“I thought I’d find you here.”
Feng-Lung looked up from the great Qi lake of Aun’El’s grove, drawing his attention away from its bubbling depths to see his friend approaching.
In his hand sat the metal cat XJ-V had constructed to soothe the young man’s malaise. If any onlookers had arrived a split second earlier, they would have seen that he was petting it gently.
“I have mastered the evasion of the Tigers, it seems,” Feng smiled as XJ-V knelt beside him. “Perhaps I truly will be a Master one day after all.”
“On that day shall I return, Feng, and you can show me exactly what I’ve been missing.”
“And on that day, you can tell me of the sights of our old world, Brother. Perhaps I might even join you when the earth is once again free.”
XJ-V nodded at the sentiment, but Feng’s face betrayed no childish dream: this was a promise from one Brother to another he was making, and XJ-V laughed to see his friend still so resolute after all they’d been through.
“It has been…quite a journey, hasn’t it?”
The question was Feng’s, but it should have been the Cog’s.
“One that I couldn’t have made without you,” he agreed.
Both men sat cross-legged in the silence of Aun’El’s Grove, taking in the sights and whispers of the willows as they bent in the spirit-wind, or the rustling of autumn leaves as the Huli ran through them, the pitter-patter of their paws matching the quiet ripples that danced along the waters of the lake – always alive, always listening – just like the earth itself.
Amidst this strange tranquility, the two men talked – Feng revealing his plans to continue his training and help Fai-Deng with instructing the new novice Cultivators, while XJ-V relayed the pain of his Creator’s death and his flight from Hensha.
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“It seems we both bear the scars of our past,” Feng said with a deep sigh as the Cog finished his story. “And yet we have both learned to carry them with us and make them just another piece of our souls. They don’t define us anymore.”
“I did not get a chance to say goodbye to my Creator,” XJ-V said. “I thought that, perhaps –“
“Please,” Feng-Lung told his friend. “Don’t speak of big lofty things like ‘goodbyes’. You and I are bound up as Brother Dragons, XJ-V. We came to understand each other even though most of human history would call such an act of understanding at best, impossible. At worst: heretical.”
Feng turned to face him, a sad but bright smile adorning his youthful face.
“You really think you leaving here is a goodbye? I’ll see you in the Dao, Brother. And when you finally right this broken world, we will walk its roads together.”
XJ-V did not turn from his friend – even though he wished to. He still held one secret close to his chest – that of the destiny his Creator and the Masters all understood was his and his alone: to reach Soul Actualization and commit Yuwa’s husk to the graveyard of the dead Gods – to scatter his ashes in the Dao and watch them rust away in the remains of his brethern…
And that meant death. The Cog knew it from the moment he realized what Janus’s dream truly was. Perhaps the old machine himself had realized it, too, and had second thoughts. No doubt he felt these thoughts to be nothing but a mere malfunction in his own logic matrix. But , thinking back to his Creator’s face as he sacrificed himself for his child, XJ-V liked to think that the Doctor had felt that these pangs of conscience were the result of something more than just the logical desire to complete Qing’s mission.
XJ-V couldn’t lie to his friend. Nor could he tell him the sobering fact that would flatten his spirits. So, he did something that he’d never done before: he obfuscated.
“You still have the cat, then?” he asked, pointing at the metal construct in Feng’s arms.
Feng balked, covering the creature’s ears. “XJ-V…you of all people should know that one must respect the name of another and not define them by their nature alone. This is Brother Gang Zhuazi*. Newest member of the Eternal Dragons.”
XJ-V chuckled. “Isn’t he more suited to the Tigers?”
“Perish the thought! Brother Gang has made his choice. Dao be damned – this kitten is a dragon.”
“Too right,” XJ-V replied. “Too right.”
Sudden movement withing the waters brought the gazes of the two men back to the lake, where the ripples had now grown into fountains that glowed with the eyes of the dancing spirits. Spinning and twirling their locks of liquid hair, the Tianjin bowed and began a new performance for all the watchful forest spirits of the Grove.
Both mortal spectators watched the performance with quiet interest, their minds preoccupied with thoughts of their past and their future – things which seemed just as mutable and fluid as the flow of the spirit’s water limbs as they traced the charged air of the sacred Grove. XJ-V could not describe it, but he was experiencing another all-too-human state as he sat with Feng and watched the dancing lights. There was not a word that could describe it – that fleeting, strange twinge in the back of one’s mind when two men sit in silent contemplation, each one desiring, knowing that more must be said, and yet each one not being able to express the thought. Not because they are incapable of articulation, but because something dwelling deep in their minds tells them that perhaps nothing must be said at all. Or, that anything that could be said has already been said – that the truth of the words pulling at their spirits is so obvious that to give them utterance would seem childish.
So, in the absence of anything else, XJ-V said the only thing he could:
“I will miss you, Brother.”
Feng brushed aside the metal hand that was then offered to him and drew his companion into an embrace.
“And I, you, XJ-V,” he said. “Know that, when you step outside these walls, my spirit goes with you.”
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*Gang Zhuazi = 'Steel Paws'