the sunken | part i

[groundrules]

THE SUNKEN

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Welcome to the first log of Arc VI: the Sunken, which covers 15 May – 2 June and doubles as a test drive meme.

Back/forward date as needed! The calendar date suggestions are indicative.

The TDM is open to everyone! If you decide to apply to the game, you can get an invite from current players or the upcoming enabling meme — or participate in the test drive meme and get in touch @ groundrules to chat things over. We currently have 13 slots available for new players.

Test drivers can use this post for logs and network posts — old timers, please make your network posts at eastbound.

LOST AT SEA | TEST DRIVE TOURISTS

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You wake, gasping, in a stormy sea, your thoughts slowed to a confused trickle. Skill, floating wood or a kindly stranger — who you can’t understand — help you to reach shore.

Villagers discover you collapsed on sand and provide critical (if rickety) communication and translation devices. They say you are in Sunken Yancai, a fishing village progressively overtaken by waters and cursed by the secretive ‘ladies of the lake’ to transit through time.

■ Rescuers group newcomers and supply questionable village couture, warm meals and accommodations in abandoned, half-flooded homes or spare small boats anchored in Yancai’s waterways. Huddle up, recover your strength and don’t think too hard on why your memories are hazy over the next three days.

■ Come morning, you visit village leader Quanze Tsaymien, then the sorceress Karsa — who explains you are otherworlders summoned into Akhuras by undead lords who wish to weaponise you in their battle against humans and one another. Karsa is an associate of the Merchant, who leads otherworlders towards ancient transport beacons east.

■ One such beacon rests dormant in Yancai. The group must infiltrate the village and wait a few weeks until it shifts to a point back in time when the beacon was active.

■ Newcomers are handed passport papers with their new identities in Yancai, where they may be known as a bankrupt merchant, perpetually drunk sailor, whale hunter, raft surveyor, mermaid who has just gained their legs, crab collector... feel free to invent a dutifully hilarious apt role for their seaside sojourn.

OLD TIMERS | THE DRIFTING

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You dragged yourself here in a haze. You arrived long ago, as if in a dream. You were born and bred in this village. In truth, your memories of reaching lively Yancai feel nebulous and alarmingly inconsequential.

Characters are facilitated new identities and dwellings by the Merchant, or believe they have had them all along.

■ A weary Karsa warns to say nothing to party members with altered memories, until the sorcery that affects them runs its course.

■ Memory-altered characters progressively regain their memories within three to five days (by 20 May). They have their memories partially or fully back at night ( midnight to 5 a.m.). Throughout the day, memory regains can trigger migraines, eerie confusion and paranoia.

■ Hauntings begin once characters have fully regained their memories.

■ Once everyone is ‘back to normal,’ Karsa explains that Yancai periodically transits through time. The memory alterations are a magical solution endorsed by the village council, which ensures locals mentally weather these shifts. Villagers continue to blithely accept you as part of the community.

(DON'T) HOLD YOUR BREATH

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Karsa reunites the existing party and newcomers, issuing first assignments. The Merchants’s information suggests the beacon of Yancai will be online once the village travels in time within weeks. A dubious Karsa asks the party to check on the beacon, located in the former House of Commerce of the largely inundated merchants’ district. Reach it by rowing boat.

■ Villagers say the Master of Commerce, a famous musician, took precautions against intruders.

■ All ground and lower floor entryways of the palatial House were boarded to restrict flooding. To enter, pick locks or climb the putrid stairwell towards upper balconies.

■ Inside, the hissing of running water — and, in the lower levels, of thin, slippery leeches whose bite numbs your limbs, while they attempt to feed. You seem to experience pronounced vertigo when entering any decaying rooms covered in black mould.

■ The beacon is located on a dais in the basement vault room, where water rises near 1 meter. Only a few scattered scrolls and golden decorations remain among decorations, while a large ceiling carving writes, greed deafens man to the cries of his conscience; music sets him free.

■ Some tiles of the marbled floor stand out as you wade — step on one, and all doors abruptly slam shut, while dozens of obscured holes in the wall start to rapidly spill water, threatening to fill the room to the ceiling within the hour. You hear the tinny, waning sound of a village song played from a hidden source.

■ To stop the pouring water and open the doors, sing the song you hear, or find the music box that produces it amid debris on the water-covered floors. Wind it, and it plays its song in reverse, revealing the voice of a laughing elderly man who says, Depressingly, Anurr was right to worry.

