Archive of Our Own

The rain came down in dominating sheets, the streets were busy and bright with last-minute purchases and reasons not to go home after dinner, and Shi Qingxuan would have really enjoyed a dry place to sleep that wasn't a General Ming Guang temple. He'd helped get her into the mess, and she knew better than to think he'd help get her out of it.

Not that she wanted him to try. She wasn't owed any favours like that, not from anyone, no matter how much Xianle and Crimson Rain Sought Flower hinted that they had favours to give, when she saw them. What little she saw of them, nowadays. It had been a little over a year now since Crimson Rain Sought Flower had returned, a little over a year since she'd seen most of the people she once considered friends for all eternity.

A little over a year since she'd last seen the man she still recognized on some level as Ming-xiong. Even as she had no other option but to understand that Ming-xiong had never really existed. He had always and only ever been Ship-Sinking Black Water, the man who'd devoured her nightmares long before she'd known his name, and then become said nightmares. He was everything she had left to fear.

He'd shown up at that celebration in Puqi Village, a shaky but standing Yin Yu on his arm, expression empty. He'd delivered the young hero to a chair with his peers. He'd looked up, and his eyes had met hers. Then he'd dematerialized into a splash of water that was gone as quickly as he'd arrived, before she'd even had a chance to call out his name. She'd been missing opportunities to do that a lot, it seemed.

He'd seen her. She'd seen him. His eyes, that impossible no-colour blue like a slice of the ocean imprisoned in his irises, had widened. He'd never allowed anyone to know him, not really, but she'd snuck into his ribcage and done it anyway, and just before he'd disappeared…

There had been fear in his eyes. No other reaction would have hurt as much as the one she'd gotten. It hurt even now.

A commotion ahead of her drew her out of her woolgathering. Four men, being shoved out of a a tavern. An old woman holding a large knife, her apron stained and getting soaked as she pushed them out. "We're paying customers!"

"You're disrupting my establishment!" she yelled back, gesturing towards them with the knife. It was a large rectangular thing, a little dirty from just being used, the sort of butcher's knife that the men clearly didn't really want to get stabbed by.

"He deserved the beating he got!"

"Get out!"

"Make us!" One of them men stepped forward. Shi Qingxuan's eyes widened, and she staggered forward as fast as she could. Her leg had never healed from that original injury. It probably never would. Payment, for all she'd taken. She stuck her cane out between them, forcing her way in, pain bolting up her body with every step.

"Hey! Hey hey hey-! There's no need for violence!" The old woman let her through, surprise on her face as Shi Qingxuan stood between her and the ruffians, glaring, gasping for breath. "Whether anyone deserved anything or not, it's done now, and you don't need to go any further!"

One of the men rounded on her. "Get lost, you! You're not a part of this!"

One of the others, whose breath smelled strongly of alcohol, grinned. "Wait, Linghui. If she don't want us in her tavern no more, no one's gonna miss this little thing."

She heard one of them crack their knuckles, and the old woman gasped out, "Now wait just one second," and after that, well, it really wasn't worth mentioning the consequences of her own choices, now, was it?

What woke her was oddly, the scent of fresh-cooked food. She didn't get that much anymore, and certainly not so close to her. Her eyes were open before she could identify anything in the smell of it, and once her eyes were open, she could see where she was. Or rather what was in front of her face, terrifying enough to make her think she hadn't actually woken up at all.

It was a skeleton. Not a human one, no, fortunately, but a fish skeleton, floating above her head, staring straight at her. She froze. She'd seen skeletal fish like that before, hadn't she? It wasn't a large fish by the sizes she knew had to be nearby, it was probably the length of her forearm, its head the size of a melon at most.

It opened its mouth, and dropped something heavy on her face. She flinched back, surprised by the weight of whatever it was bouncing off her jawline, and then caught it with her good arm. It felt cold, and heavy, like a polished rock. Moving as little as possible, she held the object up to the corner of her eye for inspection.

A ruby. A carved and polished ruby, the size of a winecup. Slowly, she sat up using her good arm, finding herself no longer convinced she was going to die. The skeletal fish swam a little backward, keeping itself at eye level. It was only once she'd sat up that she realized three things:

One, as she had suspected by the presence of the giant skeleton fish floating in front of her face, she was in Nether Water Manor, where her brother had been murdered and where she'd lost every stolen scrap of divinity and dignity she'd never deserved.

Two, her injuries from the fight had been treated. She could still feel the dull ache of them, but she had been bandaged and patched up, and she felt better than she had in weeks.

Three, there were at least eight skeletal fish floating in the room, and six of them were holding objects in their mouths, in a range from 'shiny' to 'visually dazzling'. As she shifted upright, she heard a soft crinkle from the blankets. She looked down, only to find that above the heavy, embroidered comforter she was underneath was a small pile of more valuables. Several gold chains and strings of pearls, coins from all over, seashells, jewels, shiny rocks, and a pair of silver glasses that looked strongly like Ming-xiong's.

He Xuan's, she supposed. He'd always had a habit of stowing them away when he wasn't actively looking at something. His penchant for doing so whenever her brother walked in the room, claiming that he'd seen enough, had long been a point of amusement for her. It hurt her heart to think of him, the way it always did, prim and proper and sullen but quietly amused at her antics.

Shi Qingxuan looked up at the bone fish. The bone fish looked at Shi Qingxuan. One of them approached her. Hesitantly, she held out her good hand, palm up, unsure if she was about to get bitten or not. The bone fish dropped a gold bracelet in her palm. It leaned down and nosed the back of her fingers. When she closed them around the bracelet, 'accepting' its gift, it made an odd gurgling noise, and swam a horizontal loop.

One of the other bone fish swam up to her, smacking the first out of its way with a lower-pitched gurgle. She couldn't help it: she laughed a little, it was cute. One by one, the bone fish offered her their shiny gifts, and she added them to the pile they'd already delivered while she was out. Once she had the full pile, she moved it all to the nightstand, and made to get up. There was food on the far wall, more food than was reasonable for anyone except He Xuan, and judging by the facts that the bone fish hadn't touched it and she was in a bedroom with a closed door and curtains concealing what seemed to be a floor-to-ceiling window instead of a far wall, it was probably for her.

Ming-xiong never had been good at guessing how much anyone else ate. On the rare occasions she would eat in the Earth Master Temple, he would always have enough for an army, and then he'd narrow his eyes at her when she was finished, a silent accusation that he thought she was going to wilt away and die or something. She'd teased him about it more times than she'd ever care to count.

Shi Qingxuan made to get up from the admittedly-pretty-comfortable bed. One of the bone fish gurgled at her, higher-pitched and a little frantic, shoving its nose into her sternum in some sort of insistence that she stay in bed.

"All right, all right-" she relented, moving back into bed. She could have pushed it aside, but she didn't want to see the poor thing cry. If bone fish could cry, that was. She smiled at it instead, drawing her best Lady Wind Master charm around her like a cloak. "Can you fetch me some breakfast, then, little one?"

That was either the correct thing to say or the complete wrong thing, because every single fish in the room perked up, dove for the table, and returned with the biggest dishes they could carry, be that in their jaws or balanced atop their skulls. At least one of them remembered to bring her chopsticks, but there was no way she was going to eat all this.

She made a point of trying, anyway. She'd been on the streets more than long enough to know better than to turn food down, even leftovers, even stale scraps. And the food here rivalled that of the heavens, far better fare than she could remember eating anytime recently.

When she couldn't eat any more, she collapsed back in bed, lightheaded and dizzy. At some point, sitting up had become too much, and she hadn't noticed while focused on eating. One of the bone fish trilled at her, and then dropped what felt like a cool, wet cloth over her eyes. "You're a good fish," she murmured. One of them nosed its way under her fingers, and she stroked it absently. She'd lost that fight yesterday - probably yesterday? She could have been out for days - and woken up here, her every need tended to by skeletal fish who could only have one owner.

She'd done a not-insignificant amount of research when she'd found the time. No other water ghost was known for keeping skeletal fish like He Xuan: he'd claimed that early, and no one was willing to steal his iconography. But why had he brought her here? She hadn't been anywhere near any familiar faces, and she doubted either of the remaining Ghost Kings would have actually kept an eye on her. The heavens had lost track of her, too, and she was fine with that.

She hadn't earned the right to be there in the first place, and avoiding their attention now seemed only fair. Was she dead, then? She didn't feel like it. Probably being dead would feel differently. Every time she'd touched a ghost, they'd always been so cold. She felt perfectly warm now, if a bit damp. So she probably wasn't dead? Ming-xiong wouldn't have brought her here to hurt her further: he couldn't have, he'd patched her up.

She knew better than to assume he'd gotten someone else to do it for him. For all his disguises, she knew him too well. She knew his handiwork too well, and in hindsight, all of his few junior officials had been clones. He didn't work with anyone but her if he had a choice in the matter. He hadn't worked with her voluntarily either, but he also hadn't pushed her away most of the time, either. No, this was his handiwork. He'd patched her up himself, and so he couldn't have brought her here to hurt her further. He'd promised he wouldn't. Her brother was dead, and He Xuan had told her he would pretend she didn't exist.

It hadn't stopped him from giving her back her fan just long enough to save everyone, but he'd still promised. What he wanted with her now, then… she couldn't begin to guess.

"Your master is weird and should tell me what he wants, so I can decide how mad at him I am," she informed the bone fish not currently under her hand, but the one worming its way onto the pillow beside her head. It chirped at her in response. She felt a faint weight near her hip, and another settle by her ribs, and by the time she was done counting the bone fish on the bed, she was asleep.

There was only one bone fish when she woke up again, still settled under her hand, but when she sat up again, two darted into the room. Different ones, she thought, although she wasn't sure. One had a small bundle in its jaws, and the other had a labelled jug balanced atop its head. The one with the bundle got to her first: it had brought her medicine, the sort she saw for junior officials who couldn't just be fixed with spiritual cures, but who needed actual, physical remedies for their injuries. Spiritual energy couldn't heal every wound, especially not for mortals like her. Still, she downed the medicine dry, expecting the other bone fish to have brought her some water.

She took the jug, and then promptly dropped it in her lap. It had not brought her water. The label on the jug was from a town she remembered up north, one known for its famous vineyards. She'd dragged her brother there once to sample some, and after how unenthusiastic he'd been about it, had taken Ming-xiong multiple times. That was one thing they had always been able to find commonality on: even though he didn't normally take note of food beyond the categories of 'safe to eat', 'not food', and 'eaten', she and Ming-xiong were both incredible wine snobs.

There was an equally-aged note on the corner of the label in Ming-xiong's neat, staccato calligraphy: noting only 'Give to Qingxuan after 200 years'. The wine itself was dated a hundred and fifty years prior. Her heart clenched in a vise. At one moment, at one point in time, he hadn't been planning to destroy her life. He had been expecting to still be her best friend, and he'd bought this and put it away to age, so that he could give it to her, this top-quality wine from one of her favourite wineries, that they'd gone to together multiple times.

