open | teeth on my waist i come undone

[weifinder]

WHO: Wei Wuxian & ( you )
WHEN: The week or two following the drinking of village curse-juice and forest capers.
WHERE: Ke-Waihu.
WHAT: Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng managed to knock over a shrine; the local shrine occupant took offense. Now they're temporarily foxes until they finish rebuilding the shrine over the next week (or two). Encounter him as a fox! Work with him while he's a fox. Stare at him wondering what the fox happened.
WARNINGS: Wei Wuxian is deeply, intractably afraid of dogs, and it is likely to come up in narrative, along with the particulars of what he does not like about dogs and/or envisions them doing.

He took no delight in his shifted circumstances, the luck of it all horrid and wrapped up in its own jest: the baying of hounds driving him to bolting, and he, crashing through a shrine built of stones instead of through the underbrush to a nebulous safety, treed.

Wei Wuxian didn't look down to study his paws. Movement was easier when he didn't think about it, when the motion carried him by intent, when he saw the world from lower down, the place from which he'd crawled in darker, more haunted forests, only to be here now, in a village that tasted foreign on his tongue, read nuanced in difference to his far from indifferent nose.

He heard too much with the ears perched upon his black brow, distracted heartbeat to heartbeat by their unnerving twitching movement, centring and recentring on exhalations and scuffs and drags of claw on hardpacked ground. A tail that twitched to similar nerves, and he stood as any fox, tall in his shadows and slinking in the bright light further from safety, to see to his daily deeds.

He carried stones plucked from erstwhile streambeds held delicate between white-yellow teeth, canines visible, tongue deep pink and heavy in his mouth behind them. Wet or dry, less important than the smoothed nature of the rock, beautifully flecked by saliva by the time his journey culminates on a forest knoll, by the shattered structure of a familiar formed shrine. Help, hinder, stare on in silent question: but you found him in these circumstances, so what have you done?

He slipped to your side, silent but for the pad of a paw on the dirt, meant to echo. There were tasks set to them all, but he must stay close, borrow on the certainty of human form to hold canine and suspicion at arms length. His head turned upward, narrow muzzle pointed toward the face of his current companion, before he canted it, giving them a quizzical expression. Where were they off to now? Though he will not accept the discussion of it, his nose now married a sense of purpose to discovery, but it waited on the arrival of his protector, whomever it might be, for them to set off in quest of answers to the questions posed by their hosts, and by themselves. (To all, to any, who wish for a fox-companion in their questing in those days following the induction of the group into the village by awful drunken brew.)

( ooc: honestly these are two setups for run-ins above, but you can tag me in with anywhere in village and even have wei wuxian treed because he'll learn fast that foxes can climb and DOGS CANNOT THANK YOU WORLD FOR THAT BEING CONSISTENT. so wildcard a location/starter at will, if you want! or hit me up on DM or PM to set up a starter for us. )

Comments

for jiang cheng

[weifinder]

Wet, miserable, aching from each time his thoughts entangled with his limbs and he went crashing down on his foxen chin, Wei Wuxian hesitates at the edge of the wood, petrichor rich in his nostrils, filling his lungs beyond capacity with information his brain barely parses. He and his brother, twinned horrors they are now, and he would laugh if the sound didn't come out in a way that made him cringe and shrink down, making himself smaller, less a target.

Even glancing to Jiang Cheng now, one fox black and flecked with white to another, makes him flinch. Teeth. There are always the teeth, and Jiang Cheng strikes out to hurt not because he hates, but because he loves, and there are claws and teeth and he would cry, if he knew how to, to say he's sorry again and again and please, please save your justified anger for later, for when I can survive it. Instead he stands, he starts to fall toward his belly, he shivers in the intensifying rain, and he stares out toward the village, the insidious denning site of countless dogs, of wolves kept loyal to one of Five's brothers, and he knows:

we must do what we cannot

yet has not budged.

[consignation]

Jiang Cheng would not have thought foxes to be such close kin to dogs. Foxes are cunning, are swift and agile and sly. They conspire, laugh, and smile, skirt through the shadows of the trees beholden to nothing and no one. Wei Wuxian is a fox, is one stroke from a vixen. They are not the cowed, obedient things that can be taught to obey, to heel, to guard.

