November 2020: Rise in Perfect Light

[marcicatverse]

Title: Rise in Perfect Light
Author: marcicat

Summary: No matter where or when, no matter the circumstances, it’s always possible to share love, to build a family, and to shine a light.

Actual Summary: AU - canon divergence from Shen Xi's death in the drama. She and Zhao Yunlan travel 10,000 (or so) years into the past instead, and meet young Shen Wei and Ye Zun, and things progress from there.



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PROLOGUE: Always expect the unexpected (and carry snacks)
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Maybe there was a universe in which Zhao Yunlan wasn’t in the car at all. He shouldn’t have been, after all -- surely there were rules about bringing your children to active crime scenes. And maybe there was a universe in which someone -- possibly his father, much more likely one of the deputies -- told him to stay put and he did.

Maybe there was even a universe where he went out the passenger side door, straight into the arms of one of those very same deputies, and watched the whole thing unfold like a nightmare, like the worst day of his life.

But then again, maybe not.

“Zhao Yunlan, stay in the car.”

He nodded without listening, with all of his attention focused ahead, because that was his mom out there. His mom on a narrow walkway between two crumbling buildings. His mom, being threatened by a criminal.

A criminal who was holding her too close and shouting down at his father. “You drove me to this! Why couldn’t you just leave us alone!”

His father, who was aiming a gun. “You’ve been linked with nine deaths in the last six months. Don’t make this worse for yourself.”

It was an impossible situation. Zhao Yunlan scrambled out of the car and dodged past the closest deputy without any plan at all. But he recognized the buildings. The one on the left had stairs, and he ran for them. “Mama!”

“Yunlan!” His mom was crying. He could hear her; noise echoed strangely in the stairwell. He stumbled over dirt and bits of concrete and he willed himself to go faster.

The criminal’s voice echoed even louder. “Is this what you wanted? I’ll end us both!”

“No!” He burst onto the walkway with too much momentum to stop. There was dark energy swirling around the criminal. Swirling around his mom. He barreled forward as the energy surged.

He -- stopped. Everything stopped. All around him was darkness, or maybe it was light too bright to see. It felt like he was in a bubble of silence, with noise all around him; like he was being squeezed and pulled apart at the same time. Was that what dying felt like? Maybe he was dead.

And then he wasn’t.

Reality rushed up to meet him, and he hit the ground hard. “Yunlan!”

He blinked up at his mom, suddenly kneeling next to him with her hand on his cheek. His head hurt, but if she was there, everything had to be all right. “Mama.”

“Yunlan,” she said again, and she gathered him into a hug when he reached for her. “Are you all right?”

He nodded against her shoulder, and she patted his hair, and that had to mean everything was all right, didn’t it? “What happened?” he asked. Whatever it was, his mom would know what to do.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I think we’re -- somewhere else.”

Her voice sounded strange, and he leaned back to look around. The criminal was on the ground nearby. But there was no walkway, no buildings -- no car, or deputies. No father. He swallowed hard. Took a deep breath in and let it out slowly, like he was supposed to.

Instead of any of the things he should have seen, there was bright blue sky. Trees. A cliff. And three people he’d never seen before, all staring at them. One of them looked angry.

“How did you get here?” the angry one demanded. “What power is that? Where did you come from?”

Zhao Yunlan’s mom stood up and put her hands on her hips. “How did you get here?” she questioned back. “Where did you come from? What business of yours are the powers of others?”

The questions only made him look angrier, and the man took a step closer. One of the other strangers, dressed all in black, waved his hand at them. “Be careful! He just killed someone!”

Zhao Yunlan felt his eyes go wide as he looked around, like maybe there was a dead body somewhere and he’d just missed it. The angry man scoffed. “After the meteor, the world is messed up. Killing someone is no big deal.” He puffed out his chest. “People can do whatever they want now. Who would stop me? You?”

“Why not me?” His mom sounded like she did when she had to go to his school. “I command powers you’ve never seen. You should leave first. We won’t follow.”

The man still looked angry, but he stopped moving forward. “No one has successfully stood against me in a fight. Think twice before you issue threats.”

Zhao Yunlan looked up in time to see his mother smile. “What fight? What threats? Surely you were just passing through, as are we. A chance encounter is no cause for a battle.”

The stranger in black had edged closer, along with the one dressed all in white -- intentionally or not, it gave the impression of four against one. Five against one, if the unconscious criminal counted, but he wasn’t sure they did. The man stared at them for what felt like a long time, but finally he turned away, and headed into the trees without another word.

His mom squeezed his shoulder, and then nodded. “That’s fine, then. Now --”

She stopped talking when the stranger in white started to cough, and then crumpled to the ground. The one in black dropped to his knees next to him. “Didi!”

Zhao Yunlan rushed over. The strangers had helped them, sort of. It was natural to be concerned when someone suddenly collapsed, especially if it meant putting off being worried about -- everything else.

He didn’t want to think about how the angry man talked about the meteor like it had just happened, or how everyone was wearing weird clothes. He would focus on what was in front of him, and not on the growing fear that they were a long, long way from home.


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SECTION 1
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Chapter 1: Shen Xi’s long night

She stared at the fire. She was, in all likelihood, going to need to learn how to start fires. And put them out again. She supposed they were lucky that the nights were mild. Winter would be -- she pushed the thought away. It wasn’t winter. Not yet.

“Are you all right?” she asked, instead of any of the -- many -- other questions she was thinking. They hadn’t moved far from where they’d arrived, and there had been far fewer explanations than she would have liked. But they were alive, which was an unexpected improvement over expectations. One thing at a time.

Lu Xinzhu shrugged. “Not sure what to say to that. I guess it depends what you’re planning on doing to me.”

Shen Xi almost laughed, but managed to keep it quiet. If anyone was actually sleeping, she didn’t want to wake them. “I think it’s more what you’re planning on doing to us,” she said. “It wasn’t me that brought us here.” She didn’t say, ‘It’s not us who were accused of killing nine people,’ but maybe her face said it for her.

“I didn’t bring us here. And I didn’t kill anyone,” Lu Xinzhu said. “They’re not dead, or at least they weren’t when I last saw them.”

“Forgive me if I’m not reassured.”

Lu Xinzhu looked away. “I -- I’m not sure what happened. I panicked. You were supposed to be alone, not being followed by the entire SID.”

That sounded good -- in that if it was true, there probably wasn’t malicious intent in wherever they’d ended up. But it also sounded very bad in terms of the likelihood of easily reversing it. She raised her eyebrows. “And you were supposed to be a university student with information about dark energy. And yet.”

“It was an illusion. It’s safer to look like a man than a woman, in a lot of parts of the city. If I get too far away from -- the source, it won’t hold.”

Illusions. She wondered if that explained the ‘mysterious disappearances’ that were being investigated as deaths. “And the source is a Dixingian?”

It was hard to tell in the firelight, but she thought Lu Xinzhu rolled her eyes. “Why, are you going to report her?”

“To who?” She gestured around them. “No, I only wondered --” If you left people behind, was the rest of that sentence, and she suddenly realized what a terrible question it was. “It’s nothing. You said you’re not sure what happened. What were you trying to do?”

Lu Xinzhu sighed. “You have to understand, there’s no guidebook to Dixing powers. I’ve lived in Haixing nearly my whole life -- I always hoped that if I manifested a power, it would be something useful, or at least easy to hide. I should have hoped for something easy to practice.”

Shen Xi wondered if she should point out that all of the children were definitely awake at that point and not-so-subtly listening in, but it seemed like Lu Xinzhu had already noticed. Her voice was a little louder as she continued to speak.

“I can jump backwards in time. Maybe? I hardly ever use it, but that’s what it seems to do. But it’s little things -- I missed the train once, on a day I really needed to catch it. And then I blinked, and it was five minutes earlier and I was seeing the train pull up to the platform.” She paused, and then added, “And then I was sick for three days. I can do a few seconds, maybe a minute or two. I tried to do an hour, once, but I don’t know if it worked. I woke up in the hospital.”

Yunlan shifted on the ground next to her, and she reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. “But you agree we’ve traveled in time,” she said.

“If I tried to do this, we’d all be dead,” Lu Xinzhu said bluntly. “But yes, it does seem like time travel has occurred, regardless of how it happened.”

“Do you usually see that -- the void? Whatever that was?”

Lu Xinzhu looked startled. “You saw that too? No, it’s always been instantaneous. Do you think it means something?”

“I don’t know.” She stretched, careful not to disturb Yunlan. It looked like he might have dozed off again. The others were further away, but she was sure at least one of them was still listening. She wasn’t sure what to make of them -- they were clearly the most experienced in things like starting a fire, but they weren’t volunteering any information about themselves, either. When they thought no one was paying attention, they looked very, very young.

“Right now we don’t know a lot of things. Which brings us back to my original question: are you all right? You were unconscious for a long time.” And they had no way of visiting a hospital, or finding a doctor.

She tried not to feel offended when Lu Xinzhu looked surprised again. By the question? Because of who was asking it? But she answered without hesitation. “I think so. I feel better than usual, after using my powers. Which is more evidence that this wasn’t me.”

“No one is blaming you,” Shen Xi said. “It’s good that you’re all right.”

There were a few seconds of silence between them, as the fire popped and sparked. And then Lu Xinzhu said, “Are you all right?”

She took a breath, and tried very hard not to sigh. “We’re in the distant past with virtually no resources and no way to get back.” And no idea what they would be going back to, even if they could. “I’m -- concerned. But yes, I’m all right.”

Lu Xinzhu gave a quiet laugh. “Concerned. Yes, that’s a word for it. If we’d dropped into the middle of a city, that would be one thing. Wilderness survival skills haven’t exactly been a priority in my life.”

“Or mine,” she agreed. “But we’ve made it through the first night.” She pointed towards the horizon. “The sun’s coming up.”

She hesitated, and then added, “I think we should stay together.”

“Yes,” Lu Xinzhu said quickly. “Did you think I would say no?”

Yes. Maybe. “It seemed like it was worth checking,” she said.

“Then yes, officially, I agree. Together.”


Chapter 2: Shen Xi’s long day

“Where were you headed before?”

They couldn’t stay at their impromptu campsite forever. Food and water, shelter, something that might keep random strangers from stumbling over them and threatening them -- none of them were available at the edge of a cliff, no matter how scenic it might be.

The two boys exchanged a look. They still hadn’t shared their names, but they had shared the snacks Yunlan had in his pockets for breakfast, and Yunlan, at least, seemed convinced they were friends. “Gege, you can tell us!” he exclaimed. “We can definitely help you!”

She hadn’t been aware the boys needed help, although she’d been trying very hard not to ask if they were old enough to be on their own. They were on their own, that was clear enough. And everything about the way they held themselves disinvited questions. Except, apparently, from her son.

“Maybe it would help to start by telling us something else,” Lu Xinzhu said. “We don’t know anything about this place.”

“You’re from the future,” the one in white said, and then started coughing.

“We are,” Lu Xinzhu agreed.

The one in black patted his brother’s back. “And there is still -- Haixing and Dixing?” He spoke carefully, like he was afraid of giving too much away. Or maybe afraid of what the answer might be.

Lu Xinzhu nodded. “Yes. It’s not perfect. But there is a treaty between our people. There are disagreements, as there will always be. But we live in an era of peacetime.”

It was a true answer -- perhaps deliberately vague and lacking in specifics, but still technically correct. "If it is true that the meteor strike happened within living memory, then this time is the distant past for us."

She got twin nods in reply. The one in black frowned. "After the meteor, most people left Dixing. It's easier to survive on the surface. But resources are scarce -- everyone is fighting to defend what they have, or to get more."

Yunlan looked confused. "Shouldn't the meteor have made the surface uninhabitable instead?" he asked. "Volcanoes would erupt, and there would be an ash cloud. Right?"

He looked at her, and she nodded. "It could happen that way," she said. Or, apparently, not. "I think we should take the word of people who experienced it, though, don't you?"

Yunlan shook his head. "But it doesn't make any sense! If something could clean the air and the water on the surface, it should work in Dixing too, and then no one would need to fight!"

