’s so boring dealing with that trash. Almost as bad as calligraphy practice. Almost worse.”

“If it’s anything like calligraphy practice, then it’s good for you.”

“Gege is so cruel to his San Lang.”

Xie Lian could only laugh at the dramatics that he was well accustomed to by now. “I suppose I will just have to make it up.” He pulled on Hua Cheng’s shoulder a bit, to get him to turn his face out of the pillow, and leaned in for the kiss that he’d been wanting since he first found Hua Cheng waiting in Puqi Shrine.

The humming sound Hua Cheng made against his lips said that this was a perfectly acceptable apology. As did the fingers that cupped the back of his neck and worked their way into the hair at the base of his braid, and the hand that stroked up and down his back, a mirror from in the bath. Xie Lian hooked a knee over Hua Cheng’s legs, and shifted closer, but he really didn’t have the energy left for much more than that. He let himself drift on the feeling of the lazy, languid kisses, until eventually he let his head droop into the crook of Hua Cheng’s neck.

“Next time, San Lang will have to let me help him bathe,” he said, mostly muffled into the red silk sleep robe.

It seemed Hua Cheng understood anyway, because he replied, “This lowly one couldn’t possibly let—”

“Shhh,” Xie Lian cut him off, and then leaned up to kiss the protest away. “You took such good care of me. I want to take care of San Lang too.”

“If gege would let me come out planting with him tomorrow, you’d have an excuse for that sooner.”

“San Lang!” Xie Lian laughed and gave a halfhearted swat against Hua Cheng’s chest. “I know I can’t really stop you.” One look at the smug grin forming on his ghost king’s face, and Xie Lian turned over in his hold so he was facing away. “Goodnight!”

“Good idea, we both have to be up early then.”

“I’m already asleep, I love you, goodnight!” Xie Lian wiggled back until his back rested against Hua Cheng’s chest. A pair of cool arms wrapped around him and pulled him back just a little bit further. Xie Lian was really almost asleep as it was. But awake for just long enough to hear, “Goodnight, beloved,” before he drifted off.

#tgcf #hualian #mxtxtober23 #mxtxtober2023 #hua cheng #xie lian #heaven official’s blessing #tian guan ci fu #this is just fluff truly

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tmariea · 7 months

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Been thinking about quanyin and what might’ve been going on in Yin Yu’s head as it all fell apart:

This was my dream, and I achieved it. This was my dream and the living of it is not what I had dreamed. But it’s still a great accomplishment and that can be enough.

The living of my dream is not what I had dreamed, and you’re the one who reminds me of that, without meaning to. It’s not what I hoped and you’re the only one who sees it.

You’re the only one who sees it, and you remind me that I could have something different, be someone different. But who would I be when I have defined myself by this for so long. What would be left of me?

What would be left of you when you achieve my dream too?

What if what is left of you is so much more? What if this fits you like a second skin? Why were you made for my dream? Why wasn’t I?

I can’t say any of that. Because you saw that this thing wasn’t a fit for me but you ran on ahead. Because I brought you to the place we both are today, because I was supposed to be your mentor, because I told you ‘no I’m going to stay’ before. I can’t tell you this, I can only sit in my misery and watch you from afar until I break.

#tgcf #quanyin #yin yu #quan yizhen #quanyinweek2023 #late for that but I’ll claim it as a free day post #heaven official’s blessing #been thinking a lot about dreams we define ourselves by and then they are-#not deferred exactly but become something that we have to reevaluate and decide if it’s right for us anymore

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tmariea · 7 months

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I've been working on a Renaissance Faire AU for Hualian, and feel like screaming into the void about it a little bit...

Sure this is from Ch 5 and not directly related to the premise of the AU at all but, I love this conversation so

#tgcf #hualian #xie lian #hua cheng #modern au #ren faire au #if anyone wants to yell about this AU with me... plz come say hi

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tmariea · 7 months

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Woke up this morning with thoughts of a Xie Lian who got to spend more time with Honghong-er calling him ‘my little ruby.’

And then when Xie Lian puts together that Hua Cheng is Honghong-er, picking up the nickname again. It’s to his great delight that he learns this flusters Hua Cheng.

#tgcf #heaven official’s blessing #tgcf headcanon #xie lian #hua cheng #hualian #that’s it just that thought and it’s going to live in my head forever

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tmariea · 9 months

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Random minor official who’s missed the memo about staying away from Hua Cheng: what are you?

Hua Cheng: a ghost

Official: no, I mean what gender?

Hua Cheng: a calamity

Official: no, I mean… what do you have between your legs?

Hua Cheng: usually dianxia

#I’m sure this has been done before but it got in my head #tgcf #tian guan ci fu #hua cheng #heaven official’s blessing #hualian

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tmariea · 9 months

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Modern AU where Xie Lian doesn’t like to give up clothes that are still serviceable but have small holes or tears.

Problem is his mending skills suck, and Hua Cheng is not about to let his gege walk around with badly mended clothes. So Hua Cheng learns how to repair clothes with embroidery, and over time Xie Lian’s clothes become more and more covered in embroidered flowers.

#hualian #hua cheng #xie lian #tgcf #headcanon #modern au #tian guan ci fu #heaven official’s blessing #I tried to think of a good way to get ‘flower crowned martial artist’ in there somewhere but it just felt clunky

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tmariea · 2 years

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Hello friends, today I’m bringing you a bit of a different kind of art than usual - starting in October, I will be opening commissions for custom designed dice rolling trays! I will have 2 slots available, pricing and more details on the comms sheet.

If you’re interested I’d also recommend following my Twitter account https://twitter.com/amariteattrpg - I’ll be posting more photos of the work I’ve done so far throughout this week as a lead up! Please also contact me through my twitter account if you are interested; the mobile notifications are more reliable

#dice tray #d&d #ttrpg art #art comissions #dice #dnd #dungeons and dragons #dnd commission #d&d commission #ttrpg #ttrpg commissions

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tmariea · 3 years

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Reblog if you're a fanfic writer and you wanna know what your followers' favorite story of yours is ❤

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tmariea · 3 years

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I got the chance to write for Voices from Mars: A Carole and Tuesday zine. Take a look around the digital zine and merch!!

PRE-ORDERS ARE NOW OPEN!

Greetings, Martians! Pre-orders for Voices from Mars: A Carole & Tuesday digital zine are NOW OPEN until December 24th!

The following products will be available:

PDF Zine - $15

Digital Merch Only - $15

PDF + All Digital Merch - $25

All pdfs and digital merch will be sent through email once the preorder period has ended!

Check out our store: https://voicesfrommars.bigcartel.com/

#carole and tuesday #carole and tuesday zine #zine

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tmariea · 3 years

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Hey everyone, here's my part ror the @atla-bigbang ! This was the piece I drew for tmariaea's Zuko-centric fic! It's an amazing fic and you should definitely check it out~

[IMAGE ID: A starry sky stretches over the Wan Shi Desert. Zuko is riding his ostrich-horse as he looks up at the night sky, searching for constellations. Two lionturtle constellations look down at Zuko.]

