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He dreams of rain falling warm and heavy, its distant murmur akin to the rushing sea.
He dreams of droplets trickling down the windowpanes, casting long, lingering shadows across his cheek in their descent. He dreams of their steady drum on the roof, like a heartbeat, finding the gaps between wood and stone and seeping inside, searching. He dreams that petrichor drifts in the air like mist in their wake, silken and fragrant as it lulls every sense to sleep.
He dreams of a single raindrop dripping down from above, splashing onto his lips like a kiss. He dreams of parting them, taking it into his mouth, letting it slide along his tongue and trickle down his throat. He dreams of salt and dew and honey.
He dreams of a ravenous, desperate thirst as deep as the ocean floor.
Jing Yuan awakens in those depths, all the way down on the seabed.
He can still feel the sheets beneath his hands, hear the patter of raindrops in his balcony and garden—yet he is also far, far away from them, deep below, surrendered to the water. It has risen from beneath the floorboards, pooled in his bedding, left it sodden. It bears down from above, a pressure so immense it could crush his bed to splinters, snap every bone in his body and leave nothing but dust.
It has wound itself tightly around his chest, draped itself over his limbs and turned them to lead. Every breath is an effort. The air itself is hard to take, so thick and cloying he can almost roll it on his tongue—but there is salt in his mouth still, and it will not relinquish him. Nor does he want it to.
His hands are free to summon his guandao, his lightning a mere half-thought away, yet he thinks of neither. Instinct croons in his ear, enticing him to listen, telling him that he is safe. That he can trust. Better to rest, it whispers. To sink deeper.
Its voice does not sound like his own.
Jing Yuan’s lashes flutter. He would wonder if he was dreaming still, if he could not feel the strain of opening his own eyes, sense the tendrils of sleep that cling to him and drag him down. It tears a sigh from his lips, and he can almost see it shatter the silence, casting ripples and bubbles in the water as it goes. He blinks up at where his ceiling should be, dazed.
Only darkness meets his gaze. No moon, no light, just the void of the deep, the dark abyss between the stars. Beautiful, in its own way; just as he has dreamt of, longed for. When he reaches out to touch it, the movement as languid as it would be beneath the surface, his mind struggles to comprehend what he feels: ice, water, smoothness not meant for his hands to touch. Something unnatural by nature, deeply wrong in the way it bends around him, sliding across his palm, his wrist. Touching him in turn, claiming what he has offered.
Very softly, Jing Yuan smiles.
The ocean depths stir in answer—but these are not the depths at all. It is something made of them, but vaster still, coiled around him, so large it spills down the sides of his bed. A presence that watches him, unblinking, as it has for some time now. Waiting. Patient.
Gentle, exquisitely so, as it reaches for him again, seeking more now that he has given. A second touch, a caress to his cheek.
It moves with the lightness of a bird in flight, tracing the curve of his cheekbone, the shell of his ear, the line of his jaw. Thorough. Cold, colder than anything Jing Yuan has ever felt, as though everything it touches becomes soaked in mist. So careful that his body forgets to shiver.
Darkness shifts, slithering and unwinding, pulling him closer. He feels that frigid touch everywhere at once, his breath stuttering in his chest, and then it is on his lips, as cutting as a blade and heady with salt and sweetness; yet gentle, still so gentle, as it pushes past them and rests on his tongue and grants him another taste.
It only means to soothe. To lure him back to the edge of sleep again, where he can drift. Where he can be drowned, perhaps, and it can have all that is left of him.
There is no harm in letting it.
Jing Yuan takes its talon deeper into his mouth, catching every droplet it gives—wishing, achingly, that there were more. He sighs around it, eyes drifting half-shut, and it is only then that he sees it: the faintest light filtering through his windows, coated in shadows that cling as water does to skin; the faintest glimpse of things utterly inhuman, sharp and pearlescent and looming, scaled limbs rippling like waves. A mirage that is there one second and gone the next, drenched in more than just rain.
Cloudhymn, Jing Yuan thinks, and the thought slips away as easily as it came, losing itself in fog. The talon pushes deeper, pushes him to relax around it.
