Work Text:
It’s been nearly twenty years since he and Lin Jingyan returned home, two decades since Wind Howl won the war against Tiny Herb in the north.
The baby hairs on the back of his head are starting to turn silver, and Jingyan’s for the most part handed off the leadership of their local gang to a younger protege. They’re nearing the age where people get ready to die, of some unfortunate cold they can no longer fight off, or something, hoping they have grown children, expecting daughters, something of that shit that Fang Rui never cared for. If anyone asked, he’d laugh and say his children were the dogs. They never had kids of their own.
They don’t intend to leave behind any sort of legacy, aside from their almost-legendary fame in the War. And for all the things that Fang Rui did in his youth, he somehow managed to kick that fame aside. Fitting of a thief and a peddler. Though he’s heard they’d build him a shine in the capital, nobody can match the face of the statue to his own. For all the stories they’re telling of him, they always seem to miss the slight detail of a lover who kept hounds.
It’s kind of funny, really, that they’re writing him out to be a hero, when people still live who have met him, and brought him into custody. Not that he’s complaining. It’s a nice thing to listen to on a cold winter evening, assuming the bard can sing and he’s sharing a cup of steaming cider with his husband, in the flickering glow of the tavern’s hearth.
They went south once, to spend a season in Blue Brook. As ancient as Wei Chen looked, he still cursed like a sailor, blew smoke rings with his pipe. He told Jingyan stories of Fang Rui as a child, the memory of him releasing weasels inside of the house, catching salmon with his bare hands and the almost supernatural circumstances under which the fisherman found him as an infant.
“He might not act like it, or, fuckin’, even look the part, but if any baby’s gonna survive the sea in a wooden chest, it’s the child of a god.”
“You think so?” Jingyan glances towards the door, where Fang Rui just left to water the donkey.
“Here’s what I imagine. Some girl falls in love with a spellcaster. Maybe a nature spirit. Maybe the girl’s father is some big bad warlord of the Highlands, so he takes her son and throws him into the sea. No child is going to survive that shit without the favor of the sea god. If he doesn’t have the blood of a god, he still has the favor, and that’s enough for any fucker to get deified. Not to mention that they built him a shrine—”
Fang Rui pokes his head back into the house, perhaps he was listening through the keyhole. “Hey, Jingyan, get this. When I was a kid Lao Wei threatened to throw me back into the sea if I misbehaved.”
“Did he?”
“Yeah. I learned how to swim like that.”
Lin Jingyan mused that if any other kid was thrown into the sea, they would’ve drowned.
“That’s how Wenzhou learned how to swim, too.”
Correction: any other kid not raised by Wei Chen.
Fang Rui seemed to rub at his shoulders as he joined them at the table, and Jingyan, sensing discomfort, starts to rub circles in his back. He notes how the joints in his fingers have become knobby, and how there were streaks of silver in his Fang Rui’s hair.
With the unfortunate arrival of some plague in midsummer, it’s quite possible his husband would join the ranks of the dead. He finds it hard to imagine life after Fang Rui, and even though Tang Hao’s helping them care for the hounds now, he believes they’d howl for days, in some attempt to fill in the hole Fang Rui left.
“Promise you’ll stay with me, even in death.” He murmurs in his ear, the morning after as they lead the donkey down the road back home. “When we find ourselves in the afterlife, tell me you’ll seek me out.”
Fang Rui bumps him, gently, with his shoulder. “What’s making you think I won’t?”
“Nothing much.”
“But I’ll tell you, when you die, I’ll follow. I’ll find you in the afterlife, or play games with the Fey for your soul, or whatever fuck else I’d have to do if it means I can be in your presence until our memories fade, and we forget what we were.”
Lin Jingyan makes a face. “I’m not asking you to kill yourself .”
“I mean, maybe I’ll just start living at your grave.”
“And die a few days later of a cold?”
“... Yeah.”
It makes him smile a little to see Fang Rui’s enthusiasm, reminding him of himself, a little bit, years ago when he jumped the wall of the Lord’s manor to join his lover in the war. Though they may have grown older, no longer able to stand a swim in an icy river, for the most part, their spirits never changed.
They spend the winter as they always do, chopping wood, snuggling with the hounds, sharing sips of last autumn’s wine over two bowls of stew. They speak of going to the mountains in the spring, perhaps moving closer to town— Maybe they’ll visit Blue Rain, and seek out Yu Wenzhou for an afternnon tea.