So it vexes him now, for Wei Wuxian to be so on edge, to see canine in what is so clearly not. It aches, too, with childhood promise long buried with all the things that came after. Buried, but not forgotten. Jiang Cheng was to always protect Wei Wuxian from such beasts, and now Wei Wuxian watches him with that timeless fear.

Jiang Cheng drops his tail, bows low, testing the sounds he can make with his bestial form until he finds something closer to a mewl. He bats gently at Wei Wuxian's side, hunkering down himself in the wet to try to seem smaller himself, less worthy of Wei Wuxian's fear. He thinks, and he thinks, and he rolls over on his back, peering upside down at his brother as he blinks past the rain. Paws at him gently even shivering in the mud and the wet.

Everything will be okay, he tries to speak through his gaze, tries to remember the way their sister looked at them when their parents fought. The way she held them when she found them lost in the woods. How did she do it? With all her heart, he imagines, a heart unburdened by resentment or anger. Does Jiang Cheng know how to let that go?

He does not.

Still, he tries.

I'm here, says the gentle scrape of Jiang Cheng's paw over Wei Wuxian's nose. He squirms closer, back to the ground still.

I won't leave you again.

[weifinder]

He shivers, he shudders, and his brows flinch, twitching the whiskers that protrude from them now in this form, at his brother's paw on his nose. Not to twitch away from him, but from the contact, gentle as it is, because he can't convince himself they're less canid than they are, because his nose tells him, and if he opens his eyes he'll see the claws, and he doesn't know how to do that without trying to choke on the air screaming and still sound, again, like a fox.

Not human enough, but close, and just wrong enough to leave him silent.

But he does, after that tremble, after that flinch, allow his weight to fall toward the bulk of his brother. Shifts his head so one ear presses against Jiang Cheng, flattened, and he exhales in short bursts that slowly grow longer. A slope from near hyperventilation to normal breathing, as his nose tells him everything he doesn't want to know, as he forces himself to breathe in only air of soil, of water, of natural decay in the life cycle of a garden.

What now? He asks, but he can't ask it, doesn't fathom beyond it. I know what now. The rain falls, the sun rises, we may not see it. We pick up stones, we rebuild, we hunger. No one loves foxes here.

How to say, hello, this is who we are? He curls up tighter against Jiang Cheng's side, shudders deeper, burrows his face in now so the cloying scent of fox turns into fox-and-mud-and-comfort. I never enjoy being here, but we'll survive. There's nothing else to do.

Giving up can never be a choice again.

for sizhui

[weifinder]

A man in exile becomes a thought exercise in amusement, Wei Wuxian too far beyond tired and exhausted of his situation in a soul-sick way to do more than stare at the door to Lan Zhan's collective 'family' home, shut in his face. Mud flecks him thoroughly, fur wet, the smell of himself calming only now because it's too nuanced to compare to the weak sense of scent he prescribed to knowing of wet canine in unfortunate incidents of his youth.

There's no helping it. He'd continue to sleep in the garden, but there are too many who traipse through come morning; there are too many dogs in this village for him to rest easy anywhere, less so now that he is this, easily conflated for the spirits and the hauntings which plague the town, not unfairly. Or not wholly unfairly, he thinks; not that it finds justice stitched into those moments where equality might once have started to bloom.

Quick steps, and he hurries through the still empty streets under the lingering drizzle, heading for what he hopes might be sanctuary, if he can find a way to communicate it. Slips from shadow to shadow, leaps high to break up any trail, then finds himself at last at the home where his son rests, he hopes: and there, applies a paw to the door, flinching away from the sound of his own scraping nails, and hopes it's Sizhui who answers first, and Sizhui can sense something of his self, his energy, his anything that is not a fox, a threat, a danger.

(Though he is, he supposes, all three, at different times. The fox part being most recent, and most horrifying.)

oh no, mom....

[paperbutterflies]

Sizhui rises early, as always, past the morning hour of braying fish but early all the same. Working carefully for his daily commitment for alleviating the curse he 'inherited,' he is beginning to put together food that he can donate which will not take up too much of the precious water of this time.