Instead of drinking it, she held it to her chest, and cried. The bone fish surrounded her, making soft, almost-worried gurgles and trills at her. One nosed at her cheek, and another tangled itself in her hair. Yet the first, that had stayed while she'd slept, stayed exactly where it was on her lap, refusing to move away from her more than it had to.

She cried out her fill, and when that was done, she wiped her tears away on her sleeve. Had Ming-xiong dressed her while she was out…? He must have: she was wearing a deep blue-gray robe embroidered with silver patterns like clouds, like a storm at sunset. Maybe she shouldn't have wiped her tears on her sleeve. It was… pretty. Prettier than she'd seen in a long while.

"Come on, you," she murmured, voice a little hoarse from the tears. She set the jug of wine aside - some jugs are meant for drinking alone, and some really aren't, and some should only be drunk while using one's best friend as furniture - and rose, slowly, from the bed. The bone fish followed her, one resting at her hip in case she fell.

Her cane was resting beside the nightstand. Or rather, a cane, because it definitely wasn't the one she'd found and whittled into something vaguely usable. The one by the nightstand was polished onyx and carved bone, with a tassel by the grip in the seafoam-green that matched her eyes. Not one part of it was shiny save for a pearl on the tassel, a dark gray teardrop of a pearl that she would never have found in a mortal shop.

"What gives, Ming-xiong," she murmured, and picked up the cane. It was the perfect height. The bone was carved with fish under the waves on the bottom half, and a storm in the sky on the top half, and it was beautiful. Had he done this? She actually had no idea. What he did when he wasn't with her, she'd never known. He'd never let her get that close.

She leaned on it a moment, testing it. It was solid, and didn't give out underneath her. Smiling to herself, she glanced around the room. Her eyes had adjusted to the low but present light: the room was decorated with candles, shiny objects, and various personal items that- had these been from her temple? A fan was mounted on one wall, and she knew that fan, it had been in her bedroom at her temple in the heavens. The shelves were full of books and scrolls, and upon inspection, yes, they were all familiar.

Even her diaries were here, shelved, and not a single scrap out of place. Upon touching one, she could feel the spiritual power she'd once used to seal them from anyone but her. The seals hadn't broken. He Xuan had apparently looted a good chunk of her temple and brought it all here, but hadn't actually gone through her stuff.

One of the bone fish made some sort of cheeping noise at her. She glanced at it, and it tilted up and to the side, watching her. "There's something wrong with your master," she told it. It cheeped at her again.

She pushed the door of the bedroom open, and stepped into the hall. The air remained humid. It hadn't been this humid, or this warm, when she was last here. She would have noticed. As she turned towards the door to close it, she froze.

Her hair was floating. It moved behind her as if trailing in water, not too high, not too low. It was also blessedly, impossibly clean. It shone like it once had in the heavens, back in her prime, before she'd known anything was wrong. The perfection was spoiled by the aches she could still feel under her bandages, and the cane keeping her upright. That was correct, in some undefinable way she couldn't explain. Nothing should have been perfect: perfection always meant something was wrong, under the surface, in the undertow.

The bone fish chirped at her. She smiled at them. "Let's go find your master," she said, cheerfully enough. They were just fish, if cute ones, now that she knew they weren't a threat. They wouldn't hear the strain in her voice. "I need to yell at him."

They gurgled at her in answer.

Nether Water Manor, the last time she was here, had been lonely and empty and full of shadows and with a silence so loud it became oppressive. She had been able to see so many places where there should have been stuff: personal touches, paintings, shelves with nothing on them, anything to imply that the master of this place had a personality or actually spent time here. Every single empty place had stood accusing, every open shelf something she had taken from him.

That wasn't the case now. It was still mostly empty, still almost entirely impersonal save for her room apparently, but the silence was gone. She could hear bubbling, little pockets of air being released into water, and gurgling, and chirping. There hadn't been any bone fish in here before, but she could hear them now. Light seemed to glow from the walls, sealight-blue, even as she couldn't see a single actual source of light.

Bonefish of all sizes darted in and out of the hall, some of them carrying objects, some of them empty-mouthed. Whenever one got close, it would nose her gently in the nearest part of her body. If it had something in its mouth, it would carry on. If it didn't, almost all of the time, it would start to follow her, and soon she had a small following of almost a dozen bone fish, gurgling and chasing their tails while following her all the while.

One of the nearby doors was ajar, and so she pushed it the rest of the way open. This was another bedroom: much like hers, at least, but the curtains were drawn open and whoever lived here had not been expecting company. She would have backed out, stepped away from intruding on someone's privacy, if it weren't for the stillness of the room, if it weren't for the fact she could feel the faint pop of spiritual power at the doorway, the sort that indicated a stasis array.

Whoever had lived was clearly a had: the musty stillness in the room proved it. The bed was unmade and a few sets of black-and-gold robes were just tossed around, left lying wherever there was a spot to put them. Two of the walls were taken up by bookshelves, stuffed to the brim with scrolls and tomes that were only halfway organized. Shi Qingxuan stepped closer to read a couple of the titles, and then stepped back again when she realized they were all engineering and mathematics. The sort of thing Ming-xiong had used for his work.

The far wall beside the bed was taken up by a desk, perfectly preserved, waiting for the person who had been sketching all these blueprints to come back and finish their work. She wasn't one for engineering or architecture, but Ming-xiong was, and she'd always tried to learn at least a little about what he liked.

Had he ever liked these? Or was all this just part of He Xuan's Earth Master disguise? She reached out, tracing her fingertips across the blueprint on the desk. So much of this was nonsense to her: spiritual arrays, crafted perfectly, not a bit of it any form of cultivation she could recognize. Floorplans, and arrays worked into walls, and notes on where those arrays could circuit power. It took her a moment to recognize the floorplan: this was Nether Water Manor, and the handwriting wasn't He Xuan's, and the closest date she could find was three days before she and Xie Lian and Lang Qianqiu had taken that fateful mission down to Ghost City to 'rescue' Ming-xiong. If he'd ever needed rescuing in the first place.

Staring at the blueprint for another five minutes didn't glean her any new information, but did net her a bit of a headache. If she wanted to know what this was all about, there was only one person she could ask, and she was pretty sure this wasn't his bedroom. Ming-xiong was too neat, he wouldn't toss his laundry around like this. There wasn't anything new she could learn here.

Sighing, she turned to leave, leaning a little heavier on her cane. It was a good cane. Maybe when she could go back to the capital, He Xuan would let her keep it. Or maybe not, because it was the sort of thing someone would mug her for. It was pretty and it was valuable, and she liked the former more than the latter, but she wouldn't be able to keep it.

She was focused enough on staying upright through the ache that had at some point strengthened into a low burn that she didn't notice she was about to run directly into He Xuan until she almost did. She froze, trying to come to a hasty stop, and ended up stumbling forward into his chest instead.

He caught her. He was tall enough she didn't get a good look at his face before his hands were briefly on her arms, setting her back on her feet, and he took a decorous step back, giving them both a bit of space. She looked up, ready to apologize.

What she saw was a tall, pale man, a faint blue undertone to his skin that trended more sea-blue than bruise-violet, with jet-black hair left loose to fall to his hips. His face was unmarred, and his ears were long and pointed, set into a permanent downturn that left the tips level with his jaw. His eyes, behind his circular silver glasses, were an impossible shade that didn't exist on any living face: they were no colour at all, transparent layered on transparent over and over until they formed a blue so impossibly deep that she could drown in them.

Ming-xiong's eyes had been a simple, familiar brown. This wasn't Ming-xiong. He wasn't dressed like the Earth Master either, simple black and silver robes that he'd left open to his chest, displaying a blue tattoo on his clavicle very much like her own. She blinked. She'd remembered him having that, but she'd thought she'd dreamed it…

He Xuan regarded her with a neutral expression, although he blinked twice: he hadn't expected to see her here. His ears didn't rise or fall. She'd noticed that with Crimson Rain Sought Flower, too: he had ears just as long, and they were as expressive as the rest of his face, if not more so. That didn't seem true with He Xuan: his eyes were the only thing that might betray him. They didn't, right now, only expressed the open, abyssal sea.

Those eyes told her nothing. At least Ming-xiong's occasionally sparked with interest. One more mystery she wanted to solve, that she wasn't sure she had the right to solve, anymore. She still wanted to, though.

"You should be resting," he said, frostily. His voice wasn't that different from Ming-xiong's: same cadence, same chill, but the accent was wrong. Ming-xiong had once had the same accent as most Heavenly Officials, picked up early on in his tenure as the Earth Master. He Xuan sounded like the locals of Fu Gu, the sort she'd heard on the few days she'd been there.

He wasn't hiding anymore. Shi Qingxuan decided to assume that was a good thing. "I've been resting all day, M-"

She caught herself before she finished, and dropped her gaze, shame washing over her like a wave. "He-gongzi. …Sorry."

If she'd been brave enough to look up, she might have caught his reaction. She couldn't make herself do that - damn it, she needed to remember who she was talking to, Ming-xiong had never been real no matter how much she woke up in agony with his name on her lips - and so wasn't given any hints as to his mood.

"Take her back to her room," He Xuan said, his voice clipped, but not as… cold, as she expected? She looked up again, and caught the twitch of one eartip rising half an inch as he regarded the bone fish. It was almost lopsided, and ugh, he needed to stop being so mysterious and cute.

The bone fish tugged at her robes, and she made to shift her weight so she could follow them. One of them darted almost unseen under her legs. She tripped, falling backward, straight into multiple ribcages, her feet off the polished marble floor.

It seemed the bone fish could swarm, and swarm they had, and she was now sitting in a cloud of bone fish. It wasn't the most comfortable seat. It was also weightless, and a little like letting the winds decide how she was going to fly, and kind of fun.

She held tight to her cane, and when she looked up for a brief moment, He Xuan's expression was still neutral. One ear had lifted almost to the height of his temple, and there was a glitter in his eyes like sunlight on the water.

Shi Qingxuan didn't really get a chance to analyze that, because the bone fish were already carrying her away. They returned her very neatly to bed, two of them using their admittedly-very-toothy mouths to tug the covers up over her abdomen. Dinner had been set up on the desk… another feast, enough for probably six people.

"Why is he like this?" she asked, halfway to the bone fish, halfway to the air. Neither were going to answer her. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say he liked me! He can't possibly like me! Is this some weird punishment? Is he mad at me for something new? Am I a Devastation's new chew toy? Is this just what he does when he's bored?!"

She gestured as she spoke, shaking her head. One of the bone fish regarded her very intensely, and she held its stare for a moment, feeling as though she might get an answer. Then it cheeped at her.