In the last days of February Lin Jingyan comes down with a fever. His forehead burns, and Fang Rui works to bring him cold rags, hot tea, whatever herbs and poultices the apothecarist prescribes him. At times he seems almost coherent, his face only a little warm, and then for the next week or so he becomes almost deathly pale, not doing much aside from sleep.
Three times a day Fang Rui helps him sit up in bed, and presses a soft kiss to his burning brow. He makes small talk about what he saw in town, about Tang Hao dropping by with a cow stomach for the dogs, and of the weather. Jingyan nods along, occasionally murmuring a comment or two.
The days start to grow warmer, and in the afternoon they could hear the geese returning from their winter homes. “You know how some people say it’s the barking of the Wild Hunt’s dogs?”
“Mm.” Lin Jingyan nods, shifting a little in Fang Rui’s arms.
Fang Rui then mutters about springtime, and how Jingyan would definitely get better by late March. His husband says something about promising to recover.
Jingyan dies when the young plants are just beginning to peek through the earth. Fang Rui comes in the early morning to check his temperature, and finds that his pulse had stilled. The body was still a little warm, and he presses a kiss to the dead cheek before heading to town in search of the Priest.
Despite the coming of spring, the earth is still too cold for a burial. With the assistance of Tang Hao, Fang Rui arranges for the body to be cremated, and to be scattered in the mountains at some later time.
Presumably, Tang Hao went up the mountain on his own to spread the ashes, as Fang Rui died a few days after Jingyan. Of what, nobody really understood. Perhaps it was grief.
Not that it mattered. Soon enough, Fang Rui woke up in the prime of his youth, and spent his days as a god. He’d guess it was the shrine in the capital that gave him eternal life after death, at least until people no longer remember his name.
So there he went, bestowing blessings and smiting the occasional asshole. They called him a god of travelers, underdogs, slingers, thieves. He was the protector of abandoned peoples, wanderers, the ones that went out in the world on little but hope and very grey morality.
Soon enough, they start making up stories about him down on earth. Something about killing a dragon, of surviving the rough seas as an infant, or being the child of some nature god. Most of them false, and the rest of them giving him the sneaking suspicion that perhaps Shaotian or Wei Chen or someone started gossiping about their deified relative.
On occasion, he paid visits to the afterlife in search of Lin Jingyan. Each time he came up empty, and it grated on him, how he was spending the years after his time on earth alone, missing his supposed other half. He promised to find him, sure, but nobody told him the search would be so hard .
With the tenth visit to the underworld, though, it was becoming clear Jingyan wasn’t among the dead, and so the only other possibility was the Fey.
It was much more common for the Fey to take the dead than the living. Especially if that person was illustrious in their life, perhaps they would be drinking sweet wine with the Seelie court, or chasing after whatever the Wild Hunt rides for. And like living humans who stumble into the Fey’s Realm, the dead can rarely, if ever leave their grasp.
He remembers the honking of geese one afternoon before Jingyan died of fever, and how in some twisted way, it sounded like the barking of dogs. A little later and the sun started to crawl down the horizon. Jingyan was a warrior first, not an artist or a lover. The Seelies would have no use for him, as he didn’t sing much or paint. And the Unseelie— Fang Rui’s husband wasn’t a fool. They wouldn’t have any use for a brawler who had hounds.
Yes. Fang Rui nods to himself, smiling at the memory of the dogs. The riders of the Wild Hunt had hounds accompanying their horses, and who else would be better with hounds than Lin Jingyan?
For Jingyan death was like the long-forgotten touch of a mother, pulling him away from the earth. Except he’s pretty sure the mother got intercepted somewhere, as soon enough he woke up among thirty or so figures, wrapped in shadowy cloaks that seemed to shiver and shrink like candlelight, or the rays of the sun on a bright summer day.
Behind them, in the fog, he could hear the barking of dogs, and what was perhaps the sound of a horse’s hooves.
“The Wild Hunt.” He murmurs, then noting the smoothness of the back of his hands.
Before he can inspect his features, though, the cloaked figures part for what he assumes in their leader— Fey, a hunter.
Jingyan promised Fang Rui they’d meet again in the afterlife, but they overlooked the Wild Hunt. Perhaps it was because he was a war hero, a tamer and friend of large dogs, that they decided him a formidable member, and dragged his soul to the Fey’s Realm.
They lead him to the hounds first, bone-white with blood red ears, large enough to maul a bear. Despite that, Jingyan feels a certain tenderness as he did for all dogs, and he offered the closest one a kiss to the nose. Then they hand him a steed, swift and powerful, and he hopes he’d magically know how to ride.