#atla #zuko #art for my fic New Constellations #isn't it so good??#the lion turtles look so cute and playful I love them

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tmariea · 3 years

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New Constellations (ch 2)

Chapter 2 of my ATLA Big Bang piece!!

Read Chapter 1 here

Chapter summary: Turns out, even after Zuko's lost his ship, navigation skills still come in handy. The myths just might come in handy too. After all, there's more than one type of finding your way.

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Zuko hated everything about traveling as a fugitive in the Earth Kingdom, and having parted from Uncle made it even worse, although he’d never say it aloud. He hated the plants that were all different from back home and made his head feel like it was full to bursting. He hated that there wasn’t much food to forage for, and wasn’t much left after the winter and the army’s requisitions (stealing) to buy.

He hated the nights too; they weren’t mild like back home, but downright cold. Worst of all, as the landscape grew more arid the further he traveled, and it only got colder at night despite the warm days. While his breath of fire could manage the cold, it left him with a weariness sunk deep into his bones.

Uncle was probably sitting close to a nice, crackling fire, making tea. Hopefully not with anything that could kill him this time, because Zuko just couldn’t always be there to tell him not to drink tea made of strange plants. Unlike Zuko, Uncle Iroh had always been a proper firebender; he’d had no unnatural pull toward the nighttime.

This time, Zuko had little choice. Traveling by the stars was the only way he knew how to navigate in this unknown place. He had no compass or astrolabe, not even charcoal or good paper to write on for his calculations. As much as he hated to admit it, the only thing he had left to his name were Zhu Yan’s stories and a map he had haggled with his last coin like his life depended on it. He hardly even trusted the map.

For days now, Zuko had been heading northwest towards Ba Sing Se, ever since he left Lee’s village. He knew that the Avatar needed to find an earthbending master next, and what better place to find one than the capital city of the Earth Kingdom? Even if Zuko didn’t trust the map completely, the city was so large that, if it was even close to accurate, he wouldn’t miss it.

There was a desert in the way, though, and if Zuko couldn’t find enough provisions to last him the crossing, he’d never make it. He looked up at the sky with a sigh, wishing the constellation stories had some more concrete answers to them, like “what to do when you are a broke, exiled Fire Nation Prince chasing the Avatar with several hundred miles of sand in your way?” Instead of magical solutions written in the stars, he caught sight of the Lion Turtle constellation.

Zuko could almost hear Zhu Yan’s voice in his head telling the story: they were great islands that swam across every sea. They swam until mortals no longer needed them to provide a safe home. Some settled down, growing tired and weary and stony in their old age, and became the first stationary islands. Some, though, were too young and restless, too eager to keep exploring, and those lion turtles swam off the edge of the world and into the sky.

“The world is round,” Zuko had told him flatly. “There is no edge.”

Zhu Yan had chuckled, lamented Zuko’s inability to simply enjoy a story, and then said, “The Lion Turtle is a tricky constellation. Be careful when you choose to follow it—it’s been known to lead you where you need to go, but not always where you want to go.”

Zuko had scoffed at that, too. While constellations weren’t static, he had learned well that they followed set patterns in the sky, by the night and the month and the season. He knew all the calculations, knew that you could use a map and your instruments to know exactly where you would end up by following one constellation or another. And yet tonight, with his head as empty of ideas as his stomach was of food, it felt as if there was hardly anything left but to chase a spirit tale.

Zuko closed his left eye so he could trace the curve of the strong, individual stars that made the Lion Turtle’s shell, the small cluster at its head, and the fuzz of tiny, far away lights just above its back that almost looked like an island forest obscured by morning fog. He pulled on the ostrich-horse’s reins and turned her in a new direction.

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Zuko could feel the heat forming behind his eyes as he stormed away from the prison tower. He hadn’t wanted Uncle to tell him he had another potential destiny as the descendant of an Avatar. Now, more than ever, he felt torn between home and the position in his father’s regard he’d fought so hard to gain, and the part of him that had seen the wider world and found his old views childish and wanting.

Once he’d reached a reasonable distance from the building that he wouldn’t be easily spotted, Zuko found a flat spot obscured by an outcropping of stone and began to pace. Everything about him was restless and wound tight these days. Being home was supposed to be a relief, but it hadn’t felt anything like that at all.

The story about Sozin and Roku that Zuko had found had not been helpful. Uncle had not been helpful. He couldn’t ask Mai about any of this; she was loyal to Azula, and he couldn’t ask her to deal with his insecurities. What prince of the Fire Nation, heir to the throne, doubts his country and his people?

He hadn’t heard that sneering voice in his head in a long time; not since he was first on his ship, frightened and set an impossible mission.

Thinking of those early days on the ship reminded him of one other person in his life who had been a teacher. Zhu Yan loved stories and history and tradition; maybe he would have some kind of insight. Zuko pushed down a cringe of guilt that he hadn’t sought any of his original crew members from before the explosion, other than knowing that Zhao had requisitioned them to other ships for the ill-fated Invasion of the North. The navy kept good records, he should be able to find that information easily now.

Zuko turned and headed towards the edge of the caldera instead of back to the palace. The naval headquarters were down the other side of the mountain, near the shore. His status should be enough to entitle him to the name and route of the ship Zhu Yan was stationed on. Then he could send a hawk explaining his troubles and maybe get some real advice. He chose not to acknowledge the fact that Zhu Yan had been just as known to answer a question with a cryptic story as Uncle was to do with a cryptic proverb.

He crested the lip of the stone formation and started down the switchbacks along the cliffside, pleased at the exertion after so many days of palanquin rides. The crunch of his footsteps found a rhythm with the rush of the waves further in the distance and the gulls calling overhead.

It was even easy enough to walk around once Zuko reached the military base. Wearing the nondescript clothing he usually did to visit the prison tower, he didn’t draw attention like he would in his royal robes. Sailors were businesslike, and they had better things to do than to try to see the face under his hood when the guards had already let him through the gate.

Zuko made his way towards the building where naval records would be kept, and lowered his hood as he approached the door. The man standing guard looked surprised to see him, but bowed and allowed him to pass. Inside was a small open space between rows and rows of shelves, with another officer at a writing desk who stood as Zuko entered.

“Prince Zuko,” the man said, showing no reaction to the sudden appearance of a member of the royal family at his desk as he bowed. “I am Corporal Iwao. How can I be of service?”

“Corporal, I am searching for a particular naval officer and the name of the ship he is currently serving on. A Lieutenant Zhu Yan. He was stationed with the fleet under Commander Zhao at the North Pole, last I was aware.” Zuko did his best to keep his disdain for Zhao off of his face.

“One moment, your highness,” Corporal Iwao told him and disappeared into the shelves with a bow.

He was gone for so long that by the time he returned, Zuko was sure he had memorized every inch of the small front area. Corporal Iwao was carrying a large scroll which he set out on the desk and began to unroll. Zuko tried to read the title at the top, hoping it would be the name of a ship he recognized. The bottom dropped out of his stomach as he recognized the characters for “casualties.”

The man studiously ran his finger down the list until he reached the name ‘Zhu Yan – deceased’ so that Zuko could see for himself. There were other characters which followed, detailing the campaign and date of death, but Zuko’s mind couldn’t absorb any of it.

