Two
The classes passed by slowly for WuXian’s taste, and his stomach nearly rebelled at how bland the lunch was when the students were given a break to eat. There was no seasoning, no warmth to even so much as half a grain of rice in the entire meal. He wouldn’t be able to stomach it for the entirety of learning at the Cloud Recesses, he was biànxíngqì and trying to force himself to eat like this would make him physically ill. But if he said anything they might say that he was simply being picky or greedy, even though he wasn’t like that at all. He quite literally needed spice to be healthy, his biànxíngqì traits made it a necessity rather than a preference.
He would just have to find a way to get spices or something to make it easier for his body to not immediately reject the food he was being given. If he couldn’t, he would have to severely limit how much he ate to make sure he didn’t get sick even at the cost of it possibly making him need a healer later on because of not eating. He knew his body better than anyone, but he couldn’t refuse the hospitality or kindness or generosity the Gusu Lan clan were giving by providing food. It was a good thing it had been the Yunmeng Jiang Sect that had taken him in, they were practically infamous for the levels of spice they would put in their food which meant he could never get sick from eating unspiced food. Even if he’d been trying to get to Qinghe-Nie because that was where the refugees who had escaped the massacre had fled to.
“I know that look. It’s going to make you sick, isn’t it?” Jiang Cheng frowned from where he sat across from WuXian at one of the tables in the dining hall.
“What? What does Jiang-gongzi mean by that, Wei-gongzi?” Nie HuaiSang, who had joined the two at their table, frowned with worry clear in his eyes.
“I… I can’t handle eating unspiced food for long. Every once in a while is fine, but having it every day is a bad idea. It will be fine, though, I’ll figure out how to manage it.” WuXian said, carefully not saying how exactly she would.
If her brother found out she was planning to go hungry if she couldn’t get spices, then he would write to Madame Yu to tell on her. If she weren’t biànxíngqì she wouldn’t need the spices, but she was so she did.
“I’ll write to my brother and ask if he can send some Nie spices for you to try in your food to see if they will help. Which kind of spices help the best? My brother and I are the same way.” Nie HuaiSang immediately offered, and there was a churning of warmth in WuXian’s chest at the kindness being offered.
The spices offered by the Nie sect might even be the ones of WuXian’s home, and it made his chest ache a little at the possibility of having those floral accents in his food again. Yunmeng-Jiang spices were nice and wonderful and all, but there were times WuXian contemplated whether those he lived with could even taste anything anymore. The spices of his home, of Yiling-Hua, were meant to enhance the flavours of a meal and make it warmer and more filling; the spices of Yunmeng-Jiang were to heighten how much one would need water later, to twist the flavours round and make it far hotter and more likely to end with an elderly needing a doctor.
Once classes and training lessons were over for the day, WuXian separated from his brother and their dormitory roommate to head to the library and see if there were any interesting books he would like. If there were books on arrays, he would happily learn about them and figure out how to incorporate them into simple mischief he’d get up to with his martial brother. He had told Madame Yu that he wouldn’t do anything to intentionally get expelled from learning at the Cloud Recesses, and harmless mischief had a very low chance of making that happen. If he looked for the purely informational ones, he might even be able to find a way to break his curse without needing his zhīyīn.
“You have odd energy about you.” A voice spoke from behind WuXian right as he got to the doors of the library.
Odd energy?
Could this stranger be feeling Mǎnyì hidden under WuXian’s clothing, or even the spiritual chains that sealed his ability to fully shift into or out of his human form or between his masculine and feminine forms? He never removed the cloth except to bathe, and refused to bathe with others because of what might happen. Sect Leader FengMian and Madame Yu had given up convincing him not to wear them years ago since he’d been found with them already covering his skin, and any attempt to do so had sent him hiding anywhere he could fit. They were a gift from his family, a spiritual shield that would protect him from harm that had been passed down for generations long before Xiu Chonglai had stolen from them and started that war.
“What does it feel like to you?” The boy who supposedly had lavender grey eyes asked, one hand wrapped around the handle for one of the library doors.
“… It feels like I have been around it before, despite this being the first time I have seen you. What is your name?”
“This one is called Wei Ying by others, my courtesy name is WuXian. And you?”
WuXian still had yet to turn away from the library doors or let go of the doorhandle, he had no idea what the person he was talking to looked like or what clan they belonged to.
“My name is Lan Zhan, courtesy name WangJi. Why do you not look at me?”
WuXian gave an inaudible swallow, and let go of the doorhandle he was still holding onto. Lan WangJi’s voice was already smooth and sweet sounding enough that he feared if he turned to look at him he would decide that Shài wasn’t worth waiting or looking for anymore in favour of the boy he had only just heard the voice of for the first time.
“It is a custom of my home to not look directly at someone upon the first meeting, and it is seen as a sign of great disrespect if one does. It would be akin to spitting in one’s face and calling one’s mother many rude names” WuXian answered.