When the scraping on the door comes, he hears it easily, and rubs his eyes which have been straining oddly for him to see. His cultivation is not low, so he should not have trouble with eyesight, and yet ... he finds he has been relying a little on the additional sensations that said cultivation grants him to augment the lack of ... crispness in his sight.

So when he opens the door of the windmill, the gentle, are you hungry? that he would have greeted an animal with fades from his lips, and he tilts his head, the familiar, if faint, presence coming from a fox startling him.

He hesitates, then, softly asks instead, "are you in some way connected with Senior Wei?"

It does not make much sense, what with foxes being canine enough that Sizhui doesn't think Senior Wei would much care for them, but it is the only question that he can think of that makes any amount of sense.

mom's having A Week, sonshine

[weifinder]

He had thought: somehow, I'll make him understand. The folly of that strikes even as his brilliant, lovely son, claimed out of the morass of their sixteen year gone past, asks what can at the least guide them to an answer that's acceptable. Perhaps Lans are simply raised to ask the relevant questions. It feels very Lan-like.

He nods, makes the movement slow and exaggerated, to demonstrate it's lack of incidental occurrence. He lifts a paw, then pauses, takes a moment to sit with his tail curling around his feet by its own volition, none of his own, then holds up both front paws, balancing awkwardly. He dips his long, narrow snouted nose in toward his chest, unsure that the gesture would read as anything in particular, let alone, Senior Wei is me.

Cursed into a form dogs hated as much as he hated dogs. He's aware of the cosmic cruelty of it. He also rather hates it, as he continues to refuse to make a sound.

oh NO poor mom

[paperbutterflies]

Sizhui stills at that behavior and then blinks slightly, lowering down into a crouch to come closer to the fox's level. He bites his lip, slightly hesitant...

Then he shrugs slightly to himself and holds out his arms to the fox who is, clearly, far too-human acting to be only a fox. And with what he has already sensed, it is something he thinks makes sense. Somehow.

[binghua]

Staying in the house that was being eaten from the inside out was enough to drive Xingchen mad. He'd already managed to fall through the floorboards once - at least it was just one foot and not his whole person - and the almost imperceptible noises he heard at night left him unsettled. It wasn't like Xingchen was used to luxury; he'd spent many a night under the stars with naught but his own robes for warmth. But he just needed to get out.

He also needed to grow accustomed to this village's layout, as he did with every place they've settled. Learn the streets, remember the establishments, fill out that mental map in his head as quickly as possible so as not to cause others problems were he to become lost. Besides, walking around gave him a good idea of the general attitude of the residents. And he'd been trying to think up a way to break the curse he'd been gifted. It would be better to get an idea of what the people would be willing to put up with before springing anything new on them.

It was on one of these village strolls that Xingchen sensed something following him. Sensed, then heard, ever so slightly. He paused in his steps, head cocked to the side as he tried to gauge the shape of his current companion. It didn't feel human, but also not exactly like an animal, either, though it felt smaller, in a way. Probably an animal. He'd heard the barking of dogs around here before.

A smile reached his lips and he spoke softly. "Are you looking for food? I'm afraid I don't have any on me."

[weifinder]

Wei Wuxian paused, one paw lifted in the air. He needs some sort of cover, what with the mutterings of the villagers when they catch sight of his shadow in outline, and his martial uncle is not a... terribly discerning sort, for one, but also a man inclined toward kindness.

Worrying amounts of it, to be sure, but useful amounts too, and so he makes himself come closer, slow, ears flicking forward and back as he watches Xiao Xingchen, prepared to leap away if needed. He refuses to make sounds, barely managing to studiously ignore the length of the muzzle his eyes can't fail to see, and so it's a silent animal that approaches, a polite tap of a nose against robes once Wei Wuxian is tentatively within reaching distance.

Unhelpfully, his stomach growls, his ears pressing flat against his skull in consternation. He'll find something later, he knows how to, but to find what the dogs aren't after first—he doesn't want to see how that will look. Perhaps he should simply take to the woods, see if he can learn to hunt in this form, like he does in his true form?

