Remembering Joy

[thesecondjade]

There were times that Lan Zhan needed to be alone. This wasn't easy, as Wei Ying was a near constant companion, and when he wasn't Lan Zhan still had classes to teach and juniors to guide. While time was passing, both within the bar and beyond the door, Lan Zhan was grateful for the time that Milliways bought them. It was also easier to find time alone here.

Sometimes, Lan Zhan did not want to be alone. Sometimes he wanted the thrum of a village, the chatter of lives, the things he found comforted when he traveled to go where the chaos was. He had long ago lost his taste for dull serenity, racing his guilt and grief by running place to place to thwart evil in the vain hopes that eventually, just once, he might find the restless ghost of his beloved.

Now Lan Zhan had other duties that kept him from the road, and there were no villages, with no forbidden drink, no local customs or stories. Just the quiet of Cloud Recesses, and the bar.

When he emerges from wherever he's hidden himself, he brings his guqin with him and settles in the grass somewhere -- not far from the bar, able to hear the thrum of living people, but still giving himself some space. He can look out across the lake, glance to the dojo slowing taking form through Wei Ying and his baba's hard work, and be more content as he works on composition for the first time in many, many years.

Joy has not come from his fingertips in many years, nor the song with the secret name, but he tries to coax the first to his mind and remember how he felt when he wrote it. It was a strange sort of happiness, whenever Wei Ying was near, despite the long shadow their inevitable parting would cast over them. But he wanted it now. He wanted to feel hopeful.

So from joy, he shifts somewhat into something that might someday simply be called Hope.

Comments

[sunbaked_baker]

It is a warm and bright day, springtime in full flourish on its journey towards summer. Sunshine is in the garden, trimming the new growth of herbs to encourage new stems and new leaves. She is the closest to rested she has been for a while.

Rae has been told she would benefit from meditation, but so often her thoughts are hard to steer when she has nothing to orient them around. Active meditation, though - calm, repetitive, mindful actions, kneading dough, weeding the garden in the sunlight, or harvesting herbs to use in the kitchen - fulfils her need for mental rest as well as the need to be useful.

She smiles to herself among the rosemary, hearing the guqin, and lets herself listen.

[thesecondjade]

The playing is, as always, skillful. But there is no real complete melody or some--- indeed, there comes odd pauses, hesitations, and then changes to something that might've been played in two different ways.

But the musician is content, not frustrated, and negative emotion does not seep into his music.

[sunbaked_baker]

Sunshine sighs, content and smiling to herself. It is a lovely sound. Even if it's a rough draft of music, isn't Hope so often a rough finding of one's way forward, full of hesitation, starts and stops and second-guesses? The music still continues on, because that is what hope is. It is the root of every composition, the seed of every garden. No one begins a creation without the hope to complete it. No one plants a garden without the hope of the harvest.

No, this is good, and it does her good to hear.

Sometime later, a waitrat comes by where Lan Zhan is settled, bringing by a saucer of fresh strawberries from the garden, sweet-scented and tasting of springtime.

[thesecondjade]

Lan Zhan's lips tug up into that somewhat sardonic smile he is prone too, as he takes up one berry to eat. It amuses him, this caretaking. Sunshine is so... Sunshine. A moment before the pain of old grief hits him, he thinks she would have loved to know Jiang Yanli, but--

No. Not to bed. At least he has his beloved beck, but his sister-- she will never return and walk beside him here... as far as Lan Zhan knows, anyway.

He pauses in the music to taste the spring berries, content in the moment with them as he refreshes himself between attempts to compose.

[undead_radish_seller]

Wen Ning approaches from the forest, a black-and-red rabbit sitting on his shoulder.

"Hanguang-jun," he says, bowing; the strange rabbit balances while he does so. "I thought I heard a guqin. May I listen?"

[thesecondjade]

That sure. Is a rabbit.

"Yes," he says, bowing in his seat, before he replaces his hand upon the strings. "Working on a new composition. May still be discordant."

He should begin to play. But the rabbit. He can't not look at it. It's there, just. Being a rabbit on a fierce corpse's shoulder. This is, by all ideas, a bit strange.

"Where did the rabbit come from?" Lan Zhan can't stop himself from asking. It's just -- right there, being a rabbit, in his presence. He's weak for them.

[undead_radish_seller]

"From the forest," Wen Ning says. "People here don't like them. I hear they ruined a game once, baseball, I think it was called? But I find that they are quite amenable if I feed them this one sort of nasty offal sausage."

And resentful energy. The demon bunnies respond quite well to that.

[thesecondjade]

"I have seen them," Lan Zhan admits. "But not come close."

They were, after all, brimming with their own sort of resentful energy.