The small stream they'd all drank from that morning had been surprisingly clear. She'd attributed it to a lack of pollution, but maybe it was something more. "There's no way to know right now," she said. "For now, we should focus on making sure we can stay safe while we decide what to do next."

The twins were whispering furiously back and forth, so she waited. They weren't on a schedule; it wasn't like 'how are we going to find food, water, and shelter' would be less relevant in five minutes. Finally, the one in black said, "You asked where we were going before. We were looking for a spaceship. You could come with us, if you want."

They were looking for a spaceship. It sounded ridiculous, but could it really be discounted, when they'd already established time travel as a legitimate explanation? Yu Xinzhu leaned forward. "You know where to find a spaceship?"

"No." The boy's expression was flat. "If we knew where to find it, we wouldn't be looking."

"But you know how to find it," Yunlan said.

The one in white said, "Yes," at the same time his brother said, "Maybe," and Yunlan grinned.

"That means yes," he said confidently. "We'll help you! Can we?" He turned to her and put his hands together. "Please? A spaceship!"

She tried to give him a stern look, but it was probably ruined by smiling at the same time. It had been too long since she'd seen him genuinely excited about something, without it being overshadowed by expectations. "There are five of us here, Yunlan. Why don't we listen to their plan, and then we'll talk about it, and we'll all decide together."

"Okay." He moved closer and whispered loudly in her ear. "Mama! A spaceship!"

Yunlan listened to the explanation with rapt attention. To her surprise, Yu Xinzhu seemed equally enthusiastic. They were both nodding along at every pause, even when the explanation went off on a tangent about the best ways of detecting the presence or absence of dark energy.

For herself, she already knew she would agree, but talking through a plan could help reveal its weak points. Besides, Yunlan was having fun.

She tried to keep an eye on everything around them -- she hadn’t forgotten the person who’d threatened them the day before -- and it didn’t take long to realize that the boy in white wasn’t paying attention to the explanation at all. He was watching her instead.

Shen Xi had been stared at by far more intimidating people than a Dixingian child from the ancient past. She met his gaze and raised her eyebrows, but he didn’t look away. Point to him. She got the feeling he was trying to figure her out -- she’d invite him to ask his questions out loud, but even if it hadn’t been her own idea to listen to the spaceship plan together, she doubted he’d leave his brother’s side. They seemed equal parts protective of each other and suspicious of strangers.

But there was nothing like adversity to separate allies from acquaintances. Adversity, proximity, and time. She nodded an acknowledgement, and looked away first. It seemed they would have all three.

Chapter 3: Sometimes you find a spaceship; sometimes the spaceship finds you

“It’s a very limited AI.” Lu Xinzhu patted the wall next to her, and Shen Xi tried not to find it charming.

She gave the wall a wary look. “I’m not sure what ‘very limited’ means to a society that built spaceships that could handle interstellar travel and terraforming,” she answered. “Are the boys safe?”

Lu Xinzhu nodded, and she followed her back along the sloping hallway. “They’re sleeping. I think they tired themselves out exploring. The ship definitely wants to protect them, and it recognizes us as having the same goal.”

“Can you communicate with it?” It felt like any building to her, but the ships had been made by Dixingren and Yashou.

“A little. It’s more like a feeling, or an instinct. It’s -- ah, it’s trying to reach you too, I think. I’m not sure it understands that you and Yunlan aren’t Dixingren. It’s -- very dedicated to accessibility.”

That didn’t sound “very limited” in terms of an AI, but it did sound like it might be helpful. “You don’t think it’s dangerous.”

“I think danger is relative,” Lu Xinzhu corrected. They turned a corner, and she could see Yunlan curled up between the others. The lights had been dimmed. The boys looked -- relaxed. Like they were actually sleeping, and not just dozing. She breathed a sigh of relief. They settled on the floor, close enough to see them but hopefully not close enough to wake them with their conversation.

“Relative dangers,” she prompted.

“Any piece of machinery is dangerous, so a spaceship should be too. What if it blows up? What if it flies into space? Theoretically it’s capable of those things.” Lu Xinzhu patted the wall again. “But on our own -- what if the next roaming attacker isn’t alone? What if the ghost beasts we hear howling at night get closer?”

She lowered her voice. “The time travel is dangerous all on its own, too. What about diseases? We have zero immunity to anything here, and we’re introducing a whole hoard of our own germs. If a super-advanced spaceship wants to shelter us and offer assistance, I don’t think we’re in a position to turn it down. And aren’t we all dangerous, in certain circumstances?”

It wasn’t anything she hadn’t considered herself. None of them had any idea how to make their way in a world so different than their own. “I don’t disagree,” she said.

Lu Xinzhu gave her a sympathetic look. “Wondering if you’ve forgotten any dangers you’re going to add to your mental list?”

“I do miss writing things down,” she said, which was an answer all on its own. They’d both spent plenty of time worrying, both together and separately. “But I’m curious — you don’t seem surprised, about the spaceship.” Not nearly as surprised as she felt.

“I grew up with stories about the Ghost Fleet,” Lu Xinzhu said. “The Ghost Fleet, the Lost Fleet -- whatever you want to call them. It’s an accepted part of history that a fleet of ships brought the Dixingren and Yashou to this planet, but no one knows what happened to the ships themselves. Who knows where they are by our time.”

She leaned back against the wall and looked at the ceiling. It was mimicking the sky outside, mostly clear, with a few wispy clouds slowly passing by. “I was told,” she said slowly, “that the ships had all been destroyed.”

Lu Xinzhu scoffed. “One, why would anyone do that, the ships are clearly great. Two, that sounds exactly like what someone would say to keep people from asking questions.” There was a pause, and then she added, “Three, you were told? By who? I thought Dixing was supposed to be a big secret from everyone except the SID.”

She resisted the urge to move further away. The only way out was through. “Zhao Xinci is my husband.”

The reaction was immediate. “What? But you --” Lu Xinzhu looked back and forth between her and Yunlan. “Was that some kind of undercover operation gone wrong?”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, of course not. He would never --” Put their son in danger, she wanted to say, but hadn’t he done just that? “I’m not involved with the SID,” she said instead. “Yunlan is allowed to visit his father there, but he’s supposed to be doing his schoolwork. Not -- going with them on calls.”

“I got in trouble for reading the books in the library.” Yunlan’s voice was quiet. She should have known the conversation would be enough to wake them. It was probably better that they all knew, anyway. What use was it to keep secrets that wouldn’t matter for another ten thousand years?

She waved Lu Xinzhu ahead of her, and they both moved to sit next to the boys. Yunlan bit his lip. “That’s why they wouldn’t let me stay at the office by myself.”

“Why were you there?” Lu Xinzhu asked. “I heard you wanted information on dark energy. Shouldn’t the SID be able to answer all your questions?”

Shen Xi took a deep breath. “I didn’t want them to know I was researching it.” There was no easy way to say the next part. “There was a case, before the SID was formed. Zhao Xinci was different afterwards. He slept more; he started having nightmares he couldn’t wake up from. He acted like a different person sometimes.”

“The Ghost Killer has PTSD?” Lu Xinzhu asked.

She shook her head, then reconsidered. “I’m not sure. But I know that ever since that case, Zhao Xinci has had a Dixingian named Zhang Shi living inside of him.”

“What?!” Lu Xinzhu looked shocked. Yunlan looked -- less shocked. She’d warned Zhang Shi to stay away from him, but Yunlan already spent so little time with his father, she’d hesitated to limit it even more. The other boys moved closer, so their shoulders were touching, and he nodded at them.

She sighed. “I know. But I’ve spoken to him, multiple times. He’s not very forthcoming, but he’s said enough.”

“So you’re researching dark energy to try to -- separate them?” She appreciated Lu Xinzhu’s effort to find a tactful description, despite the strangeness of the situation.

“I’m researching dark energy to find out if it’s harmful to Yunlan,” she said. Zhao Xinci had made his choice; she didn’t agree with how he’d gone about it, but she would respect that he’d made it. That didn’t mean their son should suffer for it.

“I’m fine!” Yunlan said, and she smiled.

“I’m glad,” she said. “But I’m still going to look out for you. We should all look out for each other, right?”

“And the ship too?” Yunlan asked.

She could see Lu Xinzhu nodding next to her, and she would swear the floor was getting warmer. Relative dangers, she reminded herself. “Yes. The ship too.”


Chapter 4: Seeing is believing, except when it isn’t (sometimes it’s time travel)

The ship helped. Shelter, light, heat -- things she had never had to question being present in her life until she wound up in the past. It didn’t take long going without to make them feel like a luxury to be cherished.

Slowly, their days started to have -- not a predictable pattern, exactly, but a rhythm. A set of expectations that were met more often than they were upended.

“Food?” she said.

“The alien potatoes are growing quickly, and the greens have started sprouting,” Lu Xinzhu said. “Xiao Wei agrees that we’ve convinced the ship to tell us if anything we bring in is actively poisonous, which is at least a step up from the guess and check method.”

Shen Xi winced. That had been a bad night. “And no trouble at the river this morning?”

Lu Xinzhu shook her head. “Some weird birds, but nothing big enough to worry about. We didn’t see any tracks beyond the expected local animals. Anything here?”

“It’s been quiet. The ship is working on a color system for me, but we ran into a few issues.” She waved towards the ceiling. “Did you know you can see colors outside of the Haixingren visible spectrum?”

Lu Xinzhu frowned. “Really? No, how would I know that? Is this like how you can’t see in the dark?”

“Apparently, yes,” she said drily. “It’s a day of advancing scientific knowledge for all of us. Speaking of which, I think we should consider some sort of lessons for the boys.”

She wasn’t expecting Lu Xinzhu’s blank look of surprise. “Why?”

“Because I want Yunlan to keep up with his studies, and I didn’t think the other two would want to be left out,” she said. Also, she thought Yunlan would be more likely to pay attention if his friends were with him.

“No, I mean why lessons at all? They’re doing fine. Learn by doing; that’s how Dixing kids grow up.”

She wasn’t sure ‘reluctantly agreed to share part of their names, finally’ and ‘sometimes act like they believe we’re not going to kick them out’ meant that anyone was doing fine. But she was prepared with supporting arguments anyway, and she ticked them off on her fingers as she spoke.

“We agreed that a lengthy stay here was the most likely scenario. Adding a moderate amount of structure to each day would make longer-term planning easier. Each of us has a very different skill set -- giving each person a chance to teach the others what they know would build trust, and cross-training is a logical step regardless. Math and strategy games are valuable no matter what year it is. And Yunlan’s handwriting is terrible, and it hurts my heart and my eyes every time I see it.”

Lu Xinzhu laughed. “You make a compelling case,” she said. “All right, I’ll support your suggestion on a trial basis.”

They roughed out a few ideas to present to the boys, several of which made Lu Xinzhu laugh again. “I’m not sure whether you’re disguising chores as lessons, or suggesting lessons so that chores sound good in comparison,” she said.

Shen Xi didn’t even try to look innocent. “Why can’t it be both?”

“It’s a good idea,” Lu Xinzhu conceded. Her expression turned serious. “Do you ever think about it -- if we’ll ever go back?”

It was a question that deserved an honest answer. “I think about it,” she said. “But in the same way I might have thought about time travel before -- an interesting daydream or thought experiment, but not something I expect to happen.” She held up both hands. “But as I said, that’s how I’ve always thought about time travel. And here we are.” She paused, and then added, “Do you think about it?”

Lu Xinzhu looked away. Her words sounded carefully chosen. “I left -- very little behind. Given the choice, I would stay here. But I worry. That my actions took you and Yunlan from your family, and your home. That you might resent me for it.”

“When I think of that day, I think about how it was my own choices that led me to be there. I think about you trying to survive. I think about my husband prioritizing shooting a suspect over the safety of his child.” She took a deep breath, and shook her head. “I don’t resent you. Him, a little. I try not to, for Yunlan’s sake.”

She put her hand over Lu Xinzhu’s. “I miss pencils. And street food, and hot showers. But Xinzhu, we have a home here too, and a family. All of us, together.”

