Wenwu was in the middle of a bridge.
He found himself surprisingly intact, all things considered, and walked the path on his right where he was led to a woman in red who was apparently waiting for him.
Her long hair that brushed the ground was white, but the hand that extended him a bowl of soup was young, and so was the face that smiled. “Drink deep,” she told him, voice light. “Drink deep and forget.”
Wenwu held the cup in his hands, considering. “What happens next?”
“Rebirth,” she replied. “It may not be a life as long as your previous, but it will be different.”
“Will I find her?”
The smile on her face did not falter, but Wenwu liked to believe he saw understanding in her wizened eyes. “I do not know.”
Perhaps there was a comfort in the uncertainty of it all, for what else was left to tell Ying Li aside from his neglect? It was enough that the greatness she had believed their children were capable of was true, that they had her goodness and talents.
Wenwu stared at his reflection in the liquid and drank deep.
He woke to the dark, blinking until his eyes adjusted to the familiar ceiling of his bedroom.
He would have called it a dream, except his fingers woven to silken tresses were real, as was Ying Li's voice tinged with sleep when she came to wakefulness.
She muttered something against his chest that Wenwu struggled to understand amidst the surge of… everything, and at his silence she turned up at him with a concerned frown.
Ying Li was bright even with the bare light in the late evening, and she was here with him again.
Wenwu was afraid to touch, to disturb this memory that Forgetfulness was unable to erase, but Ying Li leaned against his hand, and she remained.
"Bad dream?" she asked softly.
He nodded shallowly, not trusting himself to speak.
Ying Li understood like she always had, shifting to wrap him in her arms, his head against her chest. "Sleep," she whispered, "I'm here."
Wenwu drank her scent and the sound of her voice and knew she would be there when he woke once more.