When she woke, it… seemed to be morning? Probably? It was lighter in her room, even as the curtains were still closed, and none of the candles were lit. There was a bag of medicine on the nightstand, by the wine she'd set aside for when she hopefully would be able to corner He Xuan and convince him to maybe share it. She took it, relaxing when she felt most of the pain subside a couple moments later, clearing her mind of fog.

Just because she was no longer a stranger to pain didn't mean she wouldn't appreciate anything that helped it disperse. This now done, she tried to rise from her bed. A bone fish appeared from virtually nowhere, probably from under the bed. It rammed its face into her chest, chirping and gurgling with some urgency. It didn't hurt, it hadn't hit her very hard at all, but it seemed very firm that she shouldn't get up.

She wrapped one arm around it, holding it to her chest. This seemed to settle it, because it stopped chirping and just looked at her instead. Then she tried to get up again, and found herself blocked by two more bone fish, chittering nervously. Probably nervously. She was not an expert on identifying the emotions in the chittering of bone fish.

She huffed. "I'm going to get bored laying in bed all day!" she complained. "I'm not that injured anymore, and the medication helps a lot. I should get to explore and find out all of M- He-gongzi's secrets. He never let me find them out before!"

The three bone fish surrounding her chirped at each other, like a quick discussion, and then all three bolted off, leaving her alone. She huffed at this, too - had she upset them? Were they off to tattle to He Xuan about her intentions, and he was going to tie her to the bed or something? Once was enough for now, at least, since he wasn't being very clear on absolutely anything, the bastard - and then they came back.

Seven bone fish swam up to her, all of which held offerings of some kind or another. Only one had what she'd class as an actual shiny: a thin sapphire the size of her palm but no thicker than a pane of glass, carved intricately with a spell array. Not that she could identify what sort of array, but it shimmered with power and sparkled in the light.

"Pretty…" she breathed, staring at it for a moment before setting it aside. She didn't want to break it. The second bone fish offered her a leather-bound book, its covers all done with golden edges and calligraphy. A fish encyclopedia. She paged through it just long enough to not offend the bone fish who had brought it to her, and then set it aside.

The rest also had books, and scrolls, and various things to read that she could read in bed. There were a couple of famous stories, and a book of poetry, and one enterprising fish had stolen blueprints from the mysterious room down the hall, dated some three hundred years prior and completely illegible to her. The only thing that made sense with the signature, Ming Yi, but it wasn't Ming-xiong's handwriting. It was dated early on into his tenure as the Earth Master, so maybe he was just still refining the disguise.

Once she'd appreciated all of the gifts the bone fish had brought her, they darted out again, and came back with… more shinies and books. She was growing quite the collection she'd started to stack on the far side of the bed, big enough to share but currently being used as a desk, because the actual desk kept being overtaken by He Xuan's ideas of a light snack.

On the third round of 'give Qingxuan shinies for absolutely no reason that makes sense other than maybe she won't get up if she's distracted', one of the bone fish brought her back her whisk.

She'd left it in the heavens. It had gotten dusty and a bit muddy, and she'd tasked one of her juniors with cleaning it for when she got back. In hindsight, she was pretty sure that junior had been one of He Xuan's clones, but it was too painful to really think about. She didn't even know what happened to most of her juniors. She knew Lang Qianqiu had taken in a few, but that was all.

She sniffled, and studied her whisk. It had been empty of power when she'd left it behind. It thrummed with power now, power that didn't feel at all like her own, or like the familiar solid earthenness of Ming-xiong's. It felt like water, but not at all like her brother's, and…

"Why did your stupid master fill up my whisk?" she asked the bone fish, and her voice cracked only a little with unshed tears. "Did he mug my juniors?"

This sent the bone fish into a tizzy, swimming in circles and chittering loudly at each other. The one that brought her back her whisk got its tail-fins bit by one of the others, and then it yelped in pain.

"Hey- hey! There's no need for that!" She dropped her whisk and grabbed the bone fish, pulling it into her chest before gingerly stroking its bitten tail-fin. It cheeped at her sadly. "Are you okay, little one?"

It burrowed into her chest. She glared at the fish that bit it, which wilted under her gaze, dropping its skull and wiggling in place like a scolded child. "Be gentle, okay? It didn't do anything wrong, I'm just… I don't know. I'm confused and I don't know what he wants and everything still hurts. He's being weird."

This seemed to placate them, and while she appreciated the rest of their offerings, she set them aside and focused on the books. She could stand to read a little, and maybe they'd even have brought her something interesting.

As it turned out, while studying fish species was a pretty dry way to pass the afternoon, playing with the bone fish wasn't. She'd point to a species and read out the name, and they'd bring her bones, mostly out of their own skeletons, and drop them on the page. Closer inspection proved that the bones they'd bring her all matched, to each other and to the sketches of the fish's anatomy. They'd pop them back into their skeletons and roll in the air, cheeping and chirping and chasing each other around the room.

It only took her a few hours to figure out that they were all mismatched, each bone fish composed of multiple original skeletons that somehow made one cohesive whole. They didn't trade bones with each other, it seemed, but they definitely couldn't be fish ghosts: they'd have to individually be multiple ghosts for that to be the case, and they definitely weren't smart enough to be anything more than fish. Which of course was to say she'd spent fifteen minutes scaring them playing peek-a-boo, and any shinies that fell off the bed, they'd present to her like it was a new item entirely.

And so Shi Qingxuan came to learn the bone fish. She had no way of knowing if any of them had names, and was only sort of able to tell them apart: that one had a bit tail-fin, obviously, and another was missing some of its teeth, a third was half the size of the others but had fins much longer to compensate. And all of them wanted to snuggle right up to her and then get their ribs tangled in her hair. She'd had to stop her reading multiple times to untangle them, and it was kind of cute, even as it was also annoyingly painful.

Sometime… later? Probably in the evening? The light in the room was a blue trending into a lavender, like sunset, at least - she heard footsteps outside her room.

"Has she been resting properly?" came He Xuan's sharp, Fu Gu-accented voice. A bone fish cheeped at him. "Good. Her leg needs time to heal from whatever she did to it."

A different one chirped at him, a questioning tone on the edge of it.

"I doubt that's relevant."

A trill this time, quick and repeating.

"She is perfectly within her rights to think that."

Another chirp.

"Absolutely not."

One of them answered him with a sharp, higher-pitched wail, quite unlike a sound of pain but far closer to a child voicing its disapproval at being told no. She couldn't help but chuckle. The three bone fish around her bed seemed to be asleep, because none of them stirred at that.

He Xuan grunted in irritation. "That is not helping your case. Go fetch her something to eat and I'll consider it. Do not forget the men bao yu, or you're going in the soup."

Oh, she couldn't have that. She rose from the bed, taking care not to disturb her sleeping triad of bone fish, and grabbed her cane before making her way to the doorway, pushing the door open.

His eyes were yellow. Why were his eyes yellow? They'd been that entrancing blue every time she'd seen him save for the night he killed her brother, when they'd been yellow too.

She stepped back, unbidden. Did the yellow mean he was going to kill her? Was it a sign of his anger? Shi Qingxuan took in a deep breath, steadying herself, and squared her shoulders. "You shouldn't put your bone fish in any soup, He-gongzi," she said, firmly. "They're nice and cute and chirp at everything."

He blinked at her, the vague shadow of an expression of surprise crossing his face. "I don't… eat them? They don't go in the soup." he replied, halfway a question, halfway a statement. If she didn't know any better, she'd say he hadn't expected the accusation. "They don't care for the heat."

She hmphed. Before she could ask any more questions, he raised an eyebrow at her. His ears were low again, symmetrical. "Why are you out of bed?"

"I had to rescue your bone fish from your stomach, obviously," she answered. Since he was more stubborn than she was when he decided to be, she decided to humour him, and flipped her hair in the way she used to as a god as she turned around and sat down on her bed. "Happy now?"

He looked at her without any expression on his face at all, the perpetual blankness a little unnerving, but stepped into her room regardless. Something in his eyes closed off, more guarded now. "How are your injuries?" he asked instead of answering her. His voice was neutral - light, even, for him, blatantly changing the subject.

"A lot better," she admitted. "You really did me a favour, but… Hua-gongzi said your reach didn't extend to the capital? He said that's why you put me there?"

One ear twitched, but then both dropped lower. "I had business to attend to." That seemed to be all the answer she was going to get about that, because he didn't elaborate, and then his attention shifted to the bone fish bringing in dinner.

True to its probable promise, the bone fish with the long crack down one side of its skull had not forgotten the men bao yu. He Xuan nodded approvingly, a quick jerk of his head that could've been missed if she wasn't watching him so closely.

He was wearing different robes today, fairly casual ones belted with lighter-blue silk and bone, still left open to show most of his chest. Ming-xiong had never been a well-built man: his robes had always padded out his figure, and he'd always been on the thin side, but still well-within the realm of normal for a man who presumably had eaten something in the past four centuries. He Xuan wasn't currently hiding his origins as a ghost of famine, and his robes were tailored to fit more than they were tailored to compensate for what he didn't have.

Once, she'd asked him why he ate so much. Once, he'd told her only that he'd been sent to prison for a crime he hadn't committed, and his ascension had come too close to his release for him to really recover. She'd spent the evening brushing and braiding his hair while encouraging him to get a few spoonfuls of soup down, and between the two of them, they'd finished a single bowl.

Guilt scratched at her ribcage, and she looked away from him. The weight of his sudden regard was just as heavy on her shoulders.

"Enough."

She jerked up to look at him. "Wh-what?"

He was glowering, not quite contempt in his eyes, but something she could probably read as contempt. Whatever it was, his eyes glowed like candlelight, and he wasn't happy. "Whatever nonsense you're thinking of, enough of that. There is food. Eat it."

His eyes flicked meaningfully to the bone fish, and they gave her a few dishes, the men bao yu the first among them. She'd never tried it before, but it was… really good. The fish that presented her the dish settled under her elbow, so she could rest her bad arm on its skull.

"You should come eat with me," she said, almost plaintively. "How am I supposed to be a nice girl and eat my dinner if He-gongzi won't stop glaring and eat with me? I'm going to have to share with the bone fish at this rate, and they don't even have stomachs."

The irritation in his eyes faded, and one ear drooped lower. Still, he took a bowl of soup, leaning against the doorframe as he stirred it absently with the spoon. If today was a day where he was going to eat, he'd be devouring it already.

She finished the men bao yu, and reached for a second dish. Hao jian: she'd vaguely recalled seeing this on the menu at the restaurant in Fu Gu they'd stopped at. A signature meal, and it was exactly as good as she knew it would be.

Halfway through the dish, she broke the silence. "He-gongzi? Can I ask you something…?"

He didn't look up, but the ear closest to her lifted just enough to twist toward her. He was listening.

"The room I was looking in yesterday - that's not yours. You don't leave laundry everywhere, but… no one's used it in a while. I didn't know anyone lived with you, but…" She trailed off, unsure how to finish.