He sighs, the only sound he's made, and something too strangely human from an animal's throat.

[binghua]

Feeling the little bump gave Xingchen a better idea of the size of his new companion. A smaller creature, though not too small. And a brave one. Xingchen never tried to be particularly intimidating, but he was aware of how tall he was. Although the animal may not have been as scared as others of its kind, it probably still felt some apprehension upon approaching him.

So he slowly squatted down to be closer to the animal's level, holding out a hand to be sniffed. Instead he received a growling tummy, followed by a very discernible sigh. Poor thing. Xingchen smiled sadly. "I know. I disappoint myself, too."

But if this animal approached him despite any fears, it really must have been hungry. Xingchen thought for a moment, then leaned in toward where he thought the animal was. "I can't promise you anything, but I'll see if anyone is selling something you might like." Ah, but different animals ate different things. "Would you eat meat?"

Maybe a silly question. He wouldn't be able to get a clear answer.

[weifinder]

A cold, wet nose presses into Xingchen's palm, partly because Wei Wuxian doesn't trust he won't injure with his claws. His hideous, terrible claws, kept pressed to the ground.

Yes, he'd eat meat, he'd eat anything, but he doesn't know that he can tell his martial uncle any of that. Only edge closer, because safety of a human being standing tall is more safety than one fox, small in relativity, can manage.

[eternallywandering]

He was staring and doing little to hide it. Seeing foxes was a rarity and this one struck him as, somehow, familiar. But from where? And why was such an adorably cunning creature plucking rocks from a stream-bed? Zishu decided to find out. Crouching down, he picked up a handful of rocks and smiled, following Wuxian to his destination.

A...shrine? One that seemed to be in pieces. Ah, now he understood. Laying the stones beside the site of destruction, he whispered to the fox, trusting those big ears to hear him:

"Who are you? Do you need help turning back?"

The shrine needed to be rebuilt, of course, but Zishu could put pressure on the owner (or owners) to undo the curse early. His Baiyi could be quite insistent.

[weifinder]

Wei Wuxian froze, one paw lifted, ear twitching toward Zishu's voice less out of intent and more out of instinctual movement. He'd been hearing him follow along, not sure if this would be a stroke of luck and the man would end up inadvertently helping out with this reconstruction or not, but he also has to wonder at how adaptable the man is to by now make the accurate, albeit bizzare, leap in logic to what had happened here.

Then again, who is a broad category, and the villagers have been consumed by foxes in other ways. That this might be one more isn't so strange.

He has no words, and he refuses to make a sound, having startled himself to terror in inadvertently yip-barking early in his shifted circumstances. He gives one shake of his head, slow and exaggerated, because he cannot answer the who in any easy way, and the help he needs is rather in what Zishu's already done.

Pointedly, stone still in mouth, he looks from where Zishu deposited his own small stones, to the shrine with its stone pebble wall being slowly, carefully reconstructed. His ears perk forward: that, that there is help.

[scrapgege]

[If there is one thing that Xie Lian knows better than anyone else, it's that altars to the gods should be well tended. These aren't his gods, but that doesn't mean he can allow any altars or temples to be in a sorry state like this, and it just so happens that cleaning up is a thing he can do very well.

So if anyone wanders to the area of the Ancient Temples, they'll more than likely find Xie Lian there, scrubbing and sweeping and dusting. It also helps that he doesn't really want to be around anyone these days, and especially as the gashes have started appearing on his skin. he's kind of on edge, and he's not liking it, because a lot of memories keep flooding back to him and none of them are pleasant, and it makes him not nice to be around. He's aware of it, but he can't seem to help himself.

He doesn't notice the small fox at first, but when he does, he stopes to stare at it, perplex. There's something... different about this one.]

... Hello? Are you lost? This isn't really a safe place for foxes right now.

[weifinder]

( The fox stares back, pausing before canting his head to really, really stare at Xie Lian. Yes, he knows, yes, he cannot do anything about that, but also... he snorts, the rounded stone in his mouth a weight against his tongue, and pointedly trots right past Xie Lian to the growing stone piles around this particular shrine. It's a carefully constructed, loose wall, and truly it shouldn't hold as well as it does when Wei Wuxian delicately sets another stone on the pile, only: it does. The shrine forms, piece by piece. Larger than it was before.

