Xue Huayu seemed anxious when night fell, indecisive on where to start their hunt. It took her a good little while to decide to just start down the main road and look around for what they were working with.
Qing Xiashu had taken it upon himself to speak to the parents of the most recently lost child at the edge of town
The father had blamed it all on "the damn stray" they had taken in.
When Qing Xiashu inquired about this in particular, he was shooed out quickly after.
"A stray? If we're working with an evolved baihu gui we could be dealing with one at such a level to become a shapeshifter." Yan Hesheng mentioned. "But stray is still an odd term, do they mean an animal or a person?"
"I'm not sure, but they really didn't want to talk about it, which makes me think it's probably a child. If it was an adult vagrant or an animal I can't imagine they'd feel any amount of guilt over tossing them out after their daughter was lost." Qing Xiashu murmured. A hand rested on his chin as he spoke, only coming away in a gesture when he continued. "And again, if we're dealing with a baihu gui recreating its death, then it's possible it's shapeshifting into a child as part of the rehearsal."
"That doesn't make sense, baihu gui reincarnate as adults, it would have to take on a different role, wouldn't it?" Xue Huayu asked Yan Hesheng, who shook his head.
"Being reincarnated as mature doesn't mean an adult." Qing Xiashu pointed out.
Yan Hesheng took it upon himself to further explain. "I was revived quite young myself, mature is more a mind set in this case, aging will only continue after a certain level of cultivation, until then they will remain trapped in the state that they died in."
"Even so..." Xue Huayu scuffed her foot at the ground. "I'm still not convinced this is the work of a baihu gui at all. And I don't think we should prepare as though it is. Da-ge, what do you think?"
Xue Feiyi had been quiet for all of this, gazing at the ground with a contemplative expression on his face. "I too am unconvinced, this situation strikes me as familiar." He murmured, apparently uninterested in making eye contact with any of them.
"Huh..." Qing Xiashu had a similar sense of deja vu. "It might just be the environment." He admitted after a moment. This snowy, sleepy, haunted village, reminded him much of his "home town".
"Perhaps." Xue Feiyi agreed.
Qing Xiashu knew why.
Xue Feiyi was worried about this place and situation tripping him up and causing problems.
"It'll be fine." He assured the king.
"What are you two going on about?" Xue Huayu sighed. Qing Xiashu had been around as long as she could properly remember and she didn't really care to wonder where in the world he had come from.
"Nothing, nothing, just old problems."
She dropped it easily enough
No amount of fighting would get him to talk about what he didn't want to talk about and she knew it. "In any case, let's not rely solely on knowledge of baihu gui for this hunt. First let's find this stray. If they are a child, they're probably going to be really close to where they were last seen, or as far away as they can comfortably get. I'm going to take Da-ge and search around the homestead of the last lost child. Yan Hesheng and Er-ge will search the opposite end, acceptable?"
"Acceptable." Xue Feiyi and Qing Xiashu agreed.
The head disciple and baihu gui made good time in their movement across the town. It wasn't a particularly large space to cover. But with so many dilapidated houses, they would have to keep a close eye on the shadows.
"Yan-gege, do you think it's a baihu gui?" Qing Xiashu asked after a few minutes of walking around the far end of the town with Yan Hesheng. "You're the expert."
Yan Hesheng raised his brows at the use of such a familiar nickname. Before seemingly shrugging it off. "I really don't know at this point. For the most part, my kind are intelligent enough to have a predictable thought process, even when they've reached empty insanity. At least to me, even those stages still make relative sense and tend to repeat themselves. This is either a soon to be empty baihu gui or something else entirely, I just don't understand how it could have gone undetected for so long. There can't have been that many vagrant children to begin with. The progression is just too fast... it either moved from somewhere else. Or it just can't be a baihu gui. But then there's the fox that keeps turning up..."
"It's all a little bit convoluted, isn't it."
"That's a bit of an understatement..." Yan Hesheng said with a sigh.
"You said you reincarnated young... Would you mind if I asked what happened?"
"You mean what killed me?" Yan Hesheng questioned.
"Mm."
"My mother killed me." The baihu gui stated it so simply it left Qing Xiashu blinking. "Don't worry, baihu gui reincarnating young is common. Creating them in these parts requires that someone dies without ever being loved. I was ill from the start, she was tired of me, my father had run away, she had no reason to keep me around." He said with an unconcerned timbre.