■ Don’t forget to check the beacon — and report back to Karsa that it looks structurally untarnished.

THEY SLEEP

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After surprising revelations at previous citadels, Karsa tasks you to investigate just how… permanent death is in Yancai. Villagers share that their dead are buried in a strange rite at sea — part of which will take place within days.

■ The dead are ‘entombed’ in one-man sarcophagi ships with carved and chained lids that depict their likeness. These burial boats are set at sea on the first day of each season and return three months later.

■ Join the harbours around 22 May, when mourners gather to receive the burial boats. Characters must pretend to be greatly anguished relatives, acquaintances or debt collectors to join the grieving.

■ The boats float towards you, seemingly of their own volition. Gaze afar and spot a boat carrying a man in black — the same who haunts some characters — who observes until the last burial ship has reached the piers, before he disappears.

■ Sailors draw up the boats and unpeel the untouched chains and lids, to reveal… no corpses. Peer closer and find neither biological signs (stench, liquids) of discomposure, nor the magical chillness of spaces where cadavers have lingered long. Scratch marks litter the inside of some boat lids.

■ Mourners seem grateful that the waters have ‘accepted’ the bodies. Some say that their relatives whose boats have yet to return must have been stolen by the ‘ladies of the lake,’ a villainous witch coven. Speak to mourners or sailors for clues.

■ Linger long near opened burial boats, and you feel tempted to throw yourself into the sea, slowly losing consciousness — until someone rescues you.

AMONG US

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On 25 May, village leader Quanze Tsaymien drags the chained and half feral mistress Miang-si to households and Yancai’s largest market square.

The young woman, he says, was seduced by the ladies of the lake — the furtive witch coven that condemned Yancai to time travel. Luckily, the village elders have… coaxed Miang-si back onto the righteous path.

■ Miang-si is brought door-to-door to point out her 'accomplices.' Ill at ease, villagers whisper of similar witch hunts leading to false accusations and blood-curdling repercussions.

■ Both men and women are suspected and brought before Miang-si. Perhaps she takes an eerie interest in you, getting especially close to catch your scent, touch or remark on (in)visible hurts, or even dotingly kiss you. If you whisper quickly while she’s near, you might be able to ask one question.

■ If you are patient and kind to Miang-si, she briefly squeezes your hand as she withdraws. Within the hour, you find blood writ on your palm that warns, Our fat moon rises red.

■ If you are agitated, or if Quanze rushes her during your visit, Miang-si erupts into sudden, side-splitting cackling — while you find yourself croaking like a toad, or transforming into one and retaining human speech. The spell dissolves after eight hours.

■ Quanze’s long-suffering men say this sorcery breaks faster if you kiss one of the curmudgeonly emerald toads that hide in some of Yancai’s lakes. Catch one such delightful, slime-spitting creature or barter it from merchants at a costly premium.

ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT

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A full moon is set to rise within days of Miang-si’s visit, on 27 May — just as Yancai shows signs of time shifting. Villagers are prone to stilling and staring askance, seeming lost or adrift.

The village itself evolves: one moment, the same house appears freshly new, then drowned, while waterways overfill with water, then seem barren. Overall, the village deteriorates.

■ That day, the sun suffers a midday eclipse, while droves of black birds circle the woods and village outskirts, attacking those who come close.

■ The waters increasingly thicken and darken, preventing boats from entering certain waterways.

■ An exceedingly bright moon and a diffuse lunar replica rise with nightfall. Come midnight, the village is alive with the sounds of ripping, structural collapse and shrieks. Tar-covered corpses emerge from the waters, clawing on and climbing up piers. They swarm, drawing passers-by into waters to drown them. Help them — and foremost, yourself.

■ Light and fire keep the dead at bay. On some waterways, wildfire now spells, WHAT IS WET WAS WRONGED

■ Weaker alone, fresh corpses climb into your rowing boat, pretending they are innocents who seek shelter. They betray themselves by speaking very slowly, struggling to keep track of the conversation or obliviously peppering it with details of their death. They stubbornly ask questions about you, repeating your answers, and become violent if you say they are dead. Push them into the water at first opportunity.

■ Quanze Tsaymien and other men of the village take arms, urging villagers to barricade in the nearest home, harbour or warehouse and weather the night. They advise to be silent and beware the dead who imitate living voices, warning not to touch any black mould or water that suddenly appear in your home — which alert the dead of your presence within.