“My apologies your highness, but the officer in question was killed in action during the Siege of the North. Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

“No, thank you,” Zuko said. He couldn’t feel the words on his lips, could hardly hear them as he spoke.

The walk back to the palace was one step and one step and one step, on and on, with hardly a thread of memory to connect each to the one before it. Zuko pushed open doors and barely registered the pressure against his skin, heard the bustle around him as if he was underwater. When he reached the hallway to his room, there was someone waiting for him just outside the door. He knew he should be upset about it, but trying to reach for the emotion only opened a yawning hole in its place.

“Zuzu, there you are! I was starting to get worried. Where have you been?” Azula said ‘worried’ like it was foreign word, and her expression was disinterested as she examined her nails.

This wasn’t the first time that Zuko just stared at his sister, unsure how to handle what this next game of hers would be. He didn’t even have space for normal thought, much less what it would take to keep up.

“I went for a walk,” he finally said.

“Fairly long walk. Someone less trusting than me might not believe that.”

He didn’t feel anything as she spoke. Not even the parts of him that were always afraid of her. “Please go.”

“Is it so wrong to let my brother know that I care?” she asked, and then finally looked up. There must have been something in Zuko’s face that Azula wasn’t expecting, because surprise slipped out from beneath her perfect porcelain mask. Zuko could count the number of times he’d seen that happen on one hand, and if he had any capacity for it he would feel rather pleased with himself.

Azula examined him for a moment more and Zuko let her, standing still, feeling like the ability to even move was an ocean away. Finally, she let out a frustrated huff and turned to leave.

Zuko pushed open the final door, had only enough presence of mind to lock it behind him, and sank down onto his bed facing the open window. As the sun traveled across the sky, and shadows grew longer and then overtook the world, Zuko stayed in one place, only silence in his mind.

The next time he moved was out to his balcony after night had fallen. The air was heavy with humidity and heat, almost nothing like the cool sea breezes from the nights that he practiced navigation with Zhu Yan on deck. Zuko sat with his back to the railing, arms around his knees, and that is when the tears came. Silent and slow and unending, until every star above his head bled into one.

Zhu Yan had loved the Fire Nation. But in all the time Zuko had known him, he had never spoken about loving the war. He couldn’t remember either, if he had ever asked. But without anyone ever asking, and in fact against all Zuko’s protests, he had always shared how much he loved the fires in the sky, and stories that had been thought inconsequential for generations.

He had died for another man’s vanity. Zuko had seen first-hand the aftermath at the North Pole. There had been nothing gained there, no greatness the Fire Nation brought with them to bestow on the rest of the world.

He’d never hear Zhu Yan tell a story again.

How many other battlefields had been the same? He knew so many people now, too, with voices they would always miss. Would it be easier to count which battlefields had not left behind such pointless loss?

He’d never see Zhu Yan smile for something so small as when Zuko would listen without complaint.

Zuko thought back on the history he had read, of how even the start of the war had been for pride and had left friends lost in its wake.

He’d never again stand together with Zhu Yan on a deck beneath the stars while the world stretched wide before them. Never get the chance to voice that he had started to hope that someday the world could look so wondrous to him too.

He wondered if perhaps that was his answer.

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When Zuko left the Fire Nation palace after the Day of Black Sun, he was far more prepared than when he had left Uncle behind on the edges of the desert. Tucked away in the basket of his war balloon, he had plenty of rations, as well as an astrolabe, maps and star charts that he had lifted from the palace. Of the things Zuko had stolen in his life, these were marked firmly in the ‘do not regret’ category.

After a few hours of following the Avatar and his party at a safe distance, Zuko had a pretty good idea of where they were headed. Which was a good thing because by sunset his slower balloon had fallen considerably behind. He lost sight of them just after the last light left the sky.

Zuko checked that the fire in the furnace was still burning steadily and dug his navigation tools from his packs. There wasn’t much space to lay out a map in the bottom of the basket, but he made do as best as he could and crouched in the tiny amount of space that was left to start plotting a course towards the Western Air Temple.

It was ironic, Zuko thought, that the constellation which he followed tonight, the one who would lead him west, back to the first air temple he’d ever set foot in, was Siming. The stories described them as softly beautiful spirit, who lived in the golden clouds at sunset and gathered every drifting soul into their arms as the day came to a close and sheltered them until dawn when they would prepare to enter into life anew. Their constellation resembled a coiled fishing net. Zuko had never touched a fishing net in real life, or one woven by the spirits. If he chose to believe the stories, Zhu Yan had touched the net from the legend now.

Zuko took a long breath in, felt his fire rise up in his chest and released another blast of it into the furnace that was keeping him aloft. He did not know if this is truly what happened after death, that every lost soul was scooped into a fishing net in the sky at sunset. But Zhu Yan had believed, so for tonight at least Zuko chose to believe that his mentor had gotten one brief night to rest among the constellations that he had loved.

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The sun was setting over the Western Air Temple. Dusk always made Zuko feel just a bit hazy, like he wanted to go curl up and savor the last patch of light like a pygmy-puma, and it had slowed Aang’s firebending energy significantly. They had just finished practice for the day and were sitting on a ledge of the temple, legs dangling down into open air, to watch the sunset.

Aang kicked his legs idly, languid little bits of breeze trailing off of his feet and making the mists below swirl. “Hey, this is probably a bit of a sensitive question, so feel free to not answer, but how did you do it? You know, keep firebending after...?”

“After what?” Zuko asked.

Aang wouldn’t meet his eyes, but waved a hand in the direction of his scar. Zuko’s back tensed and he drew in a breath to yell – He was a firebender, the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, how could he do any less? How could Aang imply he was so dishonorable as to turn his back on his bending, on his nation and heritage, on the brilliant light they were tasked to bring to the rest of the world? – And let the breath back out, sat on the impulse like Uncle was always telling him to do. Asked himself if those were his own thoughts, or just Ozai’s thoughts left in his head.

Which was probably even more the heart of what Uncle had wanted him to do. Zuko sent up a silent prayer to the spirits to let him tell Uncle someday that he was sorry for learning the lesson too late.

He said to Aang, “Work, lots of it. And not the kind of work you do by practicing firebending forms, but the kind of work that takes telling your heart over and over again that it doesn’t need to be afraid, even when it wants to be.”

“Wow,” Aang replied, “that’s pretty anticlimactic. Sounds like you just had to have a lot of patience.” He had a mock frown on his face that Zuko had learned meant good-natured teasing. So Zuko only elbowed him a little in the side while Aang dissolved into laughter.

“I have tons of patience! But, if you want something a little more exciting, just wait.”

“Okay. Whatever you say, Sifu Hotman.”

Zuko spared him an exaggerated eye roll as he turned back to watch the sun dip below the horizon and the sky grow steadily darker. Behind them he could hear the sounds of someone starting a fire and beginning to cook dinner, and some faint conversation. Beside him Aang was doing his level best to prove that he had plenty of patience, and only fidgeted a little.