Lu Xinzhu turned her hand over so they were palm to palm, and squeezed their fingers together. “I miss music, and markets. And I haven’t been part of a family for a long time. But this -- all of us, together -- it’s good.”


Chapter 5: Somewhere, Shen Xi’s grandmother is sneezing

It took her far too long to realize that Yunlan’s quietness wasn’t a natural result of being uprooted from his life, time traveling ten thousand years in the past, and spending every day learning to survive with three Dixingians and an intelligent spaceship.

They were all gathered in one of the more comfortable rooms -- a generous person might call it a lounge -- for their usual post-dinner check-in. And as usual, Yunlan was sprawled out on the floor, sleeping, with his head in Xiao Wei’s lap. What wasn’t usual was seeing him scrunch up his forehead like he was in pain, and mutter, “Gege, too much.”

Xiao Wei barely paused in his explanation of the hunting habits of ghost beasts. His brother slid closer, and they gently shifted Yunlan from one to the other. Xiao Ye put his hands over Yunlan’s ears, and Yunlan’s expression smoothed out.

It was only then that they seemed to realize that she and Lu Xinzhu were both staring at them with surprise. “What?” Xiao Wei said.

“What was that?” Lu Xinzhu asked.

“Gege is loud,” Xiao Ye said, like it was obvious. “I’m quiet. This helps.” He sounded proud, and Xiao Wei nodded in agreement.

Xiao Ye was definitely not the quiet brother. Unless they were talking about something other than audible volume? Lu Xinzhu seemed to have the same idea, because she asked, “What do you mean by loud and quiet?”

The brothers looked at each other, then back at her. “Yunlan,” Xiao Wei said, in a perfectly even voice. “You should stop pretending to sleep. You told us she knew.”

Yunlan pouted his way into a seated position, but stayed leaning against Xiao Ye’s side. “She does!” he insisted. “I told her, and when I was little she always let me go lie down somewhere quiet when I asked!”

“Is this about your headaches?” Shen Xi asked. He used to get them frequently, but in the last few years, he had stopped mentioning them. She thought he’d grown out of them. Watching him now, trying to avoid her eyes, it was clear that she’d missed something. “Yunlan?” she said quietly.

“I had to be stronger so I could protect you,” he answered, still looking at the floor. She was sure she heard the echo of his father in those words, and she tried to keep her anger from showing on her face. “Daqing helped me. But there’s so much more here! It’s too loud.” He turned, and pushed his forehead into Xiao Ye’s shoulder.

It was that motion that sparked a memory. Of her grandmother, telling stories around a crowded table. “Is it noise?” she asked. “Or is it energy?”

“What do you mean?” Lu Xinzhu leaned forward with an intrigued expression. “Like dark energy?”

“Not necessarily.” Although there was surely more of it around at their current point of history than when they’d started. And maybe that’s why the boys said Xiao Wei was loud? “My grandmother always told us that she could see with her third eye -- she said that’s how she always knew when we were getting into trouble.”

Shen Xi watched Yunlan carefully for any reaction. “She said it ran in our family. I never experienced it myself, but she came to me after you were born.” At the time, she’d been more focused on the fact that Yunlan had finally stopped crying than on the vaguely cryptic words her grandmother had offered. “She talked about energy. She said certain kinds of energy could overwhelm the other senses -- and she specifically mentioned that being around a lot of it felt ‘loud’ to her.”

She shook her head. “I thought she was trying to get us to move again. She hated that apartment.”

Xiao Ye poked Yunlan’s arm. “You should tell her what you told us.”

Yunlan finally turned and met her eyes. “She said it was okay?” he asked. “Really okay?”

“Yes, Yunlan.” How could she have missed something so important? He was so young -- how long had he been keeping this to himself? “A-Lan, it’s really okay. I promise.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His fingers were clenched in his sleeves, but even as she started to say something, to reassure him again, Xiao Wei reached out and took one of his fists, gently pulling the fingers apart so they could hold hands.

All at once, Yunlan’s tension seemed to disappear. “Gege, I don’t know whether you’re giving me reassurance or keeping me from running away!”

“Both,” Xiao Wei said solemnly, and Yunlan laughed.

“Fine, fine.” He was back to looking at the floor, but he sounded better, at least. “Daqing -- a friend,” he clarified, looking at Lu Xinzhu, who nodded. “He asked why I wasn’t more careful, because my third eye was always open. I think he was worried? He showed me ways to make it less open, and they worked. It was fine. It’s just different here. There’s more --” He waved his free hand like that would explain things. “It’s just different,” he said again.

She realized it was the most words she’d heard him say in a row in days. Yes, she’d been focused on trying to ensure their safety, but that was no excuse. “Thank you for telling us,” she said. “Yunlan, I’m sorry I didn’t do more earlier.” He started to protest, and she held up her hand.

“You said you wanted to be strong to protect me, right? I want to be strong for you too. Didn’t we all agree to help each other? To support each other, and share our worries?” All three boys nodded.

“Talking about things together is part of that,” she said. “Even if you think we already know about them; sometimes hearing things again brings up new ideas.”

It wasn’t how she’d grown up, or even how their family had worked in the future. And she had no idea what the brothers had been used to before they showed up. But when everything around them was uncertain, they had to be able to be confident in each other, and that meant communicating.

“So, why don’t we start with what Daqing showed you?”


Chapter 6: It’s always the quiet ones

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Next to her, Xiao Ye glared at the river. “No. But you said we have to.”

That was -- an interesting interpretation of things she had said. But he was the one who’d sought her out. Usually it was Xiao Wei who did river trips with her; Xiao Ye went with Lu Xinzhu, and Yunlan floated between them.

“I don’t have any power,” Xiao Ye muttered. “You knew already.”

She had known that, or at least she and Lu Xinzhu had guessed it. Apparently it was rude to ask about it, and they all knew Xiao Wei was the expert on his brother, so they just -- hadn’t pushed. “I understand that’s not uncommon, at your age?” she said carefully. She was the least knowledgeable person he could have chosen to have this conversation with. But he must have known that, and picked her anyway.

“I should still be able to --” He flipped his palm over, the same thing Xiao Wei did when he was accessing dark energy. His hand stayed empty, and he clenched his fingers into a fist. “Like Auntie Lu,” he said. “Everyone can do it.”

From what Lu Xinzhu had said, that was largely true -- as far as she knew, every Dixingian had some ability to manipulate dark energy. The strength of the affinity tended to run in family lines, so Xiao Ye’s situation was unusual. “I can’t,” she said. “Does that make me less?”

“No! But you’re good at everything else!” He made a face, and dropped his hand back to his side. “I’m just weak.”

“Xiao Ye, you are not weak.” She turned so she was facing him, and put her hands on her hips. “Do I lie to you?”

“I -- no. You don’t.” He shook his head. “But I am!”

“When Yunlan needs you to help him find a quiet space in his mind, it doesn’t mean he’s weak. It means he has a different strength than the rest of us, so sometimes the things he needs to build that strength look different than the things we need.”

“Okay. But I’m not strong at anything,” Xiao Ye said.

She wished she had an easy answer to give him. “Can we sit?” she said, and they moved to a flat-enough rock. “Looking at this in a very big picture way,” she started, trying to find a balance between honesty and disappointment. “Most people spend most of their lives being mediocre at most things. That’s completely normal.”

Xiao Ye stared at her with wide eyes. “It’s not always about being the best, or the first, or the strongest. It’s about what you put into things, and what you get back.” She sighed. “I’m not explaining this very well.”

“But sometimes it is about being the best, and the first, and the strongest,” Xiao Ye said. He looked confused, and maybe suspicious, but he was still listening.

“Sometimes,” she agreed. She was sure he wouldn’t appreciate being told that ‘sometimes’ was a lot less than she’d imagined when she was his age. “But -- and this is the small picture view -- we have a very, very small sample size here. Auntie Lu is the worst at cooking of the five of us, right?” Xiao Ye nodded.

“But if you compared her to everyone in the world, someone else would definitely be worse,” she said, and Xiao Ye nodded again, slowly. “And there are a lot of things that we don’t do here, that we might turn out to be very good at, or very bad at. You might be exceptional at negotiating treaties, or city planning, and you just don’t know it yet because you haven’t had a chance to try those things.”

She thought she still wasn’t doing a good job of explaining things, but wasn’t that exactly the point she was trying to get across? “Even if you are never the best at something, that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing. And even if you’re never the best at doing anything, you’re still the best at being you.”

It was trite, and it turned out it was also a step too far. Xiao Ye gave her an impressively scathing look. “The best at being me? Being me is the one thing I wish I wasn’t good at. Being me is what got us kicked out of the last group of people that said they wanted to help us.”

It was the first time she’d ever heard him talk about what happened before they met. “Do you think we would do something like that?” Even as she asked, she berated herself for such a tactless question.

“Maybe,” Xiao Ye said, like it was something he’d thought about enough to have an answer prepared. “Not right now. But they didn’t mind us in the beginning either. Sometimes people feel one way when things are going well, but then they change.”

She was beginning to realize that the whole conversation was a test, and she wasn’t sure she was passing. Would it be better to show she cared enough to ask for more information, or respect what had previously been a stony wall of silence? Finally, she said, “Do you want to talk about them?”

“No. They said I was unlucky. Because of --” He held out his empty palm again. “And they let us in because of my brother, but every time something went wrong, they would all look at me. After bandits attacked the camp, they said I had to leave. He could stay, but not me. So we both left.”

The explanation was a little disjointed, but it was enough to start. She thought he had finally reached the heart of it -- not the lack of power, or being weak, not even the worry that they would decide to turn him out -- but the deep-down fear that someday, his brother wouldn’t choose him.

“Xiao Ye,” she said. “Thank you for telling me. I want to share something, and you are going to think it’s a very silly example. Will you listen anyway?”

He narrowed his eyes, but nodded. She hoped she would get this right, or at least right enough to have another chance later. “Think of this: when you eat crispy potatoes, do you like them?” He nodded again.

“And when you drink sweet sprout water, you like that too?” Another nod, more decisive. “But your liking the food doesn’t lessen your liking of the drink,” she said.

“It’s not the same,” Xiao Ye said. “Food and drink are not the same as people in your heart.”

She smiled. “But don’t we need them all? Isn’t love as essential a need as food?”

He looked thoughtful again, which she hoped was a good sign. He reminded her of herself, as a child. Always thinking; usually doubting. “Xiao Ye, we are all changing, all the time. It can’t be stopped. I can’t tell you where those changes will take us. But the heart has an infinite capacity.”

“An infinite capacity for what?” he said.

“That’s the thing about hearts,” she said. She tapped her own chest, then gestured to his. “It’s in you. You choose.” She hesitated, and then added, “You have a place in mine, whatever you choose. And you don’t have to do anything to earn it, or prove yourself. It’s already yours.”


Chapter 7: One cannot live on potatoes alone

For once, the boys were all sleeping at the same time. In the same place, too, but that part wasn’t unusual. Xiao Wei seemed to sleep less than the others, and was often wide awake and reading while Yunlan and Xiao Ye draped themselves around him.

“They’re exhausted,” Lu Xinzhu said, peering into the dim room. “Or faking it impressively well.”

“It was a tiring day,” she agreed.

They’d been seeing the tracks of larger animals along the river for days, without giving it too much attention. The ship was largely underground -- the scientific mechanics of which she still didn’t understand -- and animals tended to avoid the accessible parts anyway. Other than the ghost beasts, everything they’d run into so far had been either non-threatening, or easy enough to run off.

What they hadn’t accounted for was the hunting party that showed up following those same tracks.

“We were bound to run into other people eventually,” she said, bracing her hand against the wall. She could close her eyes for a few seconds, right? Just to rest them. “We should have planned better. More. At all.”

She startled when Lu Xinzhu took her elbow and started leading them both towards the kitchen. “It was a tiring day for us too.” She let herself be pushed onto the bench seat -- the comfortable one, with cushions. (The boys could have their cushions back when they stopped hitting each other with them at every meal.)

