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Long Ago…
They decided to stop just a short while before sunset. The day had been one of following a stream in the lower country, and the cool of the evening was beginning to come on, so Sanzang gave the command by a level clearing not far from the water. The air, in addition to being cool, was only slightly damp, seasoned with just a pinch of wind, which carried the sounds of evening with it through the sparse woods and patches of tall grass.
With a practiced ease, Wukong helped him down from his saddle. The monk then turned around and nodded his thanks to the horse that bore him. The horse nodded back. In the next instant, the air was filled with a glistening motion of light and the sound of crackling lightning, and where there had been a horse, there was now a dragon. A little dragon, a great deal littler than the behemoth that had erupted from a river, snapped up Sanzang’s first horse, and duelled Wukong like a living thunderstorm, but a dragon nonetheless, which slid gracefully through the air to coil himself up by the spot where Wujing was already gathering kindling.
Bajie had been poling the luggage that day, and he also made his way over. Letting the pole and the bundles fall to earth with as much grace as his nature allowed. He then made a show of stretching out his back and groaning, as if in ecstatic relief to be rid of some monumental weight. Wukong rolled his eyes at this, and, if asked, Sanzang would’ve been forced to admit to having had to resist the urge to do much the same. Bajie made such shows almost every time the duty of bearing the luggage fell to him, as though they had not all seen him help to push up a tree one thousand chi tall, or smash through mountain tops with his rake as through paper screens. Goodness’ sake, his rake alone weighed far more than all their luggage together.
The glare of the sun had ceased to offend at that point, and so Sanzang removed his broad-brimmed bamboo hat and handed it over to Wukong, taking his Vairocana cap in exchange, and placing it reverently on his head. Both of them then walked over to the beginnings of their makeshift camp. Wukong placed the bamboo hat by the luggage and began to unpack.
They had a small bag of rice that had been begged off a family of farmers in a village about a week back. As their journey progressed, Sanzang began to chide Wukong and Wujing, and eventually Lie as well, to take some food when they had to cook in the wilds like this (Bajie didn’t need encouragement.) He, in turn, had been reminded that, while they disciples could all feed off the dew and mist if need be, and Lie could always chase out a few wild deer or goats should the urge strike him, he still required regular meals, and they could hardly take chances on him going hungry. He (and Bajie) had leapt to the natural retort of Wukong’s cloud somersault, and this they could hardly deny. In the end, they agreed that they would eat with him when they could, but if food was low, to only take a small portion in comparison.
Wukong and Wujing swiftly got the fire going. As they worked to prepare the rice, Sanzang found himself looking out at the sky over the stream. The constellations were taking their place on the stage of night, and the Moon rose with their coming. It was waxing almost full, and so our master of the law turned back to face his disciples.
“Wukong,” the selfsame Pilgrim looked up at this, “Chang’e’s light is quite full tonight, and I was hoping to take a stroll by the stream there before our dinner. Please walk with me as I do, for I wish to enjoy your company.” Wukong half-grinned and rose to his feet in an instant.
“Certainly, master. Bajie,” He called out to Idiot, “help younger brother with our supper while old Sun is off walking.” Idiot, who had been reclining on the ground, opened his eyes and snorted with a grimace.
“Eh? What’s this? Why should old Zhu be made to work when I’ve been carrying that heavy load all day, letting you go off and achieve some extra merit all by yourself?”
“Coolie,” Wukong sniped back, “what ‘extra merit’ are you talking about? Keeping a man company is hardly a big thing.” Lie lazily cracked open an eye at this point from where he was lying by the fire, to get a look at the proceedings.
“Well, suppose you run into some monster or fiend, then you’d get the merit of safeguarding master all to yourself.” At this, Sanzang reinserted himself.
“Bajie, don’t talk such nonsense. Wukong and I will not be walking far, and you need not concern yourself with merit at such a time anyhow.”
“Brother,” Wujing chose this moment to interject, “The fire is started, and there is not much work to prepare dinner. You may continue to rest if you wish; I really don’t mind.” Bajie at least had the dignity to look somewhat mollified at this.
“Well, well, far be it from me to make complaints where none are really possible.” With that, he lay back down, and Sandy returned to their dinner. Lie cast his open eye between the various pilgrims, before snorting a brief puff of steam from his nostrils, and settling his head back down again to rest. By this point, Wukong was more than a little exasperated and motioned for Sanzang to begin walking, which he did.