He wasn’t lying. But that custom had not been enforced fully by the elders like it should’ve been. It hadn’t mattered that the rule was supposed to apply to everyone, the elders hadn’t tried to enforce it with any of the other children even if his mothers and sibling figures had.
“Then I must wait until our next meeting to learn the face of one who wears such complex braids in their hair?”
The mention of the braids that WuXian wore in his hair that formed into a crown of flowers beneath a high ponytail currently, made the boy hum something soft to himself. The flowering braids were a customary hairstyle of his home, and he wore them to keep more of them with him than just his former ai’xah’s perfume and things sent through Zìmǔ from his shixiong. He had his (supposedly) red ribbons tying his hair in place trailing down from the flowers and the ponytail, even if it would have been only a single loop around tie if he weren’t trying to keep his home with him in every conceivable way he could. WuXian refused to wear his home’s signature glass hair beads that glinted like tiny jewels and looked like tiny stars when worn properly, no matter how much he wanted to know how it would look here. No matter how much his biànxíngqì traits made it seem so appealing, he refused because that signature was for a home that he could not return to until the wards were gone and his people returned to the place that had been wrongly stolen from them.
“You must.”
WuXian perused the various books she could access in the public area of the Cloud Recesses library, and found only a small number of books she hadn’t read elsewhere and practically memorised. A few other people came and went, but WuXian was focused enough on the new books she’d found that she didn’t mind as much the disturbance to his finding knowledge he hadn’t had before like he would if they’d been extra noisy or bothering him about what he was looking at.
“A-Xian, c’mon. It’s time to go eat, the books will still be here tomorrow. I have some chili oil a-Jie slipped into our things before we left so you can actually eat it without getting ill.”
WuXian looked up at hearing his martial brother speak, and saw that a shichen had passed since he’d entered the library and started reading. He hadn’t found anything that could have helped break his curse without needing Shài, but his shixiong had sent a few new array ideas that looked like they would be fun to use in light mischief using Zìmǔ like they always did to keep up with each other's lives.
There were even a few ideas on an array or two to project memories, something that would allow WuXian to see his mothers and sibling figures again if it worked since he didn’t know how to get to where Yiling-Hua had been re-formed so he couldn’t return there even if he wanted to. He’d be able to show the people here he cared about his home, and share the traditions in a more tangible way than just the books his family had hidden in an arrayed bag for him to take when he'd been forced to leave. He wondered if his memories would be shown in colour to others, or if they would be in shades of grey like the world was to him. He would also be able to show why he hated the cold so much, and why dogs scared him… and about his being biànxíngqì if he could bring himself to be that vulnerable to anyone outside Shài or others like him or his not yet born children. He just needed to figure out how to break his curse and get rid of his chains before he could be free and finally feel safe enough to actually use what his nature gave him.
“A-Cheng, what colours does Nie-gongzi have?” WuXian asked, as he always did after looking at someone directly.
Jiang Cheng and Madame Yu had been a bit upset over WuXian only seeing in greys, once they'd realised why he had such difficulty seeing differences between different things. He'd learned that grass was a colour called green, and the daytime sky was light blue, and water was darker blue. He'd learned that Jiang Sect robes were made of purple, and chili peppers were red, and other colours that Yu ZiYuan and Jiang Cheng had tried to describe to him. He wanted to see colour again, the last time he had been able to see colour had been before his shixiong’s gift.
Jiang Cheng frowned a little just like every other time he was reminded that WuXian couldn't see colour, “he has walnut brown hair, greenish brown eyes, jade pale skin, and his Sect’s robes are black and dark green. What shades of grey does he look like to you, a-Xian?”
“Really dark grey, three different medium greys, and two light greys.”
WuXian sat with Jiang Cheng and Nie HuaiSang for dinner, the two boys on either side of him and his and Nie HuaiSang’s dinner differently coloured from those who were of the Lan clan due to the spices put into it. He ate his spiced Lan cuisine without complaint, though she still felt that there was something that could make it taste better. Not that WuXian would be able to find that something in Yunmeng-Jiang, considering it was a spice she knew was native to her home and therefore out of reach until the wards were broken. Unless she were to ask her shixiong to send them to her through Zìmǔ, or for Nie HuaiSang to ask for them to be sent from Qinghe-Nie so that she might have the flavours of home again.
The ache of being confined to only her masculine form even when she was feminine because of the spiritual chains under her wrappings made the food taste a little less appetising, but WuXian still finished her food without complaint. The chains didn’t have any weight to them, were nothing more than white markings against her skin, but they seemed to weigh her down all the more with how they made her body be all wrong wrong wrong because she wasn’t a boy right now but her body was masculine anyway. But the chains were only there because it was the only way her shixiong had found that could slow their curse down. The chains were there only because their family hadn’t wanted to doom them to die so young.