Tell him something he can do anything about, Xie Lian! This isn't one of them! )

[scrapgege]

[Xie Lian follows, curious to see what the fox is doing.

It truly is a feat if this small fox is the one who carried all of these stones here to rebuild this particular shrine. But he also still doesn't feel like the other fox spirits in the area do.]

Are you rebuilding it? What happened to it?

[weifinder]

( He pauses, looking to Xie Lian. When he nods, it's a careful, exaggerated, utterly unfoxlike motion, to answer the question that can be simply answered. As for what happened to it, he snorts, ears flicking forward then one swiveling back around, his tail drooping, and one paw raising.

He leaves his paw up, sort of thrusting it in the direction of the wall he's helping rebuild. Any more dramatic explanations will simply need to stand later. )

[silverneedles]

Ke-Waihu bloomed with different plants than the ones that grew in Qishan, which was not unexpected, and Wen Qing is rightfully leary of them, after the last unknown herb she tried caused a hallucination. Thankfully, some were familiar to her, simply untested in tinctures or salves, and some were the same ones she encountered at home, or along the edges of Yiling. This is why she's out, in the outskirts of the village, carefully harvesting plants.

She doesn't hear the fox approach at first, absorbed in her task, and it's only when she turns to put the plant she's just picked into her basket that she notices the fox. Her eyes go wide and she glances around to make sure she hasn't accidentally stumbled upon a shrine and angered one of the fox gods. But no, there's no shrine, and the fox looks inquisitive, as far as she can tell, expectant.

"I have no food," she tells it. "And no toys to toss around for you."

[weifinder]

He doesn't loll his tongue out, or open his mouth, or do much more than allow something of a huffed amusement beyond his lips and then duck his head, sitting and tucking his tail over his paws. One he lifts, then pointedly presses to the ground, dragging it like an overlarge, poorly made brush: the character he writes is not easily read, too sloppy like this, but there it is, there his father's family name pawed out of the loosed soil.

Wei.

... So poorly pawed it looks as if he were shyly pawing at the ground beside her.

[silverneedles]

There are many things Wen Qing is talented at but deciphering bad calligraphy from a fox is not one of them. She stares blankly at the character, a bit amused, then crouches down next to him. "I don't know what you're trying to tell me but you're clearly intelligent," she says, extending her hand for him to sniff. "Don't bite."

[weifinder]

His head hangs lower when she acknowledges his hard written work bears no fruit. Maybe if he had a brush in mouth, and paper to use... but he does not, and so her offered hand instead of a sniff earns a nudge of his nose.

He sits down by her, then lays down, then flops over with a very obvious, unfortunately very adorable sigh.

What's a man to do when he's stuck like this anyway, Wen Qing? It's miserable, I've never wanted to be anything other than human.

Not that him laying there beside her communicated any of his finer intent, but there he was, regardless.

[downswing]

Hissed start to his light-swaddled day, bitter slate pallor burning his eyelids. Wei Ying's absence claws at him like a note discordant. He knows it first: the cold, sharp intrusion of negative space that quantifies and qualifies estrangement as the natural state of two bodies independent. Two minds synchronised, but intrinsically alone.

There is an unmooring in him, between the coiled clench of his limbs, slipped to the side and reconstructing themselves from the dregs of memory sixteen years have cast ashore. Stink of last night's lamp oils and gelid, acrid wick burn. The start of his migraine — a constant of the house, plagued by its dubious hospitality and the men who call and call and never wander far — roils and batters his temples, a tempest. Sixteen years, without the tide and flow of his heartbeat. You survived then. You survive today.

Trembled, his hand catches the edge of this ill-raised bed, lifts himself, conquers the tired greetings of fated nausea. Fumbles for the heft of his pendant and prepares, with all the aplomb of a new world, to seek out his son and Wei Ying in this strange contortion of correspondence, without having so much as refreshed his cheeks or combed his hair —

And hits the bony, curled up swell of soft fur behind him. Fear first, an inevitability: an intruder, unheard. An intruder crawled. An intruder — ...barely the span of Lan Wangji's arm, a dark moon's swell blossomed in the middle of his bed, and he does not ask, How is it foxes run so brazen, that they would show their muzzles in the homes of honest men?