Finally, when enough stars had come out, Zuko gestured overhead and said, “Every star up there is Agni’s brothers and sisters and siblings. The whole sky is full of fire, fire that we can’t touch or feel. But when we use the fire that Agni grants us, it’s as if we’re just a bit closer.”

“Wow,” Aang breathed out, looking suitably impressed.

“A good friend taught me all of the stories he knew. Would you like to hear them?”

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Thank you all so much for reading!! And make sure to check out @cianidix ‘s fabulous artwork if you haven’t already!!!

#atla #zuko #atla big bang 2020 #fic #tmariea writes #new constellations

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tmariea · 3 years

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New Constellations

Written for the ATLA Big Bang 2020!! Hosted by @atla-bigbang

Rating: T

Type: Gen

Summary: "Every star in the sky is another sun somewhere out there, farther away than we could ever imagine."

When Zuko is banished from the Fire Nation, he leaves with a ship, an impossible task, and a newfound fear of his own element. As he's offered the chance to learn navigation by the stars and the myths that weave constellations into the sky, he has a chance too, to learn how to appreciate fire once more and how to look at the world in a different light.

Warnings: panic attacks, anxiety attacks, off-screen character death, grief, healing wounds

Much thanks to @cianidix and her amazing artwork, make sure to check it out!! And to @vandrell for cheer reading and aiyah, constellayetion, and burnt_oranges over on AO3 for their dedicated beta work!!

Chapters: 1 of 2

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Three weeks out from the Western Air Temple, twenty one days of sailing away from the islands that Zuko had always called home, he woke in a cold sweat. This wasn’t a rare occurrence these days. These nights when he’d jolt awake in his hard metal ship’s cabin, face aching, feeling like he was tearing apart at the seams from dreams of Father’s hands, of Azula’s pleased laughter as she had watched Father read the proclamation of his banishment.

Zuko had gotten used to turning toward the wall and curling into himself, where he would tremble either until he dropped back into a fitful, exhausted sleep, or the rising sun would beat him to it. Tonight something extra roiled in his stomach; maybe the fish they had eaten for dinner wasn’t agreeing with him. He levered himself out of bed and stumbled toward the door. A turn of the crank, and he was out into the dark hallway. There were no windows here to cast light on his unsteady steps, and so he continued until he hit the wall, slumped into it, and turned right.

Why don’t you make a light for yourself, firebender? The voice in his head sounded a lot like Father, and was just as demanding, just as disappointed. His stomach gave another unsteady lurch, and he had to stop for a moment and hunch over in the corridor as he fought for control over his breath. Finally, Zuko moved forward again, shuffling along with his shoulder to the wall until he came to the doorway out onto deck.

The door swinging forward was a visceral relief, as the cool night air hit his face. Zuko slipped out and let it shut quietly behind him. He didn’t even spare a thought for if any of the crew might be watching as he dashed to lean over the railing near the prow. Here the wind chilled the sweat that had collected at the edges of his bandage, and his stomach finally settled as he breathed in the scent of salt air slowly.

He felt better out here in the cool and the dark, where no one could look at him, or if they did, where he couldn’t see the looks on their faces. The stars trailed thick and bright down to the horizon to meet the water, broken here and there by the dark shape of a cloud. This was better. Looking at the stars didn’t hurt.

Wanting to be beneath the night sky, firebender? When your fire is at its lowest? Disgraceful.

There was a flash of cloying heat through his core as he started to tremble. It started in his lungs and spread outward, his breath came raggedly with no chance of control this time. That was right, wasn’t it - Zuko was a disgrace as a prince, a son, a firebender. Disgraced dishonored no fire no home no hope. He clung to the rail as he slipped down to his knees. He pressed the right side of his forehead to the metal, feeling the cold from the point of contact, and the pulsing pain as his skin stretched.

The waves washed against the metal of the hull, the stars wheeled overhead, and some time later Uncle came to gather him up and bring him back to his cabin. He didn’t even have the energy to answer Uncle’s questions, much less yell at the crew members who had undoubtedly alerted him.

He could still see the window from his bed, and the stars beyond. Uncle stayed with him, a hand over his as he sat beside him in silence as the stars slowly faded into dawn, and Zuko finally dropped off to sleep

Zuko lost a few days to fever after the incident on deck, as his already strained and healing body was overwhelmed. Only another week later, Uncle looked up at him over breakfast and suggested, “Prince Zuko, I believe it may be time to resume your fire bending training.” He ran hot and cold all over again, but did his best to keep it off his face. He knew, he knew, that he was supposed to be able to do this. If he didn’t he was a failure.

If nothing else though, perhaps he could delay. “I don’t think I should be firebendending with a big wad of flammable bandaging on my face.”

“I never knew you to be quite so concerned with safety nephew,” Iroh mused, with an expression that was far too knowing for Zuko’s liking. He continued, “No matter, I agree that it might be too soon to run katas or practice sparing. We will start with meditation.”

There was no good excuse Zuko could think of in response to that. He managed a small nod, and then tuned out the rest as Uncle began to go on about needing a strong foundation in the basics.

Later that same day he found himself sitting across from Uncle in his quarters, posture ramrod straight like all his previous teachers had insisted on, hoping the tension in his back would prevent him from flinching. He had to do this.

“I believe it will be best to return to the very basics. For both you and me; it’s been some time since we practiced together,” Uncle spoke softly, already readying himself for meditation.

Zuko tried to think about the last time he meditated with Uncle Iroh. It must have been before Uncle left for Ba Sing Se, when Zuko was just learning to meditate to a flame for the first time. By the time he had returned, Zuko had been expected to have the skill and discipline to manage his own daily meditation. The memory was still there, though, of the first time – together they sat cross-legged on the floor in a sitting room on the ground floor of the palace. The doors were thrown open wide and the summer’s heat and the sound of whirring cicadas drifted on the wind. Uncle had told him to feel the warmth on his skin, to hear the rhythms of the world around them but let them flow away. Then he had held up a small flame in his hands and asked Zuko to breathe to its rise and fall –

Uncle’s next words drew him back to the present, “I would like you to make the flame, and I will walk us through a basic sequence.”

As he remembered, Zuko had forgotten to maintain the tension in his back. So he was unprepared to catch himself as his eye widened and mouth contorted into a grimace. “I’m not a child, Uncle. I can meditate without your guidance,” he said with more vitriol than he truly intended.

Uncle Iroh didn’t rise to the bait, only held out a hand in an ‘after you’ gesture.

Zuko cupped his palms together, pressing the sides of his hands together tightly to stop them from shaking. He couldn’t tell Uncle that he couldn’t do this, but it wasn’t as if it mattered; he would see for himself. How can you call yourself worthy to be a Prince of the Fire Nation the voice in his head that sounded like Father sneered, and the rest of him could hardly help but agree. It was as if every time he thought about his inner fire, about producing a flame – just a small one Zuko can you not even do that? – his mind skittered away, blank and unable to hold onto the intention. The space above his palms remained cold and empty.

Finally Iroh let out a mighty sigh. Zuko dropped his hands and looked up to see a frown on Uncle’s face. “For today we will change places, then.” He lifted a hand and a small fire flicked into existence, no larger than a candle flame and so tightly controlled that it barely wavered.