“Here.” A steaming cup was settled next to her hand. “Drink your tea.”

“How could we not have made any plan for what to tell people?” she said. She wrapped her hands around the cup carefully, and then dropped her head onto her forearms. “I thought Xiao Wei was supposed to be the polite one!”

“Well, first, I’m not sure why you thought that. And second, we can’t predict the future.” There was a laugh, and Lu Xinzhu corrected herself. “We can’t predict the near future, at least. Although we really don’t know how much we might have already impacted the timeline. Maybe we can’t predict the far future either, at this point.”

She closed her eyes and left her head down. “We’re three people, and we’ve spent virtually our entire time here learning about the alien equivalent of hydroponic gardening. How much could we possibly have changed things?”

Lu Xinzhu laughed again, and she sighed. “I know; don’t answer that. I usually try not to think about it.”

She sat up and leaned forward when her brain caught up with Lu Xinzhu’s words. “You knew Xiao Wei wasn’t the polite one? Since when?”

Lu Xinzhu raised her eyebrows. “Since the first time I saw him? From what you’ve said, he was ready to throw down with a bandit more than twice his size, and he was just as ready to take on all three of us afterwards.”

“But he’s so calm!” She’d been so glad he was the only one with her, until the hunters had started talking, and things got tense. And then Xiao Wei had started talking, and that had been so much worse.

“That kid cares about two things,” Lu Xinzhu said, waving two fingers in the air. “His brother, and Yunlan. He’s plenty calm until something threatens one of those things, and then he’s calm and also full of wrath. They’re not mutually exclusive.”

“He cares about us,” she protested. “And the ship, too.” The walls glowed a comforting pink in response.

Lu Xinzhu hmm’d. “Maybe. Yunlan and Xiao Ye care about all of us, sure. Xiao Wei cares about us because they do -- we’re important to their well-being, so we’re important to him. It’s not a bad thing, necessarily. Don’t make that face; it’s not. He just has a small circle.”

“A small circle,” she repeated.

“Some people don’t have a circle at all,” Lu Xinzhu said, like that would be reassuring. “And really, there’s only four of us, so he’s at a fifty percent circle rate.”

Shen Xi wasn’t sure what her expression was doing, but Lu Xinzhu held up both hands. “I know, I know, jokes aren’t always helpful. Look, he’s a kid. He doesn’t have the strongest conceptual skills yet, but he knows impermanence. He’s lost a lot. Now he’s committed himself to what he sees as the most important things that are present in his life right now, at this moment. And when he’s committed, he’s all in.”

That was considerably more than she’d ever gotten out of him. “He’s talked to you?” she asked.

“Some.” Lu Xinzhu shrugged. “Enough. I may not be good at camping, but I do have some experience living rough.” She kept her eyes on her cup. “He’ll be okay. Who knows, maybe he’ll grow up and develop a passion for wildlife conservation, or fashion, I don’t know.”

Shen Xi nudged her foot under the table. “You turned out pretty okay, I guess,” she said, smiling. Jokes might not always be helpful, but not always didn’t mean never.

Lu Xinzhu pretended an affronted expression. “Oh, you guess? You better guess that; who was it who came to your rescue today? ‘Pretty okay.’ Saving the day, that’s more like it. You’re welcome.”

She laughed, and held up her cup in a toast. “Please accept my humble thanks,” she said. “You’re definitely pretty okay. And you did indeed save the day.”

They tapped their cups together. Lu Xinzhu waved a hand towards their food storage. “It was nothing. Besides, it all turned out fine in the end. We found someone to trade our extra potatoes to!”


Chapter 8: If wishes were spaceships, we’d all be astronauts

“I think the ship could still fly.”

Her footsteps slowed as she heard Yunlan’s voice in the garden. He was supposed to be working on lessons.

“I thought it had to be stationary when it was tapped into the geothermal energy of the planet.” That was Lu Xinzhu. Her voice was quieter, like she was facing away from the door. “Isn’t that how it’s managing the — environmental support?”

They hadn’t figured out a good way to describe what the ship was doing, probably because they still weren’t completely sure what it was. Their best guess was some kind of mild terraforming, trying to speed up the recovery from the meteor strike. Lu Xinzhu said the ship had a certain sense of satisfaction about it, which seemed positive.

It also seemed like more than one ship could manage. But any questions about other ships — ghostly, lost, or otherwise — had so far gotten only a stubborn silence. They all had things they preferred not to talk about. It only seemed right that the ship be allowed that too. It wasn’t like they needed more than one.

“Of course it wouldn’t be flying now,” Yunlan answered. “It’s busy. But I think it could later. If it wanted to.”

She started walking again and rounded the final curve into the garden. It was one of her favorite places on the ship, full of light and the smell of growing things. “Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere else?” she asked.

“I finished everything already,” Yunlan declared, and he didn’t look away as he said it, so maybe it was even true. Or he was getting better at bluffing.

“And so you decided to come here?” Usually it felt like they had to pry the boys apart -- she half expected the other two to pop up behind one of the planters.

“I wanted to ask Auntie Lu a question!” Yunlan said, all smiling innocence.

She pulled out a stool and sat down. “All right. But it’s still lesson time.”

“Mama!” Yunlan put his hands on his hips, which he had definitely picked up from her. She waited until he sighed, and nodded. “Okay.”

She nodded back. “So, tell me the whole truth, and talk me through your thought process. Think of it as a bonus exercise.”

“I did finish everything,” Yunlan said. “And I did have a question for Auntie Lu.” Lu Xinzhu waved, and continued her work with the plants. It was a nod to privacy, even though she could definitely hear everything they were saying. “But I was bored, too, and if I was with Auntie Lu then an adult still knew where I was.”

Close enough to following the rules that he probably wouldn’t get in trouble. It was a good start. “And?” she prompted. The kids didn’t have a lot of role models -- for anything, really. They saw her and Xinzhu, and then occasionally a team of hunters or traders, or a wandering traveler. She could at least push them to know themselves.

Yunlan looked at the floor. “They were practicing meditating and said I was distracting them. I wanted them to pay attention to me.” He paused, and then gave a huge sigh, like no one else in the history of the universe had ever faced such a struggle. He hurried through the rest of the explanation. “I thought Auntie Lu would pay attention to me, and I could get a snack at the same time, and that would be almost as good.”

“All right,” she said carefully. “That makes sense. Did you tell Xiao Wei and Xiao Ye where you were going?”

Yunlan frowned. “No. They wanted me to be quiet.”

“Do you think they expected you to leave?”

He shook his head.

“Do you think they might be worried, once they realized you were gone?” He started to shake his head again. “Put yourself in their place,” she urged. “You know them best. I trust you.”

“They might be worried,” he acknowledged. Then he brightened. “But they could just ask the ship where I was and if I was safe, and then they would know!”

“Mm,” she said. It was a decent argument, if it hadn’t been so obvious that he thought of it after the fact. “And did you get a chance to ask your question?”

“He did,” Lu Xinzhu said, rejoining the conversation. “And it was a good question.”

“The ship doesn’t have to run on dark energy!” Yunlan said eagerly. “Or geothermal energy!”

She and the ship got along fine, in the sense that they were polite acquaintances who generally showed their appreciation for each other through a comfortable silence. There had been a point when she’d had to draw a line with what she could handle. Time travel, yes; that one was a given. Co-parenting her son and two unofficial adoptees with a stranger who’d threatened her life that one time, yes; stranger things had happened (see: time travel).

Even living in a spaceship and coming up with nineteen different ways to cook alien potatoes, yes; it had taken time, but she’d gotten there. Understanding the scientific background of how that spaceship worked? No.

“Is that good?” she asked.

Yunlan nodded. “It’s good!!” He beamed at the ceiling, which seemed to glow a little brighter in response.

She looked at Lu Xinzhu, who also nodded, but followed up with an explanation. “We’ve been assuming the ship was using dark energy as a power source -- that’s how we were able to find it. And we assumed it had switched to geothermal energy for additional power once all of us were here using resources, or possibly some kind of safety measure.”

“But it didn’t switch! It’s using both!”

“There are multiple power systems,” Lu Xinzhu said. “More than just those two, even. Redundant, but good insurance if you’re planning an interstellar journey and then want to land the ships afterwards and keep using them. It’s good because Yunlan has ideas about asking the ship to help Dixing, and powering it with dark energy or geothermal energy could be too destabilizing. An alternate energy source could be the answer.”

It sounded like it created more questions than it answered, but good news was good news. The first thing she’d heard came back to her, and she frowned. “And the ship would have to fly?” she asked.

“What? Oh, no. No, it wouldn’t have to. But it would be pretty great if it could, right?”


Chapter 9: Speaking of names, and names unspoken

With trade came news, for better or worse. They heard about births, and deaths, and the movement of families from all corners of Haixing. The truest and most valuable trade good, it seemed, was storytelling.

More and more, they heard mutterings about a group of bandits, growing in numbers.

“It was a long winter,” Lu Xinzhu said firmly. “Things will get better when the weather improves. Everyone will have better things to do than gossip about others’ misfortune.”

It was a nice idea, and one she hoped would prove to be true.

“What if the bandits come here?” Yunlan asked. “Will we fight them?”

Lu Xinzhu shook her head. “It would be better not to fight, so we would try not to. But if they tried to fight with us, and we couldn’t resolve things any other way, then yes. Only as a last resort, to keep ourselves or other people safe.”

“I could help. We shouldn’t just wait while other people are in trouble -- we’re supposed to help people,” Yunlan insisted.

“Then you should keep learning,” Lu Xinzhu said, shaking her finger at him. “The more you know, the more options you’re able to consider. Remember what I said.”

“It would be better not to fight,” Yunlan repeated quickly. “But we might!”

He sounded far too excited about the idea, and she tried not to sigh. It was possible they shouldn’t have let the boys start practicing knife fighting, but it was the only form of self-defense Lu Xinzhu knew, and once she’d started teaching Shen Xi, it only seemed fair to extend it to everyone.

“Not today, though,” she said. “There haven’t been any reports of bandits near us, and if there were, our first reaction would be --” She looked meaningfully at Yunlan, who sighed.

“Stay in the ship and let it protect us,” he said. “I know.”

Xiao Ye patted his hand. “It would be better if we got taller before we have to fight. Especially you.” It could have been a joke -- Yunlan’s growth spurt was lagging behind the other two -- but his voice was nothing but serious, and Yunlan nodded.

“You’re right,” he said. “We’ll wait till I’m taller.”

She blinked. That -- wasn’t how she’d expected that to go. She cleared her throat, and tried to re-focus the conversation.

“There was something else I wanted us to talk about.” Everyone looked at her expectantly. “We’ve been getting more news from further away, and more people asking if we have news we want to share. Is there anything you’d like us to pass along?”

She had been trying to be tactful, but the boys just looked confused. “I wondered if you wanted us to ask for information about your family,” she clarified.

“You’re our family,” Xiao Wei said. There was a suggestion of finality in his expression, like that was all he was going to say on the subject. But Xiao Ye nudged Yunlan, who jumped into the conversational void with enthusiasm.

“Of course we are! Besides, we already talked about this ages ago.”

She raised her eyebrows. They had? She was sure she would have remembered it if they’d done something like that.

“Just the three of us,” Yunlan explained, and yes, that made more sense. It also sounded exactly like something he would do.

“It wasn’t a secret,” Xiao Ye hurried to add. ”You just never asked about it until now.”

“We talked about it for so long,” Yunlan said, pretending to -- faint from exhaustion, maybe? -- over Xiao Wei’s arm. “So long.”

“It wasn’t that long,” Xiao Wei told him. He looked across the table to where she and Lu Xinzhu were watching. “It wasn’t that long.”

Yunlan ignored him. “But it was worth it, because we finally figured it out, and now Shen Wei and Zhao Ye and all of us -- everyone has the right name.” He gave Lu Xinzhu an apologetic look. “Sorry Auntie Lu. When we have another brother --”

“Or sister,” Xiao Ye interrupted.