[undead_radish_seller]

"This one has become quite tame," Wen Ning says. "At least to me. I don't know if it would be safe for you to touch her."

He can't let a demon bunny bite Hanguang-jun! That would be terrible.

[thesecondjade]

"I am not afraid," Lan Zhan said. He won't hurt her-- they're not responsible, they're beasts, it is not the Lan way to be cruel -- but he won't let her hurt him, either. But if the mighty Hanguang-Jun can't handle a demon rabbit, is he really Hanguang-Jun?

[undead_radish_seller]

Wen Ning gently plucks the demon bunny doe off his shoulder, cradles her in his large hands, and holds her out to Lan Wangji.

"Little demon bunny," he murmurs softly to her, "meet the mighty Hanguang-jun. He has bunnies at home, too."

[thesecondjade]

It is a bunny.

A bunny that is a bit Wrong, to all the senses. Resentful energy, a whiff of a smell he can't place (kerosene to those in the know) and sulfur. But it is still a bunny, and Lan Zhan is friend to all rabbits.

As the animal is transferred between hands, she kicks a bit until Lan Zhan gets her fully supported. Then he carefully cradles her, smoothing a hand over her back.

Everything is calm.

"She is strange," he says aloud. "But not evil."

[undead_radish_seller]

"She likes you!" Wen Ning says, beaming. The strange bunny snuggles happily into Lan Wangji's hand.

"You know to be kind and gentle to creatures of resentful energy," he adds, peering at the bunny.

[thesecondjade]

It's strange, Lan Zhan knows this. But he is kind, and that goes a long way, even with the fiercest of beasts.

"Yes," he says. "The first step is appeasement, so they harm no one else. Then, you have time to work with them, and see what can be done to assure that no harm can occur past that moment."

Sometimes that means a binding, and sometimes a merciful death. He is always sad when it is the last option. But this little thing is just is what it was made to be -- another predator. Nothing of malice within it. Just hunger, and so far it does not feel unreasonably so. So Lan Zhan pets it, soothing and soft.

[undead_radish_seller]

"She is quite appeased," Wen Ning giggles. "I did feed her shrimp, too. She likes it."

[the_cupbearer]

Ganymede is outside as well, working with a small tray and many slivers of jewel-like shell being inlaid into what looks like a double flute, bone-white material warm in the bright sunlight.

It's the last bit of work before the thing is ready to play, but he stops and listens to the guqin music with a little smile, following along the fragmented sort of melody.

"Pretty music, friend."

[thesecondjade]

"Mn," says the man that speaks very little. "Composing. Unfinished piece."

Just so the man understands that it can be better, and will be someday.

[the_cupbearer]

"Doesn't negate its beauty now," he says back with a little shrug, wrapping thin cord around the flute shaft to press his inlay in until the glue sets.

"What do you think is missing from it?"

[thesecondjade]

"Perhaps," Lan Zhan said, hands on the strings. "A depth of feeling."

It has been a long time since he allowed himself too much hope. It's a fleeting thing in Lan Zhan's life, and to build a song about it requires feeling it.

[the_cupbearer]

"It can be hard to get across, yes," Ganymede murmurs softly, slowly, thoughtful. "I suppose it depends on whether you feel it yourself."

Composing--or simply recollecting--have always gone better for him, the times when he's tried it, if he's at one emotional extreme or the other. Though to be fair, none of his music is the slightest bit magical in any way. It's just notes in the air.

"What feeling do you want to give with the music?"

[thesecondjade]

"Hope."

There is no magical strength to his strumming currently -- it'd be monumentally foolish to try and use spiritual energy with an unfinished, unpolished piece.

[the_cupbearer]

"Tricky one," he replies. "How do you feel hope?"

Him in particular.

[thesecondjade]

A very personal question, but this requires reflection. A stranger with nothing invested in his answers might provide the correct sort of mirror for him to see his own feelings in a new light. He doesn't like the intimacy of it, but some boundaries have to be pushed.

"I look to my son, and the junior disciples," he says. The youth give him hope that things will change for the Sect, and that there will be less suffering because of it.

[the_cupbearer]

Ganymede likes--and is good at--asking personal questions. He dislikes needing to function above the layer of public veneer. But he hums low in his throat at the mention of children, the tiniest of smiles.

"Children are the easiest to see hope in. It's contagious from them, one of their better qualities. They forgive so easily and without holding any grudge. And it's easy to be hopeful when you have a short memory."

[thesecondjade]

"My son is almost a man," Lan Zhan says as a sort of gentle correction, "and the junior disciples are of an age with him. But some of that still remains in them."

Especially Lan Sizhui. He still sees the best in everything, everyone, but is not naive about it. He knows people are capable of cruelty. He has survived terrible things, even if they are locked in the mists of the past.