Finally, they lead him to a pool, one untouched by mortals but almost glittering with faerie magic. He catches his reflection in the surface, and meets the face of the Lin Jingyan that brought death to armies with a shortsword and a pack of hounds. He’s young again, looking like he was in his most glorious days.
But like those days, Fang Rui was miles away, in some unknown location. Who knows if he was another soul in the underworld, or a god blessing his worshippers. If he was searching for Jingyan, he wouldn’t know, and the adrenaline of the Hunt distracts him from the topic.
When they lay the horses to rest, though, and toss the hounds the leg of some terrible wyvern, he starts thinking about how lovely it would be if he could share the sweet wine in his waterskin with Fang Rui. On occasion he thinks of leaving, but then stares at the boundless moors surrounding the banquet hall, and remembers how the Wild Prince always warned them to never dismount at certain places, lest they crumble to dust.
And to that point, the Prince is Fey, so who knows what might happen if he tries to run?
The leader of the Wild Hunt was, according to godly gossip, a disgraced prince of the Seelies. Perhaps he fell in love with a human, or wanted nothing to do with dancing and wine, but it all ended up with him, a loyal friend, some steeds and a pack of bloody hounds.
At any given time, there’d be anywhere from twenty to thirty Hunters, a collection of faeries and dead souls. Occasionally a soul would lose their memory, and fade off to do whatever amnesiac souls do. Sometimes a faerie has an unfortunate run-in with an iron blade, and dies as the Fey rarely do. None of that was important to Fang Rui; all he cared was that among the twenty or thirty was his lover, his husband of many years.
And if the disgraced prince of the Wild Hunt was anything like the other Fey, he would only let go of what he took if he was deceived out of it.
Fang Rui never played mind games with the sprites that hid in the forest, and extracting deals from trapped brownies was always more of Wenzhou’s forte. But, well. He’s a thief. Something’s gotta work.
The Fey have a pesky habit of bowing to nobody, not even the gods. For the most part, it isn’t a problem, and they simply don’t talk to each other, but it surely makes negotiating with the Wild Prince a lot harder.
“I’m inquiring about the soul of man, who, if I am correct, you took to join your ranks.”
“I cannot confirm his presence, as I am not exactly familiar with this man.”
There’s something about the leader’s cold face that frustrates him. “Well, nevermind that. You spend a lot of time on the chase, don’t you? Have you ever had the time for a little music, or a dance?”
“I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure to for some time.”
“So take it this way. You’ve invited me here as a guest, and so we’ll follow the accepted rules of hospitality. You entertain me, I entertain you. I be generous, and you give in return.”
“I don’t accept that you are my guest, however.”
“But you never said I wasn’t, just that you don’t like it.”
As the bards would later sing, it would be the first of three victories Fang Rui wins against the Wild Prince.
Rather grudgingly, the prince beckons the god to follow, and the Hunters nudge their horses into a gallop, back to the hall they feast in. Perhaps the Prince was hoping to lose Fang Rui on the way, but being swift-footed, as all gods are, he kept up easily, and happily filed away this little detail as proof of bad hospitality.
The Hunters wear dark, shadowy cloaks, and only their leader keeps their hood down. But as they dismount, and lay their creatures to rest, one of them kisses the hounds on their noses.
Fang Rui smiles, recognizing it as a small habit of Jingyan’s. That Hunter’s face is too shadowed to be recognized, but he turned his head as he passed Fang Rui on his way to the door, and almost fumbled with the ring pull.
“Won’t you invite me in? You’re the host.”
The Prince seems a bit dispirited, and holds the door open, waving him in.
The Wild Hunt goes to bathe, and change into more comfortable clothes. The Prince offers Fang Rui to try the waters, but he declines, claiming the rain had cleaned him enough.
In reality, though, he wasn’t going to risk anything so shocked through with faerie magic as that bathing pool.
And, well, being the good host, the Prince forgoes his bath also. He sits at the head of a large table, already set with sweet wine and all sorts of food. Fang Rui takes his seat at the foot, and slowly the rest of the Hunters enter, in simple tunics, their faces now clearly distinguishable. Among them is Lin Jingyan.
Fang Rui winks and blows him a kiss. Jingyan waves in reply.
The others eat, and it’s simply bad manners to not follow suit. Except nobody in their right mind would eat a faerie’s food if they didn’t swear it was harmless in ten different ways. Fang Rui slips chunks of bread, slices off the leg of a cow, and he feeds them to the puppies that run around sheltered in the hall, and hide under the table looking for scraps, along with a few sips of the whine. If the Prince noticed anything, he didn’t say so.
