Chapter 15- The Music of Time Together

A week passed on the mountain. Tian slowly assembled his book of herbs, while his cultivation shot upwards like a startled bird from a bush. Liren wasn’t slack either, but she was starting from a little behind Tian as it was. She was settling down, starting to look at him again, but she still wouldn’t be in a room with him if the door was closed. She never explained why, and Tian didn’t ask. He simply silently noted it down in his heart.

He hung Liren’s painting in his room. Every morning he would wake up and look at it for a few minutes, before washing, dressing and setting out for the day’s work. He did the same at night. Some nights, he dreamed he was in the garden, waiting. He sniffed the dry leaves in the tea pot, treasured the scent of the bamboo growing around the house, made sure his tea pets were nicely organized on the tray, and waited.

In his dreams, he tried to be a good daoist, and wait without anticipation, simply existing in the moment. He never managed it. He knew Liren was there, just out of sight. But no matter how he looked for her or how he called, she never appeared.

When it was Liren’s birthday, Tian waited outside the door of her room.

“No breakfast?” She asked.

“I’ll cook, but first I wanted to give you your present.”

“Oh? What is it?”

“A song. Or a tune, maybe? Whatever you call music on a flute.”

Liren opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, then frowned. “I don’t know either. Both, maybe?”

Tian smiled. “The song doesn’t have a name. I tried hard to think of one, but it was harder to come up with a name than to write the song, and I have been working on the song for half a year now. Since the day I went looking for the stone that became our bangles, in fact.” Tian held up his wrist, the green and blue catching the dawnlight and dazzling the eye.

Liren looked away, and nodded. Tian guided her to a cushion he had set out on the porch. He stood a little way into the garden, and took out his bamboo flute. It took a deep breath for him to raise it to his lips. It took another for him to gather his courage, and a third to begin to play.

Tian had never been comfortable with his own words. He had been imitating his brothers his whole life, memorizing their little sayings, their verbal tics, and slowly melding them into something that, he reckoned, passed pretty well as “his” voice. No one had ever told him that was normal, that it was how everyone learned to speak. He thought he was like a mynah bird or a parrot, imitating what came naturally to others.

The flute had no words. This song was never written on a page or spoken of by another. Every breath, every sound, was his alone. He had never heard the right words to speak what was in his heart. He didn’t even have the words to think what was on his mind. He could only feel, and breathe out that feeling into the world. Hoping the right ears would hear, and understand.

What did Liren mean to him? She was the first cultivator he met that was his own age. Her life was inextricably intertwined with his, since before either knew the other existed. She was… too many things. Beauty that didn’t accept her beauty. Strength that knew she was strong, and screamed against her weakness. She was happy days on the Agate, and tragic days in the Wastes, and peaceful days in their home on the mountain. She was all the moments spent tending the garden and cooking dinner, or drinking his tea and bickering over nothing.

She was Liren. The point at which courage and grief intersected. She was his path to eternity, as he was hers. He feared many things, but not that future. Not her.

There was a space at the end, a moment that missed a continuation, still lacking the few notes to conclude the song. It was at that moment when he put down his flute. Liren was crying. Silently, unashamedly.

“Why did you stop? The song isn’t done.”

“It is still being written. One day at a time. Forever. Happy Birthday, Liren. I won’t remember your age, but every year I will add to the song. It will remember the important things for both of us.”

Life in the Myriad Colors Heaven fell into a numbing routine. Every day was pretty similar to the day before. Tian had the impression that the ancients liked it that way. They had long since gotten used to taking life one day at a time, not feeling anxious about what was to come. Their juniors, still burdened with mortality, were not so enlightened. It took a couple of months for Tian to get comfortable making the medicinal tea for Voidcatcher’s skincare routine, but he got there. He even started finding the ornate toad carvings on the furnace rather charming, and wondering just who was making the charcoal it burned.

Tian broke through to Level Nine ahead of Liren. Liren honored the achievement in the finest tradition of the West Town Outer Court with a raised thumb, not glancing up from her book.

Tian, a month later, acknowledged her breakthrough with a faint nod and “Is that why you aren’t passing the pickles?”

Tian did ask about special fruits that might instantly progress them to the peak of Level Nine. Voidcatcher nodded happily.

“Oh yes, there are loads and loads of ‘em in the Holy Land, and I’m only considering the ones that are safe for you to eat and have acceptable side effects. The best one for you, and your… concubine?”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Dao companion.” Tian said, a touch firmly. Voidcatcher always ‘forgot.’

“That’s adorable. Sure. Dao Companion. Anyway, I’d recommend Three Color Saw Leaf Heartbell Flowers. The three color variety is at the very lowest boundary of the Heavenly Realm, and in addition to maximizing your vital energy, it will fortify your body against the three tribulations you will encounter if your cultivation journey progresses far enough, and even help you find a state of epiphany. Valuable up here, priceless in the kingdoms below, truly one of the supreme herbs for raising an immortal. There are precious few pills that can even remotely compare.”

“Teacher has some?”

“You bet! I cleared out a whole field of them when I had to settle accounts with old Rotgut Hui. His so-called Medicine King Hall dared ruin my disciple’s good business, undercutting him on the price of pills? Hrmph, hrmph! The poor boy was always a genius of commerce, and always schemed against by his lessers. Naturally, I had to settle accounts.”

He’s just so pure, you know? A real cultivator of the old school. If it isn’t nailed down, it’s his, and if it is nailed down, he’ll take the nails too, then demand restitution for the wear and tear on the nail puller, plus labor, plus the carrying fee and a surcharge for work done outside of regular business hours. It brings a tear to this old ghost’s eye, it really does.