He sighed. "A previous resident. Nether Water Manor is, technically speaking, the imperial palace of the coastal seas. A great many ghosts are in and out of the lower floors of this manor every hour of the day."

She blinked. He was a Ghost King, sure, that was what the legends all called him. A Great Calamity, yes, everyone knew that. It hadn't occurred to her that there was actually a kingdom under the waves. Surely her brother would've mentioned such a great oversight, wouldn't he?

Oh, right. Shi Wudu had been terrified of drowning after he'd almost drowned during the tribulation that lead to his ascension. If He Xuan had claimed under the surface fast enough, he would have been able to build all manner of things without her brother knowing about it.

"I have seen nothing and no one besides you and all these bone fish," she pointed out. "Also, I saw outside last time, there can't be more than four floors to this place."

He Xuan scoffed at that, and managed a single spoonful of soup. The part of her still singing home with Ming-xiong, bothering my best friend, everything is normal wanted to cheer for him. She held it back. "The island is a pretty facade surrounding what is architecturally a tower. There's a city at the bottom of the seafloor for miles around us, and more dwellings in and out of my territory. Ghost City is only the most accessible of our realm's cities. The heavens do not know nor care what happens under the waves. I have no present plans to inform them."

She blinked. Huh. That didn't actually answer her question, but it was a lot more than she'd known a few moments ago. Obviously she didn't need to tell Xianle, he would've heard it from Hua Chengzhu, who definitely did know.

"That's… useful," she said, instead of what she wanted to say, which was that's pretty cool actually, you should show me around, and not at all a request he'd agree to. Besides, she couldn't breathe underwater.

He didn't answer, only dropped his ear back into its customary flicked-back position, and ate a second spoonful of soup. His patience was thinning, she knew that much.

"I uh, also wanted to know, if it's okay to ask, He-gongzi," she remarked, somewhat hurriedly. "Your bone fish. Are they ghosts? They brought me a book and they're all mismatched bones, so I don't think so, and they're definitely fish, but you seem to be able to talk to them just fine…"

She set aside the third dish she'd managed to finish. She wasn't going to get through a fourth, she was still a normal person, not a famine ghost.

He Xuan looked up at one of his bone fish instead of at her. "They're just fish. I was bored and built a few. They're more useful than I expected them to be."

"Chatty, too," she agreed, and leaned back on the pillows. They were so fluffy and warm. "They keep chirping at me. Can I learn to understand them? They clearly have so much to tell me, and I keep telling them stuff, like all your secrets I've found out since I got here."

He snorted. He knew as well as she did that she'd found out basically nothing that he hadn't left out for her to find. The only thing she'd really found, she could've been stopped simply by him locking the door.

He Xuan stepped over to her, setting his soup aside, and studied her a moment, his ears raised to a more level position. One tipped upwards, forming that lopsided position that seemed to mean interest, or at least focus. She held his gaze as best she could, but while he was looking at her, he wasn't focusing on meeting her gaze at all. There was a slight twitch to the corner of his mouth, like he was considering the merits of considering to smile.

Shi Qingxuan felt the spiritual power in the room rise like high tide finally allowed to rush in, and then He Xuan, ears perked up, palmed her in the forehead, and she blacked out.

She groaned. She was doing a lot of falling asleep unexpectedly. Something shifted beside her, and she felt a bone fish nose her shoulder.

[Mom?]

[Mom?]

[Mom?]

[Mom's awake?]

[Mom want to play?]

[Mom want food?]

[Get shinies!]

[Get shinies get shinies get shinies get shinies mom's awake!!]

Shi Qingxuan sat up, because it was that or cover her ears with a pillow. The voices didn't echo or hold weight like they would if they'd been spoken aloud, but she could still hear them, chirping and chittering and cheeping away. The bone fish were in a flurry, grabbing shinies and coming to surround her with them.

Two of the bone fish nosed her shoulder - mom awake mom awake mom hurt get shinies!! - and her first coherent thought was 'oh no, I have made a huge mistake', and her second was to gently push the bone fish away to give herself some breathing room. They weren't loud, individually, but in a school of eight bone fish in her room? They were loud, and excited, and she was never going to be able to hear her own thoughts over them.

But maybe they'd listen to her. "Why am I mom?" she asked, in lieu of anything actually useful. She was pretty sure she would have noticed if she'd gotten pregnant and given birth to however many bone fish were in this manor, given there were four in here she'd never seen before. There was at least twenty fish and the four bone dragons she'd seen before, and honestly, given that He Xuan had had four hundred years in which to make bone fish, she would be surprised if they didn't actually number in the hundreds. Definitely she had not at any point actually been their mother.

The bone fish considered her question as a group, and then all at once.

[Mom stay.]

[Mom stay!]

[Get shinies mom stay dad happy!]

Oh. Awesome. They were fish and they didn't actually understand how to answer questions and they were also going to wingman - wingfish? - her. If this was a Lantern Festival play, Ming-xiong would be spending it complaining under his breath about the terrible quality of stage props. This would have made for a very entertaining play, or a very questionable dream, but she had asked He Xuan to help her learn to communicate with his pets, and the slight twitch of his mouth really had been the closest she was going to get to watching him laugh at her.

A bone fish handed her the first of today's shinies: an emerald pendant, the sort that was fashionable among noblewomen in the capital. "And why did you bring me this?" she asked. She was, admittedly, a bit intrigued on why He Xuan even had it.

It twisted in the air. [Far-lady had shiny. Get mom shiny!]

"Far-lady?" She examined the pendant, and upon closer inspection, it actually appeared to have a locket behind the jewel. Popping it open revealed the portrait of a young woman surrounded by flowers. Definitely not something she would ever have expected of Ming-xiong.

[Far-lady smell like far. Far-lady watch close-people play. Far-lady not nice!]

[Far-lady not nice.]

[Far-lady not nice!]

[Mom come home, mom smell like far… mom home, mom not smell like far!] One of the other bone fish nosed her shoulder. [Mom smell like close.]

No real grasp on how time worked, apparently. "You mugged a tourist?" she asked, hoping she'd decoded that properly. Where would this even have been? Fu Gu, maybe, or was this a ghost's pendant? There really… wasn't a good way of knowing. She doubted the bone fish would be able to actually tell her the names of anything. She set the emerald pendant aside, feeling a little uneasy. Stealing was wrong, even if the bone fish didn't actually understand property.

The second bone fish gave her an unsealed envelope, folded around something about the width of her thumb. She caught it as the bone fish dropped it in her hands. "What's this?"

[Dad hold. Dad not give shiny. Get mom shiny!]

So they'd stolen this one from He Xuan, then. She relaxed a little, opening the envelope. If even he couldn't stop them from stealing things, that didn't make them malicious. Just fish, attracted to whatever shone the brightest, convinced that giving her shinies would convince her to stay here, in this lonely manor she'd built with the suffering she had unknowingly inflicted on a man who didn't deserve it, alongside the one person whose forgiveness she had no right to ask.

The glitter of the ring carved entirely from a single diamond caught her eye before the sharp, staccato scrawl did. It was faintly blue, and almost transparent, and within the ring itself she could see ashes. She'd learned this one from Xianle, when she'd asked about his necklace. He'd been quiet, so quiet, when he'd told her what it was.

The ashes of a ghost were their tie to the mortal realm. If those ashes were destroyed, the ghost would disperse permanently. Some said that if a ghost gave you their ashes, it was equal to a marriage proposal.

He Xuan's script on the envelope was simple bulletpoint, crossed out at various lines.

• Give to Qingxuan after CR's wedding
• Don't do it
• Pearl & jade? Less ostentatious?? Diamond?
• WT used jade, do not use jade
• Don't Give It To Her, Idiot. She Won't Like It.
• what makes me think this will go better than last time???

Shi Qingxuan stared at the paper, and then the ring, and then the paper again. The bone fish trilled around her, and she jumped, having briefly forgotten they were there. Anger rose in her sternum, and she glared at them.

"Why would you bring this to me?" she demanded. "He didn't want me to have it!" It hurt that he'd been planning on giving it to her, that at any point, Ming-xiong had cared that much, that he'd trusted her that much, before she'd gone and ruined it all. She couldn't even remember his name correctly, and he'd once been willing to entrust her with his entire existence.

The bone fish squirmed, and cheeped sadly. [Give mom shinies always! Give mom shinies mom stay. Mom stay.]

[Mom stay!]

[Mom stay!]

[Mom stay, dad happy?]

She stared at them. They genuinely seemed to think that if she stayed, it would make He Xuan happy - assuming he was Dad. He was probably Dad, really, no one else lived here - and couldn't figure out why that wasn't going to happen. He wasn't even sad. Or anything she could discern, really, other than vaguely irritated. He certainly hadn't taken her in and cared for her because he was sad.

She needed fresh air if she was going to deal with this. She stuffed the ring and its envelope into her pocket, and climbed out of bed. It didn't take long to change, even with how wobbly she still was, although that meant dealing with the fact she had a whole closet of robes in dark blue embroidered with silver; all of them cut in styles she recognized and liked, and all of their embroidery themed on wind over the open ocean. The closet would have cost a fortune to put together, and the faint pop of a stasis array meant that not one bit of it was ever going to get dusty.

On some level, she knew that this wasn't the sort of closet that could be put together overnight. Especially when some of the robes were near-identical to her favourites back in the heavens, but done for a god of a very different type, if also her exact proportions and size.

She picked the plainest of them to wrap around herself, grabbed her cane, and left the room.The ring stayed in her pocket. The last thing she wanted even now was to accidentally misplace it before she could return it to its owner, who could presumably lock it away before the bone fish stole it again.

They let her out of her room, this time, following behind her. Maybe they could tell that she was upset with them. The hall outside was lit for what seemed to be daytime, and the door she'd previously opened to the once-occupied bedroom was closed now.

Forcing the sparks of anger from her voice, she asked, "Who used to live here?"

[Earth dad gone.]

[Earth dad gone!]

[Earth dad bones no play…]

She winced at the answers, about to motion for silence so she could think, but the bone fish kept chirping, giving her answers that made no sense and yet still somehow hurt.

[Dad mad. Dad mad dad mad dad mad dad sad!]

[Give dad shinies but dad sad…]

One of the bone fish swam into her hair again, instantly finding a way to get its ribs tangled in her hair, but swimming high enough up that it didn't tug on her hair. It looked at her, its fins almost drooping, floating in the air. [Earth dad gone, dad sad…]

It clicked. There was only one person who could possibly have been Earth Dad. Slowly, she opened the door to his bedroom again, with a fresh eye to its contents. Black robes, trimmed in gold, cast across the room like someone too focused to notice where he was tossing anything. Architectural and engineering blueprints over every space wide enough to write. Books and scrolls and discarded tools, a bed shoved against the wall like an afterthought. An impressive model of Nether Water Island in miniature, like a podium, in one corner. The faint scent of cloves, a scent that always grew stronger when Ming-xiong had pulled his spiritual yueyachan out to use it on something.