He stretches lazily, as if satisfied by a meal he didn’t eat. “So, Prince, what do you all do to spend your dinners? You should’ve brought some musicians, a bard to entertain your guest.”
“We don’t have any.”
“Pity. You wouldn’t mind if I sing a song, would you? Or teach you a little dance?”
“I’m afraid I won’t have time to enjoy it after you depart.”
“Perhaps not, but— what about a wager? Your hunters look like a dreary bunch. If I get them to react— or, even better, for you to react, if my entertainment is memorable so that some of them would be bothered to applaud, and then for you to reminded of me each time you enter your hall, then you will allow me to ask for a favor, which you must uphold. And if I fail to, I’ll do something for you.”
That seemed to catch the Prince’s attention. Everyone knows a faerie can’t help but make bets, it’s how they get most things they have. “Very well, then. I accept your wager.”
Fang Rui stands up, and secures the pin on his cloak, before walking to the area between the door and the table. “Thank you for being my audience today. I’ll start off with a song from my hometown, it was quite popular with the noblewomen.”
The Prince nods, and the god begins, a powerful ballad of a young woman sending her lover off to war. Wei Chen used to scoff that it was too sappy and melodramatic, but he couldn't help but whistle the tune as he cast his nets into the sea. Maybe he was singing it when he fished Fang Rui out as a kid. If it was a good song, he could care less, but it certainly stayed with him until the day he died.
So he sings of the promises the lover makes, and the maiden offering him a parting glass of wine. She tells him to not return until he makes a name for himself. The war is cruel, and the lover sees many horrors, but the thought of the maiden keeps him going, until he dies from his wound protecting the king’s heir from an ambush. He dies a hero, and makes a name for himself, but the maiden never sees him return. He returns home, though, as a spirit, and appears in her dreams, and tells her to move on, and find another lover.
By this point Fang Rui sees a couple teary eyes, and a small smile from Lin Jingyan, who perhaps recognized it from the season they spent in Blue Brook.
“I’m sorry for pausing right here, but according to tradition, at this point the audience begins to touch their palms together—”
Suddenly, one of the whelps started making a crying sound. Fang Rui falls silent, a bit worried for the little creature.
Lin Jingyan rises from his chair. “Sorry for the interruption, sir. I believe it wants its mother. You know I raised and commanded a pack of hounds in my lifetime, allow me to take care of it for you.”
For a moment the Prince seems a little miffed, but the puppy’s crying began upsetting the other dogs, and in the end he relented, waving Jingyan off with a dozen little hounds in tow.
The door closes with a soft thump.
“I commend you for finding such a skilled man to manage your hounds. Who was he in a past life?”
“A thief, and a soldier. Eventually a war hero. He has a young charge, I believe, who is still managing the hounds he left behind.” Despite the clipped tone, it seemed as if the Wild Prince knew little about Jingyan, if anything.
“Interesting.” Fang Rui nods, feeling a bit self-satisfied that he knows more than the Prince. “Well, as I was going to say, by this point of the ballad the audience puts its palms together with the beat of the music, in order to imitate the maiden’s footsteps as she walks on with her life. It should get louder and faster as the song progresses, and my singing will amplify, and speed up in time.”
To be honest? He just made that up. But he’s good at making stuff up, and it’d be quite simple to sing of the end of a life. He already experienced it, for fuck’s sake.
So he proceeds to sing of a man the maiden meets, a thief from the south that saves her from a spooked carriage horse. They fall in love, the man becomes a farmer, and they live on the edge of town. But soon again, another war comes, and the man is drafted to fight. The maiden, remembering the fate of her first lover, disguises herself as a man and follows after him. So they fight together, and Fang Rui starts to pick up speed, and the commander of the invading barbarians is killed, and soon they resume their life in Wind Howl. They have no children of their own, but they take in a young orphan who works alongside the man; despite his ambitious, fiery temper— he raises his voice at this point— they teach him all they know, and mean to entrust him with their farm.
And their final years, they pass by in seconds. He’s spitting the words out now, yelling them out, and to his satisfaction, the clapping sounds like applause. They live together. They visit the maiden’s home in the south, the man falls ill, and they hope for his recovery, speak of the places they’ll travel to , but he dies and the girl, now old, soon after wastes away in grief.
“ — So there they lie, their ashes, floating in the sun. The orphan moves on, he has children of his own, he grows old, he dies, and there will be tales to come.”
