Lan WangJi / Lan Zhan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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voidtreckernet2021-04-03 11:29 pm
achickenformylove) wrote in voidtreckernet2021-04-03 11:29 pm
Kazoo 16 - Video Post
[The video opens with a very somber-looking WangJi. Even more so than he normally looked for those who were actually able to tell. Even from the angle of the video, a very obvious pair of white ears from a rabbit kept bouncing into frame for a moment as WangJi made the post while holding Little Radish]
For those that knew him, Wei Ying... my husband... is no longer on the train. There are others still here, but he has departed the train.
[It was as simple as that.
For those that wish to find him, he can - predictably - be found in the Greenhouse with his two rabbits, Little Radish now snuggled in his arms and being a good comfort bunny while Little Carrot played with a random leaf that had been on the ground]
For those that knew him, Wei Ying... my husband... is no longer on the train. There are others still here, but he has departed the train.
[It was as simple as that.
For those that wish to find him, he can - predictably - be found in the Greenhouse with his two rabbits, Little Radish now snuggled in his arms and being a good comfort bunny while Little Carrot played with a random leaf that had been on the ground]
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His eyes did follow where WuXian was going as he moved around behind him to give him a hug. The faintest of smiles crossed his face and he leaned back into the hug, resting against him. Whether his chest was unimpressive or not, he didn't mind.
Little Radish looked up as WuXian hugged WangJi and his owner leaned back a little before he shifted to settle in again]
You are better at talking.
[You talk]
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He'll cover Lan Zhan's back. Easier, too, as he settles himself down for the butt-numbing kind of long haul, grinning and starting to talk. )
Mah, Lan Zhan, how many of the stories from this last place we were in did you hear? Once the kids calmed down and I had them talking, I heard all about this story about the little rabbit who lived on the moon. He lived with a princess and everything, did you want to hear the story?
( Is he offering a grieving Lan Zhan a bedtime story?
... Yeah, basically. )
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WangJi glanced over at WuXian as best that he could without moving his head too much, not wanting to disrupt WuXian from keeping his head over his shoulder]
I did not hear that story. Yes, I'd like to hear it.
[He is perfectly fine with that]
WRITES A STORY
The story itself goes something like this: )
In the times of the ancients, of the many gods that populated their world, there was an eldest daughter of the night stars and sea god, who was given a home between but independent of both. As she was the first, neither could agree to her sole keeping, and so she came into a fraught but loved existence on her landscape, traveling the skies and echoing the sun and watching the lives of all the peoples and animals of the world below.
On moonbeams, she could listen to the stories and story tellers of the world; the drunk poets, the nights of revelry, were her teachers and guidance, the discussions from conversations between scholars at night her enlightenments, the merchants traveling her one sided conversation partners when she could hear them at night. During the day, the sun spoke too loudly, and all she could hear was the sun's joyous, powerful son, as she still watches the mortals down below.
Back then was still the time where she didn't know loneliness for herself, or didn't know the word for it. She'd keep company to all these people from a distance, and for many years, she was happy that way.
Then, one night, she heard a small, sad little sigh in the middle a large, plowed field. A small rabbit, white as snow, was curled in and refusing to move, all shivering and sad and small. Have I mentioned small?
( He cranes his head forward a little, to look down at Little Radish. )
Smaller than you! A real baby, all alone. Now, the princess didn't speak with too many, because most people don't respond well to voices they don't recognise speaking from nowhere they see, but animals? Animals accept things people older than children won't. So she asked this little rabbit, "Why did you sigh so deeply?"
The little rabbit refused to raise his head, curling up tighter. "Because I'm alone," he said.
"What is alone?" she said. She didn't know what that word was, only that she'd heard it often over the long years, but it seemed to be like so many words, meaning something and nothing at the same time.
"It means I have no one around me. No family," said the little rabbit, "They've all gone away, and I don't know how to find them."
She considered what he said. "Is being alone very bad?"
The little rabbit sighed more. "Yes," he said, "Because it's very cold, and I'm very hungry, and I don't know if I can sleep without hearing them around me, or telling stories. We would all tell a story together," he said, nuzzling down into his paws.