Dusk had already withdrawn the last of her burnt orange fingers from the surface of the stream when they pulled up beside it and began to pace its edge with leisurely steps. Wukong kept to the right beside the stream, while Sanzang walked beside him, further from the bank. Though dusk had retreated, the Moon’s silvery light illuminated everything nicely, treating them to the sight of water glistening as it made a game of leaping and falling and tumbling over the rocks of the streambed, which took this abuse in the philosophical manner of their kind. Dragonflies had begun the hunt for their evening meal, and could be seen chasing their prey over the waters, across the roots of the trees, and through the hanging boughs of the same. Said boughs could be seen reaching down to their waterlogged roots, giving them the aspect of Yogis doing exercises.
Wukong took in everything around him as he walked, his eyes roaming quickly, yet somehow unhurried. His face and attitude were relaxed, yet every step of his landed sure and deliberate without ever a glance down to the uneven floor beneath him. His nose would occasionally twitch ever so slightly, and his face bore the faint, yet utterly sincere smile of an old man listening to the long and rambling story of a young child about… something or other (even odds as to whether that something will be made halfway clear) as he followed the river in its play.
Though treading on slightly more level ground, Sanzang’s gait betrayed an obvious lack of surety in comparison. His eyes remained more on the patchwork of roots, dirt, and various organic detritus below him than not. His feet landed at irregular intervals and in irregular manners, as he tried his best to keep pace. He alternated between stepping over roots, finding the right way to step on rocks, and enjoying slight reprieves of walking through more level sections for a few steps. When he could spare them, he let his eyes sojourn upwards. With them, he took in the sight of the moonlight on the river. The flow of the water under the reflection gave the impression that she had come down to play in it, bathing with gaiety as the trees, her playful handmaidens, kept watch around her, dressed in their finery of green, and whispering little jokes to themselves as the wind blew through their bran—
There was, at that moment, a feeling of the world giving way beneath Sanzang, as he realized just then that the root he’d avoided had, in fact, a twin. Right as his mind grasped this fact, it immediately seized upon the related thought that he should probably do something to arrest the movement of the world around him—
And then these thoughts, in their turn, were cut off by the sensation of wiry arms under his own arm and chest, and the world suddenly being caught in its fall and put to rights.
He blinked, his mind trying to catch up with the last second. It did so as he was set upright, which was for the good, as it meant he could reposition his feet and keep the world in place again. The time in which he made his footing sure on a reality that was now mercifully stable once more was also when he properly realized just who had been the one to arrest his fall. The monkey in question sported a wry smile that he didn’t seem to be trying particularly hard to hide. Wukong let his grip loosen on his master in a questioning sort of way, which asked him, with the patient attitude of a parent, if he was really secured from falling once again. Trying his best to conceal the blush of embarrassment at his clumsiness, Sanzang thanked his disciple as he adjusted his Vairocana cap back into place, and the latter returned his arms to his back. Wukong told him not to think of it, as he turned to begin walking once more.
They continued on, Sanzang giving more notice to his footing, and not to Wukong’s eye now straying at regular intervals onto him, really. Before too very long, they reached a point where the stream widened out. With room to stretch its limbs, it decided to take a break from its games with the rocks and roots, and relax for a bit as it drifted onwards. Both Pilgrim and his master evidently saw the wisdom in this, as they pulled to a stop a little ways beyond the point of expansion, standing beside each other to look out over the water.
The stream hadn’t exactly been loud before, but there was something nice about how it quieted now. It gave a bit more play to the other sounds of the night. The quiet sounds of bugs and breeze, and the occasional snippet of frog song, were now free to lend a relaxing mood to the air around them. One could notice just how unobtrusive they were, and in this way, they created a sense of peace.
The moon could be seen as appreciative of this peace, as she now reflected clearly in the calm, broad waters of the stream. While Wukong looked up at her true self in the sky and then across the stars that surrounded her, Sanzang found his gaze fixed on the stream’s surface. Even at its expanded size, it could hardly be called anything close to a river, yet Sanzang still found that (quite by chance really) it reminded him of a river.
A very specific point in a very specific river.
