Chapter Text
A dying breed, that’s what they called her.
Never to her face, but the wind carried countless whispers. She could not fault them, of course. They were not necessarily wrong. These once fresh paths lay broken and littered with all manner of unkind beasts and bones. Horrible things they were, all beget with an insatiable taste for flesh and blood. Every mortal she’d ever known to walk these paths had fallen victim. It was a pity really, but not her place to interfere.
The Snowhills were hers to maintain, monsters and mortals aside.
The winds of the Snowhills were almost as much of a blight to her work as the yaoguai. Her stores of sturdy material had long since dried up. It could not be helped. Shrine maintenance was not meant to fall on the shoulders of a single shrine maiden. The woman suppressed a scoff as she gathered her tool wrap. How long had it been since she’d last seen one of her sisters? The other pure maidens had long since retreated to the safety of the heavenly court. Perhaps they had been reassigned? She’d likely never know.
She slung the leather pack over her shoulder and retrieved her spear from its perch against the wall. It was heavy, pure steel, with one sharpened side. The metal was dulled with use, and under different circumstances the maiden may have felt shame. She tightened the simple wrap near the blade with a grumble.
The hair on the back of her neck pricked. She shifted a fraction to the left, the arrow that shot through her floorboards just barely missing her foot. Her stilted shed bore many annoying eyesore arrows. The resident pests were rather fond of using it for impromptu target practice.
With a frown the maiden dove headfirst from the doorway of her high perch, bringing the blade of the spear through the skull of a yaoguai arbalist. Planting her feet on his shoulders, she pushed off towards the thick brush near the stone walls where the other scout preferred to hide.
She found it empty.
“Curious…” She muttered, ignoring the cries of the yaoguai behind her as he thrashed into dust.
The little ones always traveled in pairs, even trios if she was being particularly lazy with her cullings. A small bloom of hope budded in her chest but she was quick to smother it. It was a foolish thought. Even if one of her sisters had deigned to return it would have had no effect on the yaoguai’s numbers.
Per the courts and traditions, shrine maidens were not meant to spill blood.
Perhaps that is why she remained alone. Perhaps her sisters no longer recognised whatever she had become in her quest for preservation of the lands. The maiden’s ear twitched at the distant sound of crunching snow. Uninterested in flipping her itinerary fully in favor of a culling, the shrine maiden retreated to the overgrowth of brush and waited. Confusion bubbled as the footsteps grew nearer. By now she was able to place most yaoguai by their canter. The bats tended to shuffle through the snow with disjointed steps, constantly flapping their wings. The monks also moved in a quiet slow shuffle unless angered.
But no, this one was different. Their footsteps did not seem hindered by the snow at all. Either tall or strong then. Their weapon was drawn, heavy from the sound of it. It reverberated as it skipped over the broken brick and stone beneath the snow. A long weapon then. She might’ve mistaken them for that blasted white macaque if their footsteps didn’t sound so sober.
That horrid monkey’s sword had given her many a close call.
A jet of wind ripped through the ruins, rattling the brush hard enough to dislodge the snow. The maiden shuddered, muffling her sniffles with her sleeve. A mere second passed before she found the end of an intricate metal staff mere inches from caving in her head. With a startled hiss, she leapt back but the intruder was keen to give her no quarter. He charged through the brush as though they were mere suggestion. She leapt and ducked away from his onslaught for maybe a few seconds before catching a rather nasty sideswipe that sent her sprawling across the bricks.
The maiden snarled, pitching forward into a roll and just barely missing what sounded like the intruder crumbling the bricks where she’d landed to dust. This was decidedly not the way she’d hoped to start her morning. Suffering the complaints of her pride, she sprinted to the edge of the impromptu arena and scaled the large stone wall. When there was a distinct lack of clambering after her, she risked a peek.
Another monkey. How wonderful.
At least this one didn’t seem keen to spend his days wandering drunken and loud about her grounds.
