fruitjuicer | linger; yield; again abide it

linger; yield; again abide it
Rating: Teen
Fandom: 四海重明 | Love's Rebellion
Characters: Master Endurance, Yin Ya
Tags: Post-Canon, Vignette
Length: 1200+

"Laotou, what else? Of course this little fox has come to see you off."

All Immortals who walk the given path of their determined life know when they will die. They see its approach like the sun lancing the horizon, like home on the hill at the end of a wearying journey. It is only when one is so close that the finer intricacies and ponderings each emerge. Is the sun risen the moment its yolk streaks the jade seas and blue skies, or only when it hangs overhead, lofting all beings as an emperor does his subjects? Is one home the moment no face nor tree is unfamiliar, or is it when he and his shadow have both crossed the summiting threshold?

In the little time that remains to him, Endurance has a wealth of wait, and no wants of the world to spend it on save contemplation. What to do, then, but just that? So he sits himself in the wing of the sect where all the mount and heaven's most beautiful threads crescere. There, in balance, and peace, or something quite selfsame, he looks out to the garden without seeing it, and he watches the change of season kiss a ginger-mandarin sweetness to every branch and blade of grass. The pond is still; so too the wind. He thinks of old friends, and he thinks of old enemies, and he thinks of how parting has softened those grudges and swept clear such distinctions. He dwells after the tells of their realisations, what it must have felt like when tiredness at last flowered to relief.

Through patience, Endurance endears upon his answer. The arrival of passing is not portended by a chill or ache, but an honoured guest. So distinguished a one, indeed, to invite himself to Sorrow Mountain and Brahma Sea without summon.

With the ebbing sink of his sigh, Endurance's eyes slip shut. With the next slow pull of his breath, he can gust a chuckle. "Hu'er," he murmurs, and to speak to anyone is to hear what his own voice has become, cragged with drought and disuse. A swallow does little to parch him, but its matter is less to nil. "Forgive an old monk for not standing, hm? Our humble sect is seldom called on, these years — what could we do for such a like as the venerable Yaohuang, I wonder."

"Laotou, what else?" Yin Ya drawls with meandered levity, smiling at him. Endurance knows this and sees this without his head turning over his shoulder, without the reflection of his mirror. The shape of his mouth is a happy, fanged thing, with a shine that splinters across the dewdrops gathered at the leaf tips of his eyes. "Of course this little fox has come to see you off."

"Is it that time?" Endurance asks, feigning simple ignorance. "Or is Yaohuang here to right an old wrong?" The sun has begun to lumber in the sky, lilting back to downward. He can still feel this all from the mere skin of his hands, as he can the pitching cool.

Yin Ya huffs out an annoyed little noise, trotting over. "Shifu," he is already whining, "scaring children and illing nuns, isn't that beneath me even for evil? Really, it never matters the good I do, all the human clan knows is ingratitude."

Endurance hears his footsteps fall to a stop before him, and opens his eyes. He takes in the visage of this powerful spirit, unparalleled for his generation, pouting down at him like a slighted maid. Yin Ya looks as young still as he did in Filth Valley, when Endurance spied him through his mirror; as young as he will continue to be when all those else who met him back then are gone. Even the wisping streaks of grey hair that frame his face give his appearance a spring allure — a spite of their own pallor, their evidential proof of a precocious purge of life exchanged for power.

Endurance hums, hefting up a heavy hand to tweak at his beard. Everything is its own felt effort. "And you've come alone, have you?"

Yin Ya tilts his head, considering. The pleasure his riposte will give him can barely be concealed by the pinch of his lips as he folds his arms across his chest, quirking a brow. "I was given all the looks and wits of our four," he muses. "A shame they haven't sensed it, but then, all of them crowding into this shabby little sect, wouldn't it be a bother?"

The century forepast has not been without its strife. To ameliorate one such spate is what brought Yin Ya closer to the veils, vested him as a reconciliation to their separations. Now he smells death on the air like a meal, and draws the resentful lingered towards him like moths to flame's allay. But this too is nature, according itself to fate.

"So it is," says Endurance. Everything as it is placed. He lowers his hand again, back from his face, to brush over his fan where it has rested prone in the cradle of his lap.

Yin Ya clicks his tongue. Beneath that all shifts his weight, nerved, from foot to foot and between heel and sole. "Where is that Zhen Fang, anyway?" he asks aloud.

Endurance blinks. It must be slow in its seconds; he feels the nosing pry of Yin Ya's attentive stare prick through equanimity down to his skin. So lively. "With his village," he answers. The one that chose him, as much as he chose it.

"Such an unfilial disciple," Yin Ya remarks, scratching a taloned nail across the pistil of his nose. "Other than Zhen Fang and Zhen Yuan, there are no more followers of your Dao." He sighs. "Ah, what a sad state your affairs are."

There is a tinge of worry in his tone, or something curious to it, though it needn't cause him concern. Silly boy. "Aren't there?" Endurance questions serenely, sagelike.

Yin Ya throws out each of his hands, as if to placate the Heavens themselves. "Now don't look to me," he contests. "Vegetables, sobriety, abstinence— whenever did I obey those, hm, even as your prisoner?"

Endurance wants to laugh; manages for it more of a cough, disturbing chestal dust. "A terrible monk," he agrees. But an apt teacher.

"Now don't push yourself," Yin Ya, deferring victory, complains instead, voice as wrung as his gestures as he teeters in. "Candle to the wick, and you're still in a hurry? Are you cold? Take a lend of my fur."

On the cusp of parinirvana, he'll not rebuff mortal comfort. So Endurance leans back — or slumps, truthfully, rather, loosened by a force slipping his cognisance — and makes no remarkable room at all for Yin Ya. There is no need to: his own force of nature, Yin Ya at once shivers into the sleek streak of a nine-tailed fox and slinks up over his thighs, the sangam of a thousand preternatural nightmares emboldened into the likeness of a dowried house cat.

"Shifu, you're still sharp, aren't you?" Yin Ya stretches out in his lap, arching against his lilting hand with a shudder of contentment. A needy thing, as all creatures are, man or beast. Heavy, too — the harvest in Qingqiu this year must have been fruitful. "The view from here is not too bad."

Endurance settles that hand more generously up between his ears. There, his fingertips stroke torpidly over the ridge of Yin Ya's snout, unable to rouse much more than a tremor for rhythm.

There are no blossoms to bloom for the departure of the enlightened on Sorrow Mountain. But in the heart of its embrace, where stands not the temple of its tianren but a small cottage, a spindling longhua tree starts to flower.