A river that had swallowed up a bloody, still warm liver and heart, while an old man, a young monk, and a poor woman had wept beside it, and then it was as if a yaoguai snatched that young monk away on a baleful cloud (and didn’t he know, all too well how that felt now?) to the arms of another man, and the memory of that same poor woman—
He drew in a shallow, almost inaudible hiss, and grimaced, now really not noticing when his companion’s eyes snapped from the sky over to him. He released his breath and moved his gaze to the water nearer his feet. Why now? Why, after all the giant rivers, and yaoguais and terrors was he torturing himself with this now? He closed his eyes, and forced another breath into his lungs and out again.
“...she saw that the five heaps were but emptiness, and transcended all sufferings.” He let the words come out in a whisper, his voice not betraying the beg for comfort within them.
When he opened his eyes again, he finally noticed Wukong’s eyes upon him, but he simply returned to looking down at the stream. After a moment, Wukong’s gaze also fell, and then turned back ahead of him, landing on the far bank. There was quiet. The moon continued her rise, and the stream its journey.
“Master.” Sanzang hmm-ed quietly at Wukong’s voice, turning now to look at him. The monkey said nothing a moment longer before he continued. “Do you remember what I told you about the distance we must travel?”
Sanzang’s brow furrowed slightly at this. As a matter of fact, he remembered quite a few things about that, the most prominent one being the distance itself: 108,000 li, which still gave him some pause to think about, as he was fairly sure he recalled being told that the Earth itself wasn’t even that big around in circumference. He’d asked Wukong about this at one point, and he had replied with something to the effect that, when it came to journeys to enlightenment, mortal geography need not apply. Then he had said something to himself about “yaoguai country” that Sanzang couldn’t parse, and the monk had let the subject drop. He was fairly certain that that wasn’t what Wukong was referring to now though. Fortunately, all that memorization of sutras had, naturally, given him an excellent memory.
“Now, let me see.” The monk cast his mind back. “You said that, even in a thousand lifetimes of walking, I would find it difficult to go where I would, but that when I perceive, through the resoluteness of my will, the Buddha-nature in all things, and when every one of my thoughts goes back to its very source in my memory, that will be the time we arrive at Spirit Mountain. Is that not right, Wukong?” Wukong smiled at this.
“Quite right, Master,” he replied, his eyes moving back up to the sky just beyond the tree line of the far bank. He didn’t say anything else for a moment, Sanzang simply watching him as he continued to take in the night sky, like a speaker who sips on water before continuing their speech.
“She moved in the deep course of the perfection of wisdom, and she perceived, achieved all that I’ve said, and all that you’ve heard. Yet when she did, it moved her to compassion, and in this compassion she chose to remain a Bodhisattva, and to be a goddess of mercy.
“She chose to help others to find the Way.”
Wukong kept his eyes on the stars as he spoke, while Sanzang kept his on him. In the quiet, he realized the subtle sounds of the flowing waters, and turned again to face the stream.
The sounds of insects shifted volume and pitch in the air.
The trees kept their rustling vigil.
A frog gave the monk no mind as he hopped a course before his feet on evening business.
The moon lay calm on the water.
A monkey and a monk stood by a streambank, attempting to perceive the real.
“...Thank you, disciple.”
“Speak nothing of it.”
The stars really were beautiful that night.
There wasn’t any real sensation of time as they stood there. As far as Sanzang could tell it might’ve been ten seconds or ten kalpas. Somehow though, he found himself neither jarred nor startled when Wukong spoke up again.
“Well, we should go back to the others now.” Wukong turned to move towards the way they came, and gestured for Sanzang to walk away from the bank, which the monk did with a nod of thanks. “Younger brother will be finished with preparing the food in a moment,” he continued, as they began the walk back, leaving the calm waters behind them.
This time, as they made their way along the stream, Wukong kept more towards the trees, and away from the bank, and Sanzang found himself naturally falling into step behind him. His eyes left the sights around him to focus on Wukong’s steps, using them to know how not to fall again.
In this way, they arrived back where the others were barely after Sanzang even realized it. Wujing had the bowls and the mats laid out, and a steaming vessel of something that smelled far better than it had any right to. Wukong went forward to inspect Wujing’s work, while Sanzang held back just a moment to take one last look at the stars before the move into the firelight would destroy and overwhelm all sight of them. He found himself smiling slightly as he heard over his shoulder Wukong’s incredulity at learning that Bajie had, in fact, helped by fetching some water, as well as the latter’s (possibly mock) indignation at said senior brother's incredulity. He couldn’t really hear them, but it wasn’t hard to imagine Wujing’s indulgent, faux aloof air at his elder brothers’ antics, or Lie’s comfortable indifference to the world around him. Then, with this final look done, Sanzang turned to the light and dinner with his friends.