"Is she still alive?"
"No, she was also rather ill, she didn't survive very long after I died. How about you? You were adopted by the royal siblings. What happened there?" Yan Hesheng asked as he pushed a shutter away from a closed shop's window just to peek inside.
Ah... Turnabout is fair play...
Qing Xiashu laughed faintly, rubbing the side of his nose with one finger as he looked down an alley. "Well... I was from a village at the foot of the mountains in the northeastern borderlands, it was a lot like this place actually."
"Is that what the King was so concerned about? Worried you'll be affected by some kind of post traumatic stress?" The baihu gui murmured between empty roads and crumbling homes at every turn, stepping over a collapsed door frame.
"Mm, he gets worried like this every time we end up in some quiet dead snowy place..." Qing Xiashu said with a sigh while they moved through the dark streets. "But this time it's not just that, something about this place just- reminds me of my old master."
"You were a slave?" Yan Hesheng asked, climbing his way up a rotting stoop to look over the block and spot anything possibly interesting. "I thought slaves and indentures were outlawed quickly after your brother took power."
"They were." The head disciple confirmed. "But it wasn't a human. It was some kind of yao. It used me to get up to all kinds of shit in the larger world. Something specialized to control others. One could argue it's in their natural right to keep slaves."
Yan Hesheng's eyes flickered toward Qing Xiashu and then immediately away. "I see, and your brother handled it?"
"Mm, he always does, anything wants to hurt Xue Xiaojie or myself and he'll be right there to save us. Even when it's ourselves."
"You got lucky then, Qing Xiashu." Yan Hesheng acknowledged.
Qing Xiashu smiled. "I know. Between that and my life here, I'm incredibly lucky. Not many people get a quick way out of the problems in their lives." At times he was still left reeling with how dramatically his life had changed over the years.
Once and then once more.
The baihu gui froze not far off to Qing Xiashu's left. "We agreed that the only reason that it moved to children with families is because it ran out of street children, yes?"
The head disciple followed the fox's rusty gaze.
"So is that one new?"
"Or our problematic little shape shifter?"
There was a frail little girl picking at the dirt by her feet, hunched in on herself and seemingly unaware of the cultivators watching her.
Qing Xiashu stepped closer only for his arm to be anxiously grabbed by Yan Hesheng. "It'll be fine." He whispered over his shoulder before continuing towards the child. "Little one." He called gently, catching her attention.
The child's eyes snapped up to him and went wide. They were gold.
Bright stellar gold, and upon the little thing's forehead was a red mark.
In the North, these huadian weren't uncommon.
Qing Xiashu and his siblings also wore them daily.
He wore one now.
They were stained into place with dye that didn't vanish even after washing, though they could certainly fade over time. It was especially common in cultivator families directly tied to the Chaoting Palace sect.
Something made Qing Xiashu doubt that this was a mark made with that flower dye. It was both too vibrant for such an unkempt child, and not accompanied by the red stroke under the eyes.
"Are you alright?" Qing Xiashu asked as he knelt down beside the girl. "Do you need us to take you to someone?" The little girl's eyes were glued to his hip where Touming rested. Hesitantly, he continued. "Don't worry, that's not for you." He said as he held his hand out to her, offering to help her stand.
Hesitantly, and without a word, she took it.
The moment her skin made contact with his, something dark and cruel twisted around his wrist.
He swallowed down the instant disgust and distress in his throat.
As quickly as he could think to, he attempted to trace its origin, only to find that it didn't come from the child at all. But rather, she was captured in its clutches just as he now was. Rather than panic, he only carefully helped her to her feet without standing himself.
The pull of the darkness was uncomfortably strong, tugging at some aching dark that already resided in the pit of his stomach.
It wasn't something he'd felt in many years, but now that it surfaced he found it terribly familiar.
Behind Qing Xiashu's back, one of his hands gave Yan Hesheng a vague gesture.
"Well, why don't you show me where your family is?" Qing Xiashu hummed as he stood, still holding the girl's hand to follow her.
He thought he was doing a rather impressive job of keeping his expression neutral, but his mind and core screamed to get away from the disturbingly familiar hold.
Yan Hesheng didn't follow, darting in the opposite direction, likely to find Xue Huayu and Xue Feiyi.
Qing Xiashu rested well assured that they'd catch up soon. He was leaving more than enough of a trail of spiritual energy for them to follow as he walked with the child.