“Another brother or sister --”

“Or neither.” Xiao Wei seemed surprised when everyone turned to look at him, and he added, “Or both. Flower Tribe.”

Yunlan nodded, like that made perfect sense. “When we have another brother, or sister, or neither or both, your name will definitely be the first choice!”

Lu Xinzhu looked like she was trying not to laugh. “It’s fine, Yunlan. I’m used to my family not having the same name as me.”

He studied her carefully, like he was trying to decide if she was telling the truth. “If you change your mind, you’ll tell us, right?”

Lu Xinzhu smiled. “Yes, I’ll tell you. And when you find your next sibling, if they want my name, they can share it, I promise. But let me talk to them first, all right? There are lots of ways someone can be family.”

“And one of those ways is sharing names,” Yunlan said. “I know!”

She was still trying to process the whirlwind of announcements — were they serious about fighting bandits and adopting more siblings? Had Xiao Wei really agreed to use her last name, and a different name than his brother?

But she was also proud. They were growing up.

She looked across the table at the three of them. Yunlan was really going to grow up here, ten thousand years before he’d been born, and he was doing it well.

She stood up and bowed to both of them. “Shen Wei and Zhao Ye. Please consider this your official welcome to the family.”


***************
SECTION 2
***************

Chapter 10: The kids are all right (just don’t call them kids)

She heard Xinzhu making her way along the path before she could see her. Mostly because she was muttering to herself about ungrateful children.

“Did you find the boys?” she asked, trying not to smile. She was on the prime sunset-watching rock and wasn’t planning to move, but she patted the space next to her in a clear invitation. It was a big rock; there was plenty of room for both of them.

“Oh, I found them,” Lu Xinzhu said. “They might wish I hadn’t when they wake up tomorrow morning, but I definitely found them.”

She leaned back on her hands. Lu Xinzhu sounded more amused than truly annoyed, so it couldn’t have been anything too serious. They were both learning how to step back, and let the kids -- teenagers, already! she could hardly believe it -- have more space. Sometimes they didn’t agree with the choices they made with that space, but that was the learning part. Hopefully.

“When they wake up?” she prompted.

“Yes, when they wake up, because they’re not ‘meditating to help Zhao Ye’s breathing,’ they’re sleeping! We let them get out of all the evening chores, and they’re taking a nap!” Lu Xinzhu shook her head, and then laughed. “I suppose it’s keeping them out of trouble, at least.”

She’d always somehow imagined that parenting would get easier with practice, but so far that hadn’t been the case. “They’ve been working hard,” she offered. “They probably need the extra sleep.”

Lu Xinzhu knocked their shoulders together. “Listen to you, being so reasonable and understanding. I’m still making them do double chores tomorrow. If they needed sleep they should have mentioned it. ‘Hiding a weakness magnifies it,’ and all of that.”

On the other hand, one thing that did make parenting easier was having help. She’d long since accepted that parenting wasn’t one of Zhao Xinci’s strengths; even before he’d been ten thousand years too late to be involved.

She smiled. Lu Xinzhu had developed a habit of dispensing wise-sounding proverbs. She’d given up trying to determine which ones were real and which were invented on the spot. “Well, we can’t both be the stern parent; who would they go to when they needed to confess something?”

Lu Xinzhu immediately shifted so they were facing each other. “Ooh, has there been a confession? Is it about that group of traders that came through last week? I told you there was something suspicious about them; didn’t I say that?”

“You did, and no, it wasn’t. Zhao Ye is having nightmares again. Yunlan wanted advice about how he could help -- mostly about what he should do if Zhao Ye refuses help.” Yunlan took his status as Zhao Ye’s older brother very seriously. Which was made more complicated by the fact that Zhao Ye insisted he was the older brother, and he took his status very seriously as well.

Zhao Ye was definitely the older brother. But whatever co-older, co-younger sibling balance they’d negotiated seemed to work for them, so she certainly wasn’t going to make an issue of it.

“Ouch.” Lu Xinzhu made a sympathetic face. “That’s a big question. What did you tell him?”

She held up her hands. “What could I say? I told him there’s not always an easy answer when it comes to helping people, especially the people we care about the most. Pushing someone to make a certain decision, or making decisions for them -- even if you think they’re the right ones -- can mean you lose that person’s trust. Sometimes the best thing we can do is be present, and keep letting people know we’re there.”

“How’d he take it?”

She gave a small laugh. “Well, I think he was hoping for a more action-oriented answer, but he said he’d think about it.”

“That’s a good start,” Lu Xinzhu said. “They’re smart kids; they’ll figure it out. You’ve taught them well.”

“We’ve taught them well,” she corrected. “You’re stuck with them now. Don’t think you’re getting out of your share of the credit and/or blame for those three.”

Lu Xinzhu laughed. “I would happily accept either. Can’t have one without the other, right?” She hesitated, and then added, “You know I’m here for you too, right? Not just the kids.”

She did know. It was still nice to hear it out loud sometimes. “I know,” she said. “And I’m here for you.” She sighed. “It took so long to feel like all of this --” She waved a hand in a broad ‘everything; too much to list’ gesture. “--was really happening. That we were really building a future for the kids here.”

A future that included spaceships and bandits, not college degrees and professional networking. There had been a lot of late nights and early mornings coming to terms with that. “But it was easy to focus on keeping them safe. Easier than thinking about me,” she admitted. “And now they’re growing up. Which is good, I just don’t know how to think about the future when it’s not --”

“Ninety percent child-proofing a spaceship and figuring out where our next meal is coming from?” Lu Xinzhu offered.

“Exactly, yes. What are we going to do with ourselves when they don’t need us anymore?” She couldn’t look Xinzhu in the eyes when she said it, so she leaned back further to look at the sky instead. The stars were coming out.

“Well, first, it’s a good thing you said ‘we’ and not ‘I,’ or I’d be feeling very nervous right now,” Lu Xinzhu said. Her voice was serious, but she didn’t sound upset. That was good. “Also, I think you’re maybe, possibly, worrying about that a little too early. They might be tall enough to pass as adults now, but they still have a long way to go for everything else to catch up.”

“Will they be okay?” It was an impossible question, but she couldn’t help asking it anyway.

There was a long moment of silence, as the sky got darker. Finally, Lu Xinzhu said, “I don’t know. But I know we’ll do everything we can to help them along the way.”


Chapter 11: The rules say cats make the rules

“Get some bandages!” Shen Wei had his hand clamped around Yunlan’s arm, and she could see blood on his fingers.

“I’m fine,” Yunlan said. “Get some water!”

Zhao Ye glared at him. “I’m fine,” he insisted. “If you’d stop making me repeat it, I could focus on breathing!”

He was hunched around -- a shirt? Something wrapped in a shirt? Lu Xinzhu was staring at it, so she ignored it for the time being. “Is anyone in immediate, life-threatening peril?” she asked, in a voice loud enough to cut through the chatter.

Yunlan and Zhao Ye both looked at Shen Wei, who shook his head. “Not at this moment,” he said, after a nerve-wracking hesitation.

“Good. Keep it that way.” It was easy enough to carry water and first aid supplies at the same time -- once they’d been distributed, she stepped back and crossed her arms. “What happened?”

They were supposed to be camping, not getting into trouble. Well -- they were supposed to be only getting into minor trouble, like eating junk food for three days straight and arguing about which route to take. Not ‘getting injured and coming home early with company’ kind of trouble. How had they even made it back so quickly?

“We were camping,” Yunlan said, watching Shen Wei fuss over the scrape on his arm. Once the blood was cleaned off, it looked significantly better, and she quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

“And we were near the caves this morning, and then we heard a commotion nearby, so we went to see what was happening.” He looked up and saw her expression. “Carefully,” he added. “We very carefully went to see what was happening.”

She narrowed her eyes, and he waved at Zhao Ye. “And we found Daqing!’

They what? She swung around to look at Zhao Ye, who grudgingly unwrapped the bundle in his arms. It was definitely a cat. She’d never seen Daqing’s cat form up close, but there was a resemblance. Of course, she’d always thought his claims of being a ten thousand year old king of the cats were exaggerations at the very least, but -- stranger things had happened.

Lu Xinzhu leaned in closer, though she kept her hands well away. Possibly for the cat’s comfort. Possibly for Zhao Ye’s. “Why is he a cat?” she asked.

Yunlan looked confused. “He’s always a cat; he’s Yashou.”

“No, I mean -- why is he a cat right now? Is he hurt?”

“Oh! No, no, he’s fine. He was just tired, and it was easier to carry him in this form. We took turns.” Yunlan reached over and tugged the shirt. “Hey, we’re here.”

“Why are you poking me? I’m not less tired just because we’re inside now,” the cat said testily. “Who could sleep through all your shouting?”

Zhao Ye smiled. Of course, he liked the prickly ones. “Can we get you anything?” he asked. “Water? Food?”

The cat paused, one paw over the edge of the shirt. “Fish? Do you have fish?” he said.

“We have potatoes,” Yunlan said. “You’ll like them!”

He did like them, as it turned out. And he could pack away an enormous amount of food, which she remembered being told was being related to the Yashou shape-changing abilities. They had to eat enough to maintain both forms, regardless of which form they were currently in.

And he was, bafflingly, Daqing. Or at least, he introduced himself as Daqing, the one and only member of Cat Tribe, and everyone else seemed willing to go along with it. He seemed to bask in the attention -- enough so that she couldn’t tell if he’d been an actual participant in Yunlan’s plan to distract her from the ‘commotion’ part of the story, or if he was just a happy beneficiary.

Either way, she waited until he dozed off before turning back to Yunlan. And then she reconsidered, and looked at Shen Wei instead. “A commotion?” she said.

“Several bandits had cornered Daqing near the caves,” Shen Wei explained. “He was alone and in distress. I created a distraction to draw the bandits away, and then we snuck in and liberated Daqing.” He ended with, “No one saw us,” as if that was the thing he expected her to be worried about.

“Thank you. We’ll be revisiting the ‘distraction’ later,” she told him. And then she crossed her arms and turned back to Yunlan. “How did this involve you getting hurt?”

He looked away. “It’s embarrassing!”

She waited, and finally he muttered, “On the way back, I tripped over a rock, and I hit a branch on the way down. It was bleeding some at first, but it’s fine. It’s just a scrape.”

“Don’t be stoic,” she said. “A minor injury can be just as dangerous as a major one if it gets infected, or if you ignore it and don’t give yourself a chance to heal.” She met each person’s eyes in turn, until she reached Lu Xinzhu. “Or rest. Right?” she asked pointedly, because they were supposed to be modeling healthy life choices, and Xinzhu knew very well what she meant.

“I know, I know!” Lu Xinzhu held up both hands. “You’re right. We shouldn’t hide things from each other, and I promise I have now fully absorbed this wisdom. We’re a family, and when one person is hurt, everyone is hurt.”

Yunlan and the boys nodded along, while Daqing watched them all with blatant curiosity. “That’s right,” she said. “Now that we’ve all agreed, two questions. One, how did you get back here so quickly? The caves are at least a three day hike from here. And two, why did you come back without any of your gear?”

The boys looked at each other. They looked at the floor. Zhao Ye went so far as to look at the ceiling.

As expected, Shen Wei was the first to bend. He gave an awkward cough, and said, “There was a need to act quickly.” She supposed she should be glad that at least he hadn’t started by trying to take the blame.

Yunlan jumped in with, “I can explain.” He looked at Shen Wei, who nodded, and Yunlan gave a bright smile. “The good news is that A-Wei learned a new power today! The bandits were led by a Dixingian who could make --” He waved his hands in front of him in a vaguely circular shape. “Portals? Space-time tunnels? Magic doors?”

“Portals,” Shen Wei said firmly.

“Fine, fine. Portals.” Yunlan spread his hands apart. “Instantaneous travel! And of course we wanted to be safe, so we tested it before we used it, and then we came right back here.”

“And your gear?” Lu Xinzhu asked. “Do portals not work on that?”

“No, no, they do! Remember when we mentioned that distraction?” She was starting to see where the explanation was headed, and she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or sigh. Yunlan’s hand gestures got broader. “Well, it’s like this -- the gear was a part of that. The distraction.”

