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A-Yuan sprints into the meadow on chubby little legs, laughing full-bellied and unafraid, and the rabbits all bolt away from him at top speed.
"Qing-jie," he says. "No bunnies!"
She smiles, because the look on his face is so much like Wen Ning's had been at age six or so, when a bird wouldn't come to his hand. He'd been a patient child, though, and the longer they are in Gusu, the more apparent it is becoming that A-Yuan is not patient by nature.
"They're scared," she says, and settles to the ground. "Come sit here with me, and tell me about what you learned today. If we are both very still, they might come back."
A-Yuan settles down, curling halfway into her lap. He might be getting too old for this: it's hard to know whether the Lan rules apply to him or not. He doesn't wear a forehead ribbon, not yet, but she's talked to Lan Wangji and knows that if they grant permission, he will adopt the boy into the main branch of the family.
"...and he said that skeletons are scary," A-Yuan is saying, and looks up at her. "Skeletons are just part of the ground that gets in the way when you're digging. They're not scary! I think he's a wimp."
Her heart breaks a little bit for this child, for the years he spent in the Burial Mounds with them, nearly starving on radishes and what little they could trade for, for what it has taught him 'normal' looks like.
"A lot of people never see a skeleton close up," she says, treading a careful line, as she so often does now when discussing their past. "It's easy to be scared of things you don't know."
"Oh," A-Yuan says. "Like Wei-gege? He's not scary, but people think he is."
Wei Wuxian is extremely scary, Wen Qing thinks, and entirely too willing to do horrifically dangerous things to himself or others, but that's not a conversation to have with a six-year-old.
"Mm," she agrees. "Now stay still. I think I see a brave rabbit over there. If you're patient, she might come say hello."