She walked and walked.
Taking him into the forest and quite far from the structures of the town. When the light from the moon and stars was blocked out by dense foliage, it was replaced with the pale flickering of gui huo.
"Where are we going?" Qing Xiashu asked after a long while, smiling the whole time despite the ever growing sense of unease.
Did this child live among spirits?
The child themself certainly didn't feel dead. Perhaps the child wasn't human, but in no way did she feel dead the way even a baihu gui simply did not feel alive.
Her answer took far too long. "Master wants to see you." The girl murmured, leading him into a cave.
"The dark one that reached all the way into town with you?" He asked as they walked into the darkness.
The girl only nodded. Two gui huo followed her, turning a deep shade of red as they obediently tapped into her qi. This didn't seem to tire her, Qing Xiashu could see how easily she gave to them. A practiced exchange, energy for light.
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And the girl had plenty of energy to give.
The air thickened with something that could only be described as unchecked malice. It clouded Qing Xiashu's vision so much that he had to scuff his boots along the stone ground quietly to retain clarity and ward away his light headedness.
"What's your master's name?" Qing Xiashu asked when they got a bit closer and entered a larger cavern. But the girl didn't answer. She only pulled her hand away from him and side stepped before he could make any comment on it.
The cavern was empty other than the deep mildew scented pool at the center. The entire space stank of stale mold. There was clearly an entity in the pool, he couldn't see anything but all the smog seemed directly attached to the water. Even the dark tendril tied around his wrist led directly into the deep waters.
"Excuse me, Xiansheng." Qing Xiashu greeted with an infinitely polite smile and accompanying bow.
"Ah. Finally, A respectful youngster." A graveled voice grated off the walls.
"I'm afraid I'm unsure as to why you wanted to see me."
"Come closer, you seem to be familiar with me."
"You remind me much of my old master. Though, sir, I am sure you are not the same." Wandering a few paces closer, Qing Xiashu's soul sank further against his rib cage.
Yes, this entity was exactly the same as that which had once held him.
"Are you a child of my brothers'?" The entity asked. "That mark on your core suggests that you are indeed. I don't suppose you would do my bidding for me so obediently? You are my inheritance after all."
Agitation rose like a beast in Qing Xiashu's stomach, rippling against the pitch black sediment left by a past so far away that he could hardly feel it in the ache of old scars.
"Ah, sir, I'm afraid his ownership of me ended with his death and passed to his killer rather than to you."
Qing Xiashu's history wasn't something that Xue Feiyi made an attempt to remind him of. All he had was the twisted perception of a terrified child.
And those memories were old and clouded.
What the entity in that pond had been?
Qing Xiashu could no longer recall.
What exactly had killed it?
He also couldn't recall.
Only that Xue Feiyi had done it that day they met.
"You would refuse my brother's will? Even as his charge?"
"I'm afraid so, I must remain loyal to my new master. He holds more than a spiritual demand over my head."
"Oh? And what would it be that he holds? Secrets? A loved one?"
"A life debt and kindness." Qing Xiashu said with a weak laugh.
The entity scoffed. "Closer."
Before Qing Xiashu could do so on his own or refuse, the tendril on his wrist went taut, pulling him directly towards the depths.
"It's been long since I've had the chance to feast upon a cultivator you know."
An armed cultivator.
Qing Xiashu couldn't help but click his tongue as he twisted. Touming flashed from its sheath and split the tendril so quickly that its owner hardly had time to shriek before Touming was back in its scabbard and Qing Xiashu had righted his posture.
"Sorry, Xiansheng, what were you saying? I was told you wanted to see me for something in particular." The ever present polite smile didn't waver. Even as the entity in the pond seemed to violently thrash below it's depths, making the previously calm surface roll.
It lashed out with a hundred more of these similar tendrils, trying to catch him and draw him closer again.
Qing Xiashu danced back towards the mouth of the cavern, looking around for the child who'd brought him there. Only to find a significant absence of the little girl.
He furrowed his brows.
Up.
Left.
No child.
Right.
Down.
No child.
One of the tendrils latched sternly around his ankle. Before he could greet it with Touming multiple more wrapped around the sword and sealed it shut.
In a moment all too quick he was again yanked towards the murky water, below it he could see an enormous churning maw entirely prepared to haul him in.
He didn't have the chance to be properly afraid before frost shattered the fog.