She decided on a raised eyebrow instead, and said, “And now?”

“And the distraction was successful?” He hesitated, then added, “We’ll definitely go back and look for the gear. I’m sure most of it is probably still there!”

And there was the sigh.


Chapter 12: Best friends forever doesn’t have a time travel exemption

Despite repeated assertions that Daqing was completely fine, she didn’t actually see him out of someone’s arms and moving under his own power until the next morning. No one mentioned him leaving, and in truth she was glad he was there. She’d missed him. It seemed the weight of the things they missed got a little less with each passing year, but seeing Daqing again had affected her more than she would have anticipated.

Taking the night to recover gave her a chance to settle her own emotions, and also to give Lu Xinzhu the full backstory of their interaction with Daqing in the future.

They paused outside the kitchen. “Are you okay with this?” Lu Xinzhu asked, squeezing her hand.

“Yes,” she said, reassuring herself as much as Lu Xinzhu. “This is a good thing.”

The boys were already eating -- or rather, Daqing was eating, while they others watched.

“How’s breakfast?” she asked. It looked excellent; Shen Wei must have done most of the cooking. The others were passable in the kitchen, but tended to either repeat the same meals over and over, or experiment wildly, with equally wild results.

“Good,” Daqing said. “It’s much more convenient to eat in this form,” he explained through a mouthful of eggs.

After all the usual morning greetings and exchanging of food was finished, she felt like she was fortified enough to begin the conversation that needed to happen. “Daqing,” she said. His eyes went wide, and he pointed at himself. “Yes, you. I assume you’ve been told about how we all came to be in this place, and this time?”

Daqing looked surprised. “Oh, that was true? About the time travel?”

“You didn’t believe us?” Yunlan looked indignant.

Daqing shrugged. “You told me you already met me in the future right after you tripped and fell. I thought maybe you had a head injury. Or maybe I had a head injury.”

“It’s true,” she said. “We’re very happy to meet you in this time as well.”

“Of course!” Daqing said enthusiastically. “Thank you, I mean.”

Yunlan threw his arm around Daqing’s shoulders. “I wish you could stay. We live in a spaceship! There’s plenty of room.”

Daqing took the opportunity to start eating out of Yunlan’s bowl instead. “I can stay for a while, at least. Besides, you think this is the first spaceship I’ve seen? This ship is like a tiny baby sibling of the ship the Alliance is staying in.”

She and Lu Xinzhu startled, and Daqing froze. He rubbed his neck and looked at the floor. “Ah, maybe I wasn’t supposed to say that.”

“It’s okay,” Yunlan reassured him. “We won’t tell anyone. Besides, we’re best friends!”

“You’re family,” Shen Wei agreed. “Whether you are here or elsewhere.”

They’d already reached the point of adopting him into the family? She thought it might be time to step in, but Lu Xinzhu was nodding, like the whole thing was perfectly reasonable. “Remember to have him come talk to me,” she said. “Any time is fine.”

Somehow, the question of ‘what to say when three of your children adopt another sibling who seems to be involved in a quasi-military group that you learned about in history class’ had never come up in her life before. At a loss, she asked, “So, what do you think of the Alliance?”

Daqing shrugged again. “The bandits threaten all of us. Many of them are Dixingians with destructive powers, but they include Haixingians and Yashou too. It makes sense for all of us to stand together against them. We all have the responsibility to protect each other and do what we can to help.”

“Well said,” Lu Xinzhu told him, and the boys were nodding.

And then Zhao Ye frowned, “Wait, if you’re part of the Alliance, what were you doing fighting bandits all by yourself?” Zhao Ye looked indignant on Daqing’s behalf. “They didn’t give you backup?”

“The bandits weren’t supposed to be there! I was scouting.” Daqing puffed himself up. “I’m the Alliance’s best Cat Tribe scout; ask anyone!”

“You were scouting in a cave?” Yunlan asked.

Daqing sat up straighter. “I’m looking for other Yashou. Flower, Crow, and Snake Tribes are going to choose a High Chief. The other tribes are being informed, since they are welcome to observe, or to join the allied Yashou at that time.”

It had the sound of something he’d memorized and then recited many times.

“Were you expecting to find Yashou in the cave?” Zhao Ye asked. “Who?”

“Bat Tribe!” Daqing told him.

She had never heard of Bat Tribe, Judging by the looks on everyone’s faces, they hadn’t either, and were trying to decide if they should take it seriously or not.

Zhao Ye reached across Yunlan and poked Daqing in the shoulder. “Bat Tribe or no Bat Tribe, when we found you, you were trapped in that cave. Alone.”

“I wasn’t trapped!” Daqing protested. “I was fact-finding! It was reconnaissance.”

“You should be more careful,” Shen Wei said, probably saving the whole thing from descending further into an argument.

Daqing immediately nodded. “Of course, yes!”

Shen Wei narrowed his eyes, seeming to doubt the sincerity of the words. Probably with good reason. He watched Daqing carefully as he said, “I would have time to prepare food more often, if I wasn’t making sure your actions matched your words.”

Next to her, Lu Xinzhu was trying not to laugh. “All grown up and practicing their bargaining skills,” she said quietly.

“He learned that from you,” she replied, not sure if she meant it as a compliment or a complaint. But if it encouraged any of them to think twice before flinging themselves into danger, that could only be a good thing, right?

And Daqing’s expression did look more sincere as he nodded again. “You are absolutely right, big brother! That is an excellent point and we will all heed your wisdom.”

Shen Wei pushed another dish closer to Daqing. “Do your best,” he said. “And we will do the same.”


Chapter 13: Even the darkest clouds can have a silver lining; it’s just hard to see when you’re trapped in a cave

“I wish I had brought a jacket.”

Shen Xi frowned. “Are you cold?” Dixingren were usually able to handle a broader range of temperatures than Haixingren. She lowered her voice. “Are you all right?”

Ly Xinzhu smiled. “If I had a jacket, I could give it to you, and then you wouldn’t be cold.” She paused, and then added, “Also there would probably be snacks in the pockets.”

“Well, we didn’t exactly plan on being ambushed when we left home this morning.” They’d been looking for a little calm -- she loved all their kids, but they weren’t quiet.

Instead of calm, they’d found what seemed to be a lone traveler, and while they were exchanging the usual news, a pair of Dixingians had snuck up behind them. They were whisked through a portal before they had time to react.

She checked on their guards, but they were still at the entrance of the cave, facing the other direction. The situation was -- not great, but not as bad as it could be. She edged next to Lu Xinzhu, so they were close enough to touch. “I’d rather have you than a jacket,” she said. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

Lu Xinzhu dropped her head on her shoulder. “I think so? The portal was bad; let’s not do that again.”

It hadn’t been great. She patted Lu Xinzhu’s head carefully. “I’m asking because you seem a little --” She hesitated, not sure what word she was looking for.

“Caves are also bad,” Lu Xinzhu offered, and the words were muffled by her shoulder. “Dark enclosed spaces with things living in them that you can’t see are bad.”

Without thinking, she asked, “Can’t you see in the dark?”

Lu Xinzhu poked her in the side. “Fears don’t always have to be rational,” she said primly, not moving her head from her shoulder. “I’m trying to distract myself by thinking about other things. Not always in a coherent order.”

And apparently Shen Xi wasn’t thinking very rationally either, because the first thing she said was, “I had no idea there were so many caves around here.” She winced. “Sorry, that wasn’t helpful.”

“It’s fine,” Lu Xinzhu said. “Talking is good. You’re right, though -- I’m not sure we’re still near where we started.” She pointed at the ground. “It feels different; I think the portal might have gone a long way.”

Lu Xinzhu claimed she could tell the difference in where she was in Haixing based on how her connection to Dixing felt. No other Dixingians they’d asked agreed; it was a long-running joke by that point, and she poked Lu Xinzhu in reply. “You know, Shen Wei says your ‘reverse compass’ theory doesn’t make any sense.”

“Shen Wei doesn’t know what he’s missing,” Lu Xinzhu said. “You know they’ll definitely come rescue us. They’re probably already on their way.”

“I know.” That’s what she was worried about. She debated saying it out loud -- the benefits of honesty versus the benefits of not making the situation seem worse when there wasn’t anything they could do about it. “I’m worried that’s exactly what these people want them to do.”

The whole thing felt too well planned to be a random attack, but no one had spoken to them beyond ‘sit there, don’t move’ since they’d arrived. She had a sinking feeling they were the bait.

“You think we’re bait?” Lu Xinzhu said, echoing her thoughts. “For the boys? Our boys?” She seemed oddly pleased by the idea. “Both of us? Like we’re a real family!”

“Of course we’re a real family,” she said firmly. “Do you doubt it?” In their efforts to make sure all the kids feel like they belonged equally, maybe she hadn’t put enough emphasis on making sure Lu Xinzhu did too.

“No!” Lu Xinzhu hesitated, and then said, “Not usually, no. I know we are! But there’s knowing, and there’s knowing.”

Very quietly, she added, “No one’s ever come to rescue me before. It’s -- not that I want anyone to be in danger! But it’s comforting, to think someone’s coming.”

“It is,” she agreed, because it was. “Even when that someone is our kids.” And maybe they were going to be walking into a trap, but maybe not. Maybe they had just run into particularly slow-moving captors by sheer coincidence. Stranger things, right?

“I’d feel better if they had backup,” Lu Xinzhu agreed. “Other than us, obviously.”

She sighed. “I know what you mean.” It was an honor, to see all her children growing up and finding their way. It was also the most heart-wrenchingly terrifying thing she’d ever done. “I still think of them as being so little. I’m sitting here hoping they’ll stage a rescue against armed attackers at the same time I’m hoping they remember to eat their greens and get enough sleep.”

Lu Xinzhu nodded. “They’re good kids. If anyone could do all three, they can. Well, maybe not the sleep part.”

She thought about it. “That’s fair.” It wasn’t as unusual as she would have liked to find them all still awake from the night before when she and Lu Xinzhu got up in the mornings. But she was willing to compromise when it was necessary, and it was possible that Daqing slept enough for all of them. “Do you ever get the feeling they’re planning things?” she asked. “Without us?”

“They’re teenagers, of course they’re planning things they’re not telling us about.” Lu Xinzhu sat up, and frowned. “Hopefully not the same things I was planning when I was their age. Although I guess I turned out okay.”

“You did.” That, at least, was an easy answer, and a true one. She bumped their shoulders together. “There’s no one I’d rather be trapped in a cave with.”

Lu Xinzhu’s laugh made the guards turn and glare at them, but she couldn’t bring herself to regret it.


Chapter 14: When entering a battle, it’s important to be prepared for anything -- bringing your whole house with you is an unconventional, but effective, strategy

They sat for long enough for her to switch from worrying the kids would rush in without a plan, to worrying that something had happened to them to keep them away. She told herself there was no way it had been as long as it felt. They were too far back in the cave to see much of the outside, but it was definitely still daytime.

“I don’t know if it would be better or worse if we knew what time it was,” Lu Xinzhu said.

“Better, I think,” she offered. “It can’t possibly be as long as it feels like, right?”

All the hair on the back of her neck stood up, and she shivered. Lu Xinzhu grabbed her hand. “Did you feel that?”

There was a hum in the air all around them, like the cave itself was vibrating. “What is that?” she said. There was shouting coming from outside the cave, and both of the guards ran towards it without looking back.

Lu Xinzhu stood up immediately, and pulled her up after. “I think it’s the ship,” she said, and there was a hint of laughter in her voice that could have been admiration or disbelief. “I think they brought the ship with them.”

They had. By the time she and Lu Xinzhu followed the noise to a nearby clearing, they could see: a dozen or so bandits, sitting on the ground; all of their children, enthusiastically gesturing; and one spaceship, hovering above their heads.

The humming changed noticeably when they arrived -- Shen Wei was the first one to spot them, and his expression of relief was so intense that she had to swallow around a sudden lump in her throat. He reached out a hand and Yunlan cut short whatever he was saying -- something about education?