■ Some dead try to tear you apart, while others seek to feed you a disgusting, tar-like black mould. A small taste of it makes you sluggish and feeble for two-three hours, while an entire fistful can kill.

■ If the undead infiltrate your house, hold your breath, do not move and keep from screaming. The dead have weak sight and olfactory senses and might pass you by, as long as you stay silent. It can be more efficient to fool than kill the dead.

■ By 5 a.m., houses start to replenish themselves, gaining a new appearance, while water and mould retreat. The dead withdraw into waterways. Outside doors have been marked with blood: vertical lines tell how many living people remain inside; horizontal ones count how many within died overnight.

■ You step to seize a brave new day — while Yancai enters a new time period (further details due in the next plot update).

NOTES

■ The game enabling meme goes up on 25 May.

■ Hit up available NPCs here or in their new inbox!

■ QUESTIONS.

Comments

[lanclan]

He would know the sound of that dizi anywhere.

Pausing in a strike as the dead seem to topple backwards of their own accord, he looks around for the source of the music and spots the (always so ominous) figure that Wei Wuxian cuts atop a roof, flute in-hand and black smog cultivating around where his qi should be presiding. Since the corpses are being directed away, Xichen takes his leave of them and joins the other man outside harm's way for the time being, robes driven to one side by the cold, fluttering breeze coming off the lakes.

Smiling to see him, he sheathes Shuoyue and reaches to pat him on the shoulder.

"Didi." That's a thing back home now. Wei Wuxian has been his family for a while, and many teasing terms of address have ensued (largely to annoy Wangji over dinner, but Xichen would not use them around his brother casually as his teasing is far lighter). He has warm fondness in his gaze, all for Wei Wuxian. "That was helpful, thank you."

[weifinder]

Wei Wuxian's efforts at present are temporary deterrents and redirections, a fact he's well aware of as he allows the last note of his song, coaxing as it'd been, to linger on the night air. Sound attracts these dead, he's noticed, but in his case, it also shifts them offcentre to their original purposes.

He smiles in return to Zewu-jun's expression, but the immediate greeting of didi startles him badly enough he goes wide eyed and starts coughing. Waving Chenqing between them, the staving off of asking if he's lost his mind spontaneously, or at least failed to perform basic functions of breathing, before he manages a smoother sounding, "Ge," like that isn't the single most perplexing thing to be referring to Lan Xichen with in the worlds.

Which, given Wei Wuxian hadn't known he was married in Lan Wangji's mind for decades, and time yet here, and had dragged it out of him, he concludes (erroneously, perhaps, but what seems correct from his perspective): "You've reunited with Lan Zhan already, ah?"

[lanclan]

That is quite the entertaining reaction, given a drunken Wei Wuxian circled around all the Most Appropriate things to call his new brother-in-law back home. His smile brightens in the corners of his eyes, amused, but he keeps tabs on it and smoothly replies as though noticing nothing amiss with a sudden choking fit post-flute playing. Totally normal, that. He does it all the time.

"I have met with Wangji, yes. He spoke of you."

He nods agreeably, not about to divulge the traumatic Twin Jades moment that occurred during a much-needed hug.

"Zewu-jun is still acceptable, don't worry."

He wouldn't want to make Wei Wuxian feel like he's missing out on a joke somewhere.

[weifinder]

His eyes glance past the elder Twin Jade, clocking where the shifting mass of death energies and their shambling or jerkily coordinated singularities still moved as if part of a greater, hungrier mass of want. These dead are different and similar to others before, less perceptive in ways, and that's easier to think on than other things, but he relaxes his shoulders, shifts his gaze back to Lan Xichen. They have moments where doors hold steady and no screams stir through the night, only the feral sounds of the dead and the banging of bodies against wooden structures, splashes through watery shallows.

He spoke of you. Feeding his assumption about what Lan Zhan shared, and that's irrelevant to anyone outside of his head as it comes. He smiles, instead, offering a half shrug and what might have been a wink, "Only complimentary things, I'm sure!"

With a shift of expression, more serious, he adds, "He's struggled. Formed his own bonds here, navigated his own paths. He's missed you, deeply." For a man who has his own complications in brotherly affection, who has moments where he and Jiang Cheng almost feel in step, in tune, and more often where they do not, but well aware they both care with intensity, he knows missing. He speaks of it now for the same reason he felt Lan Xichen, Zewu-jun, had spoken to him where Lan Zhan had not; communication the horse they continue to tame together, tempted with sweets, then darting off again in fine fettle and silent regard, hooves flashing and dangerous.