There is no need to think of such things, or to see more than that. All he needs is to stay like this, pliant and still, neck bared to the moon.
The creature is kind as it tips his chin back, showing him how. Stroking his hair in praise when he listens. When it withdraws, leaving his mouth bereft and glistening, Jing Yuan’s protest is muffled, distant to his own ears. A low trill answers, eerie and echoing, a sound his tongue could never hope to replicate. A sound that belongs in the deep. He aches to taste it, too.
Sweetly, the shadows oblige. Saltwater rain drips onto his lips again, sliding into his mouth. As he takes it down his throat, a talon traces the line of it, leaving a damp, frozen trail all the way down to the hollow, almost reverent. A croon sounds in his ear when he swallows.
There is a wrongness here: in the taste, the texture, the way it coats his tongue, the way he thirsts for it. His mind grasps, but every thought is water slipping through his fingers. He is already drinking again, straining for it as he is gently pushed down, shadows sliding wet and heavy beneath him, all around him. There is already a maw at his jugular, licking a cold, possessive stripe, slickening his skin. Having its own taste of him.
He has already taken, and there is a price for that.
Breath ghosts over his pulse, and the chill of it sinks deep into his bones, sends a shudder rippling through him. Coils shift, cradling him into stillness. Talons brush back his hair with the tenderness a lover might show. Lips and thoughts smeared with salt, Jing Yuan tilts his head back further, leaves his flesh bare for them. Another offering.
There is nothing tender about the fangs that claim it.
They are incisive, ruthless. As unsparing as his guandao is in battle, slicing cleanly into him as they clamp down on his throat. Piercing skin and seeking more than that, sinking to the root until heat wells and spills; until it scorches trails along his skin. A sharp sting begins to bloom in their wake.
Jing Yuan arches into it with a hiss, fingertips wandering and sinking into hair or silk or kelp, something draped over him, alluringly soft to the touch. Lips drag along his throat, staining it with blood so they can taste it on him, tongue laving at the weeping wound. The scrape of monstrous teeth follows, tugging at his flesh with naked hunger now, coaxing more from it in their greed. Taking everything and more, trying to consume their prey whole.
It seems an insult to call it pain. This isn’t the cruel swing of a sword on the battlefield, the violent rake of claws ripping him open, something twisted and poisoned that seeks to tear him apart. There is no hurt in it. There is only petrichor and salt and flowers, rich and heady, calming him. There is only want.
He can hear the rain and a deep, thundering rumble beneath it; a sound of contentment, settling on him as though it were his own. A voice like music, singing to him, commanding. Sink. Rest. Let the Sea have you now.
Something slides into his mouth again, softer, soaked in salt and wine; one taste and he is already adrift.
They are beyond even the seabed now. All he knows is the cold embrace he has yielded to, this covetous, restless darkness that pulls him close, close, close, seeking to devour him in ways unknown, unfathomable. It feeds him sea-scented honey, and Jing Yuan diligently takes every drop, lets it glide deep into his mouth, trusting enough to be eased into its lull.
It’s a soothing rhythm. Leisurely. An ebb and flow of cold lips suckling at his skin, blood flowing in warm rivulets, droplets being smeared, savoured, swallowed. A melody of the slick sounds of feeding and his own laboured breaths, a cycle that begins again and again, that cannot stop, will not stop. Like the push and pull of the waves.
Too long, he thinks, and the thought could be his own or an echo in the water. Too long. The more he drinks, the more he thirsts, the headier it tastes when he is given more. Every graze on his bare skin wracks a shiver from him.
Fangs sink in again. Drop by drop, like venom, pleasure seeps into his veins, growing warmer inside him. A delight that resonates with his own. Coils endlessly ripple and touch and glide, finding new ways to have him.
The faint throb of his neck becomes a dull, forgotten thing. A new ache stirs, a flicker of heat between his legs that overshadows all else, growing from a ripple to a wave.
His mouth slackens, sweetness trickling from the corner of his lips. Flushed and wanting, his body shifts, seeking what is kept just out of reach, arching on instinct. He reaches for his arousal, shudders when his hand is pinned down again, possessively.
