One
Hua Yingtai who was more commonly known and called as Wei Ying, thankfully able to retain the courtesy name WuXian that his mothers had chosen when he was born, knew that he couldn’t let Mǎnyì leave his person. Mǎnyì, also known as the spiritual shield that was disguised as bindings that let him look normal and like a human, that had led to Wei ChangZe and Cangse SanRen deciding to bring her to Lotus Pier when they found her trying to get to Qinghe-Nie where it was safe. Mǎnyì had been a gift passed down in her family, for her it was imbued with her shixiong’s protective spiritual power and able to help her disguise her unusual features so that people wouldn’t immediately know she was not human like they were. It was the reason she hadn’t been chased off or hunted down by the humans for what she was.
He was hated and called bas’re by the clan elders for nothing more than not being something he wasn't, but that was because his phoenix mama and fox mama were so different that they weren’t supposed to be able to have a baby. His former ai’xah had been like an older sister to him but after some things happened he’d been forced to leave for his own safety even though his mothers had wanted him to be able to be safe with them. She had been just a few months short of turning eight when it had happened and even with how a-Ru was supposed to be helping her get to the relative safety of Qinghe-Nie it was incredibly scary to find just how many adults would want to do bad things to her. Especially with how she had been cursed and her shixiong was forced to put spiritual chains on her to weaken the curse as much as possible. He'd been given the spiritual shield shortly after, since he’d have to leave to find the one who could break his curse. His mi’yi and ai’ri had written down their Clan and Sect’s stories for him so he wouldn’t forget about what he was or where he came from.
But Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren had died on a night hunt gone wrong partway through bringing him to Yunmeng-Jiang after a-Ru and he had been separated, and he was living with the Yunmeng-Jiang clan’s head family after a few months of fending for himself and trying to get to Qinghe-Nie like he had before the kind adults had intervened, and it was only now that he had children close to his age near him that didn’t want to hurt him outside a-Ru and his former ai’xah and shixiong. Even if neither of the two children knew that WuXian was not beholden to the same rigid confines of gender as humans were. Even though his sister figure wasn't his ai’xah anymore because they'd been forced to sever the bond when he'd had to leave for his own safety.
Jiang Cheng and Jiang YanLi were both older than him, even though he had heard Jiang FengMian refer to him as older than Jiang Cheng when he’d brought the child to Lotus Pier where Madame Yu lived with her children and husband alongside other clan members after finding him on the Runan streets. The healers that had been asked to look him over when he first arrived had somehow been tricked and hadn’t seen past Mǎnyì that hid the features that gave away what he was. They hadn’t seen the scars and scar-wounds despite the fact Mǎnyì didn’t actively help him hide anything more than his other-ears, fur and feathers, and wings from other people’s sight. They fortunately hadn’t tried to force him to remove the spiritual shield that he had decided to wrap around the spiritual chains to hide them from being seen by anyone more than twice. They'd try to remove the chains if they saw them but until his curse was broken it wasn't safe to.
Now WuXian was at the Cloud Recesses with his brother Jiang Cheng and he was happy to follow him around and learn alongside him. His shield hummed silently against his skin under the robes he wore that were in Wei Changze’s colours (according to Sect Leader FengMian anyway), reminding and reassuring him that no one knew about his otherness and he was alright. He looked coincidentally similar to Wei Changze, and no one who didn't know would doubt he was part of their family because how could they know that WuXian didn't even have a father that could be related in any way to the man? The entirely coincidental similarity between them had made people draw their own conclusions about where WuXian came from. Not one of them actually asked WuXian though, so he couldn’t correct them without making any rumours worse.
“Hurry up, a-Xian!” Jiang Cheng called from in front of him, turning slightly to make sure she was close behind.
“I’m coming, a-Cheng!”
WuXian ran to catch up to her brother and they soon reached the classroom they would be learning in. They would be staying in the dormitories of the Cloud Recesses while they studied there, and WuXian couldn’t wait to see what kind of mischief she could get up to with Jiang Cheng even with all the stuffy rules the Gusu-Lan clan had.