"We're all only what we make of ourselves from blank paper in this world." Not an experience either of the Twin Jades could understand on their own world, formed and labeled and molded from birth by their clan in ways that Wei Wuxian, adopted orphan, despised and loved unequally, was not. "He hasn't looked away."

Not from that challenge, and not from the confrontation with self. Yet to be known, to be known to his core, is helped further by one who had been part of his raising, and not part of what stokes fire and impulse and everything else grasping in Lan Zhan's hands. Wei Wuxian knows this. He suspects Zewu-jun does as well.

Clapping his hands together, he smiles again, as if the serious nature of what he'd said need only flow with the course of conversation onward.

"When do you arrive from, ge?" Ge it is, with a twinkling of mischief in his eyes as the oddity of it trips across his tongue.

[lanclan]

The lavish details he gains from speaking with Wei Wuxian are so pointed, so keenly spoken, that he feels the pride in the other man when it comes to their mutual connection, and he's reassured about his relief that Wei Wuxian has been here with his brother. For him.

"I never imagined he would fail anyone," he says calmly without prelude, because it's true; the day Wangji looks away from a challenge is the day he's dead. Xichen gives Wei Wuxian a grateful nod. "Thank you, for standing with him."

As for when he is from, a note of shame trickles down his spine. He can't bring himself to lie, only pause before admitting,

"I am three months into my seclusion, after the Guanyin temple fell."

As much as he cannot and would not abandon Wangji and the others here, he longs for the silent walls of the hanshi and the encompassing quiet that smothered his thoughts. His fallen smile hitches back up, not wanting to worry Wei Wuxian. It's nothing important that will affect his actions, it isn't appropriate to be in mourning for his own heart here.

"And yourself?"

[weifinder]

Wei Wuxian offers no contradiction, though he doesn't agree: Lan Zhan has failed people, himself first and foremost, but has not stopped striving to not let such things happen again. He doesn't wish for Lan Zhan to carry any guilt when it comes to these things, but he will, these days, hold him as accountable as he once wouldn't have said a word over, too caught in the mire of his own lacking self worth and heartache for a world that proved as corruptible as he proved incapable of bending to public opinion or making himself vulnerable enough to ask those he cared for to help, to stand with him, instead of spare them from the decisions themselves.

None of them are perfect persons. Each has struggled. To a younger him, he would not have expected the degrees. To the man he is now, he admires them more for how they pick up and rebuild themselves even in the aftermath of life's harrowing trials and beautiful joyous moments.

Three months is not much time at all, all things told. He looks faintly quizzical when he's being asked his own arrival time; it's not affected, rather genuine, as over two years have passed since and there'd been nothing crystalline in the moment before his abduction to hold it strong in his mind.

"I think I was still traveling with Little Apple. Was I turned back toward Gusu yet? Or was I just considering it after traveling along the coasts?" His smile is wry, knowing, and he shakes his head, the almost apology that has no weight behind it, because in the end, it matters little. "Couldn't say I remember where exactly, but it was something like that."

Time where he presumed Sizhui and Wen Ning had made their efforts, and if not finished their cenotaph, then it was minimally well under way. Time where he knows Zewu-jun had been tucked away into the seclusion that was quiet echoing of thoughts to find a way through the understanding of the depths of betrayal he'd survived, even against his own in the moment inclinations.

Wei Wuxian understands that. Too well, perhaps, but it provides no kindness in answers here.

"This place preys upon what aches most in our hearts." Again a serious mien, his dark eyes swallowing light on this moon-full night as he observes Lan Xichen, not the world's wisest man, not the world's smartest man, but one of the genuinely kindest, one of the most loyal, one of the most willing to believe. Downfall in some stretches, saving grace in others. "Jin Guangyao was here, over a year and a half ago. He will stalk your dreams, your nightmares, your waking moments, as will every other regret and pain. It's the nature of the curses here, ge. You're not being granted the luxury of healing quietly."

Soft, his voice, when he says that much. Not presuming, stating factually, because these are hard truths that must be delivered, understood. He is not a man for gentleness in these truths, no, not when to pretend they aren't looming will do more damage than directing attention to what haunts the man before him.

"You do not stand alone. If nothing else, allow Lan Zhan to be at your side as you are at his."

