Chapter Text
In one hand, Nie Huaisang holds a fan once given to him by Jin Guangyao. It’s one of the few mementos of him that he has remaining. (Nie Huaisang had nearly let them all burn after Jin Guangyao had died.) The fan depicts the proud, cragged Qinghe mountains; and at its base are a scattering of gold-tipped gingko trees, sharply bent as if by a great ceaseless wind.
An object connecting user and recipient; a yearning.
Nie Huaisang has never been one for cultivation, or research, or spell magic. Yet here he was, pouring everything he has into all three. Well. There is no longer anyone around to notice, care, and mention any uncharacteristic behaviour.
An object connecting past and present; an endurance.
He doesn’t regret what he had done. But perhaps this was only because he simply could not see any possible alternative once his brother had died.
And this was why he was going to make sure his brother would never die at all.
An object connecting regret and resolve; a desperation.
Nie Huaisang braces his other hand and channels every last shred of his spiritual energy into his index and middle finger and presses down, pouring it into the fan in his other hand.
His surroundings collapse and flare into a pure white abyss, empty, freezing. For a moment, he is harrowingly unmoored in body and mind, as if rejected by the fabric of both space and time.
But he has prepared for this. He whips open his fan and, in a move he could never have imagined tolerating before, snaps the left-most spoke of the fan off in one clean break. The end of the wooden spoke bursts aflame, the fire ghost-white and cold.
Nie Huaisang thinks of cold Qinghe mornings, of the white ivory of a sculpted peony trinket, and of the smiling ghost that has haunted him down through the decades.
“Is Huaisang pleased by this time’s gifts?” asks a warm voice, a voice Nie Huaisang has not heard in years.
Nie Huaisang looks at the peony sculpture in his hand, and he looks up at Jin Guangyao.
“Yes, I’m pleased,” he says, a slow smile breaking out on his face.