A sharp clap cut the air.
Humidity was sapped from the muggy cavern in a snap.
Spires of ice launched into the water, pinning the beast to the floor of the pond and forcing it to loosen the shadowy tendrils on its prey to focus on prying itself free.
Qing Xiashu gave a frazzled smile as he scrambled to his feet and rushed away from the water's edge. Xue Feiyi stood at the mouth of the cavern with an expression almost as cold as the frozen air. "Qing Shidi." He greeted, his voice came blankly but there was a light relieved sigh below it.
"Shixiong, where did the little one go?"
"She found us first; go to the entrance. Huayu and the baihu gui have her." Xue Feiyi responded calmly, patting Qing Xiashu's shoulder as he passed, dismissing the boy. "I will follow in just a moment."
"Don't be long, Shixiong." Qing Xiashu said over his shoulder at Xue Feiyi's back, his form disappearing into the dark.
"I won't."
Qing Xiashu had just made it out of the cave when a boom exploded behind him. Frost vapor and snow filled air blasting out after him like someone had set off a firework in a glacier. "Whoa- is Da-ge blowing the place up completely?" Xue Huayu murmured as fine snow landed in her hair.
"It was eating kids. Blowing it up would be a mercy."
Yan Hesheng had been awfully quiet, watching the cave entrance while he cradled something dark and fuzzy in his arms.
Qing Xiashu looked around, farther into the snow coated trees. "Shixiong said you had the little one up here, is she ok? Did it let her go?"
"Sort of." Yan Hesheng murmured, lifting his arms to allow the head disciple an easier time seeing. The fuzzy thing was a kitten, though on further inspection it was definitely not a cat. The kitten's forehead was monopolized by one golden eye, and behind it three tails were rather stiff, as though the animal was too terrified to move. "She- uhm... she came to get us, I believe she's a huan."
Well that much was clear.
The little huan didn't seem to know if she wanted to snuggle right in or make a break for it. In the end she did neither.
"Hand her to me." Qing Xiashu directed with a chirp, holding his hands out for the little kitten. Yan Hesheng handed her over after a moment of hesitation. The kitten had clearly struck out at Xue Huayu, if the little claw marks on her cheek were anything to go on, but she didn't strike at him.
"Ah! So small!" He cooed, rocking the kitten gently in his arms as he rolled her into a ball and tucked her into the loose fabric of his sleeves like they were blankets. "I'll call her A-Ying."
"Ying?" Yan Hesheng asked with a head tip.
"Isn't she so round like a little cherry?" Qing Xiashu hummed, grinning.
"What if she already has a name?" Xue Huayu scoffed, fiddling with strands of her hair to get them organized again.
"I'll ask." Qing Xiashu promised. He'd been even older than this girl when he'd been found. The name he'd been given, even as literal as it had been, had been his favorite gift for many years. Only later beaten by Hefeng. He'd been all too thrilled to abandon the name his mother had given him.
"You're gonna try and get Da-ge to let you bring her back to the palace too aren't you."
"I bet you Shixiong will."
"I will what?" Xue Feiyi asked as he walked from the mouth of the cave.
The head disciple really hadn't noticed that the explosions had stopped, but he turned to Xue Feiyi with a grin. "Can I keep her?" He asked, showing him the kitten, who had since dozed right off in his arms.
Xue Feiyi glanced down at the kitten with a look of soft contemplation, then back at Qing Xiashu's hopeful expression.
"She will be your responsibility to train." He said simply.
And so the cycle would continue.
Qing Xiashu bounced and chirped again before Xue Feiyi once more cut in. "And do make sure to ask her."
Xue Huayu was huffing and puffing over the destruction of her hunt, even literally dragging her feet as they walked back to town.
However, Xue Feiyi made the executive decision to ignore her complaints. The moment Qing Xiashu's survival had been brought up Xue Huayu had caved and accepted that they would just have to find a new hunt on the way back to the palace. Her mind especially changed when it came to taking care of the entity in the pond and keeping Qing Xiashu out of its very toothy mouth.
"And Qing Xiashu will be sitting out." Xue Feiyi said flatly on the topic.
"Huh!? Why? What did I do?" Qing Xiashu protested, looking beyond a little offended.
"Only nearly die." The king hissed, giving his brother a short glare. "Next time don't run off on your own like an idiot."