This one seemed younger, sharper, with brown fur and an odd black mask obscuring his face. He twirled his staff as he stared up at her but did not follow. The shrine maiden scoffed. A monkey that does not climb? The gourdmond would never believe it. Slowly, the woman shifted from all fours up to her feet. The monkey stopped twirling his staff.
“I have no quarrel with you, traveler.” She called below, “so long as you are not yaoguai, you are welcome in these lands.”
He did not respond, but his posture relaxed ever so slightly. Taking that as a welcome sign, she offered a small perfunctory bow. It had been some time since she’d last had reason to offer introductions.
“I am the Snowhill shrine maiden.” She recited calmly, ignoring the echo of pain in her ribs. “May you pass peacefully through the new west.”
She raised from her bow, finding the monkey had fully relaxed from battle. After a bit of hesitation, she dropped from the high walls. Her lost spear had scattered away just behind the traveler. With another shallow bow, hands brought together respectfully, she passed him to retrieve her weapon. By the time she turned back, he was gone.
Fine by her.
The rest of the day passed without incident, it took two more before she saw the strange traveler again. Not that she expected to at all. He was rather preoccupied at the time, embroiled in battle with a small horde of undead monks. While loud, they were far away enough to safely ignore. If the traveler could catch her off guard, the undead should pose no true issue to him. She knelt in front of the shrine with a frown and unrolled her leather pack.
This shrine was looking particularly poorly. With her stores in the state they were, many shrines had devolved into mere woven bundles of sticks and twigs. The only precious piece that remained was the incense bowl. With a small sigh, she took up her hand brush and began clearing away the drifts from the roof. She shoveled away the snow in a neat half circle and re-tied the broken weaves. Those weaves were her last bastion of quality, string woven with spider silks for a blessing of strength.
Snowy footsteps crunched behind her as she was polishing the incense offering bowl. A brief backwards glance revealed it was only the traveler. She paid him no mind. He stopped a few feet away…and just stood there. Waiting. A hot flush of annoyance surged in her ears, but she stubbornly ignored his pointed gaze and continued her polishing. Far be it from her to allow the poor manners of others to interrupt her work.
Unfortunately, her stubbornness seemed evenly matched.
His gaze bore into the back of her skull until she relented with a sigh. Bowl still in hand she turned to the traveler, the “Destined One” he was called according to the whispers on the wind. She suppressed a small scoff. Prophecies and destiny had never interested her much. Such things were not her business and far, far “above her paygrade” as the mortals might say. Though…perhaps if he had the patience to wait, he wouldn’t be disagreeable to some work in the meantime.
Steeling her expression, the shrine maiden bore into his gaze with her own.
“If you are waiting on me, you will be waiting a while.” She said sternly, gesturing to her tools, “If you insist on waiting, do make yourself useful.” She opened her palm, her axe flying to it with a satisfying smack. She tossed it toward him. “I need wood. Good wood. Shrines are more powerful the better they are cared for if that is any fodder for your consideration.”
The axe landed in the snow at his feet, which he stared at with a rather dumb expression. She turned back to her polishing. Whether he picked it up or not, it mattered little, she would simply carry on as she had been. To her delight, there was a brief moment of awkward snow shuffling before his footsteps wandered away. A backwards glance revealed her axe to be missing. She smiled, pleased with her good luck. Perhaps the Heavenly Courts still smiled on her, though the thought made her scoff.
If her peers from her days in the palace courts could see her now they’d drag her away kicking and screaming with scoldings of blasphemy. The thought of reassignment was a looming one that carried with it the threat of a weighty punishment. Every day she wandered with the lingering fear that one day one of her peers may remember her, or worse, come looking for her. Her sisters were one thing, they were aware of her stubborn nature. But the others? She could not count on such understanding.
She continued polishing the bowl to a shine before filling it with fresh white powder. She smoothed the powder with delicate tools until it resembled untrodden snow. She lit a stick of incense, admiring the bright golden glow of the flames as they engulfed the sticky sap brimming with salt. Her peaceful moment of quiet admiration was quickly cut short with a loud echoing bang. The sound made her jump hard enough to kick the business end of her shovel and she collapsed into a heap in the snow, clutching her toes. She cursed under her breath, hearing a distant warbling cackle blow by on the breeze.