“Shh.”
The sound comes from everywhere at once, the rush of seafoam across the shore. The corner of his mouth is licked clean, and then there is a tongue slipping inside him, a wet, perfect mouth covering his own, a tang of iron, more salt. The restlessness is kissed from him. He is kissed until he drowns in it, until he forgets to desire anything else. You will take what you are given, and no more.
Something slips between his legs, sleek and supple, and he is lost.
The world fades into bliss. He is promised pleasure and he takes the bait like a fool, a fish entranced by the glow of the moon. More coils wind and tighten around his thighs, pulling them apart as they seek his heat. Their pressure is careful, exquisite. He follows it without question, rocking into it before he knows it, before he thinks. Chasing the moon in the depths, even when he ought to know it will devour him.
His easy surrender should bring him shame, perhaps. But there is no wrongness here, none that he can remember now. There is only want and the need to sate it, and there is nothing more right than being had like this. Than offering all of himself.
Every roll of his hips evokes a sigh. The faintest touch and he is already a pliant, mindless thing, sweet with lust. He moans for the rippling shadows that entangle themselves further around him, with him, until he can no longer feel his own body, tell where scales end and he begins, think of anything but more. He thrusts up, breath catching in his throat as fangs sink into it, their sting and his pleasure entwined; a give and take that’s effortless as he pursues it again and again, as they luxuriate in one another in unending waves.
A bite is carved deep into the crook of his neck, rivulets trickling down his collarbone, his chest. When talons frame his heated cheeks, tilting him as though he were a winecup to be savoured, he strains for a kiss. He knows that their lips no longer fit as they should, that he is mouthing at something not made for this now, sharp and eerie—and he seeks more of it, beguiled.
Soft flesh tears open. Blood spills, and so does he, with a rush of heat and a quivering gasp and graceless undulations of his hips, moving as water does. Droplets slide into his mouth like rain, and he gives them, too. He gives everything.
He is consumed.
Night and day lose all meaning. Jing Yuan carries the weight of centuries on him, a wearisome burden, yet he is as light as a feather now. He could spend another like this, he thinks, jealously kept away from the sun and moon—what need does he have of them when the sea, too, can nurture him? When it can feed him salt and pleasure and keep him in return, just as they agreed?
And perhaps such thoughts also echo in the water. Perhaps they leave a scent of their own on him: a fierce maw lunges for them, just as a predator strikes when its prey wavers, and then Jing Yuan is being kissed again, fervently, not granted a single breath before he is dragged beneath the surface, just as he wants. Before he dives in himself. Sweet, foolish fish.
With a trembling hand, he reaches for the sleekness between his legs. Fingertips sink into softness as frigid as mist, slip on drenched scales. Their touch is kind on his fevered skin, soaking him in their cold, moving with him in a relentless push and pull. His mouth falls open in quiet, breathy moans.
The coils shiver for him, pleased, when he spills again, and then again, warm and wet, every inch of him strung taut. They pull him closer, closer, entrapping him as they ripple with contented purrs. Glazed with sweat, he can only rut helplessly into them even as his body twists, shuddering and overwhelmed. He is so slick in his nest that he might almost slip away.
But he is not parted with, not for a second: not when he cries out as he is coaxed into climax yet again, only to be crushed into the depths’ embrace and tenderly shushed; not when he has nothing more to give, no more he can bear to take, only for every drop of him to be leisurely tasted, from his throat to his thighs as shudder after shudder quakes through him; not when water slithers over ravaged skin and a cool gaze settles on him, sharper than teeth, watching him writhe with attentive intensity.
He makes for poor prey, but no other will do. Only him. All of him.
Time slips away from him, and Jing Yuan slips away from himself: from his name, his title, his own skin. He trembles and feels and wants, and when he finally, fully loses himself to it, eroded into stardust after hours or days or decades, he is as he is meant to be: of the sea, belonging solely to it, as he has ever since he looked into the depths and held their gaze. As he does when they seep into his bed and remind him of their claim. Their promise.
For a moment, they almost keep him.