The princess had heard many stories, some told in groups, some told alone. She knew cold because of the people she watched, and she knew people and animals would sleep in groups. They'd also sleep alone. Was that bad, then? Not everyone had seemed unhappy. Still, this little rabbit was, and she didn't like how it curled in so small, so she said, "I can tell you a story."
The little rabbit said nothing, one small ear twitching.
"I can help keep you warm."
The second ear twitched.
"I can't make up for your family, but if you come with me, we can look for them together."
The little rabbit lifted his little white head, looking up toward the moonbeams. "You promise?"
"I promise."
And so the little rabbit came up to the moon, and rested in her lap, and was very warm in her blankets, and they started to look for his family.
A GOOD STORY
That was a good story.
here's the kicker WHO SAID WE WERE DONE, SOBS
We're not done yet, but it is a good story, isn't it? Little Radish and Little Carrot both think so.
( He glances toward the rabbits in question one after another, and Little Carrot only looks like they're responding because of lifting paws to try and crawl into Lan Zhan's lap from the front, avoiding Wei Wuxian's legs as much as possible. )
The princess and the rabbit watched during the day, when they could hear nothing, and searched the lands, listening closely at night to all the sounds and whispers, trying to find the rabbit's family by the sounds of their dreams. They asked the owls, who were confusing and not so helpful; they asked the foxes, who helped them find rabbit warren after rabbit warren, some empty, some overfull, but not the missing family. They laughed, they cried, the composed poetry together, and every day and night, they searched.
Then one spring, nestled in the middle of a meadow far from the villages, where only deer and birds and bear would tread, the little rabbit heard a song on a moonbeam, and said, "Princess, princess, I know this song. It's the song my mother would sing to us, I know it! I remember it from my long, long ears to the depth of my small, strong bones!"
The princess smiled, and rare for her, traveled with the rabbit on a moonbeam to the meadow, stepping down on earth that was not the moon for the first time in centuries. She knelt down, and let the little rabbit, who was no longer quite so little, hop forth, calling out to the singing rabbit.
"I know that song," the not so little rabbit said, and the singing rabbit sat up and twitched their nose and lifted their ears and cried out, "I know you!" And so the princess watched as all the rabbits poured out of the burrow, sleepy and yawning, only to laugh and talk and gather around the rabbit who had come back home, overwhelming him.
He talked, and he laughed, and he cried, and all his family talked and laughed and cried, and then he told them, "Let me introduce you to her, the princess who helped me find you," and he turned to find... the princess was gone. She'd returned to the moon while his family had surrounded him, saying not a word.
Indeed, the princess had left, not wanting to interrupt, and wondering at the ache she felt. As she returned on her moonbeam to her home on the moon, she pressed her hands to her heart, and said, "Why does this hurt?"
She sat down, and she considered as she watched the rest of the rabbit family reunion, then glanced away, if this wasn't what being alone felt like. The princess had learned, at last, what it meant to feel lonely.
The not so little rabbit, however, had not forgotten her. The next night, he sat in the moonbeams, and he sang up to her, a song of his own making. One he'd come up with in all their days and nights of searching, one that reminded him of his family then, and reminds him of her now. He sang, and he sang, and he sang each night for days, until the princess called back down to him.
"Little rabbit! I hear you singing, and it's very lovely, but your whole family is asleep. Why are you singing now? The insects and the owls aren't so fond of listening as to be a good audience." Her voice was fond, and the rabbit shivered, so pleased she'd finally spoken.
"I'm not singing for the insects or the owls or even my family," he said, sitting up even taller, his soft nose twitching. "I'm singing for you."
The princess smiled, her heart hurting again, in yet a different way. "That's very kind," she said. "Thank you for sharing your song with me. You should go in and rest now, it's not good for rabbits to be up late at night. It's not safe."
He shook his head, his ears falling down to rest against his back as he stared up the moonbeam toward the moon. "Princess, I won't go to sleep. Why did you leave that night? I was going to introduce you to my family, so they knew who heard a sad and lonely little rabbit, and who helped him find them again. When I turned back, you weren't there."
Her answer came after a pause. "I'm sorry, little rabbit, I hadn't realised. You were with your family again. You weren't alone. That was good, and right, and I cannot stay on the earth for long, it doesn't suit my nature."