Qing Xiashu's pace slowed, dumbfounded. Xue Feiyi almost never became upset with him. And watching the man's back, dark robes and hair disappearing into the snow as he stalked away, made his head spin a little.
Nothing bad had happened, and so what if it did?
He wasn't like Xue Huayu and Xue Feiyi, the future of a nation resting on their survival.
The kitten in his arms began slowly stirring, eye opening and watching the dark forms before them vanish, leaving them alone in the woods again.
Qing Xiashu felt like a child who'd been scolded and told to go to his room. In his early childhood, before he came to stay with the royal family, telling him to go sit in the silence of his storage bin was a mercy.
He would simply use the time to happily play with his small paper animals. Creating fun little stories with the characters or simply sitting in the peaceful empty quiet.
But this time he felt guilty.
The kitten stood from her little bundle in his sleeves and stretched, standing and stepping up his arm, perching on his shoulder. "Oh, good morning A-Ying, did you hear all that?" He asked with a quiet little chuckle.
She only shook her head,
"Good." Qing Xiashu smiled. "Do you want to come to where I live and learn?" Qing Xiashu asked, rubbing her little head and listening to her give off a shaky little purr. "It's got plenty of food, and the walls keep nice and warm at night, it's not as damp or cold as living outside."
"I could stay there?" She finally asked after a few moments, appearing in his arms as the raggedy little girl again.
"Mm, I'll teach you as much as I can, and if you want, I'll give you a new name. My Shixiong gave me one when he took me there. I used to live in a place like this too."
"Alright."
Qing Xiashu gave her a warm smile. "I'll try to come up with a good name by the time we get there."
To this the child nodded. "Are you sad?"
"Oh, no, I just got in trouble with my brother, that's all." Qing Xiashu shrugged. "You don't have to be worried. Look, there's the inn, let's have some dinner."
"Mm..." The girl curled into the chest of his robes, staying warm against him and wrapping a little hand in the yellow tassel, turning the beads over again and again.
" The girl curled into the chest of his robes, staying warm against him and wrapping a little hand in the yellow tassel, turning the beads over again and again [https://img.wattpad.com/05ea08c19aa146dfe85b7bb788a3c11ee8ec437a/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f7038476a674e6a774947534c73673d3d2d313439373030383232312e313830393436643765353061316366623437363732323439353830302e6a7067?s=fit&w=1280&h=1280]
When Qing Xiashu stepped into the inn, Xue Feiyi and Xue Huayu were already eating dinner. "Come. Eat. The huan as well." Xue Feiyi said flatly. He wasn't done being angry it seemed.
"Did you cook?" Qing Xiashu asked as he set the girl down, letting her dig into the food on her little section of the table.
"Don't use your hands." Xue Feiyi ignored Qing Xiashu in turn for instructing the little girl on how to sit up and use chopsticks rather than just grab and shove food into her mouth. By the end of the meal she almost fit into their proper posture, though she still looked mussed with her hair in tangles and clothes dirty and torn.
Qing Xiashu smiled while he watched, eating a few bites of food but leaving the rest.
He let the girl take the rest of his portion when she'd cleared her own. Xue Huayu even got in on some of the teaching, showing the child how to pick up bits of vegetables that were a little difficult to get ahold of.
By the time all the food had been eaten, it was quite late, or rather early. It was certainly far past midnight, and the little girl had fallen asleep at the table.
Xue Feiyi was the one to carefully scoop the girl up, it reminded Qing Xiashu of when the king would scoop up his sleepy little sister and carry her to bed, tucking her in and ensuring she would sleep peacefully. "She can stay with me." Xue Huayu said with a smile.
"Qing Shidi's responsibility." Xue Feiyi reiterated, carrying the girl to Qing Xiashu's room and tucking her into the bed there. It was very much a way to say "suffer."
And yet Qing Xiashu didn't mind, he wasn't so young as to require sleep every night anyway.
He would spend the night in the courtyard, meditating and practicing sword forms.
He hadn't however expected that moment he was alone, the adrenaline holding his seams together would vanish.
He was left to crumple to the ground, crouching down fully and hugging his knees to his chest. Like this he shivered out all of the day's stress.
The feeling isn't real.
The pain wasn't there.
It was some child he didn't know. A child that passed that same night the Southern royals did.
Let go of it.
It isn't yours...
Let go...