Now…
There were some very nice smells wafting from a pair of pans on the stovetop, as Peizhi worked on the last bit of cooking for dinner. In one were a number of xiaolongbao, of the sort that came frozen in a bag, a bit disappointingly. It was a brand Peizhi trusted, though, and he felt that something of a treat was in order.
The fact of a strange girl now living in his home may have been a bit of a system shock for him, but he had, by all rights, risen to the occasion admirably, and even with his concerns about the situation still occupying a somewhat regular place in the forefront of his consciousness, he could have hardly missed that she was, for one, putting a very brave face on something that was rather much for her as well, and, for another, working herself very hard. He wasn’t really privy to the physical aspect of her exercise anymore, now that she and his other guest had begun doing that away from the shop, but he certainly saw how tired she was when they got back, and how much she devoted herself to reading and writing in her room when she was home. All that to say that, when he saw the bags of soup dumplings in the store, he’d felt almost no hesitation in buying some.
Returning to the stove, the other pan beside the dumplings just had some sautéed broccolini, so they’d have something green to go with their meal. Aside from that, a bit of rice currently steaming in the cooker would then serve to round out everything nicely.
With all that just about done, he turned from the stove, and cast his gaze instead onto the monkey man currently sitting in his kitchen window.
That was the other system shock he now had to deal with, and despite it being a more established one, he still hadn’t quite found a way to get used to it. Every time he almost did, the sheer weirdness of his current life would get driven home to him again, and his efforts to get his brain to accept his new reality would all fall to pieces before him.
He wondered, somewhat sardonically, if he was getting used to not getting used to this.
Wukong himself was propped up on the sill, with one leg crossed over it, his back against the frame, and the other leg on the floor inside. From where he sat, he was looking up and out at the sky, his whole attitude relaxed yet attentive. Peizhi noted all this with some confusion. You couldn’t see the stars in Brockton Bay on a clear night, so what exactly was he looking at out that window?
His mind still mainly on the strangeness of his guest, Peizhi finally switched off the burners, and took a few steps away from the stove towards him. He coughed in as soft a manner as he thought he could. It sounded a bit like a kitten, but as far as he was concerned, that was for the best. Despite the many relaxing evenings he’d still had with his guest, a part of him—which drew renewed strength whenever another incident appeared on the news—was still frightened of him. Wukong blinked and looked over at his host, a faint smile gracing his lips, and his eyes slightly wide, as if taking in a reality they had ever so slightly forgotten existed.
“Ah, Peizhi-xiansheng, my apologies; I was lost in some reminiscences.”
“Oh, no, that’s quite alright. I just wanted to tell you that dinner will be ready in a moment. I just have to plate things really.”
“Excellent, I’ll go fetch young Taylor.” He immediately hopped up with that strangely manic, yet not unsettling energy of his, and sauntered out of the kitchen to the hall, his tail swaying behind him as he walked. Peizhi had realized a little time ago that the tail could serve as some insight into Wukong’s feelings, nothing major really. All he’d really gleaned for sure at this point was that relaxed meant relaxed, and tense meant tense, hardly groundbreaking stuff, but he’d tried to be observant nonetheless. As it was, the tail seemed relaxed, and its movements were smooth, but it was still being held, not exactly high, but fair ways away from the floor—he almost never let it droop all the way to the floor, at least not while walking—and Peizhi wondered what exactly this meant as he turned back to the countertop.
He had the utensils and napkins laid out by the time Taylor and Wukong walked back into the room, and was just beginning to make up the plates. Both the monkey and the teen were curious about what exactly he’d made for them. The ignorance of the former took him by surprise, but he quickly chalked it up to another cape quirk that wasn’t worth the effort trying to understand. Regardless, they were a hit with the both of them, and though he explained very clearly to Wukong just how little praise he deserved for the buns—who once again marveled at the concept of frozen food, and pre-prepared meals, while he and Taylor discretely shared a slightly incredulous look—he couldn’t help but feel a little pleased with himself for making a monkey man and a superpowered teen a little more happy on a quiet evening. It was certainly a strange life he now lived.
But it had its moments.