It didn’t matter.

Zuko felt heat roar from his head and down his arms, down through his stomach. It was a sickly, scalding kind of heat that left tremors in its wake and tightened his lungs in its grasp. He scrambled to his feet and stumbled backwards, not stopping until he hit the metal wall of the cabin. It was cold and hard against his back, comforting and terrifying in equal measure; there was nowhere else he could go. The rest of his senses caught up with his rabbiroo-quick heartbeat, and he focused immediately on Uncle’s face, searching for his reaction.

Uncle had put out the flame, and at first only looked shocked. Then his expression contorted into worry – and why wouldn’t it? A crowned prince who wouldn’t bend, who tried to run from his element? But there was no anger. Zuko watched and waited silently, waiting for the anger, but it never came.

Uncle Iroh broke the silence first. “Prince Zuko, we need to talk about this.”

Zuko’s heart sped up again, and his limbs tensed to back away further, but he was out of space. Instead he shook his head vehemently, before catching himself and snapping, “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“I believe that there is.”

He screwed his face up into the most impressive glare he could manage with only one eye and leveled it at Uncle Iroh, willing him to back down. Uncle failed to look intimidated or impressed, only shifted slightly to make himself more comfortable.

There was a lump forming in Zuko’s throat. He couldn’t do it, couldn’t, couldn’t let the words out that he was afraid and a failure and doomed to never reclaim his honor. If he did they’d be real. He swallowed hard, clenched his jaw until he was sure he wouldn’t start crying, and then tried one last time. “Uncle, please.”

Uncle Iroh sighed, and Zuko couldn’t help but notice the way his shoulders slumped as he did. “Alright. Another day then. But, Prince Zuko, when I say another day I do mean that. I’ll leave you to collect yourself. But will you join me on deck for tea in a little while?”

There was nothing Zuko could do but give a small, tight nod. He watched as Uncle stood with a groan and a joking mumble about old joints, before he left the room. He watched until the door closed and the latch spun shut, and then sank down the wall and let out a shaky breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

The night after the bandages came off, six weeks away from home, Zuko crept back out onto deck again. This time, he didn’t have any bad dreams as excuse. At least that meant that he felt less frayed at the edges than the last time, if only just. It meant he could dart from the shadows near the door to the catapult platform, and finally out to the railing, hoping no crew would be the wiser to their addition to the night watch.

He settled himself into a cross-legged seat and turned his face up to the sky, a mirror from earlier in the afternoon. He had come out to the deck after Uncle had told him he wouldn’t need to reapply the bandage to his eye. He had wanted to feel the sun on his face, his whole face.

He hadn’t expected it to feel like he was burning again.

The sound of the wind and the waves was barely audible over the rumble of the engine, but he could feel the cool night air on his cheeks and imagine the spray. Even during the daytime, he was accustomed to the breeze off the water cutting the warmth of the sun. He had been unprepared for his healing wound to feel like it was suffused with unbearable heat.

After he had ducked inside, after Uncle had found him and sat quietly with him until his breathing evened out again, the ship’s medic had explained that burn wounds and scars were more susceptible to sunburn than the rest of his skin. That was all, nothing more, it was perfectly normal. Just like the fact that sounds from the left were muffled now and sight badly blurred, creating a dizzying distortion when he tried to use both eyes. Just perfectly normal.

Zuko had spent the rest of the afternoon pacing his cabin like a caged tiger-dillo, resenting sunlight for the first time he could remember, and Uncle and the medic for not warning him before he went outside.

But here in the dark it was only coolness, and looking back towards the tower of the ship it wasn’t as if he would be able to make out details with two good eyes anyway. Lately, the night sky had been so much kinder to him.

Zuko settled his hands on his knees and took a deep breath in and held it for a count of six seconds before letting it back out again. He could still do meditation breathing exercises even if he couldn’t manage a flame. He was only sometimes good at letting thoughts and sensations come and go, but tonight he sank into it with the relief of a moment to just stop thinking.

So much so that he didn’t notice that he had company until the light of a lantern fell on his face.

If asked later, Zuko did not jump, nor did he eye the lantern warily before reminding himself that the fire was contained behind glass. Perfectly safe and separate. The sailor holding the lantern looked really no different from the rest. Standard issue armor, clean shaven face, dark hair in a top knot. Zuko had been told names on his first day, but he didn’t remember any of them. He could blame being delirious with fever and pain, but it sounded like too much effort to make excuses when he just didn’t care.

“Prince Zuko, I didn’t expect to meet you out here,” the sailor said, and gave a reasonably deep bow. He did not shape the flame as he was holding an odd assortment of scrolls and books, a writing kit, and some kind of metal contraption under his arm, in addition to the lantern.

Zuko drew his back up as tall as he could make himself and tilted his chin up in a way that he hoped would appear as if he was looking down his nose at this interloper, despite the fact that he was still sitting in casual robes directly on the metal deck. “State your business, sailor,” he said.

“I am ship’s Navigator Zhu Yan, sir. I am here to confirm our course towards the Northern Air Temple. My apologies if I disturbed you; I did not expect to find anyone else out here.”

Zhu Yan did not leave immediately as Zuko would have preferred, and it took him a moment to realize that the sailor was waiting for either another question or a dismissal. “As you were.”

The man bowed again, and headed for a small table which was set up a short ways away and started unloading the contents of his arms. Zuko considered going back to his meditation but the movement in the left side of his vision kept drawing his attention. He had become unused to seeing anything from that side. Now it was only just too blurred to be able to make out what Zhu Yan was doing through the night’s darkness, but the lantern light flashed off of something on the table as he moved it.

Thoughts of meditation abandoned, Zuko turned his head to see what was catching the light. It was some kind of circular contraption made of metal that Zhu Yan set down before he flipped through several pages of a book on the table. He then wrote something on a scroll before picking up the contraption again to look through it.

The next time he placed the contraption down, he glanced toward Zuko and called, “I would be happy to answer any questions you have, sir.”

Zuko could feel the heat in his cheeks; he wasn’t supposed to be caught staring like some commoner. His traitor mouth didn’t seem to care, as he blurted out, “Why are you navigating at night?” and then twisted his lips into a tight frown before he could ask anything else. Tsk tsk Zuzu that sounds like a stupid question.

Zhu Yan seemed to pay no mind as his face lifted into a smile, as if completing a pair of opposing theater masks. “There are several navigational methods approved for use by the Fire Nation Navy,” he began, as if he was reciting a set of instructions verbatim, “I am trained foremost in celestial navigation. I am proficient in navigating by the sun, but I prefer to navigate by the stars.”

A citizen of the Fire Nation who would eschew the sun for the stars? Zuko’s first instinct told him it wasn’t supposed to be like that, and his second reminded him that he had been just the same lately. He looked up at the sky, and felt a sting in his heart that with both eyes open the stars blurred into an indistinct curtain of darkness and faint light. He closed his left eye and breathed out in resignation as the stars condensed back into their own focused points.

“Do you enjoy the stars as well, Prince Zuko?”