“Mama!”

They met in the middle of the clearing, in one massive group hug. She definitely wasn’t the only one crying. It felt like she could finally breathe again, after the long hours of worry and waiting.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt? What happened?”

The questions ran together, and she patted shoulders and heads and backs for everyone within her reach. “We’re both okay,” she said. “We should be asking you those things!”

She’d almost stopped noticing the hum -- it had to be the spaceship -- when it suddenly changed pitch. Yunlan and Shen Wei immediately turned back towards the bandits. One of them had apparently thought to take advantage of their distraction to escape; they were halfway to standing and looking warily between the boys and the ship.

“Sit down,” Shen Wei said. They sat.

“Are you bored already?” Yunlan asked. “You should be paying attention; this is a learning experience.”

She leaned closer to Zhao Ye. “You’re sure you’re all right?” she asked quietly. He nodded. “What are they doing?”

“We didn’t think you and Auntie Lu would want us to fight,” he answered, just as quietly. “This was the alternative.”

“This is why you should always take time to think about the consequences of your actions!” Yunlan was gesturing wildly again. She wondered if it was because he was stressed, or if it was to distract the bandits from noticing how young they all were. Possibly both.

“Look at you! You had good speed, and you utilized the element of surprise very effectively. You had the advantage of superior numbers.” Yunlan looked at Shen Wei, who nodded slightly. “And even in the face of defeat, you haven’t turned on each other. Very admirable!”

She frowned. “Is he threatening them, or giving them a pep talk?”

Zhao Ye looked at her in surprise. “Neither. He’s recruiting them.”

He was what?

“So why are you the ones sitting in the dirt and we’re the ones celebrating? Two reasons!” He held up two fingers. “One, you didn’t think critically about the information you were given. Someone tells you to take two harmless people and then capture whoever comes to rescue them? Who’s harmless in this world? What was your long-term containment plan?”

“There’s a Dixingian who’s been organizing the bandits,” Zhao Ye explained. “Daqing received the news today. It’s likely that’s who organized the attack, and this group just carried it out.”

In front of them, Yunlan held up his hand. “Two, you didn’t have any backup!” He gave an exaggerated look around the clearing. “None!”

“How likely?” she asked.

Zhao Ye shrugged. “Eighty percent?”

On her other side, Lu Xinzhu looked impressed. She nodded towards Yunlan. “So that’s -- eighty percent confidence, twenty percent audacity?”

One of the bandits called out, “What are you going to do with us?”

“I’m glad you asked!” Yunlan stepped closer to Shen Wei. “We are going to invite you to join the Alliance!”

She wasn’t sure who was more surprised, her or the bandits. “What?”

“You didn’t know?” Yunlan pointed at Daqing, who waved. “That’s the Alliance’s number one scout, right there.”

Another bandit spoke up, sounding skeptical. “That’s their number one scout?”

Daqing bristled. “Hey! We found you, didn’t we?”

The bandits subsided into muttering amongst themselves. “Why would the Alliance want us?” one of them finally asked.

“The Alliance is based on teamwork,” Yunlan said. “Which you demonstrated today. And it values the sharing of knowledge, which you could clearly benefit from. You would gain a more organized support structure and improved skills that would serve you well in the future. We would gain more allies and fewer enemies -- a positive solution for all parties.”

“Did he come up with that on his own?” Lu Xinzhu asked quietly.

“Most of it. The last part came from Fu You,” Daqing said. “I’m supposed to say it when I’m recruiting people.”

He shifted into his cat form and jumped into her arms. “What? The danger is over, and you looked stressed. I’m helping.”

It was true; it was harder to feel anxious while holding a cat. “Did you recruit our family and I didn’t notice?” she asked.

Daqing managed to look affronted even in cat form. “What? No, of course not. You would definitely notice something like that. Recruiting is one of my more optional assignments; I temporarily deputized him to help today. He volunteered! He’s much better at it than I am, but don’t tell him I said that.”


Chapter 15: Questions and answers lead to answers and questions

“I have questions.”

They were back on the ship -- the inside looked as warm and welcoming as ever. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected -- some kind of sci-fi transformation? Some disarray, at least?

After Lu Xinzhu’s reaction to the portal earlier, she’d been worried they would need to use one to get back on the ship, but Zhao Ye assured them that the ship could land. She hadn’t missed the sighs of relief when the ship had actually done it, though.

“Should I have been concerned about that?” she’d asked.

Zhao Ye had hesitated, and Yunlan had jumped in with, “So, it turns out landing is harder than you might think,” and then hurried all of them onboard without any further explanation.

“I have fish,” Daqing said, and then seemed surprised when everyone looked at him. “Sorry, sorry. Were we not saying things we were grateful for? I thought that’s what we were doing.”

Lu Xinzhu laughed. “I’m very grateful that we’re all okay and together, so that my questions can be answered.”

Shen Wei nodded seriously. “It was an eventful day,” he said, like that wasn’t that the understatement of the year.

“First question, then: you brought the ship?”

Yunlan beamed. “I told you she could fly! And she wanted to come. You always say we shouldn’t overlook a source of strength, right?”

She leaned forward. “The ship is a she?”

“She decided today,” Shen Wei agreed. “She was inspired by both of you.”

Really? She looked at Lu Xinzhu, who was blushing. “She’s very complimentary,” Lu Xinzhu explained. “And, ah, very happy to have participated in our rescue.” She looked at Shen Wei. “She seems -- more chatty?”

“I told you,” Yunlan said again. “She was busy. Now she’s not.” He patted the floor, and she could hear a hint of the same humming again.

“I think we’re all very aware of that right now,” Lu Xinzhu said, and Shen Xi nodded. If even she could feel a sense that the ship was suddenly paying attention to them, she could only imagine what it felt like to the others. “But more of an explanation might be helpful, if she’s willing to share. How did all of this happen?”

“It’s an interesting story,” Yunlan said, and then stopped talking. He nudged Zhao Ye, who was sitting next to him. Zhao Ye quickly poked Daqing. Daqing looked to his other side, where Shen Wei was already looking back. Daqing took a deep breath, looked like he was considering the potential risks versus benefits of trying to pass responsibility to Shen Wei, and then turned back to her and Lu Xinzhu with a sigh.

“It’s like this,” he said. “The ship knew right away when you were taken, because she likes you a lot, and she was alarmed. And she let us know, and then we came up with a plan to rescue you, and it worked!”

As explanations went, it got points for brevity, but lost them again for lack of detail. She raised her eyebrows. “And that took you half the day?” she asked.

Daqing shook his head. “No, no, it only took us a short time to come up with the plan. Two plans, really, but we thought you’d like the second one better.”

She could guess what the first plan had involved, and Daqing was right. She did like the second one better.

Lu Xinzhu said, “Fine, yes, you’re fast planners, well done. Second question, though -- and not to indicate in any way that we’re ungrateful, but if the planning happened so quickly, what took you so long?”

Daqing’s eyes went wide. “Ah, maybe I wasn’t supposed to say that?”

“It’s fine,” Zhao Ye said. “It’s not a secret. I just didn’t know how to —“ He shrugged. “It doesn’t just flow into the conversation. You don’t ever want to talk about our powers.”

She felt Lu Xinzhu startle next to her. “Do you want to?”

“Yes! Everyone talks about them except for you two!” He looked away. “I don’t want your future to come true if it means we have to hide who we are!”

“Didi,” Shen Wei murmured, and Yunlan grabbed Zhao Ye’s hand.

“Zhao Ye,” Lu Xinzhu said. “A-Ye. I’m so sorry. It’s true that where we came from, Dixingians often hid their powers from others. But we never want you to feel like any of you had to do that. What can we do to make it better?”

Zhao Ye shook his head, frustrated. “I don’t know. You’re the adults.”

‘You messed it up, you should know how to fix it,’ went unspoken, but she heard it anyway. “That’s a good place to start, then,” she said. “We’re the adults, and we know what things were like in our future. So we’ll talk about what we know, and then you’ll have a better idea what to ask for next.”

She looked at Lu Xinzhu. “We don’t want that future to happen either; that’s the first thing we should have told you.”

Lu Xinzhu nodded. “I’m scared of my power,” she said. “I should have told you that, and I didn’t because I didn’t want you to be scared of it too.”

She reached out and took Xinzhu’s hand under the table, and laced their fingers together. They’d never talked about it so directly, maybe, but it wasn’t a surprise.

“Maybe your power would be less scary if you understood more about it,” Yunlan said. “The ship is really good at powers. You could ask her and I bet she could help.”

The ship seemed extremely pleased about that plan. “Maybe we could all learn together,” Lu Xinzhu offered. “That way we would all understand it more, and we’d have a chance to talk about it together if we had any questions.”

“Yes. Please, I mean.” Zhao Ye looked relieved. “And -- and that’s when we could talk about our powers too?”

“We can talk about your powers any time,” she said, and Lu Xinzhu nodded again.

“Having a specific time set aside to talk about mine makes me feel more comfortable right now, but something else might be what makes you feel comfortable.”

“What if I want to talk about it now?” Zhao Ye asked.

She tried not to smile. Daqing had been a good influence on the boys -- on all of them. They’d all become too used to treading the same roads, following the same patterns. She expected the twins to pick silence when they weren’t sure how their words would be received, and for Yunlan to make everything more complicated instead of simplifying. She was sure they were just as used to her and Lu Xinzhu’s habits.

Daqing didn’t complicate, or stay silent. He didn’t talk around things or use subtle hints. His easy declarations of what he wanted, and his just-as-easy acceptance of the response regardless of whether it was in his favor -- it had been a shock to their system, but a much needed one.

“Any time,” she repeated. “Including now.”


Chapter 16: Is this the test of perseverance, or the test of common sense?

The ship wanted to move, and they could all agree that staying anywhere that was associated with recent bandit activity was a bad idea. They relocated to a nearby river -- nearby being a relative term when spaceships were involved.

“It’s a different river,” she said. “But it still sounds like home.”

She and Lu Xinzhu were sitting outside -- close enough to the ship that they could reach out and touch it, but still outside. She thought the fresh air was helping; she might be able to sleep that night after all.

Lu Xinzhu hmm’d in agreement. And then: “So, Zhao Ye has powers now. And white hair.”

She let out a sigh of relief. “I thought I was seeing things! And then they just -- didn’t say anything about it! Even when we talked about everything else.”

Lu Xinzhu leaned against her. “And the longer no one mentioned it, the more awkward it became to ask about it. Is it a prank? Is it one of his powers? Can Shen Wei change his hair color too? Why white?”

“I think they were waiting to see how we would react. Maybe he was the test case, and they’ll all have different hair colors tomorrow.” On the other hand, it couldn’t have been a coincidence that it happened the same day his powers showed up.

Which was another thing they still hadn’t gotten a clear explanation about. ‘We think something about the ship’s systems might have done something’ and ‘We wanted to make sure everything had settled down before we came to find you’ were not as reassuring as Yunlan seemed to think.

“I’m sure it was a test; I’m just not sure if we were supposed to pass by being observant and interested — which we are! Or by showing that we trust them to make their own choices about their lives — which we do!”

She tugged them both back so they could lean against the ship. She’d had exactly the same thoughts, but there was no way to always pick the right option. She wasn’t even sure the kids themselves knew what the right option was. “Parenting is hard,” she said finally.

“Hah! Understatement.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the water. Her mind couldn’t stop replaying the day’s events. “I thought we were respecting their boundaries,” she said. “And they thought we were denying part of their identity.” She kept poking at it, trying to find out where they’d gone wrong.

“Shen Xi, listen to me,” Lu Xinzhu said, and she startled. It was unusual for her to sound so serious. “They’re teenagers. Really great teenagers, yes, but still teenagers. Everything feels immense to them. So many things they’re experiencing are things they’re doing for the first time, and they don’t have the benefit of being around adults who’ve been through it before.”

“You’re saying they need to be around more people.”