But remembers: first, the cloying travesty of foxes in yearly ritual permanence, haunting these lands. Then, Wei Ying's marrow-deep — ...dissatisfaction with all canine kind, and is it this, then, this soundless slip of sharp-edged nothing, this trinket of tender touch, this fox that has exorcised his — ...whatever they are. Whatever they compromise to be. Wei Ying has fled.

In his heart, half a dozen rabbits crowd warmth and sun-licked white brilliance, and he is not the man to hurt a creature, willing. He lacks the appetites of despair huntsmen stoke into daring. When he flinches, to collect the first soft thing in hand — his bed cushion, then his slipper after — he does not strike for the creature where its filth sleeps, but above it, hard resounding thud chipped off the resilient wall.

His second slipper follows thereafter.

"Retreat."

Perhaps the animal is given to military strategy and the foresight to gauge itself unequal to the invasion.

[weifinder]

He hears Lan Zhan stir, the damnable reality of ears and body primed for different levels of awareness, his weariness and fear not enough to sink him so deep that wariness can't rise him up again. Yet, he does not startle before there is reason; yet he remembers, Lan Zhan can be kind, is often kind, to animals, does not have reason to strike first when there is no aggression or seeping wrongness that speaks of curses, speaks of resentment, speaks of everything in opposition to the way Lan Zhan seems inclined —

Thud.

The hair at his neck and along his spine stands on end as he bolts upward, sleep a visitor leaving swiftly as he tangles a paw in sheets, eyes wide, ears canted back, the second slipper's thud against the wall a reiteration that nothing he knows, or thinks he knows, holds and sense.

Lan Zhan is throwing slippers at him, is telling him retreat. Retreat? Is he sleep addled, or is Wei Wuxian? Retreat to where?

In sheer dumb confusion, paw still trapped, ears still back, eyes still improbably wide, Wei Wuxian the fox stares at his husband and cannot, for the moment, fathom what in the whole fuck of the world to do.

[downswing]

This... does not develop as planned.

The fox persists in half-startled mutiny or ill-timed paralysis, paws and whiskers and bones suspended in a perfect visage of innocence.

The trouble is, hells and heavens hath no fury like Wei Ying's dread, hound-stoked. And Lan Wangji, head tipped at several degrees of hesitating sympathy, can't fault the perfectly canine sharpness of the fox's complexion, how the snout curves adorably, lines intermittently stabbed by the glistened glimpse of fang.

But for terrifying both one [1] Wei Ying and a modest multitude [39] of rabbits, the fox might be forgiven the trifling matter of its ongoing existence. As things stand — largely, to look at the vulpine intruder, sprawl — all Lan Wangji can do short of ruthless slaughter is dip in with serpent-swift impunity, drag the layers of linens each side of the animal and fold them inward, until he has effectively... swaddled the fox like a babe, readied it for carrying.

Then, by way of true greeting and apology, "You frighten him."

So off Lan Wangji must trot into the garden wilderness and deliver the wretched child in his arms, for surely this is what Wei Ying would wish.

This is his life, then. So be it.

[weifinder]

There's a shock in being so fully known and unknown in the same instant. To hear that he frightens himself, a truth, but to not be understood as the one who is frightened.

He's deposited in the garden, unraveled there, staring at the impossibly broad back of his husband as he leaves, insufficient apologies to mark the growing stretch of disturbed earth between them.

Know me!

Lan Zhan walks on, Wei Wuxian lifts his paws, squelches mud between battered toes, feels fur gather dew and grow laden by it.

Lan Zhan! You're supposed to see me!

Yet he knows better, he knows curses, he knows himself: an expectation, and he is not what his husband expects.

He waits hours before a visitor leaves open the door so that he might swiftly sneak in. This time he curls up in a corner, seeking to dry himself unobtrusively in the room with a hearth. He sleeps, fitful, stomach a tightened emptiness.

You don't see me, and we're both fools.