The or else the suffering you'll face will be untenable goes unsaid. This place is no better at disguising their weakest points, their unhealed wounds, than a Lan is inclined to bathe first in a heated spring's waters to heal.

[lanclan]

It is as if the world narrows down to the grip he has on Shuoyue, white-knuckled in such a primal reaction of revulsion that he tenses up, standing straighter as he hears the news Jin Guangyao was here and it obliterates the importance of anything else. It hurts, somewhere laced in wire around his ribs, to think of a-Yao walking and talking and being again, he cannot stand the notion of it; it makes him nauseated in a way that feels too much like cowardice and cannot be shown to others. Even the memory of him drove Xichen into seclusion. Despite being told about Lady Wen being alive, it never occurred to him that these same streets could have been walked by the one person who shredded his self-regard to tatters. He does not even want to be on the same physical plane where that ghost walked first, even if it is gone.

Wei Wuxian is saying something about Xichen sticking close to Wangji and, yes, he will, but also,

"What did he do while he was here?"

A-Yao. What kind of rage would you bring back to the waking world with you, a-Yao?

Xichen does not admit that Jin Guangyao already stalks his nightmares, let alone his entire life.

[weifinder]

"He died."

Wei Wuxian's smile is thin, predatory in the way of a hunter who needn't do anything at all to be considered dangerous, time and again.

"Not by our hands," he says, offering the clarity that was his navigation of the dark reaching energies of Meng Yao, of Xue Yang, his firm boundaries with them and his lack of remorse in learning either man was gone. "By his own arrogance, in pursuit of a great sea dragon. He was resurrected — ah, that's entirely possible here, unlike in our worlds." He does not mention he's learned the means, or that he was why Meng Yao had been resurrected, to owe that debt of life to Wei Wuxian, as a calculated move to ensure his better behaviour against his worst tendencies when it comes to survival and self-absorbed mania. "Then he departed for good. The beacons work that way, sometimes."

He does not recall if Meng Yao had gone through a beacon.

He cannot find it in him to care.

"This was a long time past. Over a year and many citadels and villages ago." No part of their present path shared with a man who loved nothing beyond himself with any genuine depth of emotion.

[lanclan]

Died, again. This time by a dragon? And resurrected too, that does not sound pleasant. Xichen briefly closes his eyes and pictures the hanshi around himself, the walls and pictures of cranes, the soft colours, and he breathes steadier when his eyes open.

His grip on Shuoyue never slackens, however.

"Thank you for telling me."

Even if he feels ill as he offers a mild smile that drifts away as he looks down at the docklands.

"I am going back down there," he decides it on a whim, wanting any excuse not to think, "will you please try to create a funnel and keep them from encircling my back?"

[weifinder]

Wei Wuxian inclines his head, lifting Chenqing and holding it ready, the whole of him steady. He doesn't need to speak about how wrecked he's been only weeks before, controlling and guiding dead more willing than unwilling to purposes of holding back an army of dead for long enough that the living might escape. He can spend this time, these moments, preventing one man from being overwhelmed by sheer numbers. It isn't too demanding.

It should, in other ways, be demanding enough, but he's a practical man, and he's been damned for it before, and this is justice.

"Hunt well," he says by way of verbal acknowledgement, and when Lan Xichen seeks to vent the demons of his heart against the grasping blindness of this village's dead, he watches, he listens, and he keeps his husband's brother's back clear of danger. Listens too for signs of other persons needing guarding, of dead to turn back, knowing in the same moment this village stretches too long for any one man to defend it whole.

There will be deaths come morning, and he's sickened to know it, even while he does what he can in the ways he can, fighting against the curse that powers the dead here, the twisting ways of it, in this dark and sodden landscape gilded red and silver by the moons.

[lanclan]

It is incredibly selfish of him, he knows, to use this as an excuse to channel an incoming panic attack into something useful instead of shameful. As he descends at the mouth of the pier his trembling hand steadies out of necessity, which is what he wants, and he loses himself in the dance of death played with corpses that lose more limbs than heads in a macabre dervish above the water. Xichen trusts Wei Wuxian and so does not glance behind himself, focusing instead on thinning the rising tide. If he does not, who will? People will die, assuredly, but the more he hews at flesh and bone, the more he may be able to keep safe in this accursed realm.