She grumbled and roughly tied away her tools. Once safely secured, she slung the pack over her shoulder and grumpily trudged off in the direction of the noise. She could never understand how mortal men could stand to walk everywhere. As the shrines had fallen into disrepair, her magic had soon followed. She could hardly even summon enough power to slow her descent from high walls now. Gone were the days of traversing the streets of mortals, glamoured and unseen or passing overhead by an unassuming form.
No, now she had to do as mortals did. One day she might even be mistaken for one. The thought made her grimace.
Unsurprisingly, she found a monkey at the source of all the noise. Thankfully it was the politer one. A large stack of logs sat off to the side waiting to be split into smaller sections. Most were rather small, just enough that she could nearly touch fingertips around the circumference, but they would still do.
“That is enough for now, thank you.” The maiden called, stopping the monkey mid-blow.
He turned to look at her with a rather unreadable expression.
She gestured to the woodpile. “If I could pester you a bit longer, it would be difficult to carry all of this on my own.”
With a huff so small she almost didn’t catch it, the monkey spun her axe in hand and offered her the hilt. She took it with a grateful nod, stepping out of his way. In an impressive display of strength, he shouldered the long wooden load in one smooth motion. He was showing off, but she found she didn’t quite mind.
“Many thanks, traveler, my shed is not far.” The maiden assured him, taking the lead. “I will see to it that you are compensated appropriately.”
He followed without complaint or anything really. Perhaps this monkey had befallen the same curse as the Macaque who had traded his true voice for power. The maiden sniffed with disgust. Yellowbrow’s golden-plated pungence had been long declared unwelcome in the Snowhills, not that it tended to stop him. The pair trudged the five minute walk in awkward silence. Less awkward than it would have been however, as he’d traded out his black mask for a sleek metal headband. The golden metal was tarnished and in desperate need of a good polish, but the design was rather pretty albeit simple.
It felt oddly familiar, but the maiden couldn’t quite place it.
She led him back to the resource shed near where they’d first fought. There wasn’t really any proper place assigned for full uncut tree trunks, so the monkey merely laid them on the ground looking at her expectantly.
“Yes, yes, just a moment.” The maiden sighed, leaping up to the raised shed’s porch. It took a few minutes of digging through the shelves and old boxes before she found it, but it looked as beautiful as the day she’d stored it.
She leapt back down, a surge of sentimental tightness in her chest as she rolled the beads between her fingers.
“As thanks,” the maiden said softly, handing the silent monkey her precious curio, a set of lovingly cared for prayer beads. “These beads were blessed by Guanyin herself and will amplify all magical skills you may acquire on your journey. Perhaps it’s not the best gift if you are still experimenting, but you seem a bit more…seasoned, than that.” The maiden smiled fondly as she dropped the beads into his waiting palm. “As for the shrine, it has been renewed. You should feel a difference if you happen to stop by and offer your prayers.”
The monkey said, shockingly, nothing in response to all of this. She admittedly found this a tad annoying. That was an exceptionally precious reward for only cutting down some wood. He dangled the beads, inspecting them as they glinted. He let out a small satisfied sound before tucking them away in a pocket. The atmosphere teetered into awkwardness once more. The maiden fiddled with the red silk ribbons on her sleeves. She opened her mouth to speak, but when she turned to meet the traveler’s gaze she found him pointing at her.
“...yes?” The maiden asked slowly.
There was a twinge of frustration in his gaze now and he gestured to her from head to toe. Unsure what he was asking but confident enough to hazard a guess, she faced him fully and offered a shallow bow.
“I am called Xuelan.” The maiden said, raising and returning the gesture. “And you are called?”
The monkey nodded respectfully, but ignored her question. He returned her bow and promptly took off in the direction of the shrine.
Xuelan sniffed, “...rude monkey.” She muttered, jumping back up into her shed in search of her neglected tools. It had been months since she’d last seen her wood planer but she’d turn this shed upside-down if she had too.
Far be it from her to let “destined” luck go to waste.