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open | teeth on my waist i come undone
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. )
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. )
no subject
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."
no subject
Wei.
... So poorly pawed it looks as if he were shyly pawing at the ground beside her.
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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.
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She reaches out to pet his ears, then runs her palm down his side. "Are all foxes so friendly?" she asks, shifting a little so she can keep petting him. "I don't remember them being this friendly back home."
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He snorts, tensing at first contact, then resigning himself to it all. Sizhui has bathed him, Lily has carried him at one point, Lan Zhan has repeatedly find ways to put him outside, what's a stroke down fur he never asked for by the best doctor he's ever known?
The snort is answer to her question, only his ear twitching to keep focussed on her voice. No tail wagging, no vocalisations, just his presence and choice not to contend with her choice of physical affection. Maybe she needed it as much as he did?
... If he's ever... needed stroking? Maybe of his hair, before, with Yanli...
no subject
Perhaps there had been more affection in her life than Wen Qing had recognized, certainly in those last few months in the Burial Mounds. It's lonelier now, without her family around, which she knew, but never acknowledged, in ways she couldn't comprehend.
She keeps petting the fox, laughing softly when his ear twitches. "My brother brought home an injured cat once," she tells him. "Once I got his wounds to stop bleeding, he let a-Ning pet him until I sent him to bed. You're a little like that. Thank the heavens you're not bleeding, I'm no vet."
A sigh escapes her, and she stops petting him for a moment, looking away from the fox. "I miss him," she says. "Although I'm glad he's not here, with the horrors we've encountered." As though realizing she's getting maudlin, she looks back down at the fox, a wry smile on her lips, and gives him a belly rub instead. "Not that you need to worry about those horrors, playing in the forests all day."
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He turns his head, listens to her actively in a way animals might sometimes manage, tracking the warbling melody of spoken sounds, looking for patterns, looking to understand. He understands too well, his heart registering tiny points of pressure, pain, needle-like claws sinking in. Knowing she must miss Wen Ning, that she must miss everyone, and he'd had nothing to offer her but certainty of an end for all but two of the Wens. Erasure of both, just in different ways, and the rediscovery of Wen Ning, the only hope for any future generation to carry the Wen name.
Not that he feels legacies remain tied to names. Not that he thinks clans are the way all should be summarised, that values don't reach further in their ways, that there are bonds which Lan Sizhui will carry forward that have nothing to do with being a child of only one clan, but of being a man who remembers he's a child of several, and carries forward himself in the best of all potentials, stronger one day than his forefathers, and infinitely more precious for the love he's been granted, at a distance or in close proximity.
His ears twitch forward as she speaks, then angle back, an act of partial contrition, partial grief. Only to have his head thud against the ground when her hand returns to petting and she runs it over the skin of his stomach, that light covering of fur shorter and softer than what covers his back and sides. If a fox could look scandalised, he does a strikingly close rendition of the emotion, staring at her wide eyed. I am going to die. This is my death warrant, signed and sealed!
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"Thank you, Mr. Fox, for indulging me," she says, rubbing his head, just behind the ears. "I'll leave you alone and stop rubbing your belly." There are still tasks to be done and she's been trying to figure out a way to cure her curse, although she's had little success with that. She doesn't move yet, however, still sitting there, watching him.