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“You won’t remember but… I hope you’ll like it,” Wen Ning smiled hesitantly as he held out the bowl to Sizhui, anxiously waiting for him to taste it.
Wen Ning had left their little campsite early, while Sizhui still slept. He had been planning what he might do to commemorate their arrival at Dafan Mountain for a few weeks now, and it had finally been time to act.
He remembered the spots well – not necessarily from his own hazy recollection of his early childhood on the mountain, but instead based on Wen-popo’s vivid descriptions of the landscape, her long bouts of reminiscing. The cold evenings in the Burial Mounds when the two of them had gathered around the cooking fire, her for the heat, Wen Ning to cook. She had often sighed, regretting that even when they could afford them, the spices sold in Yiling weren’t nearly as fresh. She lamented that the burial mounds could be coaxed into growing many things, but for something with such precise flavours, needing such specific environments, the Burial Mounds had no chance. But Wen-popo, with the occasional interjection from other relatives as they circled the cooking fire, reading for dinner, had still taught him the recipes, had still laughed and joked about the various misadventures she, the family, had shared on the mountain. Had celebrated that despite the circumstances, the losses, the fear, there could still be some of that life in their new home.
On scouring the mountain for the ingredients that morning, he had actually been a bit surprised to find how easy it was. That while so much from this mountain: him, a-Yuan, his family, had changed, had died, that the herbs and spices he needed were still thriving as they always had.
He followed the instructions carefully, remembered even through his long years in the dark. Years of grief, pain, loneliness. Through them, it had been these memories that had kept him going. Kept him hoping. And so the steps were as clear in his mind as they would have been had they been neatly copied out for him by his family’s hand. The voices of his sister, his grandmother, his uncle, and a busy tide of cousins echoed in his head -reminded him where it was better to cut lengthwise than widthwise, or to press instead of chop. The practiced precision of a family training in medicines and healing. He knew the exact proportions, the temperatures needed as he cooked the meat and vegetables he had purchased in town – so much easier to source now with the purse of an inner Lan disciple to fund the shopping. As he cooked, Sizhui dozed, in sleep not really different from the little a-Yuan of years ago.
Now that the sun had risen, now that Sizhui, that a-Yuan, sat before him, smiling, reaching out to receive the dish, Wen Ning only wondered whether his creation bore even a passing resemblance to the version that would have been cooked on this mountain over decades and generations past.
Sizhui lifted the spoon, gently, carefully to his mouth and sipped at the broth.
Wen Ning raised his eyebrows, leaning in slightly, “Do you… like it?” he asked nervously.
And as though an echo from the past, Sizhui smiled broadly, nodded decisively, “I do like it!” he proclaimed.
Then the illusion passed as a pensive look fell over the teen’s face, one far too mature for the child Wen Ning remembered from the Burial Mounds, “And it tastes… familiar, somehow?” he laughed softly to himself, a wistful tint to it, “But I’m sure it couldn’t… it was so long ago, I would have been so little.”
Wen Ning, too, chuckled, but he shrugged, never one to fail to catch even the smallest wisp of hope, “My sister once told me that smell, that taste are the senses the most capable of evoking old memories, so maybe you do,” he suggested.
The smile that grew on a-Yuan’s face, the tears that Wen Ning could see shining in his eyes, the excitement that built with each bite, was worth every moment he’d spent roaming the mountain, standing over the bubbling soup that morning.
Wen Ning wasn’t sure, still, how accurately he had replicated the old family recipe. He also didn’t know how easily, how successfully, he and Sizhui could piece together their family history. But together, here, sitting in a quiet spot on Dafan Mountain, sharing memories, he knew at least they could carry forward their legacy.
And whether the tears in his own eyes were from buried memories of his own, brought forward by the smell of the unique spice blend, or whether they were from the later, but just as treasured final year with his family, Wen Ning didn’t know. But he found that now, with him and a-Yuan together, alive, that that distinction didn’t much matter to him.