Zuko hardly knew how to name his strange mix of feelings on the matter, so he simply nodded. He could tell that Zhu Yan watched him for a few minutes more, waiting for the next question that never came. Eventually, the navigator turned back to his task, and Zuko watched until it seemed like he was engrossed enough to slip away without notice.

Uncle Iroh cornered Zuko over dinner the next evening again. He was starting to get the feeling that he should start taking meals in his own quarters. Currently Uncle was waiting expectantly after saying, “Navigator Zhu Yan said the two of you spoke last night.”

This was a fact. This was not a question. Thus, Zuko didn’t feel bad at all about leveling a stare at Uncle and waiting until he got the hell to his point.

Iroh sighed gustily, disappointed that Zuko hadn’t taken the bait, and said, “He’s offered to teach you navigation if that is something you might have an interest in.”

“Why would I have any interest in learning navigation? I’m here to find and capture the Avatar, not become a naval officer.”

“It does the mind good to pursue different skills, Prince Zuko. After all, the flower that draws no nutrients from the soil will never bloom.”

Zuko groaned and fought the urge to bury his head in his hands. “I don’t particularly care. I’m not interested.”

“I will let Navigator Zhu Yan know that is your decision,” Uncle said, and turned back to his dinner with the kind of nonchalance that left Zuko incredibly suspicious. He set down his chopsticks and waited for the other sandal to drop. Iroh took another bite of fish stew and chewed contentedly before continuing. “Of course, if the Avatar has managed to hide himself for 112 years, I would suspect he has quite mastered the skill.”

This time, Zuko gave into the impulse to smack himself in the face. He immediately bit down on his tongue to hold back a whimper as his still-tender scar protested the rough treatment. “Fine,” he snapped.

“Wonderful!” Uncle exclaimed in that booming voice of his that he liked to use when he got his way. “Zhu Yan has said you can start as soon as this evening if you wish.”

They did not start that night, because this was Zuko’s ship and he was the one who gave the orders of when he wanted things done. They did start the following night, because Uncle had given him a silent disappointed look that morning.

Several hours after sunset, after most of the crew except the night watch were off duty for the night, Zuko walked out on deck to find that Zhu Yan had already set up at the small table from the last time, but now with the addition of an extra cushion. He stood as he heard Zuko approaching and bowed with a smile. “Prince Zuko, good evening! I’m glad you were interested in learning more about navigation. Shall we sit?”

Zuko nodded his permission and settled at the table, with his new teacher following across from him. There was barely a beat of silence before Zhu Yan began. “To start, we have several tools that are the most commonly used. Of course, we do have our standard maps,” he patted a few piled scrolls, “and then the star chart maps as well.”

The star charts seemed to be in the large bound book that Zuko had noticed the last time they spoke. Despite himself, he was curious about maps of the stars; he’d never seen anything like it before. He scowled at Zhu Yan as he seemed to pick up on his interest and flipped through the book until he found a map. He turned the book in Zuko’s direction and pushed it closer so he could see a page with an inked black circle filled with dots and connecting lines. There was a pull of curiosity in Zuko’s chest that made him want to look up and see if he could see any of the patterns for himself, but he bit his tongue.

“Each map will show the constellations visible in the sky from a given place and a given time of year. They travel across the sky each night like the sun does during the day, but they do move by the seasons as well. The constellations we can see in the fall are different than the ones we can see in the spring, and so forth, which is why the book is quite large.”

Zhu Yan flipped through a few pages, showing the names of places and the times of year they corresponded to. Zuko recognized that the maps had a certain kind of beauty, but each looked so much like the last, and so many of the beautiful things he’d known had proved useless. He didn’t think he was dedicated enough to try to learn the difference between one map and another, when he still had doubts that it would help him find the Avatar. Instead, he pointed to the device which had caught his attention the last time they spoke. It was a brass circle, empty in the center except for four spokes and an arm attached to the center which could spin. “What’s that?”

“That is an astrolabe. With it we can measure the angle of a set of stars to the horizon, and use that to determine our current location and where we need to go. I thought we might leave that for later, though, since it does require some calculations.”

“How would you navigate if not with the tool for it?” Zuko asked, scowling in confusion.

“When in familiar waters, you can navigate by knowing the stars and their place in the sky, without even needing to use astrolabes or mathematics, the same way people have navigated for generations before us. I thought it might be more enjoyable to start there, by learning some of the stars and the constellations they belong to, since I find it easiest to know them by their stories.”

Zuko didn’t understand. The way he had always been told, new instruments and technology was supposed to make a task better, make the Fire Nation better. “Those tools must have been invented in the Fire Nation, right?” From everything he’d been taught about other nations, they had nothing remotely advanced enough.

“Oh, yes, of course.”

“Then why would you want to use an old outdated method?” Zuko asked, tension building in his voice.

“It’s always worth keeping a good tradition alive, I think. It connects us to our history and our ancestors. I find our myths to be quite an enjoyable tradition, so I like to fall back on them when I can.”

“We made something better, so why would you want to go backwards?” He’d always been taught that the Fire Nation was the smartest, most advanced nation in the world. That it was their duty to bring their greatness, their prosperity, their advancements to everyone else. What did it mean that even their own people chose to still follow old ways?

Of course you would ask these questions, it is only fitting for one without honor.

Zuko stared at his hands, clenching into fists so tight he could feel his nails digging in to try to ward off the drop in his stomach that the voice in his head always caused. He nearly didn’t hear when Zhu Yan responded.

“I don’t see it as going backwards. I find it valuable to learn both, and to learn the best situations to apply each. Besides, while the astrolabe does provide greater mathematical accuracy, you can see at many ports of call that other sailors are still successful using only the star charts and stories.”

Other sailors. If only the Fire Nation had this technology, Zhu Yan was implying that sailors from other nations could still be equal to them. That couldn’t be true, it couldn’t. Zuko leapt to his feet, refusing to follow that thought any further. “Our progress is what makes the Fire Nation great! How can you choose to ignore that? I won’t learn it.” He made sure not to look back at Zhu Yan’s expression as he stormed back to the inside of the ship.

The next time Uncle Iroh decided to press the issue of meditation, he arrived at the door to Zuko’s cabin with an unlit candle and a set of spark rocks. The wash of shame that coursed through Zuko’s body was so intense he thought for a moment that he would be sick. “I don’t need that. Go away!” he shouted.

However, he wasn’t willing to slam the door in Uncle’s face, which left him to watch as Uncle came into the room anyway and set the candle and rocks down on the low table.

“Sit,” Iroh told him in a voice that brokered no argument.

Zuko sat stiffly on his knees, feeling hot and cold all at once at the memory of the last time they had tried.

“As your current firebending master, I don’t believe that is an acceptable answer. Many soldiers who have been wounded in battle have found they needed to begin from the ground up. I have even employed this method in the past with some of them personally.”

“I wasn’t wounded in battle,” Zuko snapped. “I was taught a lesson because I’m a disgrace.” That’s right, you have no claim to anything honorable soldiers do.

“Regardless of if you were on a battlefield or not, you were done harm by firebending. If you are determined to regain your skills, I would like you to try this.”