WuXian idly wondered during a short break between classes what colour eyes Yuan and Yìchén would have in his next dream they appeared in. The rest of his future children's features remained largely the same throughout all the dreams he’d had, with only minor changes while their eyes were fluid between options even if they weren’t every possible variation. Lychee or fox shaped eyes, his eye colour or their other parent’s or some combination of the two colours even though he could only tell the difference by what shade of grey the colour looked in his dreams. He wondered what Yuan and Yìchén’s other parent would look like when they finally met. He already knew that to find Shài he needed to look for someone with fox eyes that were a vibrant colour full of warmth, but there weren’t many hints in either of his sons’ facial features.
Fate was already being kind enough to give him glimpses of the children he would have with his destined beloved, and he would need to be content with that until he finally met Shài and got his curse broken. With how generous fate could be, perhaps Yuan and Yìchén’s other parent was also dreaming of their future children. But Mǎnyì never left WuXian’s body around others which meant that they wouldn’t be able to find him just by looking for someone with his biànxíngqì features. They wouldn’t know they were looking for him unless he took Mǎnyì off, and he never would. It kept people from knowing, which meant it kept him safe, which meant he couldn’t let go of it even if the people around had a chance of not being disgusted by him.
What if they decided they didn’t like what they saw, because of her odd features? What would happen to WuXian’s already dearly loved Yuan and Yìchén then?
There was another boy in the dormitory that WuXian and his martial brother would be sleeping in while they studied at Cloud Recesses, one who had that splash of foreign-familiar that indicated he was a Creature at least partially. Nie Rui, courtesy name HuaiSang was what he introduced himself as. As he had always done before, WuXian did not look directly at Nie HuaiSang since this was their first time meeting each other. This boy was from the place WuXian had originally been trying to get to, before those of Yunmeng-Jiang had taken him in.
The lights went out at curfew, and WuXian gladly fell to sleep so he could hopefully dream of his children-to-be.
The air smells of smoke and ash, and there is a bitter taste on his tongue. WuXian almost does not recognise the place he is at, it’s not Lotus Pier or anywhere else he has visited before but he knows in her heart and her blood that this place belongs to her family once more the way it did before that horrible man Xiu Chonglai stole the Yin Iron from them and corrupted it, slaughtering innocents and making the Great Sects have to come together as one front instead of just allies. There are elders, children, and women crying and running while swords clash and voices scream angrily. Yang, Yichén, Yuan, where are Yang and Yuan and Yìchén? Please, no, don’t let anything happen to WuXian’s children so early in their lives, please they're just children, Yuan and Yìchén are only babies don’t hurt them-
“Mi’yi!” “Mi’yi!” “A-Niang!”
Yuan and Yìchén and Yang, that's Yuan and Yìchén and Yang crying out for her, those are her children who just want their parent. But they're only calling out for WuXian, neither are crying out for their da'yi like they are their mi'yi. The voices of WuXian’s children are coming from beyond a group of people wearing robes that WuXian can’t clearly make out through the smoke.
It doesn’t matter. Her children are past them and the unknown people are in the way of him reaching his babies. He pulls out his flute (why is it a flute? why doesn’t he have Suibian or Lan’xan with him? where are his sword or his hulusi?) and brings it to his mouth before beginning to play a rather haunting melody. The people are thrown through the air and as soon as they are no longer keeping WuXian from his children he runs to where the twins with oddly coloured hair and dark-streaked light eyes (Yuan) and light-streaked dark eyes (Yìchén) him alongside their older brother. Yuan is nearly bawling, there are a few tears in one of Yìchén's robe sleeves with hints of blood peeking from behind the fabric and a bruise already forming on Yang's cheek alongside a bleeding lip. His darling dearest little ones are hurt.
Someone hurt WuXian’s children, they laid hands on his children when the man’s back was turned for no more than twenty seconds if that, and he is expected to just allow it to have happened without any repercussions? Whoever caused it had better pray to whatever higher power they believed in that WuXian didn’t bring the wrath of his family upon them for hurting his son and daughter.
“Mi’yi! A-Niang” The three continue sobbing, but now they see WuXian and start running towards him because somehow Yuan and Yìchén and Yang already know that if they stay with their parent then WuXian will allow no one to lay a single finger on his children.
It was right when the twins were about to be picked up into WuXian’s arms in the dream that the teen was woken up by someone shaking her a little. She blearily opened her eyes to see that it was Nie HuaiSang looking at her with incredibly worried dark dan phoenix shaped eyes. She wondered what colour Nie HuaiSang’s eyes were, even if he wouldn’t find out until his destined beloved kissed him on the mouth and fulfilled the requirements of his shixiong's gift.