"A-Shu." A soft voice caught his attention, snapping him from his mild meltdown.
It wasn't often that he heard Xue Feiyi call him in such an informal and affectionate manner.
But there Xue Feiyi was in all his quiet glory, hands tucked behind his back and without all his heavy cloaks. It left the little shocks of bright blue cloth and glittering sapphire exposed, bringing more life to his presence.
"Shixiong." Qing Xiashu murmured in greeting as he stood up from his little huddle, feeling a bit like he'd been pulled from a drowning spiral and set on dry land.
Xue Feiyi sighed softly. "Promise that you will never do that again."
Amber eyes instantly averted. He knew this wasn't the last time they'd have this conversation. It was far from the first.
"Your self sacrificial streak can't keep going, one of these days I won't be able to catch up to you in time." The King warned with a stern look.
"That day will come when it comes."
"Are you so prepared to leave us?"
"I just don't consider it in the equation. There are more important things out there."
"Start considering it... or I really will ban you from all hunts for at least the next season. Just because you could have lost your leg doesn't mean you shouldn't care for the fact that it's broken now."
"Yes, Shixiong..."
"You're grounded."
"Grounded-? Are you joking?"
"No."
"What am I grounded from?"
"Being foolish."
"So you are joking."
"No. I'm very serious. Until further notice you are forthright banned from doing anything idiotically unsanctioned." The king hissed under his breath.
"Alright, alright, yes Beifang Dianxia."
"Don't you call me that, A-Shu." Xue Feiyi scolded, arms crossing in front of his chest.
Qing Xiashu grinned. "But Shixiong, it can't be helped when you use your king voice!" He said with a dramatic hand raised to his forehead, spinning in his step to drop his back against Xue Feiyi's solid shoulder.
Xue Feiyi gave him a short lived glare before he smiled in that mild mannered, quietly exasperated way of his. Eventually gently patting his little brother's head and continuing to support the man's weight. Xue Feiyi wasn't that much taller than Qing Xiashu but he was quite a bit more built.
Meanwhile Qing Xiashu still lived up to the namesake given to him as a child.
Mousy at best.
Finally Qing Xiashu picked himself off of Xue Feiyi and stood on his own, tipping his head back to look at the stars that peered through the thin layer of cloud. "You'll be up for a while, shall I keep you company?"
"If that would please you." Qing Xiashu hummed softly, nodding but not tearing his eyes from the sky. Sometimes he searched for the patterns he would recognize in his dreams, yet he found none.
The sky was of course familiar to Qing Xiashu, but absent of the shapes that brought him comfort in his dreams. He relied on them to assure himself of the fluidity of supposed events.
No destruction was assured...
The head disciple settled down on the steps to the courtyard and just watched the empty air. Those dreams varied from sweet to downright mortifying, the sound of bones cracking and screams echoed in his head, but so did gentle music and the hum of soft wind.
"Why are you unhappy?" Xue Feiyi asked after a few moments of observing Qing Xiashu's star gazing. Settling beside him easily enough, gently patting the mousy boy on the head again.
"Do you ever kind of miss a place you hated?" Qing Xiashu asked. "Not because you suddenly feel any fondness for it, but because sometimes you miss how much you knew it?" Qing Xiashu watched the frozen palace master's eyes glaze over, as though he were far away.
"I suppose that... There are many places I feel that way towards, though not many are so far out of reach that I cannot visit on a whim."
Slowly, the head disciple nodded, eyes returning skyward.
"Are you nostalgic over your old home town?" Xue Feiyi questioned. It wouldn't be hard to take him there. Even though Qing Xiashu could hardly remember exactly where he used to reside, Xue Feiyi would likely never forget.
"No." Qing Xiashu chuckled, shaking his head. "Sometimes I just miss the shapes and colors of the stars."
Xue Feiyi raised a brow and finally followed Qing Xiashu's eyes upward. "The stars were different?" He asked, looking into the bright stars scattered in a pattern that was their galaxy.
"Mm, in my dreams... And while I don't typically enjoy those dreams, the stars, I am ultimately quite fond of. Purple, blue, unchanging regardless of season. I just wish I had more time to see them in peaceful moments."
"Then perhaps you should make new shapes in the stars that you'll come to recognize all the same." Xue Feiyi suggested, leaning back on his hands to stare into the sky easier.
Qing Xiashu smiled a bit. "Shixiong truly is wise..."
•●•