"I wasn't alone before," he said, ears twitching, his paws held up toward the sky. "I wasn't lonely. I was with you."
The princess stared down at him, but didn't understand. "We found your family, and you've gone home."
The rabbit shook his head, extending his paws further upward. "We found my family, but this isn't home. Princess, do you really want to be alone?"
"No," she said, "But I'm not, really. I can see all the world. How can I be alone, when I see all the people and animals and plants like this?"
"Are you lonely?"
She couldn't answer. The rabbit kept reaching upward, as if he could climb the moonbeam on his own, now balancing on his hind legs.
"Princess, I love my family. I told my family, there is this kind princess who lives on the moon. She sees all that passes below her, and hears those voices raised at night, and she is alone in her home, in the vast beauty of its quietness. She does not have a family to curl with in a burrow. She does not have anyone to sing to her at night. She is a kind and wonderful princess, and I don't want her to be lonely. Princess, may I continue on, and live with you?"
She was quiet still, and then her heart, which had been hurting, found one more new way to hurt, and she said, "You wish to do that? Your family... you love them so. How can you bear to leave them?"
"I can visit, princess. But my family is not just the ones down here. You're my family too, and I also love you."
So it was the princess appeared them in the moonbeam, walking down from her home, and reached out to take the rabbits paws in her hands. "I don't know what that is," she said, for all she'd heard it in songs and poetry and the twitters of night-loving birds and bats. "I know that loneliness makes a heart ache, and missing someone does too. Now my heart feels full, and I don't know what that is."
The rabbit stretched out his neck, nose gently pressing against one pale hand. "That's love," he said. "When a heart feels full, and a heart feels aching, and you are lonely, that's all room for love."
And she said, "Oh," and she smiled, and she laughed, and she cried, and she took the rabbit in her arms and walked up the moonbeam to the moon, and she and the rabbit who was not little anymore live there still, loved and not lonely, and he visits his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-very incredibly great nieces and nephews to this day. That's why they say, if you listen closely in the summer, on a night when the moon shines brightest, you might hear his song as he sings to the rabbits about his princess of the moon.
( By now, even if he's used to talking on at length if he wants to, he's feeling thirsty. He swallows, clearing his throat, and adds: )
That was the end. I think. There might have been other stories, but that was the one they told me.
( Over many nights and in fractured ways. It's his composite fill in the blanks memory version, at least. )
GASP
When he finished, WangJi spoke]
Yes, that was a good story.
[It was certainly how he felt right now. Even though he was lonely and missing his Wei Ying, there were a lot of others coming to see him]
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( Sad in part, but about hope and the families gained, not just losses. Both of them have dealt enough with loss, no matter the world.
He shifts, but it's just to end up briefly resting his chin on Lan Zhan's shoulder. )
You're separated for now, but you'll find your way back to each other. What's remembered, what isn't remembered, it's all in here.
( He actually has no easy way to indicate he means the heart, given how he's chosen to seat himself and that he's hugging Lan Zhan at the same time. It's a strange sort of feeling, but not a bad one, and his sympathy for the loss-that-isn't remains strong.
Thus he ends up giving a squeeze with his arms to indicate: the chest. The heart. The place felt, not logic'd through, which is not his personal strength in muddling through, but he knows that. )
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Yes, I will remember him. Even though he is not physically with me, he is still here as long as I remember him.
[It was nice, sitting here with him. The story had been nice. Sad in places, but nice as a whole with a good message at the end. And having company right now made it easier. The rabbits were good company, but there were really only good to hold. They couldn't talk back and give him advice]
Thank you.
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( He'd been tracking his own thoughts for a moment, and then hums again, saying: )
You're welcome. You, ah... you or the rabbits, these rascals, find me anytime, yeah?
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[He glanced down, watching as Little Carrot started trying to figure out if he could climb on top of WuXian's leg. He wanted to be taller!]
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Yeah, only if I've tied carrots to me, they're always preferring you, you know that. It's sheer animal magnetism!
( That is definitely not what it means, but that's Fine. )
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Perhaps. He did come over to you on his own.