"Ming Yi," she breathed. The bone fish chirped.

[Earth dad here.]

[Earth dad not here.]

[Earth dad here.]

[Earth dad go far…]

[Dad sad. Dad sad dad sad dad mad!]

She reached down with her bad arm almost unconsciously to the bone fish caught in her hair, and pulled it to her chest. It went easily, freeing itself of her curls, and snuggled into her robes like this was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe for a bone fish, used to snuggling up to He Xuan whenever it wanted to, it was. She'd always enjoyed snuggling up to him in the heavens.

She'd never met the real Ming Yi. She'd seen his bones, in the foyer of this manor, set in a place of reverence, his lingering spirit jumping out to warn them of something, the ghost of a god who hadn't been able to do anything more. Would she understand his message now, if he spoke to her again? If his bones could still do that much?

She didn't know where they'd set his bones to rest in the end. She knew they'd been reclaimed from here, He Xuan had not fought the heavens on that. Everyone had said he'd held Ming Yi captive, that of course the Ascending Fire Dragon had been sent to call the heavens for help.

He Xuan had slaughtered Shi Wudu in revenge for stealing his fated divinity. And yet, he had taken the very same from Ming Yi. And yet, the bone fish said when Ming Yi had left, He Xuan had been sad - sad, lots of sad, and mad.

She wasn't sure if it made sense, if the bone fish were being honest and not simply mistaken, but she had a suspicion, and there was only one way she was going to confirm it. Drawing her courage around herself, she stepped further into the room, examining the blueprints for Nether Water Manor with a more critical eye.

She still couldn't understand most of it, but she wasn't looking for measurements or spell array constructions or how much weight various parts of the floor could take, or however he'd done the waterproofing that would be sorely necessary for a place like this. She wasn't looking for any of that at all. But now that she knew what she was looking for, the evidence blossomed through the pages like new buds in spring, unseen before to the unskilled eye.

The places where Ming Yi had tried out a hypothesis, scratched it out, wrote down the results, and tried again. The places where his writing grew quick and messy and oddly lengthy, where he'd cracked a problem and scrambled to write it down in time with his thoughts. The places where he'd gotten experimental, found and tested new ideas, got stuck on problems and hadn't managed to solve them. The places where he'd bone-fish-proofed rooms, and how many of those rooms tended to hold either treasure or building materials.

This was not the writing of a man in captivity. This was the writing of a man so engrossed in a project he might have thrown books at anyone who interrupted him, who got between him and the beautiful, bright work of art he could see in his mind, that he had to bring to life around him. She'd seen passion like that in Hua Cheng, and Ming Yi's ghost had left his passion here, in the bedroom he hadn't been expecting to leave for very long, under a stasis spell He Xuan had cast, to leave this place exactly as it had been when Ming Yi died. Ming Yi had built this manor with his own two hands, and judging by how much he had accounted for He Xuan's spiritual power in the construction, they'd shared the work.

"You were working together," she murmured. "Maybe you were even friends." He had never been her Ming-xiong, because she'd never met him. Standing in this room, knowing absolutely nothing of the man but the empty grave he'd left, she wondered what those early days had been like. Some of the blueprints brought out for reference were four hundred years old, early ones, showing the foundations and rough sketches of what would eventually become the final project.

A brand-new Devastation, and a brand-new god, teaming up to build themselves a home that would eventually serve as the imperial palace for the entire ocean, and no one above the waves had known. There had been love here. In the depths of the ocean where light didn't shine without spiritual power, where nothing living could exist, there had been love here. There had to have been.

It was beautiful. It was impressive. It made her want to hit He Xuan with a brick until he told her every single secret the man who must have been his best friend had taken to his grave, and then told her why he let his damn bone fish give her his ashes.

Shi Qingxuan left the room instead, closing the door ever-so-gently behind her. She glanced at one of the bone fish. "You should tell He-gongzi to reset the stasis array he has in there. It shouldn't get dusty."

It chirped in reply - [Take message mom happy!] - and swam a figure-eight in the air before darting off, presumably to deliver her message. She couldn't help but smile a little before turning away again, resolving to explore a little and get some fresh air. There was more to this place than just what she'd seen, even if she had no plans to descend into the public areas of the manor.

The first challenge was the staircase in what seemed to be the first common area she came across. She made it up about five steps before she had to stop to catch her breath, leaning over with both her cane and the banister for balance, chest heaving with the exertion. Her injuries must have been worse than she thought they were, or maybe she'd been in bed too long.

[Mom need help?]

[Mom need help.]

[Mom need help!]

One of the larger bone fish swam toward her, curling its eel-like body around her in a gentle loop before picking her up. Another two swam up to help balance her, and working together, they set her on her feet at the top of the stairs.

Once she had regained her footing, she petted the cool, smooth skull of the bone eel in appreciation. "You did very good."

[Mom safe mom close mom happy!] came their reply, and then they waited to see where she would go next. It was hard to tell which of the bone fish were speaking, because their mouths didn't move, and they were all looking at her. She couldn't help but smile a little, and lead the way onward.

She caught sight of a larger pair of doors, intricately carved into a scene of coral and kelp. As she came up to the door, the bone fish opened it for her, smacking their skulls into one of the doors until they could push it open. Light briefly blinded her, bright and pale blue. When her eyes adjusted, she could see it for what it was: an indoor garden, filled with plants and topiary and an impressive amount of coral dotting the walkways.

There weren't any ponds, or streams, which seemed a little odd for a garden like this. Still, she walked through it, grateful that the walkways were smooth blue-gray brick instead of cobblestone, which always caught her cane. Her bad arm rested perpetually on the spine of a bone fish, swimming beside her just high enough not to irritate her shoulder while keeping her arm elevated. "Doesn't coral only grow underwater?" she murmured to herself, looking around at the plants. Some of these were fruit trees, and bushes, and flowers. Some of these were kelp, or some sort of seagrass, or coral, or other things she was pretty sure didn't exist abovewater.

If He Xuan was here to ask, he probably could explain the impossibility. It was his garden, after all. One of the bone fish darted down as she walked, coming back up with an abalone shell. She paused just long enough to admire it, before gently remarking, "You'd best put it back where you found it."

The bone fish looked at her. [Mom not want shiny…?]

She considered this. It was a fish made of bones. It couldn't look sad at her. It could probably be cheered up with a kiss to its forehead and being told that it was a good fish. It would undoubtedly forget the shell in about thirty seconds. It was a fish. "Mom can't bend down right now," she admitted. "It looks prettiest in the garden, but I can't put it there. If you can put it back for me, I'd be really happy."

The bone fish did not wail at her refusal. It did not cry and cry and cry, sob sob sob, that Mom was being mean and cruel to poor bone fish who never did anything wrong. It chirped at her, [Help mom! Help mom! Get shiny!] and darted to put the shell back. It came back up again without the shell, and then dove into her hair with a relatively-meaningless trill of joy.

She'd figure out how to untangle it later. Or ask He Xuan to do it, maybe. As she walked the rest of the garden, her thoughts passed instead to the many, many times he'd done just that, helping her with her hair and makeup before some event where she'd been insistent on looking perfect. He'd always been patient with her, and had rarely offered his opinion on her choices in fashion. She'd teased him many times over his suspiciously-vast knowledge of how to apply makeup, only to always receive a "One should never allow himself to be caught unawares in your presence, Qingxuan," in return.

He'd still remember how to brush out her curls, though, bone fish or no bone fish. The far wall of the garden came into view, and the bone fish opened it for her into another hallway, and she followed their lead, picking a direction more or less at random to follow.

The next interesting door was a library, surprisingly large for the amount of scrolls and books within. All of them near the entrance were poetry, sorted by author's surname and then by date of publication. Once she'd gotten through enough poetry to find the next section entirely on philosophy, she turned right back around and left the library.

Either surprisingly or unsurprisingly, depending on how she looked at it, the room right across the hall was a second library. This one seemed to be more focused on ghosts: records of their existences, census records, folk tales, journals. There was an open book on one study desk. A ledger, apparently, of known water ghosts, rated by power. More than half of them had been crossed out, dates marked beside their names. A shiver ran down her back, and she left. She didn't really want to peruse He Xuan's records of ghost murder in the name of killing her brother.

One of the bone fish nosed her wrist. [Mom sad,] it remarked, and then gently bit her sleeve, tugging her forward, toward a smaller door. [Mom sad! Get mom shiny!]

She pulled her hand away from it, and it whimpered. She didn't have to listen to it, she knew that, but she… didn't want to hurt the poor thing, either. "I don't want shinies, little one," she said, and gently patted its head. "It's… it's been a really weird day, okay?"

It trilled sadly. [Dad sad, get dad shiny, dad happy,] it said firmly. It had to be just the one bone fish speaking, the sound wasn't both extremely loud and coming from all around her. [Mom sad, get mom shiny, mom happy, mom stay. Shiny close!] It darted toward her and tugged her sleeve again, toward the door.

She sighed. Well, if it wasn't bringing the shiny in question to her, then she probably didn't have to wrestle with the guilt of telling it to put the shiny back. So she let the bone fish pull her forward, toward the door. One of the others - the eel - pushed the door open, and then helped her step out onto-

Shi Qingxuan stood on a balcony set into the underwater cliff that made up the side of Black Water Island, and stared out at the seafloor vista. A kelp forest grew below her, inching up to the karst that was the island, and around that forest and outward was a city, gleaming with lights like stars. Not too far from her, several stories down, was a cluster of docks filled with ships, and a public pavilion, the bricks decorated into a pattern recognizable as the symbol of Ship-Sinking Black Water.

She could sort of see people down there, and large fish, and all sorts of creatures moving throughout the town. As she watched, a bone dragon descended toward the pavilion, landing neatly on one side with its front two legs before bounding off in another direction.

She was underwater. She could breathe, somehow, and she didn't feel soaked to the bone or hampered by the weight or pressure of the water. Her hair drifted behind her exactly as if she had been underwater the whole time, and she must have been, but this? This?

He Xuan had built all of this with his own two hands, and whatever ghosts he hadn't eaten, and not all of the ships flew his flag on their masts. Not even most of them were in good condition - some were clearly shipwrecks, able to sail below the waves using spiritual or ghostly qi. Some flew her brother's colours even now, their captains apparently disinterested in changing out perfectly good sails in order to keep up with the latest developments in the heavens' hierarchy. The amount that flew Ming Yi's colours hurt her heart. He'd been known for engineering. Ships were a part of that, even as she'd never seen one like these above the waves.

This wasn't a shiny. She still pulled the bone fish that had thought of bringing her out here to her chest, cradling it close. It trilled at her, and burrowed into her outer robe.