He cuts the ending off abruptly, clipped short, instead of drawing it out gracefully like the bards do at the taverns. As if still caught up in their stupor, the Hunters clap along. They applaud.
And Lin Jingyan is yet to return from outside.
When the applause finally dies down, the Prince speaks up. “... I will admit you have an art for singing. Were you a bard before you died?”
“No, a thief.”
The Wild Prince seemed to smile at that. “You did earn the applause of my Hunters, but unfortunately, there’s nothing to remember you by. You went so fast in the end that I couldn’t recognize the words.”
“No, no, I never said I would make you remember this moment right now .” He laughed, knowing that he’s won the bet. “I’ve already made your Hunters applaud, but then , later on, sometime in the future, I will make you remember my presence.”
“And how would you go about doing that?”
“Every other day at twilight I will come visit your hall, and I will sing, and dance, until you know the tune by heart, and are perhaps tempted to dance a little. I swear that on the truth.”
The leader of the Wild Hunt raises an eyebrow, knowing, like all faeries do, that mortals lie liberally. “A man’s truth means nothing, even if he becomes a god.”
“Would I lie to my host? If I were, it would be quite rude, knowing that you can’t.”
“Perhaps swear on something else, then.”
“I wouldn’t do anything that implies anything but good will to my host, and you know that. I mean to be good, to be cordial, and part of that is honesty. A lie would simply be quite rude, don’t you think?”
The Wild Prince goes silent for a moment, perhaps waiting for Fang Rui to bend, or maybe simply just pondering it. But Fang Rui says nothing, and eventually, before it becomes deeply uncomfortable, the faerie speaks up.
“Very well, then. If you honor your part of the bet, to make yourself memorable at some future time, I will grant you the favor. But know that if you break your promise, I will take away what was given.”
Thus, the bards would sing, Fang Rui had his second of three victories.
“Why, thank you.” Fang Rui grins, a wide, conspiring one that shows his teeth. “I want Lin Jingyan, who serves you as one of your Hunters, and who just earlier left the hall to take care of some crying puppies and has yet to return. I would like you to release him from your service and give him to me.”
The faerie laughs. “He’s eaten the food of the Fey already, and bathed in its waters, so you do understand he cannot leave. Ever. You cannot take him to your palace in the God’s Realm, nor visit the mortals’ mountaintops with him, if you stay with him, you must stay here.”
“And who ever told you I wanted to leave the Faerie Realm? I think I might build myself a home, a little cottage on the moor, with some dogs to keep us company… We could live as we used to when we were young and alive.”
Slowly, he can see the Prince grasping at Fang Rui’s intentions. “And what would I do with my one missing man?”
“You’ll remember him quite well. If I’m aware, he’d be the only one that is no longer among the Hunt because a god has taken him away. All your others have simply died, haven’t they? You’ll remember the time a god won against you in a battle of wits, and you’ll have a missing man to prove it.”
With that, the Prince smiles, and leans back in his chair. He remains silent for a second, and then laughs, cold, sharp, and vaguely humorless. “Well played, well played. I’ll send you off with your Lin Jingyan, and a parting glass of wine.”
“No need for that. We’re only walking a short distance from here, we don’t require any fortifying. If you insist, though, pour out that glass as a libation to my divinity.” And with that, he makes a short bow to the Prince of the Wild Hunt, and proceeds to skip out the door.
Jingyan meets him at the entrance with two puppies in his arms.
Such is the third victory of Fang Rui, and there the bards stop singing.
The sea god had a few complaints about the reunited couple now living permanently in the Fey’s Realm, but eventually just shut up about it when Fang Rui pointed out he could still hear humans’ prayers. So they built a little cottage, perhaps a couple miles away from the Wild Hunt’s banquet hall. From time to time they join the Hunt, and Fang Rui seems especially smug every time he and Jingyan ride past the Prince.
More often, though, they live in their cottage, and raise the bloody hounds that seemed to have followed Lin Jingyan to his new home. If the Prince said anything about it being bad hospitality, Fang Rui waves it off with a ‘Jingyan was not your guest, but my gift’.
Down in the Mortal Realm, they appeared to have introduced a new holiday. A festival day for Fang Rui, celebrating his trickery of the Fey. For the most part, Lin Jingyan’s remains omitted from their folktales, and the lover in the bard’s song remains unnamed. In some more regional variants of the story, however, near the southern border with Blue Rain, or perhaps in a certain town inhabited by a certain Tang Hao, they worship a war hero who commanded a pack of hounds, and they consider him the lover of Fang Rui.