He fights as if carving a path home for him and Wangji, clearing his smog-choked heart of its echoes (a-Yao) in lieu of a single purpose. It lasts longer than he first intended. Panting by the time he retreats, he makes his way to Wei Wuxian, concern rising for him. Xichen should not have indulged his cowardice so long.

[weifinder]

There's no acknowledgement beyond the flicker of a glance, a blink and the lowering of Chenqing. Wei Wuxian reaches into the front of his robes, pulling free a stack of thin talismans. He holds them up, facing Lan Xichen, showcasing what was written in scrawling seal script: fire.

Simple, economical, unlikely to burn far, but fire, and further detailing of burning in circles.

"Have you your own?" The question asked, the answer predicted: no, for he's already halving his number and handing them toward Lan Xichen with a steady, considered gaze. Exhaustion rides each of them differently these days, and this still doesn't touch the reserves of normal, natural endurance Wei Wuxian has cultivated where his core remains nothing but a shallow pool of his body's natural resources, nothing further. Not even resentful energies. Not for a long, long time.

"These dead are held off by fire and light. Mark individual houses, we can defend better for a time. Mark the whole of an island, we might hold it longer."

Might, maybe, with the driving belief that they will. A panting Lan is not a man so spent of his energies. Wei Wuxian, calculating to the last of his own qi, knows that very well.

[lanclan]

He has none of his own, no, because he was doing nothing of great worth before waking up half-drowned in a lake. He accepts the talismans and gives a nod.

"Is there somewhere we can meet, after?"

He has just been wandering the village ... since he arrived. Sleep has not been something Xichen has much indulged in, nor food, and though he is thinner after three months of preferring to subsist on qi and willpower, he knows it is his responsibility to stay able to fight in this realm. Resting somewhere without the monsters around is rapidly becoming a priority.

[weifinder]

One day the two of them might exchange the specifics of the moments they arrived from, simply by having nothing to say: they were not noteworthy moments, but their arrivals here, those were jarring indeed.

"A holy cave," he says, lips curling into a wry grin. "No cold springs, apologies."

Lifting an arm, he gestures in the general direction of where he, Lan Zhan, Vanessa, and Yelena all share cavern space, where the unholy hours are the holy times for cleaning, and all his sleep debt is starting to accumulate once more.

"I've repelling seals around the entrance, difficult to miss. No barrier — easier to press back than to selectively allow the living in when the dead can register as alive."

To overall detriment.

[lanclan]

Thank goodness for Wei Wuxian's cleverness.

"I will meet you there."

He takes the time to bow, reluctant to leave Wei Wuxian and split up despite the common sense in it. Off Xichen goes in a flurry of white and blue like an errant, elegant cloud, and eventually he does make it to the cave.

He was being led by his brother at the time, whom he met while fighting the undead yet again, and has since been silently critical of the place out of a place of love and concern for the welfare of those forced to share its crude space. Meditating alone on Wangji's mat, Xichen keeps an ear on the entrance so he isn't caught off-guard once someone arrives ... "home".

[weifinder]

He comes to quiet intrusion, to the lingering traces of death sloughing off as dead skin, to reveal healthy, new flesh underneath. The wards don't so much as twitch in his presence, exhaustion painting the shadows beneath his eyes darker, but the dark of his eyes warmed still, glistening. Wei Wuxian is not the kind of exhausted now as he was in Alem, with his husband's cold avoidance in his struggling grief. He's not trying to help hold off a massacre, one power among many, against a vastly more powerful creature, with hell opening wider beneath them all.

This is simply some dead, not too pressingly cunning, and a mystery. This is a kindness for the simplicity of its cruelty so far, and thus his steps are light into the cave itself. He's made no attempt to array it any better than the day they moved in, not a man prone to making luxurious cavern homes, having had one in the past and finding little more than the necessities of talismans and wards and plastered papers of his musing thoughts and inventive curiosities on walls and tumbling off tables and other unmoving surfaces.

He hasn't had enough time here, though Lan Xichen will have noted the small collection of papers with notes on music, half recalled and half invented lyrics. Sketched paintings, of landscapes familiar and unfamiliar. There, Gusu, from the standpoint of the waterfall at its back. There, Yunmeng, looking upon Lotus Pier.

One can plaster stone over with paper and rushes and blankets and the bare bones of desperation and love and make it home, when one must. But must one?

Tiredness means he returns to old, established patterns, hands up and clasped to bow shallow to Lan Xichen with a, "Zewu-jun," and the heavying of his steps. "Lan Zhan?" The question regarding the whereabouts of their mutual interest, in case he's returned.