For a few moments, she only leaned against the railing and watched the sea. It should have been nothing but darkness down here, and it wasn't: rays of sunlight still drifted even this far down. The last time she had seen these waters, they had been frozen and pitch black. She tilted her chin to the sky - the surface, she supposed - and found that she couldn't see it at all. The water above her was as pitch black as it had been above the water, and yet light still filtered down.

She lingered for a few more moments, only watching the view and the imperial capital, before she turned to leave again. She was mortal, neither god nor ghost, and she wasn't sure she was fated for such beautiful sights. She couldn't bear to look at them anymore. The memory was more than enough. She held the bone fish to her chest with her bad arm, her cane in the other, and returned to Nether Water Manor.

Like most palaces, Nether Water Manor was easy to get lost in. There were too many side chambers, and while the bone fish were happy to show her around, she stopped knowing how to get back to her room about six turns and four staircases in. She was reasonably sure she was back on the same floor - she'd gone up twice, and down twice, but once was in a kelp garden four stories tall, so maybe she wasn't after all - and that was about the most she knew.

She was starting to feel extremely tempted to ask the bone fish to bring her back to her room when she felt ghostly qi just around the corner, strong but inert. She followed the sensation, chilly and crawling up her spine, and found herself in front of a simple onyx door, identical to every other one on this hall, save for a faintly-glowing spell array on the doorknob. Looking a little closer, she could see an intricate array on the doorframe as well, far too complex for her to guess at the intent.

The door was ajar though, and one of the bone fish went to push it the rest of the way. The doorknob pushed it back with a faint hum, just enough for the bone fish to be bounced backward a good two feet. It whimpered, [Dad sad dad sad dad sad…] and Shi Qingxuan frowned.

She reached over and pet its head. "I'll see what I can do," she promised, and then pushed the door the rest of the way open herself.

She would have taken the room for another balcony if it didn't so clearly have a roof, a natural cave opening in the island toward the sea. There was a bed next to her, as big as her own and made recently. The only real wall was the one where she stood, with the doorway: the other three were simply open to the sea, blocked only by a faint shimmer she suspected was the work of an array allowing one-way travel and sight only. The floor jutted out away from her for a true balcony.

Facedown on the balcony, one hand gently petting the head of a giant bone dragon, was He Xuan. His hair was held up with a seashell clamp at the back of his head, messy and haphazard. His robes were askew, and he was wearing socks, but not trousers. At least his outer robe was hemmed at the knees. His ears were down, and he showed no sign of awareness in her presence. He probably had noticed her and was just ignoring her, but if he was going to ignore her, she could look at his stuff and notice all the differences between the bedroom of the Calamity and the bedroom of the supposed Earth Master in the heavens.

He did not have much stuff in his bedroom. He had a bed, and a small bookshelf to one side full of books, and on the other side of the bed, a life-sized statue. It looked a lot like Xianle: the hair was curlier but almost identical in cut, the ribboned xiao guan more detailed than Xianle tended to wear, the robes cut differently. Differently enough that she stared at the chest of it a moment, wondering when Xianle had taken a female form and not told her, and why a statue of a seemingly-female Xianle was here of all places.

She leaned over the bed on tiptoe to get a better look, and caught sight of the world's worst-written artist's signature she'd ever seen, and a couple of hanzi that after a moment she deciphered as "Happy Birthday!". She looked back up at the statue. The statue, its fan in hand, ignored her entirely. There was a single hanzi on the fan, as painfully-written as the artist signature.

Realization dawned on her, and she burst out laughing. She couldn't help it. Hua Cheng of all people would do this, for as many reasons as he had faces, and he also wouldn't be capable of carving anyone but Xianle even if he was really trying to carve someone else, like say, Shi Qingxuan. He'd probably put it here himself, and then placed an array on it that caused unfathomable damage if He Xuan tried to remove it from directly beside his bed.

By the time she was mostly done laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of the Four Great Calamities - she couldn't be scared of them now, she couldn't even imagine why anyone had been scared of these idiots, they were as bad as the heavens - He Xuan was sitting up, cross-legged, and looking at her, eyes as fathomlessly blue as the ocean behind him. He wasn't wearing his glasses, so she wasn't sure how much he could actually see her. He still had the snout of a bone dragon in his lap, and his hair was still a disaster, and his ears were somewhere between most of the way lowered and neutral-flat. He looked almost resentfully at her, as though he hadn't left the door perfectly open for her to come wandering in to harass him into being nice to her.

But since that was exactly what he'd done, she smiled brightly at him. "Found you!"

"Evidently," he replied, somewhat sourly. "You're not resting."

She leaned over her cane toward him, still smiling. If the cut of the robes he'd left in her room for her made her admittedly-worn figure look stunning, well, that was on him too. "No, but I'm having so much fun looking for all your secrets that tell me all sorts of things."

"Go back to your room," he said, tone turning more tired than resentful.

She huffed. "Why would I do that? He-gongzi is right here and he's got all sorts of interesting things he won't tell me that he really should. Like why he needs that many books on poetry when he doesn't even like poetry. Or tax law in Yong'an. Seriously, who remembers that stuff?"

"I do, when trying to trace back embezzlement of public funds that would explain Night-Touring Green Lantern's current financial status and likelihood to set my ships on fire." He Xuan's answer was almost automatic: he didn't have to think about that to explain himself. He reached into his robe with his free hand, putting his glasses back on.

She blinked, and then dropped to sit on the side of his bed, resting her cane on her lap. "Wouldn't you just dunk 'em? I saw outside. The outside down here. You have ships and they work underwater."

"That would risk drowning whatever mortals I have stolen from him, that I intend on returning to human civilization."

She hummed, watching him absently keep petting the bone dragon. "But I'm a mortal, and I'm still breathing, and we're underwater."

"You are wearing enspelled clothing that does not permit you to drown." He paused, briefly. "Or die. But mostly drown."

That was a new one. Had he enchanted her whole wardrobe? She looked at him, blinking, and after a moment she spotted it: gills, on the sides of his neck, open and fluttering in the water. He was a ghost and he didn't need to breathe, but he still had gills, and somehow that made sense right now. "You brought me cute clothes," she agreed. "Did you have them all made specifically for me, or is there another girl you're courting?" She gestured to the statue. "I don't think Hua-gongzi shares."

"If I left you in rags, you would just wear mine the first chance you got," he pointed out, and he was totally right about that, because every time she had decided to sleep in his temple to avoid talking to her brother over some fight or another, he'd let her borrow some of his robes to sleep in rather than send a Middle Court official to her temple to get clothes and risk leading her brother right back to Ming-xiong's place.

He-xiong's. Ming Yi had never been there. Or whatever. Maybe he'd designed the temple too and it technically was his also. He Xuan wasn't rising to the bait of her teasing, which was mean of him, because he was a fish and fish are supposed to eat the bait so she could reel him in and make him explain himself properly instead of vaguely glaring in her direction in a way that probably would've been a pout if he were the type to do that. Which he wasn't. But it was close enough to note the similarity.

"Very sweet of you to cut out the middleman and just give me robes like yours," she agreed. "Your robes, your fish, your manor, your food… I wonder what else He-gongzi would give me, if I got really close to him and looked cute enough that he wanted to give me stuff?"

His shoulders tensed, only slightly, but she was looking at him and she saw him do it. His ears both lifted a little more toward neutral, and maybe that meant something. Behind him, she could see the sea shift and the sunlight darken and fade, and between one moment and the next, his eyes turned a normal shade of brown, and then to a glowing, lambent yellow. The mechanical clock on the bookshelf - Ming Yi must have made that, she'd seen similar in his temple - indicated that it was about sunset now.

Mystery solved. "Dinner, and I would send you to bed," he answered flatly. "You're injured and you keep getting up." His disapproval shone through his words, even as she could tell he wasn't as annoyed about it as he could be: she had heard much stronger annoyance out of him before, often whenever she suggested he do things like 'go outside' and 'come with me to this event' and 'be nice to my brother for five minutes'.

Her smile doubled in brightness. "But He-gongzi gave me this pretty cane to use while I'm here, so how can I not? I can't take it back with me, and it's such a pretty gift."

That seemed to catch him by surprise. "You can take it back with you."

She pouted a little. "No, I can't. Someone would steal it, because it's so pretty, and I'm no good at fighting."

His ears dropped. His eyes narrowed, and there was a slight menace in the air that hadn't been there before. She suppressed a shiver. "It would return to you within a moment. They would not be able to leave with it." Unspoken, she thought, went the threat of what would happen to the thief who tried to take it from her, or what would happen if they tried to fight her for it. The faint ghostly qi in the cane seemed a little stronger, for just a moment, and she got the feeling that if she was a fighter, she would find her cane a very effective weapon.

She could be afraid of him, thinking of all the curses he could have placed within this cane for anyone who crossed him. Fortunately, her mind was quite changeable. There was still a life-sized statue of her within her peripheral vision that looked mostly like Xianle with an ample bosom. She couldn't be afraid of him, not really, and so her smile brightened again. "Then He-gongzi's looking out for me," she replied brightly. "Awh, He-gongzi, I didn't think you cared. If I come over there, will you care lots more?"

She made to get up, and the moment she started to rise, his face changed. His ears spread out to either side, still held downward, and he looked briefly panicked. By the time she finished standing, he was gone, melted into the water around him and vanishing into the tide.

Shi Qingxuan huffed. They were getting along so well, too, and then she must've spooked him or something. This seemed to be the real difference between He Xuan and Ming-xiong: Ming-xiong had always sort of just tolerated her excitement and hanging off his arm, sturdy as a rock. He Xuan seemed far more interested in turning into water and hiding from her whenever he thought she'd get too close to him.

She considered the bone dragon, which didn't seem too surprised by its master's behaviour either. "Is he afraid of me?" she asked. It was a dragon, so maybe it was smarter than most of the bone fish.

[Dad sad,] it replied. [Dad sad. Dad sad dad sad dad sad. Mom stay?]

The bone dragon bolted off the balcony without waiting for a reply. It wasn't smarter, then, just louder, with a deeper 'voice'. She hadn't moved more than a step before it returned, a torn blue-and-white sail in its mouth, embroidered with gold. It climbed more onto the balcony, holding the sail out to her.

[Mom stay dad happy?] the bone dragon cheeped. She took the sail from it, examining it. Well, the golden embroidery was shiny. Pulling it open to look, she spied the torn emblem of the Water Master, and dropped the sail, recoiling fast enough she barely got her cane under her. He Xuan had always sunk Shi Wudu's ships, when Shi Wudu didn't sink them himself for the crime of not offering him enough to protect them. Of course his shipwrecks would be here. Of course his shipwrecks would be scavenged. Of course, of course, of course-

She turned on her heel and bolted. She didn't bother looking where she was going, she just ran, cane tapping against the floor every few steps, pain bolting up her bad leg.

She didn't see the staircase until she'd already stepped towards it. She misjudged a step, and then her cane hit air instead of the next step down, and she was tumbling facefirst down the stairs. Pain followed, and after that, hazy black.

