Inbox: Ximilia

[singlelogbridge]

// Wei Wuxian

TEXT • AUDIO • VIDEO

XIMILIA

Comments

action ; flashback mission

[eschewings]

[ the sunlight room, when wei wuxian steps inside it, does not contain real plants grown to supply the station; instead, what he finds is something far more familiar. the scent of lotus pier hits him, first; the gentle lapping of waves against wood, second. but it is not the lotus pier that he has carved into his memories, from before its burning — no, it is the lotus pier from his childhood, from those faint, early memories that have faded over time.

should he wander further, he will see the memory focuses on what is unmistakably a cultivation conference; the faces of the sect leaders are strangely blurry, like the owner of the memory had never cared enough to commit them to memory, at the time. even robes seem to blend into another; it is impossible to tell jiang from ouyang, lan from qin. only one sect stands in clear, sharp detail: the nie, with a severe-looking, much younger nie mingjue sitting at the front of them all. he is clearly just a teenager, and yet he wears the sect leader's robes; his face is impassive, but his fists are tightly squeezed.

behind him, an even younger nie huaisang yawns. a second after, he balks, lifting his sleeve to cover the yawn... that has already passed.

the corner of nie mingjue's mouth tugs just the slightest bit.

a-sang, he whispers, this will take a while still. no one will think badly of you if you go. you have sat here for hours, now, and proven your patience.

huaisang's eyes start to sparkle. really, da-ge? you're the best!

he at least seems to remember enough of his manner lessons to make his escape a non-hasty one, at least until he makes it to the back of the room — then he sprints, straight into wei wuxian. ]

— ah! Hi!

[singlelogbridge]

[Between the thick humid air, the bright sweet scent of the lotuses, and the sound of the lapping waves, Wei Wuxian knows instantly where he is before he's even fully understood what he's seeing with his eyes. For a moment he wonders if he hasn't walked into his own memory, but the longer he stares, the more the small changes assert themselves and he realizes that if this memory were his own, he wouldn't be as old as he is now. (He knows already how the memories of childhood could take over their minds in a way the others didn't.)

Surrounding trees that had burned at the fall of Lotus Pier still stand just as he remembers them, and the old auntie who had died the spring before he left for Gusu is out on a dock in the distance selling watermelons, the image of her unfocused, but recognizable to him by the bend in her posture that he'd known so well. This is undoubtedly the Lotus Pier before the fall, and as he moves through the memory towards the center of its focus, his heart tugging painfully with every purple robed blur that he passes, he quickly recognizes whose memory this is even before the child comes into view.

If he'd kept his gaze on Huaisang, he likely would have anticipated the bump, but as his eyes had shifted—not without a soft gentle sorrow—to watch Nie Mingjue in the distance, it takes him by surprise, and his arms come up to steady the boy's shoulders at the same time that he lets out a soft laugh.]

Aiya, is the young master in such a rush to escape? [He raises an eyebrow but then breaks out into a conspiratorial smile.] Here, follow me and I'll take you somewhere much more exciting than this. [He winks once and then turns to lead him away from the conference and back towards one of the private gardens that borders the lake.]