The Tears of Thirteen Years

Chapter 24

Hello again! There will be two final chapters after this one.

Hard to imagine that we are finally at this point! Thank you so much for reading.

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I always thought after learning that Lan Wangji raised Sizhui as his son, that he must have been lurking around the forest intentionally in Chapter 5.

Why else would he appear so conveniently, when Sizhui threw the flare? So I decided to expand that thought. Sorry if its disappointing.

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The lonely song of a guqin, broke the quiet peace of the forest. Echoing the pain of a heart long broken.

One thought wove and danced through the music.

It has been thirteen years.

Long fingers stroked the taut strings, low ringing notes following in their wake like a tidal wave, bold and mesmerizing. A story of devotion and loss etched into ice, the spiraling patterns of grief, spun like spider's thread remaking a sweet love song into something new.

Minutes stretched into a hour, as years had turned to a decade, their count held in sadness. Still he played, as he had played nearly everyday for every year lost to the past.

If he closes his eyes he will feel the black soil of the Burial Mound between his fingers, smell the scent of the battlefield and again relive that agony, the shock of pain of hearing, the knowing that he was gone.

In the underbrush, a young fox listened for a moment, before darting away from the sound it found so strange and ominous in the peace of the woods.

After that, not a single animal approached the area, where the man cloaked in white cloth and cold grief knelt, drowning in pain. The aggressive melody, that slowly mellowed into haunting chords, that would bring a shiver even to the strongest of souls.

Every note was one of longing, a sweet almost tender song that filled the small clearing. It echoed and called through the trees down into the valley below. Calling and never once receiving a reply, the reflected silence only adding to the pain.

The moonlight danced along his sleeves and shimmered across the guqin, casting his furiously moving hands into shadow, the sharp motion and decisive pluck of the vibrating strings.

Thirteen years.

He would wait a hundred, if he was granted such time in this world. A thousand, if it meant seeing Wei Ying one more time. He dreamed of it some nights. A street and a man so familiar. A laugh that had him running towards a voice he waited to hear once more. A face in a crowded marketplace.

It was difficult to imagine that the world could have moved on by over a decade, without Wei Ying. Harder still to reconcile that he had been absent from his son's life for so long. Wei Ying would find that hard to bear when he returned.

No one else believed now that he would return. It was better that they believed him gone and yet the sting of their disbelief never completely went away. He had less tolerance for them now. They had wished for his death. Would wish for Sizhui's if they knew who his father was. His true father.

He had begun here in this lonely outcrop, thinking to play something that let him reminisce on the earlier past. Summer days and Wei Ying's laughter. The one he often played by the glade overlooking the bridge, where Wei Ying would once cross into Gusu, the tone far lighter, dancing in the air. That was a safer ode to Wei Ying, calming and something more in line with the ancient songs of his Sect.

A song Sizhui would like.

This was anything but calm.

It was not a song he would play in Gusu. Not where his brother or son could hear. Too honest and raw for the quiet days and too loud for an audience that included most of his Sect. He would not care but for Sizhui he needed the appearance of calm, if nothing else.

A short step away was the edge of a cliff, that tumbled smoothly into the forest below. It offered a perfect view of the valley, stretching for miles in daylight he thought, but here in the quiet of the pre-dawn hours, the village in the center of his vision was perfectly illuminated, by night fires and lanterns. Small pinpricks of light in the distance.

Where Sizhui was investigating with JingYi.

His son was talented, responsible and had been carefully trained for almost all of his young life, preparing him for a night such as this.

As if that makes you worry less.

It had been two months since the day, Sizhui gave his respectful bow to the Elders, accepting his graduation from his studies with excitement concealed behind a gentle expression.

Standing impassively behind him as his father, Lan Wangji was torn between pride and dread.