[Mom fell!]

[Mom fell!!]

[Mom fell get dad get dad get dad get dad mom fell!!!]

The ringing in her ears was punctuated by a chorus of impossible yelling, and the darkness took her.

A pair of arms lifted her gently, so gently, off the floor, cradling her into a set of silken robes, faintly warm over something very, very cold. A bone fish, maybe. Maybe the whole school of them, and somewhere in the hazy black she could hear them chirping and yelling and fainter, she could feel them nosing at her. They felt almost like the madmen on that fateful night, or the hustle and bustle in Fu Gu when she'd ended up in a locals' tavern, hiding from all the tourists during the Bloody Fire Social.

People in Fu Gu didn't really seem to have a concept of personal space, and maybe that was why the bone fish didn't, either.

[Mom hurt mom hurt mom hurt dad fix mom stay dad happy?]

It was hard to sort out one voice from the rest of the school. The bone fish yelled over each other in a cluster, impossible to really understand.

"I will fix it." He Xuan's voice was an anchor in the depths of the sea, a lighthouse on the coast, an open window to blow the wind by. He sounded like Ming-xiong. He sounded like home.

[Mom stay. Mom stay dad happy?]

[Mom stay dad happy!]

[Dad sad dad sad… mom stay dad happy!]

"She's not going to stay." Arguing with Ming-xiong had never gotten anyone anywhere, except for when she argued with him sometimes and he relented. Sometimes, she'd thought he only relented because it was less effort than continuing to argue. Sometimes, there had been a slight glitter in his eyes, and she'd let herself believe that maybe he'd loved her.

[Mom stay… give shinies gives lots lots lots shinies, mom stay?]

[Dad tell mom stay! Mom stay!]

He Xuan sighed, and she'd heard that sigh before. "I fucked up. It isn't fixable. She isn't going to stay."

Ah, Ming-xiong, she thought, vaguely, trying to open her eyes. Her body seemed so far away. She could feel the chill of his sternum under the warmth of his robes, and the prodding of a swarm of bone fish, and that was about it.

One of the bone fish wailed, like a child being denied, and then something brushed her shoulder. She heard He Xuan swear, sharp and quick. Probably the bone fish had just bit him. [Dad tell mom stay! Dad tell mom stay!! Dad give mom shinies mom stay!! Mom stay dad happy earth dad here!!]

He Xuan answered with a shaky, breathy laugh. She'd never heard him sound so unsure, and she forced herself to focus, to listen. "She's never once listened to me. She won't listen now, regardless of what I give her. Shinies only work on fish. She'd drown here."

[Dad scared… Dad give mom shinies. Mom stay dad happy!]

The bonefish melted back into a chorus of 'mom stay!', and her head was spinning, and she lost track of what they were saying other than that. Ming-xiong's grip on her was steady, and she wasn't sure if he was walking, his gait was so smooth.

Silly Ming-xiong, she thought, vaguely. I'm only me, not someone else… I don't need to rob the world of every glittery thing to be happy.

He'd taught her that, after all. The few things he'd kept had value for other reasons. Three hundred years, and the music box she'd once found for him had remained at his bedside, never with a speck of dust. Besides, he'd kept her, and she wasn't very glittery right now, either.

The pain was overwhelming, pulsing from every part of her she'd banged on the way down the stairs. He was so cold, and yet he burned where she touched him, the ring in her pocket icy enough to ease the pain in her bad leg.

She hated falling asleep when he was finally talking. But it had been so long since she had truly felt safe.

The walls of Nether Water Manor were shaking. Shi Qingxuan sat bolt upright, feeling pain spark and ignite in her spine, eyes open and scrambling for her cane. She couldn't move. She couldn't move, she was pinned and overheated and there was something across her stomach and holding her hands down, something on her collarbone, pinning her down-

The bonefish that had been pleasantly resting on her chest, monitoring her breathing, fell off with a wail of surprise. She caught it automatically with her free hand, looking for the source of the shaking. There was a bone dragon hanging off her balcony, the curtains pulled back to reveal the lack of a wall in front of her, and it was making some sort of trilling noise of contentment that shook the walls with the bass of its 'voice'.

She stared at it. After a moment, she looked down, and there were six bonefish all settled either on top of her or against her, and the placement of the heavy blanket strongly implied the presence of at least four under the covers, as well. Ah. So there was nothing to worry about, just more of He Xuan's pets that were quite sure she'd given birth to them. Or maybe they were just wingfishing her.

"Hi," she said, feeling somewhat awkward as she looked at the bone dragon. "I'm sorry I ran off earlier. Uhm, you're a good fish?"

The bone dragon perked up at her words, and at the compliment, attempted to launch itself through the open balcony into her room. Its shoulderblades got stuck with its skull only partly into the room, and it whined softly. She was almost grateful for that: the bone fish were loud when they wailed, if the bone dragon chose to express its sadness, she'd be permanently deaf in seconds. She wasn't sure if she wasn't going to end up deaf by the time she returned to the capital, but for now, she still did have her hearing. It made her think of not having the bone fish with her when she returned. Her heart hurt a little at that, they were always so cheerful and determined to help, and finding shinies would greatly help a lot of the other beggars of the capital.

Not her, of course, she'd give it all away before she took more than she absolutely had to in order to survive. She'd more than overspent her due. But the bone fish weren't themselves a show of wealth, or of fortune. They were just… companions. She held the one in her free arm to her chest, stroking its skull absently. This one was the one that had brought back her whisk, she could see the cracks in its tailfin still. She'd have to ask He Xuan before she left if he could fix it for the poor thing.

Now that she was more awake, she could see that breakfast had indeed been brought to her by some unseen force. Maybe servants - the manor was free of dust enough that someone had to be dusting in here - or maybe a Distance-Shortening Array. But there definitely had to be servants, because food was happening. She'd seen chefs in Ghost City, and wondered what sort of ghost would come here to cook, instead.

But still, breakfast. The bone fish saw her looking. Six of them jumped up all at once, darting to the desk to bring her the best, biggest dishes of the some-two-dozen dishes there. The first to be passed to her was a large bowl of congee with a spoon. She relaxed, breathing a sigh of relief. Her stomach was still churning from her surprise awakening, something easy and familiar from before even her brother had ascended was welcome.

She took her first bite, and changed her mind: she'd forgotten briefly that this was Nether Water Manor, and He Xuan made a point of getting not only more food than anyone could eat, but also of the very best food anyone could ever have. She could taste at least six kinds of fish in this, and sharp ginger, and a few spices she couldn't name. It was easily the richest congee she'd ever eaten, even better than the heavens.

She finished one bite, and set the spoon aside. When she ate breakfast in the heavens… She usually ate with her junior officials or with Ming-xiong, sometimes her brother if he felt like having company, a rarer occurrence with every Heavenly Tribulation. If the servants had wanted her to see them, she would have seen them by now.

She took a deep breath, and settled her eyes on one of the more energetic bone fish, one that had been wriggling for a while on the bed, clearly caught between its desire to Help Mom and its desire to swim around and play. "Little one, can you go get Min-"

She stopped. No. It wasn't fair to keep doing that to him, address him by the name of his dead housemate when she knew better. She tried again. "Little one, can you go get He-xiong for me?"

Maybe recognizing him properly would help. The bone fish trilled in excitement - [get dad get dad get dad get dad!!!] - and then darted through the open balcony, and she set the bowl of congee aside. The remaining bone fish cheeped at her.

[Mom not hungry…?]

[Mom not like food?]

She waved them off before they could cheep and chatter themselves into a panic. "No, no - Mom loves the food, and Mom's hungry. Mom just wants to eat with He-xiong and the fish, like a family!"

She really didn't know why she let them keep calling her mom. Maybe it was because all the other beggars knew Laofeng as a man, if a very slight and short one, or maybe it was just that they clearly loved her with all of their little skeletal hearts and she couldn't bear to disappoint them. But they seemed to like her explanation anyway, putting all of the breakfast dishes back on the table and then settling up against her again. One of them brought her a small jar of her medicine, and she took that, grateful for how fast it started to ease the pain in her back. She wasn't going to be able to lie down again for a little while: the pain was keeping her in this position for now, but the medicine would help.

A few minutes later, she heard the soft scuffling of the bone fish dragging something around in the hallway outside her room. The door was pushed open, and she caught sight of three bone fish before she caught sight of He Xuan facedown on the floor, being dragged into her room by eight bone fish working together, holding him by the scruff of his robes.

They dropped their grip on his robes when he was fully in the room, still facedown, but clearly awake. His ears were perfectly perpendicular to the floor, which was sort of neutral she figured, and she couldn't help but start to giggle at the inherent hilarity of the situation. Dad had been Got, that was for sure.

Once He Xuan had been got and released, he slowly sat up, and then rose to his feet. The motion was smooth, inhumanly so, and he was a beautiful man. Objectively terrifying, sure, but a beautiful man was beautiful no matter how clearly exhausted and underfed he was. He looked at her, and she smiled at him.

"Good morning, He-xiong," she greeted. "I'd offer you a spot to sit, but, you know. The bone fish." She waved a hand at the pile of shinies that took up the far side of the bed, enough that there was no way she was moving it enough to make room for him to sit down on the bed with her.

He didn't raise an eyebrow at her, but one ear flicked. From his robe he withdrew his glasses, putting them on before studying the pile of shinies for a moment. His eyes, still so impossibly blue, swept over the bone fish. "Enterprising, are we?" he asked, and the question seemed almost aimless, less pointed than his voice ever was in the heavens.

The Earth Master she'd known never said a word he didn't have to, and never without an expected response he wanted. He'd held up his walls so strongly that no one could ever break through and get close to him. It was so nice to finally see him relax. She'd only been dreaming of that very thing for centuries.

If he was relaxed, then maybe he'd let her past his walls. The bone fish wiggled and chirped at him, as unafraid as ever.

[Dad like shinies.]

[Get mom shinies.]

[Mom stay dad happy mom happy!]

He Xuan didn't bother to respond to their commentary. Shi Qingxuan smiled at them instead.

That was a new one. Did he like shinies? He'd never displayed an interest in them as long as she'd known him… no, that wasn't quite right. He'd never cared to bring them home, but when one was shown to him, his eyes had always tracked it, always followed the sparkliest thing in the room. She'd always attributed his notice of all jewels and gold and crafted trinkets to being the Earth Master, from which element most jewels came from. She'd always made a point of wearing heavy jewellry to their outings together, only a little bit of vinegar on her tongue at the idea of his eyes catching something other than her.

She'd felt bad about it, when she'd fallen from the heavens. Now, she could only try to hold in her laughter at the realization of his true idiosyncrasies, and the delight at knowing him so much better now.

She shifted, and there was a slight pain at her hip. She reached under the cover, intending on gently readjusting the bone fish that was probably jammed into her side, and her fingers brushed something else, instead, something that was still in her pocket. Her fingers touched it and He Xuan blinked, ears perking slightly before he schooled his expression.