How simple it would be: to give him their salt again, let droplets trickle down his throat and soak into him, soothing his aches; to feed him enough to fill his lungs until he no longer has need for them. Until he is as sleek and supple as water, made for it, so he will never have to leave it.
As exhaustion tugs at him like a current, Jing Yuan lets them tempt him. He tastes the seawater that is spread on his bottom lip, feeling the sting of selfishness; he parts his lips for the tongue that seeks his own, and he licks at its greed and spite, letting the kiss steal what little breath he has been able to seize. He can hardly move, but he imagines opening his eyes and looking into that unfathomable abyss again; the yawning void between the stars. He imagines asking it to devour him. Allowing it, after it has yearned for so long, just as he has.
But he is so, so tired now. Down to his bones. He is already being carried back to shore, gathered close.
Weight settles over him, more careful than the suffocating pressure from before, blanketing every sense, every sliver of bare skin. The faintest shift is still enough to tear a shiver from him.
In the quiet, he seeps back into himself, his breathing calming to a steady ebb and flow, a rhythm far older than his fleeting lifetime. He becomes aware, in a distant way, that his cheeks are damp. That there are eyes on him, unblinking.
Ice grazes his brow, brushing away sweat-slick strands, and for a moment he is as tremulous as a leaf in the wind. For a moment, there is clarity: a spark, a pressing desire to have. To reach for something to hold, let his fingertips slide through fur or the gaps between webbing, bring scales to his lips.
Stay, he wants to say, though his voice is gone, reduced to a rasp still raw with pleasure. Rest with me. Take more. Take everything.
Only a loneliness that resonates with his own would seek him out like this, in such darkness. He craves its companionship as he does nothing else.
As suddenly as it came, the thought slips through his fingers. Talons are stroking his hair now, following the pattern of his breathing—or weaving it, ever slower. A soothing trill sounds in his ear, and something featherlike is caressing the ravaged valley of his throat, and all he needs to do is listen. He is still again, soft all over, soaked in moonlight, and that is good. That is enough. Rest, now.
The world fades into whalesong. Jing Yuan lets himself sink into it, lower, lower, to depths beyond comprehension, a darkness that overshadows every sense. A darkness that basks in his warmth as it lulls him to sleep, seething with a thirst beyond his ken.
Rain falls warm and heavy outside, drumming on his roof, and he drifts. He dreams.
It’s a peculiar sight, to behold the Luofu’s skies clouded with grey.
Rain was once an orchestrated affair here, carefully planned and contained by the ship’s engineers; a precise calculation built on limited time frames and strict regulations. Today, however, water pools in awnings and slides down sloped roofs, falling as it will while passersby seek refuge beneath eaves and stall owners scramble to cover their wares. A far more chaotic scene than Central Starskiff Haven is meant to show in the early morning.
Jing Yuan takes it all in, his footsteps unfaltering.
Such fascinating ripples stemming from something so harmless, he muses, entertained. As general, he has developed a preference for keeping things orderly aboard the Luofu—but it seems a small, occasional disruption might do its citizens good. A permissible break from the comfort of habit and tedium, if only to rattle things a little.
Starskiffs soar above and below as he crosses the empty main bridge, its wooden planks soaked and dark. He pauses to lean over the railing without fear, savouring the wind and mist on his face, allowing himself a moment—just one—to recall the feel of it in his hair, the lightness of being far from the ground. Dream or memory, or perhaps a little bit of each. He has found himself slipping into both since he awoke today.
Drowsiness clings to him like cobwebs still, though he feels hale, more spry in his step than he’s been as of late. Rested. Closer to the thriving sprouts in his garden, rather than the stoic ginkgo tree graciously bearing the gilded weight of its age. Amusement sparks at the thought.
In a fit of foolishness—or youthful fancy—he tilts his head back, letting droplets splash onto his brow and the bridge of his nose. He makes for a strange sight himself, he knows, but it hardly matters. He’s too early to his meeting, and he’s grown too fond of rain, and he’s lived too long to bother with self-consciousness now. His armour will dry eventually.
Air fills his lungs, bringing freshness and peace. When he wets his lips, he tastes the faintest tang of salt.