The food settled in WuXian’s stomach like stones, heavy and oppressive and making them feel ever so slightly ill. Their martial brother was up ahead walking to their shared room next to Nie HuaiSang, but WuXian needed a bit of time alone. Meditation would do them good, they’d be able to feel their energy and be assured even a little that even though their body was currently unable to change with them, their spiritual energy shifted with them. She was so tired of her body staying in one form, it had been ten years at this point. But if she removed the chains all at once, her Core would shatter and her meridians would burst; it would kill her within half a shichen at most. There would be no surviving that. Not to mention her curse needed to be broken before removing the chains would be safe to do so.
A shattered core and a melted core were vastly different in nature. A shattered core could be re-cultivated, but if done too impatiently would lead to a fatal qi deviation. A melted core couldn’t be re-cultivated, on account of the meridians closest to where the core sat in the body being destroyed in the process.
“Wei WuXian, good evening. Might I see your face, now that this is our second time meeting?”
At the voice of Lan WangJi, WuXian turned slightly in between her forms to face close to the direction the boy was in.
“Good evening, Lan-gongzi. Are you here to meditate as well?”
§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§
Lan WangJi, second young master of the head family of the Gusu Lan clan, could admit that there were times when he was speechless for reasons other than simply not wanting to waste words. Seeing the face of one Wei Ying, courtesy name WuXian, was one such time. He had already been intrigued the first time running into Wei WuXian, as he had never before seen such a complex hairstyle as the one the other teen wore, at least not outside of his dreams. And the way they spoke of it being a custom of their home to never look directly upon someone at the first meeting made him want to see them again, if only to see their face and know if they were the one he had dreamt of since he was young. This was indeed the second meeting between the two, yet Wei WuXian’s eyes were closed as they moved through their meditation. How had they noticed him if they hadn’t been able to see their surroundings? How did they know it was him?
Their golden core’s signature during the first meeting had been very distinctive in how they were clearly masculine; but this second meeting it had a softer and more feminine feel to it, almost as if in between WangJi’s first time meeting Wei WuXian and now the other had become feminine themself. It was such an intriguing phenomenon, and again there was that feeling of familiarity as if WangJi knew them down to the very depths of their soul despite the fact the two had traded barely more than a few sentences back and forth.
Looking at Wei WuXian, all WangJi could think was: they could almost be his Chánjuān.
All of Wei WuXian's features were in the right places with the right shapes, but their hair was just barely lighter than that of the one in his dreams and they lacked the extra limbs; he knew that other-beasts could hide their nonhuman features however, so that wasn’t an immediate indicator that Wei WuXian and his Chánjuān weren’t close. Perhaps the one he dreamed of was a close relative of Wei WuXian. He couldn’t help feeling a sliver of disappointment at that, Wei WuXian was intriguing and seemed to be quite lively from the times he’d seen the other around Cloud Recesses with the Jiang Sect heir and the Nie Sect heir’s younger brother.
Their moving meditation appeared almost like a dance, and they kept their sword sheathed as they moved between different forms like water flowed through a river. It was very distinct, and completely unlike the Yunmeng-Jiang style despite both appearing fluid like water to the observer. He eyed their black robes with red lining, wondering why someone from the Jiang Sect wouldn’t be wearing the Sect colours. It certainly made the black cloth he could see peeking into view around the base of their neck less obvious, and he nearly missed that identical cloth was wrapped around both of their forearms beneath their robes because of how seamlessly the cloth blended in with their sleeves.
“Lan-gongzi?”
At the prompting tone from Wei WuXian, WangJi remembered that they’d asked him a question, “ah, yes. I came here to meditate as well.”
Why were they able to draw so many words from his lips, when even his older brother couldn’t bring him to speak much beyond his usual hums? He would ponder that question as he meditated, and hopefully find an answer while he circulated his qi through his meridians.
Wei WuXian had called him Lan-gongzi during their first meeting too, despite the fact his being the Second Jade of Gusu-Lan was well known in the cultivation world. But they also hadn’t seen his face, so it was possible that they just didn’t know which member of Gusu-Lan they were speaking to.
Rather than meditate as he intended to, WangJi found himself watching the way Wei WuXian moved through their meditation forms with an unveiled eye. Their sword moved with them, remaining in its sheath and seeming to both be a focal point and afterthought in their movements.
It was only the fact that WangJi was watching Wei WuXian’s meditation that allowed him to catch the moment they began to slip in the damp grass. He immediately sprang into action, grabbing the part of them nearest him to try and prevent them from falling to the ground and dirtying the robes they wore. Unfortunately, the part he had grabbed was the sheath of their sword, and they fell to the ground with their sword bare to the elements and the sheath in his hand. Wei WuXian’s cheeks reddened once they had caught sight of their sword’s sheath in WangJi’s hand from where he had tried to catch them, and they quickly stood before taking it back as gently as they could. Wei WuXian put their sword away, and then turned to leave as if embarrassed.
There was something that had happened that WangJi had to have missed, some sort of nuance or other insight that he was unaware of. Wei WuXian had been entirely unbothered and at ease, and then was not before hurriedly leaving as if something truly unexpected had happened. It hadn’t been falling because of the damp grass, they hadn’t reacted negatively towards that until they’d seen their sword’s sheath in WangJi’s hand instead of concealing their blade.