“Wei-gongzi, you were crying in your sleep. Were you having a nightmare of some sort?” WuXian’s classmate asked.
“I- I need a-Cheng. I will tell you after once we find the time to.”
Nie HuaiSang seemed to relax a little at that, and WuXian immediately went to the bed where Jiang Cheng was sleeping. His martial brother was the nearest member of the Yunmeng-Jiang Sect members who could comfort WuXian after that horrible premonitive nightmare. WuXian could already feel the bruises from it forming under his clothes.
Jiang Cheng stirred awake as soon as WuXian drew near enough for his martial brother to catch the scent of tears and the hints of his former ai’xah’s perfume that Madame Yu and Jiang YanLi had helped WuXian recreate after learning why he’d been crying so much at the scent that was fading from his clothing. It had actually been Jiang Cheng who had accidentally dropped something into the perfume they’d been making that had brought it from just similar to identical.
“A-Xian?” Jiang Cheng murmured drowsily, already halfway awake because WuXian cried on average perhaps six or seven times a year.
“A-Cheng.” WuXian said as steadily as she could, swallowing down the instinctive ai’xah that nearly left her lips instead.
It wasn’t part of the common dialect, or Jiang dialect. Even with how Jiang Cheng responded to it whenever WuXian woke from a nightmare with the title already falling from her lips despite her having no one that held it anymore, that was on Lotus Pier and she didn’t want it to spread around that she used words from a dialect the five known Great Sects didn’t openly recognise. It wasn’t her fault that her home had gotten its history twisted around and silenced, though she thankfully did have books and other things of Yiling-Hua that she’d been given to keep with her by her family. Until the wards were destroyed, those books and Zìmǔ were WuXian's only links to her home. At least, they were only because she hadn’t been able to get to Qinghe-Nie like she’d been trying before Yunmeng-Jiang had taken her in.
“You were crying.” Jiang Cheng narrowed his almond-shaped dark eyes as he sat up on his bed, and WuXian swallowed down the knot in her throat while refusing to meet his eyes.
“... I had a bad dream, a-Cheng.” WuXian said in barely more than a whisper, and his martial brother immediately pulled her into a hug to reassure WuXian.
“It’s okay, a-Xian, it’s not real. It was just a dream.”
It wasn’t though, it wasn’t just a dream. It was a glimpse of events that hadn’t happened yet, of the pain waiting for WuXian in the future.
Jiang Cheng sent a letter to Lotus Pier telling his mother that WuXian had had another bad dream. The mother and son had taken to keeping track of them to try and at least help a little. Not that they ever could.
His dreams had never been wrong before. Not the ones that left bruises because of his curse.
“What are you thinking so hard about, Wei-gongzi?” Nie HuaiSang asked, and WuXian looked up at the other boy.
“Events that have passed and things to come.”
The answer was the truth, but still the way it was technically a lie sat heavy on his tongue. There weren’t any falsehoods in the words that left WuXian’s lips, there never were. But sometimes the truth was stated vaguely enough or with enough information omitted that only he truly knew what he meant. It was times like these, where he had to say the truth without saying anything at all, that made WuXian wish internally that he didn’t have the Seal forced on him to keep people from knowing things he did. He would be able to speak freely only when he and Nie HuaiSang were alone, or when he was alone with others who shared his kin.
He could feel Mǎnyì against his skin under his clothing like a brand, reminding him that though he never lied with words or actions he was still deceiving. None of them knew what he truly looked like, even if he only hid his other-features. He couldn’t even remember what he looked like without Mǎnyì that hid the ears and fur and tails that his biànxíngqì side gave him since his spiritual chains prevented him from being able to shift between forms. It had been so long, he’d been barely old enough to start learning how to cultivate when his shixiong had given him Mǎnyì that hid his Creature traits and made him promise to never let it leave him unless he completely trusted those around him with everything he was. It was to keep him safe, people would do very bad things if they learned of what he truly was. And until he was able to figure out how to break his curse and remove his spiritual chains, he couldn’t let himself be seen without Mǎnyì by any human, unless they were Shài or related to his kin.
“What sort of events, Wei-gongzi?”
He didn’t reply to HuaiSang’s innocent sounding question, not wanting to tell the truth but unwilling to lie. It didn’t matter anyway, since they’d reached the classroom where the other disciple cultivators they were learning alongside had gathered.