Zuko nodded, tight lipped. No matter how much he denied it, he still felt the bite of anxiety as Uncle picked up the spark rocks. It must have shown in his face because Uncle said, “Take a breath, Prince Zuko. This fire won’t be under anyone’s control. The only fuel it has is the candle wick, and it cannot leave that. It cannot hurt you. Say it please.”

“The candle won’t hurt me,” Zuko repeated with as little feeling as possible, scowling at the ridiculous request. He knew that. He had been around candles and lanterns since, it was fine. He did know that, so why was it so hard to feel it?

“It’s a start.” Uncle struck the spark rocks.

Zuko bit the inside of his lip hard as the small flame came into being on the wick. He had still flinched, but at least this time he hadn’t been sent reeling back into the wall.

Uncle’s smile was big, bigger than Zuko felt he deserved. “Very good. I want you to watch the flame as I walk us through the sequence, and we’ll go from there. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes, fine.” Zuko readjusted his seat into a relaxed lotus position and took a big breath in, eyes on the natural flicker of the candle flame. “Let’s start.”

Zuko paced up and down the hallway that led to the deck, tense with frustration. Just the same as Uncle Iroh had been willing to hear no argument about meditation practice, he similarly had insisted that he did not give up on learning navigation. Zuko didn’t want to continue. He saw no point in learning from someone who disregarded the greatness of the Fire Nation. That would not help him regain his honor.

He’d told Uncle as much, had thought that was a good argument. Why should he listen to someone so dedicated to something old and outdated, something which should have been left behind? Uncle had only said that meant they needed to reach a compromise. He had also insisted on an apology.

Zuko pressed the heels of his hands into his forehead and tilted his head up towards the ceiling with a groan. He did not want to apologize. Why should he have to apologize for defending the greatness of their nation? It wasn’t his fault the navigator had backwards ideas! But Uncle would be upset with him if he didn’t, so he didn’t have much choice but to push open the door and head out onto the deck where Zhu Yan was seated at his normal table.

Zuko stopped a reasonable distance away, in case Zhu Yan was angry with him, and said, “Lieutenant.”

The man looked up from his work, the expression on his face made unreadable by the light and shadow from the lantern. Zuko couldn’t decide if that was better or worse. He swallowed against the sudden twisting in his stomach and bowed with the flame. “General Iroh has suggested I should apologize for causing you offense and walking out on our lesson,” he said stiffly, words he’d been rehearsing in his head all evening.

“Thank you for your apology, but it is unnecessary Prince Zuko. I’ve been called sentimental by plenty of men before.”

Zuko was sure he had said worse things than ‘sentimental,’ but there had been a small part of him that had worried how Zhu Yan would react, which was now breathing a quiet sigh of relief. He barreled forward, “I’ll keep learning navigation, but only if you teach me the astrolabe and the calculations.”

“That I can do. Would you like to sit?”

“Another night.” He wasn’t sure that he was up for much more. He waited for Zhu Yan to nod his acknowledgement before turning back toward the hold.

He did hold to his word and return the next night, and then a few nights a week after. Zhu Yan was proficient in the new methods, proven as they successfully arrived at the Northern Air Temple, and then turned sights towards the Eastern. The new methods also did prove to be a lot of numbers and memorization. Even without the stories, Zuko still needed to memorize stars and constellations and charts.

Zhu Yan kept to his word about leaving it at that for a few weeks. The first story happened to coincide with when Zuko was struggling to remember a particular constellation. He could never remember the shape of the two triangles that came together at a point, almost like an hourglass, or how to find it in the sky. He had nearly reached the point of giving up looking for it when Zhu Yan began, “When the world was young and spirits roamed the world freely, there was a spirit named Ezi.”

Zuko clenched his jaw against the sudden rush of irritation. Even if he didn’t care about stupid spirit tales, at least if he said nothing it would get him out of searching skies and maps that were starting to blur even in his good eye. He turned a page in the star chart book and did his best to look absorbed in it as Zhu Yan continued.

“Ezi lived beneath the earth and sea; she was the heart of the fires within the world, the heat that gave them life. She watched over the swirling currents of molten stone, yellow like sulfur and orange like the sunset and deep red like a ripe chili pepper. This was her artwork and her design, a dance and an ever-moving painting all in one.

“While Ezi thought her own works of art must be the most beautiful in the world, she still loved the stories she heard from the Earth whenever she drew new pieces of stone into herself and melted them into her grand work. The Earth showed her the shapes of crystals and the outlines of plants and animals that had become marks in stone. It also told her of other spirits, of Air, and especially the Ocean. The Earth said that the Ocean had currents that danced just like hers.

“Ezi was overcome with jealousy and curiosity. How could this Ocean create something comparable to her own work? She begged the Earth for more stories, and it brought them with every new rock that she folded into herself. She learned that the Ocean was so cool to the touch that creatures could live within it, could add colors she had never even known existed. She listened to stories of grand structures of coral, which looked like stone but was a living creature. She learned that the Ocean could even take images and reflect them back on its surface.

“Soon, Ezi became obsessed with the Ocean, began to dream of things she had only ever known as fleeting shadows or whispered tales. Soon, it was enough that she hardly had attention for her own dance, and she decided she had to see the Ocean for herself. She begged the Earth to help her reach the Ocean, and the Earth drew her to a place where it grew thin and brittle.

“Ezi sent her currents through the cracks until they met something like she had never felt before. It was nearly freezing, and wet and unknown. She rushed forward to catch a glimpse of where she had finally met the Ocean, but it only lasted a second. As the temperature dropped, she felt all the bits of stone and metal slip from her grasp as her heat could only keep them warm enough to dance for so long. It wasn’t enough. Ezi gathered more currents and pushed further until she touched the water again, looked at the ocean floor for the briefest second. This time, there was movement, a creature she recognized from prints in stone but this was more than just an image, and moved faster and more gracefully than her own currents.

“Ezi knew then that she couldn’t stop. Every time her warm currents met the cold ones of the Ocean they fell from her grasp, and every time she gathered more to push on for just one more look, for just one more chance to take in a different kind of masterpiece. She kept working, kept moving up through the bits of Earth that solidified into a mountain under the water, until one day there was no more Ocean left around her. Instead, for the first time, she met the air, and there learned that she could look down on the Ocean and its constant dance still. To this day, Ezi still takes advantage of any chance to see more of the Ocean, and any time she finds a place where her currents can dance between, she leaves behind a new kind of artwork.”

“What’s the point of the story then? Why should I care about some spirit that made a volcano however many years ago that’s supposed to be? It’s not relevant to me,” Zuko snapped.

Zhu Yan’s face took on an expression like the owlcat that got the cream. Zuko did not have a good feeling about that look. “Well, I know you are good at finding the Ocean constellation, yes? This story helps us remember that the constellation for Ezi can always be found beneath the Ocean.”

Zuko let out a frustrated growl, stood from the table and left without another word.