Without warning, a shadow moves behind his closed lids. He opens his eyes to a vast expanse of red obscuring the clouds, having appeared so suddenly and silently that it would take too much effort to muster surprise.
“Good morning, General.”
The voice is as soft as the falling rain. Gentle, yet it sends a whisper of gooseflesh all over him.
His attention flickers to the hand extended before him, accommodating his height as it holds an exquisite crimson umbrella. Slender and elegant, fit for a musician. Fine, spindly fingers cloaked in dark gloves.
The gaze he turns to meet is nowhere near as delicate, yet all the more striking for it.
Yinyue-jun Dan Feng has a stern way about him, from his unwavering poise to the line of his mouth. Even here, far from the delves the Vidyadhara are most at home in, he still carries a cold, distant air, as though he has just walked out of the sea and brought its presence with him. The teal glow of his eyes evokes its wildness, as well as the light of the moon—a different kind than the one the Luofu knows. One far older.
Instinct quivers like a struck chord, but Jing Yuan sees no need to heed it. He answers to that solemn, quiet look with ease now.
“High Elder.” He inclines his head with a smile, then nods at the umbrella. “It seems you were wiser than I today.”
“When the clouds speak, I listen.” That piercing gaze travels to Jing Yuan’s hair and pauldron, both no doubt glittering with rain. Scales shimmer at the corners of his eyes as he reaches out a hand, swiping a droplet and smearing it between thumb and forefinger. His expression settles on something bordering reproach. “I also see them, and act accordingly.”
“I fear my head was in them this morning, but not my thoughts,” Jing Yuan replies, somewhat sheepish. “In my defence, it’s been quite some time since this delve last saw rain. I trust the Alchemy Commission is more generous with it.”
The one domain where engineers and calculations no longer hold sway. The sunny and green delve from his days as lieutenant is no more: its air is thick with moisture now, its skies never clear, and the rush of the sea is a perpetual melody. A drastic, too-sudden change in the eyes of the Xianzhou people, more used to an inexorable yet slow-paced evolution of their home.
Yet it will settle with time. As will the Vidyadhara, after a few more years.
“It is adequate,” is all Dan Feng says. Answering some silent command, raindrops seep out of Jing Yuan’s uniform, merging into a sinuous shape before him, not unlike his horns. “It has accommodated us, and so too must we learn to adjust to it. We will adapt, as we agreed.”
His accent still has an odd lilt to it; rich with the archaic quirks of the Xianzhou tongue as it was spoken several millennia ago, before first contact was formally established between their peoples, curious and pleasant to Jing Yuan’s ear. His words flow as alluringly as his fingers do, crooking gracefully as they beckon the water to him. With only his hand, he crafts a captivating dance.
His eyes, however, remain fixed on Jing Yuan.
He’s moved closer—close enough for Jing Yuan to count the scales on his cheeks. To admire the stark dash of colour that lines his luminous gaze, as red as a fresh bloodstain.
To forget himself, if only for a single heartbeat.
Dan Feng’s voice lowers to a murmur, meant for his ears alone. “It has also been quite some time since we last spoke, has it not?”
Jing Yuan is suddenly aware of every drop of rain on him: those clinging to his hair, grazing his brow and the shell of his ear; those trickling down his nape, slow and cool. The ones lingering on his skin and deeper still, stirring awake. Answering the call of cloudhymn, though Dan Feng seems in no rush to claim them.
“Quite some time, yes,” he replies, his voice steady. He doesn’t look away. “How it flies.”
“Swift as a wingfish,” Dan Feng agrees calmly. With the lightest flutter of his fingers, the water in his hand ripples and bends. When it leaps over the ridges of his knuckles in a nimble arc, it seems to have grown fins.
Recognition surges with it. Memory and dream. Restless waters at night, star-speckled and inviting; a quiet voice whispering in his ear, echoing trills in a language he cannot understand; a splash, a flash of sharpness, blood blooming like an ink cloud, staining scales and feathers that glint silver; talons dripping with salt and ichor, presenting a gift to him, sweet in his mouth when he tastes it; sleekness sliding along his bare skin, cold as mist, reminding him that he, too, can be devoured just as easily.