Oh.

Oh, now this was going to be fun. "He-xiong hasn't been missing any of his favourite shinies recently, has he?" she asked, all innocence that she knew he could see through without even trying.

Discomfort crossed his face like a shadow over the ocean, and then he whipped around to narrow his eyes at one specific bone fish, the one with a crack by its eye. "Have you been keeping your snout to itself?" he asked, sharply, voice as tight as it always was in the heavens. This wouldn't be as fun if he walled her out again.

The bone fish wilted under his gaze, squirming a moment, before it wailed, [Dad scared mom help!!] and darted for her, diving into her hair and tangling its ribs into her curls. She reached up from the ring to pet the bone fish instead, smiling softly.

Scared, huh… What reason would they have to lie? Would they even be able to, built entirely from his ghostly qi? They would know him so, so very well. She looked back up at him, could see the distrust in his eyes, could see that he didn't know how she was going to react. He waited, watching her, and he didn't argue with the bone fish.

She smiled at him, as gently but as bright as she could. "Instead of asking me anything you really should be asking me, He-xiong, why don't we just eat breakfast together?"

His eyes widened, and his ears perked up, higher than she'd ever seen out of him. He made a soft noise from his throat that she barely heard, and one of the bone fish darted over to the desk to drag the chair back to beside her bed. Slowly, he sat down, still watching her, a sunlight glitter on those eyes behind his glasses. He was so much more beautiful when he relaxed, and he had been beautiful when he wasn't.

Too bad she was in too much pain to tackle him and see if he'd let her kiss him. Too bad she knew better than to be the thing that got between He Xuan and breakfast. The bone fish brought them back their food, and she took the congee again. He Xuan waved them off from giving him a dish. Smiling gently, she offered the bowl of congee in his direction.

"Little one, can you get a second spoon? We can share!"

[Get mom spoon get mom spoon mom happy dad happy!!] answered the bone fish, and handed He Xuan a spoon. This seemed to surprise him, but he took it anyway. He dipped it into the congee, blowing on it before just letting it linger, not eating it.

"You can do it, He-xiong," she murmured, and ate a spoonful herself. It was still just as hot, somehow, and just as rich, and somehow not mixing with the water they were both breathing. His ghostly power really was impressive.

At her encouragement, she could see a trace of what looked almost like vulnerability, and he ate the spoonful of congee. Together, they finished the bowl, and when the bone fish insisted on giving her more dishes, she made a point of getting him to eat at least a couple bites before she ate as much as she could.

His ears remained upright. "I wanted to ask, He-xiong," she said, somewhat abruptly in the comfortable relative-silence of the bone fish being the only ones to chirp and talk. His ears flicked more forward, listening. "The room from earlier… that was Ming Yi's, right?"

He looked away, casting his gaze to the balcony and the open sea. "Yes," he said, after a moment. He didn't seem inclined to continue, and so she leaned a little closer to him.

"Were you… friends? I mean, I saw the blueprints and stuff, he was relying on your power for a lot of the construction. So you had to have at least talked and worked together."

He Xuan shrugged, and did not meet her gaze. It was only his profile that she could see now, watching him as he seemed to gather… something. Confidence, or fortitude to speak of someone who was gone and not coming back. Not as a ghost, not even for a moment. "I stopped his ascension by accident," he admitted. "There was a lahar. I'd made it by accident. He got caught up in it. We were the only survivors."

She kept quiet, holding her breath almost in trepidation. She could feel it in her sternum that she was only going to get this story once, and if she breathed, he might stop, and she'd never find out what happened.

"He didn't want to go to the heavens. Ming Yi… wasn't a people person." He paused, and raked a hand through his hair, loose and inky black. "Ah, who am I trying to fool…? He hated the whole town he grew up in, thanked me for killing them all, and then punched me in the face for suggesting he help me find driftwood to make a boat with so we could get off this island."

He shook his head, only slightly. "We didn't build more than a shack for a few years. I was a new Devastation… we didn't know what I could do. The Four Great Calamities didn't exist until I did. No one knew what the Kiln would make of me. We only started to build the manor when it became clear that I was going to have to take over the seas."

From what little she could see of his expression, it turned downcast, and his ears dropped to their customary low position. "It was his idea for me to play his part. He… wasn't trying to help. Not then. He just wanted a good excuse to not have to do his job."

That hadn't been evident, when she'd searched his room. Not at all. He wouldn't have accounted for He Xuan so much in his works if he hadn't cared for his unexpected roommate. "So you didn't… get along?" she asked, hesitantly.

He Xuan shrugged. "We didn't, and we did. When we found out what the Water Tyrant had done… he was faster to anger than I was." She could see around what he wasn't saying, the faint grief in his tone, the empty spaces where she was sure Ming Yi would interject and tell the story differently. He Xuan had been caught in the guilt of realizing his family had died because of his own misfortune. Ming Yi had seen through it immediately, and turned the blame onto Shi Wudu.

"I understand," she said, softly.

"When it came time to put our plan into motion, he drew up the blueprints and half the arrays we would need to corral the Heavenly Tribulation. I sent him to Ghost City so he wouldn't be caught in the crossfire."

Laughter, shaky and harsh, bubbled out of his gills. They were open. She hadn't seen them open, but they were open, and maybe that meant something. "The last sentiment he ever expressed to me was to tell me not to wuss out and take mercy. He didn't live to see me break that promise, too. Hua Cheng's lieutenant found him on the road. He never made it to Ghost City."

One of the bone fish cheeped sadly. [Earth dad gone earth dad not close earth dad not play anymore… dad sad earth dad mad…]

She stroked its skull, frowning. "Did you ever find out who…?" She trailed off, but the room suddenly seemed colder, and when she looked up, the look of calm rage on He Xuan's face made her shy away.

"I didn't object to Hua Cheng and his lover wrecking my seas for a reason. They don't know how much easier it was once it was two Devastations against one. If it had been sooner…"

He trailed off. His hand rested on the bed between them, and hesitantly, she reached to take his hand.

His fingers were so, so cold. They burned when she touched them,. He turned to look at her, surprise written on his face, and she smiled at him, aiming more for reassurance than joy. She'd heard from Xie Lian how much of it had been orchestrated - in the year without Hua Cheng, she'd spent more than one night at Mount Taicang, escorted often by Lang Qianqiu who wouldn't cross the threshold of the shrine there, telling her second best friend that it wasn't his fault his love was gone. "I'm sure he knew that, even if he was an asshole about showing it. After all… you've never been the nicest man around either, but you still like me just fine."

"Do I." It was a statement, not a question, but she couldn't help it, she brightened.

"Your bone fish don't know how to lie, He-xiong, and they keep telling me you're happy when I'm here. I know it's funny to torment me with how much they never stop talking, but really! All they do is tell me to stay to make you happy! You can't expect me not to start listening to them eventually!"

He snorted, but he didn't pull away from her. "Your injuries are as healed as they are likely to be," he answered instead. Her back didn't hurt as much as it did before his arrival, but she could still feel the dull ache. That was fine. She'd been putting up with worse for months now, and refusing to let what few gods knew where she was help her for about as long. She'd had enough of taking things from the heavens.

He let go of her hand, and she mourned the contact, mourned that she couldn't hold tighter to him. He glanced at her. "Get dressed," he remarked, but there was no ice in his somewhat-rigid tone. His ears had lowered again. "It's time you returned to the surface."

"Isn't there something you should ask me?" she asked, innocently.

"Nothing that you would agree to."

She pouted. It was nice, to be here with her best friend, to feel something like herself again. "Why doesn't He-xiong ask and find out if he's wrong?"

He turned to the bone fish instead. "Set the array to bring her back to the mortal capital. I'm not dealing with Emperor Mu's damned state preceptor in person again." They cheeped at him, sadly.

[Mom stay, dad happy! Mom stay!!]

[Mom stay!!]

[Mom stay!!]

He raised an eyebrow impatiently. They chirped, something akin to a whine, but swam away to follow his orders. She picked up the bone fish still tangled in her hair, the one that had stolen his ashes for her. She lowered her voice conspiratorally, knowing he could hear her just fine.

"Between you and me, little one, I'll stay for good and play with all of you, but only if he asks me the right question," she said.

He Xuan muttered something about her being silly and flighty, but there was no heat in his words. In the corner of her eye, she could see him, and his ears were upright. Good. He was pleased to hear it, and now he knew her as well as she knew him.

He stepped outside the room so she could change, which she did in front of the bone fish: there was never going to be any sort of privacy in her life from them, and so there was no point even trying to insist on it. When she stepped out, leaning on her cane, he offered his elbow to her free hand. She took it, and let him guide her. There wasn't a single staircase between them and the room where he kept his arrays, but the position of the windows strongly implied the inside of the house was doing something strange to its architecture. They were definitely above the water when they reached it, anyway.

She couldn't help but laugh when she saw the array, creatively made entirely out of bones. He Xuan sighed, the universal sigh of a god - or ghost - who had given his juniors orders and hadn't expected them to get creative with it, but on second thought, wasn't sure what else he should've expected.

He activated the array with a gesture. She took a step toward it, and then paused. No. He knew, but did he know, really, what needed to happen next?

She turned around and stepped back up to him. He looked down at her, surprise on his face behind his glasses, and she leaned up on her toes. It really wasn't fair he was so much taller than her now. He didn't step back, at least not in time, so she grabbed him by the collar of his robes and kissed him anyway.

His lips froze against hers, burning hot. She was considering stepping back when his hands settled on her waist instead, and it was He Xuan who stepped closer to her. Whatever thoughts she'd had a moment before were lost to the tide of things, his mouth on hers and the heat within. Ghosts burned cold, but he was scorching, all the way down her spine.

After a moment, she stepped back again, a smile as smug as any on her lips. He stared at her, blinking. She couldn't help it, after so many days of holding back: she reached up and tugged gently at his ear. He frowned, but his ears remained upright, his head following the motion.

"Stop that," he protested, and she knew him too well to know that he didn't really mean it. She grinned, even wider, the salty taste of his saliva on her tongue.

She kissed his cheek, and then let him go. She'd be back. As soon as he asked her the question he needed to, the question he'd been so sure she would refuse, she'd be back.

She stepped toward the array, the weathered driftwood door already ajar. One of the bonefish, it of the bitten tailfin, waited just before it. She paused long enough to cup its skull and kiss it on the forehead. "You be good, little one," she said, softly. "He-xiong's got to ask me something, but when he does, I'll stay for good. Until that happens, you be good."

It cheeped at her in return. [Be good be good dad ask mom stay dad happy happy happy!]

She smiled, and with one last wink in He Xuan's direction - he didn't quite blush, but she saw the tips of his ears turn a little pink - Shi Qingxuan turned towards the door, and walked back into her mortal life.