They fell into a routine as Zuko’s first summer away from home came to a close. Zhu Yan continued to supervise Zuko as he worked on his measurements and calculations, ready to offer correction or advice. Whenever he felt the silence had stretched too long (a far shorter period than Zuko would consider an unbearable silence), he would point out a new constellation and launch into another wild spirit tale of how men built the first boats from grand turtle shells, how great hunters and warriors had been immortalized in the sky, or how the spirit of justice dispensed her judgements from behind an impartial porcelain mask. Zuko would keep his head in the maps, and when Zhu Yan would look back for his reaction once the story ended, he would resolutely scowl or roll his eyes to remind him that all of this was unworthy of a Fire Nation Prince and the advancement of their civilization. Eventually, Zhu Yan stopped looking, and Zuko stopped having to pretend he hated the tales.

Sometimes, he even enjoyed them.

One evening Zhu Yan began, “Prince Zuko, have you ever heard the tale of how the constellation The Dragon came to be in the sky?”

Zuko looked up from his page of numbers to see Zhu Yan standing near the railing, eyes on the horizon, no doubt looking for the constellation which had prompted the question. “I bet you’re going to tell me.”

“Ah, you know me too well.” Zhu Yan turned around and leaned back on the railing so he could be heard over the waves against the hull of the ship and began, “When the world was young, dragons were tasked with the guardianship of fire, just as the badgermoles were to preside over earth, or sky bison the air. For many generations they kept their elements only to themselves, until there was born a dragon named Druk.

“Druk was a curious and energetic dragon when he was young, always quick to ask questions or think of grand new games. As he grew, his curiosity became cunning and a penchant for trickery. Druk could be counted on to cajole any dragon into giving him the best parts of their hunt, or to sneak away with the best treasures, especially when they didn’t belong to him. He could convince anyone of the wildest, most unlikely stories, and be counted upon to be laughing from an inconspicuous distance whenever there was trouble.

“But if there was one thing that Druk loved more than a good trick, it was humans. He tired easily of dragons, who lived their long lives so slowly. Humans, for all that their lives were simple when the race was young, lived with such urgency and bravery. They had no wings or claws or teeth, but they built tools and took on the most improbable challenges.

“More often than not, Druk watched the humans fail. Although they tried so hard, they were so fragile. Other beasts would stalk them in the dark, they would fall easily to the cold or they would succumb to illness from raw food. So Druk went to the elder dragons and petitioned that they should give some of their fire to humans.

“The council told him that humans were too young and too small to be trusted with such a great responsibility. After all, fire requires control to wield without causing harm, and the elders did not believe the humans would be able to do this. They forbade Druk from giving fire to humans, and warned that the consequences of every trick he’d ever played would come back on him doubled if he disobeyed them.

“Druk went away from the meeting, not defeated but scheming. He thought for weeks, wondering how he could get out from under the watchful eyes of the elders, who had hardly let him out of their sight since. Finally, he came upon the idea for a race.

“Not only was Druk confident that he was the cleverest dragon, he also believed he was the most nimble too. He proposed the idea, as something to occupy himself with if he could not go to the humans anymore, then spent the next weeks leading up to the race planting a word here or there that the elders had gotten so old and slow. How he doubted they could even get off the ground anymore. If there is one truth about dragons, it is that they are vain, and so just as Druk had planned, every elder was lined up at the start on the day of the race.

“The dragons took to the sky with a mighty roar and rush of wind from their wings. The elders were larger than Druk and he knew they could outfly him in time. So instead he twisted and turned in the air, darting here and there, under and over wings and tails and long dragon bodies, all the while taunting the racers to follow him and beat him if they could. When Druk was finished, all of the other racers had tied themselves into a grand knot of dragons that sunk clumsily to the ground. Druk laughed as he sped across the finish line and beyond, finally free to grant his fire to humans so they could keep themselves safe and warm.

“Between his tricks and cleverness, Druk was able to stay with humans and teach them what he knew of fire. He was amazed at the things they began to create – strong tools and bricks for their homes, delicious food, beautiful glass and pottery. But as with all things, Druk’s luck came to an end. When the dragons found him, they debated what his punishment should be, and decided that he should have to live as far from humans as possible. And such, with the help of the spirits who had first entrusted dragons with fire, Druk was placed as a constellation in the sky. When his judgement was passed down, he only laughed, for this was fit for his last and greatest trick. Although he would be far apart from humans, he could still watch them from the sky for eternity.”

As per their silent agreement, Zhu Yan turned back towards the sea when he was finished with the story, leaving Zuko behind him staring at the constellation and imagining it dancing in the sky. The picture stayed with him all through the rest of the lesson, and in his dreams, he saw dragons shaping metal and glass with their breath. The next morning at meditation practice, Zuko was still absorbed in wishing he could have met the dragons. He hardly noticed that Uncle Iroh had lit the candles with his own fire rather than the spark rocks, until the same moment that he realized he hadn’t flinched away.

By the time autumn had begun to march on towards winter, Zuko was gaining some level of confidence that he could identify most constellations in the sky, could measure them and do the calculations he needed to pinpoint his location on a map. He had also heard more myths than he had thought possible for one person to keep in their head. “Why do you care enough about all of these myths to have them memorized?” he asked one evening, when the sea air was a bit too cold, his eyes straining to focus in the lantern light, and his heart only too aware of how long they’d been far from home.

“Everyone loves a good story!” Zhu Yan looked toward Zuko for confirmation and sighed as he met the corresponding glare. “But, in all seriousness, and if nothing else, this is the one for you to remember.”

“Another story?” Zuko groaned. “Why is the answer to every question another story? You’re just as bad as Uncle with tea or proverbs.”

“I promise it’s less of a story than something to think about. So we know that Agni is the spirit associated with our sun, yes? Well, every star in the sky is another sun somewhere out there, farther away than we could ever imagine. Every one of them is Agni’s brother or sister or sibling. The constellations and their stories are important to me because being under the stars is like being under the light of a thousand suns.” Zhu Yan turned his face up to the sky as if to try to feel the light. “Why wouldn’t we want to find a way to connect ourselves to that?”

Zuko didn’t have an answer, and for once, didn’t have a disparaging comment either. The stars were suns far away? Did this mean that when he liked being under the stars it didn’t mean he was a disgrace as a firebender?

Almost as if he could read his thoughts, Zhu Yan continued, “That’s one of the reasons I love the Fire Nation, and firebending. Since firebending comes from the sun, when we bend we’re also as close as we can be to the stars.”

Zhu Yan fell uncharacteristically silent after that. For the rest of the evening’s practice, hardly another word was spoken. Zuko found himself forgetting his earlier complaints, instead enraptured by the thought of light and heat and fire so far away he could barely see it.

After they packed up and parted for the evening, Zuko returned to his quarters with energy humming in his veins. He sat himself cross legged in front of his meditation candles and took a deep, steadying breath inward. Firebending came from the breath, Uncle always said. And according to Zhu Yan, it also connected them to the sky. How could that be so bad, to hold a piece of a star in his hands?

Zuko let out his breath and drew in a new one, trying to feed his inner fire. It had been so long, he had almost forgotten the pleasant trickle of warmth along the skin of his hands. Another, and he held his palms up in front of him, and watched as a tiny spark bloomed an inch above his skin and grew into a small, but real flickering flame.

#atla #atla big bang 2020 #zuko #fic #tmariea writes

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