[lanclan]

"Out, he will return soon."

There is a barrel set to one side and his hair is wet but freshly combed and styled, as will be Wangji's whenever his brother returns. Xichen greets Wei Wuxian with a tired smile, acknowledging the inherent exhaustion knitting the other man's stride and gestures together.

"If you are not too given to sleep after you have rested, I would like for us to talk. Please don't feel obligated if you would rather not, that's alright too. I understand."

Courteously opening that avenue of options gives Wei Wuxian permission in advance to tell Xichen to get lost, because he wouldn't be offended.

[weifinder]

There are (cold, chilling, breathtaking) ablutions he wishes to make, and he does, veering to the side and one of the cisterns of water inside of the cave, cupping hands to splash water over his face. The shock of it leaves him inhaling sharp, cutting away at the humidity and grit and sweat and blood and dirt of the day and its fighting, to this night that rests uneasy.

He makes use of the small drying rag nearby to drag across his face, sopping up water before it slips down to soak his collars, aiming himself casually toward Lan Xichen. He has respect for the sect leader. He has respected most of them, while he doesn't agree with their actions or decisions, time and again, or simply time to time. Lan Xichen is a rarity in his willingness to provide chances, but those were tempered too by the complexity of Lan Zhan's habitual, unfailing turning toward Wei Wuxian, to the man who had dragged a wanted criminal into Gusu Lan to heal him and be allowed to offer shelter, just as Wei Wuxian was equally allowed to leave after.

Both of them are better men than their father ever was. Both may be closer to their mother than either are allowed to know. Both are, in the end, raised by an uncle who had never sought his brother's position, but had stood strong and strident for it anyway. Wei Wuxian is as aware of this with Lan Qiren as he is forever going to find the man's beard ridiculous, and his overbearing need for constrained, confined definitions of the world tiring.

(He remembers him with the juniors. Remembers the softening edges, the changes to him decades after Wei Wuxian dies, in a world not defined simply by increasing strife from the Wen Clan and the costs of the war that followed. He can respect Lan Qiren, in the ways proper to an elder, in a sense of understanding now what he did not as a younger man, but he reserves judgment on anything else.)

Lan Xichen, however, merits a smile to lift little more than the corner of Wei Wuxian's lips as he sinks down, sitting on the ground with the ease of a much younger man. Most days it doesn't matter. Tonight, the ground feels as comfortable as anything else.

"Did he offer you tea?" They have that, if little else, and already that's a bounty and a blessing beyond what had been possible in Yiling. Tea as a luxury here, too, and not terribly good, but it's more than simple water. He's curious, but presumes, given Lan Zhan's sense of propriety and tradition held strong through so many other moments, and this is his brother, his clan leader, his elder twinned half in so many ways, and not in others. An interesting man with poor instincts for people's motivations.

A failing, largely for the lack of balance to see him through the betrayals that had opened him to from those he wished better of.

He doesn't answer directly, but the actions, sitting and asking after what would be part of an opening motion toward conversation, the fact he doesn't stir himself to worrying, is a more relaxed, confident man than he's been two years and six months ago. Someone who knew himself better, who understood the world was as he had come to know it, but was worth protecting, defending, upholding justice within, and not finding the erroneous belief of doing so in singularity, by solitary means, as necessary. Lan Zhan had taught him that first, just as Jiang Cheng had wept for the horror of them both not understanding how to be what each other needed, one too giving to the point of leaving, the other too tongue twisted to find a path he wanted over the one he felt was expected.

Love is like that sometimes.

Wei Wuxian simply waits for Lan Xichen to speak, quietly attentive, tamping down on his own sprawling maze of thoughts and considerations. Later, he promises himself.

[lanclan]

Tea has been had, poor quality though it was. He didn't mind. Xichen does, after a nod, get straight to the point, however.

"Wangji wished me to congratulate him."

Letting that stew for a moment as his mild smile watches Wei Wuxian, he remains of calm mind and sturdy body where he sits up on his knees. He takes the time to fold his sleeves over his lap, breaking the wait between his speaking and a possible answer.

"He has a way of speaking around that which he wishes to say. I find it is what he will not utter that presents the biggest case as to what occupies his thoughts."