“Are you well, General?” They are depthless, those eyes. As fathomless as they are radiant, so at odds with the softness of the High Elder’s tone. So attentive. “You seem weary today.”
And yet his tiredness is absent now, lost to the wind. To those depths.
“Rain always awakens certain aches,” Jing Yuan replies, amiable and just as soft, “and I feel them more with every passing year. Nothing that some rest won’t fix.”
A thoughtful hum. A ripple of moonlight on still waters. “If aches are what troubles you, I could be of assistance. You need only ask.”
Fingertips touch lightly upon his hand, still resting upon the railing. Languorous and unconcerned, they trace the contours of his vambrace. The line of his wrist. Even through cloth and leather, they’re as cold as ice.
With the same languid confidence, Yinyue-jun can turn bone into clay and crush it, toy with the water in any living being like a musician plucking at a guqin. Shape the seabed itself to his whims. Jing Yuan has seen him lift an entire ocean with the palm of his hand and pour it as though it were wine.
There are whispers still, among his Cloud Knights, that the Vidyadhara may well drown the entire ship in that eerie, voracious sea of theirs. That it may swallow them from within, as unfeeling and unknowable as the one who commands it.
Jing Yuan has long lost his wariness of it.
Indulgently, he turns his hand over. Offers his palm and inner wrist. “Yinyue-jun is too generous. I couldn’t accept without giving something in return.”
“An agreement could be reached, if you wished.” Dan Feng’s reply is as smooth as silk. “An arrangement made. We have a talent for such things, do we not?”
His smile is a faint line with no hint of teeth, but Jing Yuan feels them regardless—just as he feels a ghost of the talon that once painted red over his wrist, elegantly splitting his skin open before Yinyue-jun raised it to his lips. A mark of the first promise between the Vidyadhara and the Xianzhou. A taste of peach-sweet blood as the price of their pact.
“Indeed,” Jing Yuan says slowly. He tilts his head, inquisitive. “And what would Yinyue-jun ask of me in exchange?”
Teal glows brighter—a flash of emotion too quick to be grasped, sleek as a fish. A reminder.
A seaglass gaze loftily looking down from upon a throne, never straying from him. A glimpse of cunning and scorn and keen intelligence across a negotiating table, trying to corner him at every turn. Vibrant aquamarine reflecting rippling water, curiosity framed by dark, sea-soaked lashes. A luminous, devouring light among the shadows of the deep, brighter than the moon, so cold it sears.
Pinning him in place with ease, endlessly pondering what might be had. What Jing Yuan will offer and relinquish, unwavering in his sense of fairness. Unfaltering before something as ravenous as the sea, too steadfast to ever fear it.
When Yinyue-jun took from him that first time, closing frozen lips over his bleeding wrist, Jing Yuan took just as much, after all.
If he sometimes wakes with a feverish ache, sheets drenched in a floral, humid fragrance and a terrible thirst ravaging his throat, unquenched by water that tastes all wrong, then that, too, is only fair.
As if sensing his thoughts, the High Elder’s eyes flicker to his mouth, lingering on the curve of it, the remnants of salt, the too-tender flesh. There is no need to grasp at the hunger that simmers in them, as though it were a fleeting, secret thing. He bares it to Jing Yuan without reserve.
“I would have nothing more than what you wish to give, General,” he murmurs, speaking the word with utmost care. Showing him how he savours it. “As ever.”
His thumb brushes over Jing Yuan’s bottom lip, pressing down on newly healed skin almost to the point of pain, of splitting it anew. By the time he steps back and away, scaled tail unfurling itself from Jing Yuan’s ankle, the wound and its echo have been long forgotten.
His shadow falls across the bridge, and for a moment it seems far larger than himself. Shapeless and shifting, unnatural in the way it doesn't quite follow the High Elder's movements, lingering too close to Jing Yuan's side instead. Beckoning him.
As rain begins to seep into his hair and clothes again, as he tastes it on his tongue, Jing Yuan smiles to himself—and follows.