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There’s a lotus pond in the Burial Mounds.
The water is cool against his feet. Jiang Cheng has no real memory of deciding to sit at the end of the pier, watching the ripples catch the moonlight. He’s not actually sure when he slept last- don’t think about it -so some fuzz is to be expected. Humid air coats his raw throat as he breathes and determinedly does not think about why he’s awake and exhausted and grieving and alone -
He breathes in past the catch in his breath. The moonlight dances across the water, uncaring.
He wants to stop caring too.
That’s a lie.
He wants to not be alone so badly it hurts and hurts and no fuck this he’s not thinking about it. Not right now.
He watches the lights flicker among the lotuses and suddenly he is six and spinning a tale to impress his new big brother-
Jiang Cheng wades into the water.
There was a lotus pond in that scrap of a settlement, he remembers. A muddy, scraped out hole with the only color in the entire place that wasn’t red.
“What if someone dies where there’s no lotuses?” the memory of a child asks-
The water is cold and soaks through his robes instantly. Silty mud squishes up through his toes, sunken sticks scratching like- don’t think about it.
Lotus roots curl around him, flowers drifting away as he presses slowly through the water.
“You must be careful, A-Cheng, they will startle if you move too fast-”
The frog is a soft, wet weight in his hands, far too light for what it carries. Water seeps between his fingers, pools in the creases of his palm. The little light on the frog’s back flickers as if in echo to the fine trembling of his hands. Jiang Cheng is terrified to try to close his fingers, to cup his hands more than they are, to hold like he should have years ago when something very different rested in his hands.
The frog hasn’t moved.
He can feel the tiny rib cage flutter against his skin. They like the warmth, he remembers A-Jie telling them, frogs and salamanders and other things cool to the touch. They’re a bit like the dead, that way.
The ghost fire pulses, slow like a resting heartbeat.
A name scratches at his throat and he wants to choke it back because if he’s wrong-
The frog shifts.
“Wei Wuxian,” rips out of him, nearly silent despite the way he wants to scream.
The ghost fire
flares .
There’s a lotus pond in the Burial Mounds-
“That’s the Frog of Souls,” Jiang Cheng lies with the imperious confidence of a six year old, “It guides lost spirits across the lotuses to the afterlife.”
“Ooooh,” Wei Ying says, nodding. A pause. “Is it only for where there’s lotuses?”
“Um,” says Jiang Cheng, who hadn’t thought that far. “Yeah, but there’s lotuses everywhere, right?”
“I think so?”
“So they’re wherever there’s lotuses. An’, and they all come back here!”
“Why?”
“‘Cause Lotus Pier is the best!”
“Huh,” Wei Ying’s nose scrunches in what Jiang Cheng will eventually recognize as his ‘ramble incoming’ face. “But what if-”
The curfew bell tolls, rolling over the water and cutting Wei Ying off as the pair scramble for home. Lights flicker over the lake behind them in the slow drifting dots of fireflies, an echo to the stars over the flowers in dark water.
(wei ying had never seen such a thing before, had asked his new shidi who wanted to know something more than this new boy, and wei ying would repeat it to the even littler shidi who repeat it and it becomes a silly little legend that an older wei wuxian will tease jiang cheng about and jiang cheng can tease back about him believing it -
but that’s later)
There’s a lotus pond in the Burial Mounds and the water is turning red-
(end)