[weifinder]

Wei Wuxian blinks, slowly. Much like a cat observing the people before it, mildly surprised at their presence, but accepting they're there, regardless. It's funnier to him now to find he's in a position of knowing more than Lan Xichen, but he'll admit to himself which congratulations is due is one he's... not entirely certain of. Lan Zhan having married Wei Wuxian several times in his clan's ways without telling anyone, including Wei Wuxian? Or the ones that follow? Was that said over tea?

His brow quirks up in small increments, and then he smiles, slow and amused.

"There's a number of things worth congratulating," he says, voice warm with an undertone of his tiredness. "Which he intends I hesitate to say."

The truth behind it rings genuine: congratulate him on having survived, on adapting, on making friends, on finding people he wants to protect, in having reached beyond himself, in having laid parts of his trauma with their mother to rest, in admitting his wants and intentions, in having to face and return and stumble and succeed and fail again in what relationships are. Wei Wuxian has done the same, and he doesn't have the ease of speaking on love that Lan Zhan has managed.

Or congratulations, more important than a social bond acknowledged between soulmates that goes parallel to their existing one, for Lan Zhan finding himself and his way step by step, becoming the man he wants to be, even as he's new to learning who that man is.

"He's found a path for himself. One he sees and acknowledges, here, where the merit of any clan is meaningless, and personal action and decision is all that carries weight. He could mean that."

[lanclan]

"He has not abandoned his clan." This much, Xichen knows for sure. As much as Wangji can advance other priorities, he longs for home and Xichen intends to somehow return him there. All of them, working as a team. "He knows how to weigh the merits of people according to their actions, not their heritage or methods, that is true. However, I do not think that is what he was alluding to."

He doesn't quite sigh, though he does exhale slowly.

"I wish you would not hesitate to say."

Glancing down at his hands, when his gaze flits back up it is steadier.

"Wangji speaks nothing of you."

[weifinder]

A faster blink, and a snort, shaking of his head.

"When did anyone say he had?"

But he stands after that, heading to the alcove with the small banked embers and the pot for water to make tea, looking for grasses to feed into it, coaxing along the small flame. He adds water to the small pot, looking for the cups.

"Do you still have the cups from earlier out?"

In this case, it's one conversation that the brothers need to have for each other. This isn't the insight to a life lived that the other party simply can't know without someone speaking. Lan Zhan struggles communicating what he assumes people will intuit or understand, and sometimes they do. The times they don't, those are the ones where... a little clarity is useful.

Yet he'll make his brother-in-law tea. Even if he's already had tea. Because that's what you do.

[lanclan]

Xichen rises to fetch the washed cups from the ledge that provides a shelf for such items.

"He speaks nothing of you," he elaborates patiently, "and avoids conversation of you, which leads me to believe he still holds you in high esteem. More so than what I understood back home, given your ... two years together.

"It is your business, of course, and I don't wish to pry."

Turning the cups over, he offers them once having checked they have dried. His tone is calm and measured, polite but with an earnest edge controlled from years spent exuding decorum.

"But I hope, in the case of there being something either of you need to say, you will at least consider me a confidant."

[weifinder]

"If your worried we've discovered springtime, let me lay that to rest," he says, more a grumble than anything else as he picks up the tea leaves and measures them into the teapot, checking that it's been cleaned.

He does not add, not for lack of trying. Their timing has continued to be miserable, but Lan Xichen doesn't really need to know that. If anything, the mumble is meant jestingly, which he matches with a smile that says, don't take me seriously when he accepts the cups.

"Two years is a long time to find ourselves. Lan Zhan hasn't been the only one determining his own way, or how we choose to walk the world in step." It'll be some time for the water to heat, so he shifts to one side, holding the cups in hand and leaning back against the wall. "What you want to ask, Zewu-jun. Ask him directly. He's somewhat better at speaking when you bring his attention to what you want to hear, ah?"

Two years of struggling with communication, and he can say that much confidently now. It had hardly been a one sided struggle, and no one sided improvement. They learn together.

[lanclan]

"I've said what I wanted to."

He waves off the suggestion of asking Wangji anything directly, he wouldn't want to put his brother on the spot for an interrogation. Even the remarks about springtime don't pull more than an amused muscle in the corner of his lips; he was assuredly not asking about that sort of thing, no. Very funny.

Watching him, his smile softens.

"Besides, Wangji has considered you a part of our clan for a long time. I would be remiss in not doing the same and letting you know that you can come to me, if needs be."

It deserves saying out loud at least once.