She felt Lu Xinzhu shift in what could have been a shrug. “I’m saying that they’re trying, and we’re trying, and just because sometimes figuring it out takes some shouting or some tears, that’s still better than the alternative.” There was a pause, and then she added, “But yes, probably we should all be around more people.”

“The Alliance?”

“It’s the best option I can think of -- Daqing is committed to them, which is possibly the best argument in favor. And today showed us the boys are all perfectly capable of holding their own.”

She sighed. “Their first plan was fighting.”

Lu Xinzhu immediately answered, “And their second plan was arguing their opponents into giving up -- which they did, and it worked.”

She was right. It wasn’t as comforting as she’d hoped it would be. “How are you so reasonable about this?”

“I’m faking it,” Lu Xinzhu said.

She waited to see if there was more -- a punchline, or an explanation, maybe. Finally she said, “What, really?”

Lu Xinzhu moved again, and that time it was definitely a shrug. “Not entirely. A little, maybe? I really do think they’re doing fine, but it’s normal to worry and have doubts, right? It just seemed like you could use someone to be reassuring, so I channeled the part of me that knows they’ll be okay.”

“They will,” she said. “They are.” It was easy to pin her worries on the boys, but wasn’t she the one who pushed them to know themselves? It was only fair that she do the same. “I think -- I didn’t realize how settled we were, until everything became unsettled again. Now I feel like I should have been more grateful for how things were before.”

“I know what you mean,” Lu Xinzhu said. “Today was -- is it bad to say I miss our rock? I miss the feeling I had when I woke up this morning, when I knew what I was going to do and how the day was going to go. Or how I thought it was going to go, anyway.”

She missed it too. “The rock is still there, you know.” She wasn’t sure if that made things better or worse. It was comforting, in a way.

“It wouldn’t be the same to see it now as it was yesterday, though. I’m pretty sure that’s how my power works, actually.”

She nodded, even though she had no idea what that meant. “If you’d like a listening ear, I’m interested.”

“Thank you -- I mean, I knew that, but thank you.”

She nodded again, and Lu Xinzhu laughed. It wasn’t a big laugh, but it was there. “It’s hard to know what to say. The boys were right; the ship does know a lot about powers. She’s been around a long time. She has perspective.”

There was a long pause. Long enough that she wondered if she should change the subject, and then Lu Xinzhu said, “If you think about time like a river, then my power is a little bit like getting out of the river, and then getting back in. You can’t step in the same river twice, right? Even when it’s the same river, it’s different.”

There seemed to be one very obvious question in response to that. “And -- is time like a river?”

Lu Xinzhu’s laugh was louder that time. “How would I know? It’s still time travel; as soon as you explain one aspect of it, another three show up to be confusing. But I feel -- better isn’t quite right. I feel more at ease with it now. Less like I’m going to do it by accident.”

She didn’t want to give the impression that she’d been worried -- she hadn’t, so she said, “I’m glad. I was never worried about you, but I worried for you. If that makes sense.”

“Not really, but that’s probably because it’s been a very long day, and already a long night too. We’ll talk more about it later?”

She nodded -- surely everything would be easier after some rest. “Sleep first?” she asked.

Lu Xinzhu patted the ship, and then held out a hand to help her up. “Sleep first. We’ll talk about it in the morning. As a family.”


Chapter 17: Fly me to the moon and back again

“So, the Alliance?”

It turned out the boys had been making their own late night plans. They really should all just stick to sleeping at night, and plan together during the day. It would be much more efficient.

“If we leave soon, we might get there in time to see them pick the new High Chief,” Daqing said. “It’s definitely going to be Fu You. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

“Nobody’s heard it from you,” Yunlan said. He shook his finger at Daqing, which was definitely something he’d picked up from Lu Xinzhu. “Weren’t you supposed to be spreading the word?”

“Who says I haven’t been?” Daqing retorted. “I’m a cat; I do what I want. Haven’t you ever heard of delegating?”

“You delegated your official duties?”

“I just said I did!”

She could see Daqing tensing to spring, and she pulled her bowl closer just in case. But then Shen Wei put his hands on the table, and suddenly Daqing and Yunlan were both extremely interested in looking in opposite directions and pretending they had absolutely not been about to bicker their way into a wrestling match.

Shen Wei said, “We can’t join the Alliance yet; we have to go to the moon first.”

She looked at Lu Xinzhu, who was looking back at her and seemed just as lost. “The moon?”

Shen Wei nodded. She thought they must have deliberately picked him to present the idea, because he was the best at making ridiculous statements like ‘we have to go to the moon first’ sound at least mildly plausible.

She waited. Shen Wei also waited. Finally, she asked, “Why do we have to go to the moon?”

“That’s where the other ship is,” Shen Wei said.

“The bigger ship,” Yunlan added, as if that bit of clarification would make them understand the situation.

“There’s a bigger ship?” Lu Xinzhu asked.

The boys all nodded enthusiastically. “When the Dixingians and the Yashou came here, it was only after a long journey,” Yunlan said.

“Very long!” Daqing agreed.

Yunlan waved his hand, narrowly avoiding hitting Daqing. “And obviously you wouldn’t want to spend the whole trip in one little space, right? But you also wouldn’t want to be around everyone else constantly.”

Daqing nodded again. “Napping is important and shouldn’t be interrupted.”

Yunlan jumped back in. “So there’s a bigger ship, and the smaller ships could go there and meet up while they were all traveling in space, and then when they got here the big ship stayed on the moon and the smaller ships came here.”

They were getting louder with each declaration, and she held up both hands to stop the flow of words. “Why is the ship -- the bigger ship -- on the moon?”

Zhao Ye leaned forward. “Remember how we said landing was harder than you might think? The bigger the ship, the harder it is to land. If you want to be able to take off again, at least. And if you don’t want to mess up the atmosphere or cause an earthquake or anything like that.”

If they were excited enough that even Zhao Ye was rambling, they definitely weren’t going to let it go until they actually went to the moon. She looked at Lu Xinzhu, who said, “I’m not disagreeing, but -- why the moon first? Why not the other way around?”

There was a long pause, while the boys exchanged increasingly complex significant looks and eyebrow movements.

“Strategically, it would be to our benefit to approach the Alliance from a position of strength,” Yunlan said finally.

It was an answer, but it wasn’t the whole answer. “It would,” she said, and waited through an entire ten-count of awkward silence. “Look, we trust you. We talked about this yesterday, right? Sometimes there’s things we don’t -- or can’t -- talk about, and sometimes we can talk about the reasons for it instead of the things themselves. But more communication is better than less.”

“It’s important,” Zhao Ye said. “We have to go to the moon first. I can’t tell you why, because it’s not --” He cut himself off, looking frustrated. “It’s not words. I just know.”

“I agree,” Shen Wei said. “Also, the ship is concerned about why she isn’t able to connect fully with her counterpart on the moon. Since we have no pressing need to meet with the Alliance at this time as opposed to later, the most logical thing to do is to go to the moon first and address those concerns.”

He sounded calm, but his knuckles were white where they gripped the edge of the table, and she couldn’t see Zhao Ye’s hands at all. She looked at Yu Xinzhu again, who nodded.

“Fine, yes,” she said, and immediately had to put her hands up again for quiet. “But not until we finish breakfast, and not until we’ve had a chance to talk about it first.”

The boys turned as one to look at Lu Xinzhu, who shook her head. “Don’t look at me; she’s right. What do I always say?”

“Always bring more snacks than you think you’ll need?” Daqing frowned. “No, wait, that’s what I always say.”

“To rule over ashes is not victory, but defeat,” Shen Wei said.

“Do not mistake wisdom for experience, nor planning for doing?” Yunlan asked.

“Don’t wander off,” Zhao Ye offered.

Lu Xinzhu laughed. “I was thinking more along the lines of ‘always listen to your elders.’”

Yunlan beamed. “Luckily, the ship is the eldest of all of us!”

“And luckily,” Lu Xinzhu answered firmly, “All of your elders are in agreement that we should be as prepared as possible before we fly the ship into space.”

There was only minor grumbling in response -- as excited as the boys were, they all knew that taking an ancient ship into space was no small thing. And if there was one lesson she and Lu Xinzhu had emphasized over everything else, it was to always have backup.

“How can we have backup if we’re all going together and no one else we know has a spaceship?” Zhao Ye asked.

“We can be each other’s backup,” Yunlan said. “Like before, with the rescue. We’ll be the ship’s backup, and she’ll be ours.”

The ship seemed pleased with the idea, and obligingly displayed a series of maps, time and distance estimates, and a staggering number of schematics of what was probably the ship’s essential flight functions, and which she was fairly sure none of them had any hope of understanding. Maybe Zhao Ye. She hadn’t missed the implication that he hadn’t been part of the rescue planning, and he’d always seemed to have a stronger connection to the ship than anyone else.

She pulled Lu Xinzhu aside while the boys were watching a holographic walkthrough of the larger ship. “Are you going to be okay with this?” she asked, trying to keep her voice at the exact level of ‘quiet enough to not draw attention, but not so quiet it sounds like a secret.’

Lu Xinzhu looked surprised. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

She raised her eyebrows. “‘Caves are bad? Dark enclosed spaces are bad?’” Space was dark, and they were going to be enclosed in a spaceship for significantly longer than they’d been in the cave.

“Ah. Well, that’s true.” Lu Xinzhu patted the wall. “But the space we’re enclosed in won’t be dark, and also the ship likes us.” The ship sent a pattern of sparkles to swirl around the spot where Lu Xinzhu’s hand was touching it. “That makes a difference.”

“Will it make enough of a difference?” Fears didn’t tend to respond to rational arguments, after all.

Lu Xinzhu took a deep breath. “Let’s hope so.”


Chapter 18: That feeling when you take your family on a day trip to the moon and it turns out it’s haunted

It didn’t help as much as she would have liked, but it did help. (Shen Wei said that he could probably send them back via portal now that he’d been to both places, but Lu Xinzhu had declined so vehemently that they were probably going to need to apologize later.)

“Not to be the negative voice in the room, but -- I don’t see any spaceship.”

They were all gathered in what Zhao Ye assured them was a very secure observation room, looking at -- as unbelievable as it seemed -- the surface of the moon. What they didn’t seem to be looking at was a spaceship, bigger or otherwise.

“It’s invisible,” Shen Wei told her.

Of course it was.

“At least that’s working,” Zhao Ye muttered. He was glaring at what she could only assume was the invisible spaceship. “We’re supposed to be docking,” he said.

She held herself back from asking yet again if it was safe, as Zhao Ye’’s words seemed to prompt the ship to start moving again. Very, very slowly. Zhao Ye gave a long-suffering sigh. “Thank you.” Then he patted the screen gently. “It will be all right. You’ll see.”

Yunlan put his hand over Zhao Ye’s on the screen. “Hi, yes, it’s me,” he said. “We’re going to find out what’s going on with your ship family, but you’ll still be part of our family too, so you don’t need to worry about that, okay?”

He looked at her, and she nodded her agreement. “Of course,” she said. She hadn’t been aware it was a question. Of course the ship was part of their family -- even before she’d woken up, or started paying attention, or whatever they were calling it, there had never been a day when she hadn’t been an important part of their lives.

The ship started moving more quickly, and Yunlan beamed. Zhao Ye sighed again. “You don’t always have to wait for an adult to agree before you believe us, you know.”

“But we appreciate it!” Lu Xinzhu called from the hallway. She said it was easier to pretend she wasn’t on the moon if she couldn’t see it.

She felt her eyes go wide as the view changed from lunar rockscape to spaceship. A bigger ship, they’d said. Yes, it certainly was. “Wow.”

“We’re inside the invisibility shield now,” Shen Wei said.

Their ship showed no more signs of hesitation, and they docked with a gentle thud that ran through the floor like a shiver. “Are we there?” Lu Xinzhu called.

“Yes -- oh.” Zhao Ye froze, staring out the window. She looked, but there wasn’t anything there. Nothing she could see, anyway.

“What is that?” Shen Wei sounded -- not good.

“It’s haunted,” Zhao Ye said. “I think the moon is haunted.”

There was a long minute of silence, and then Daqing started laughing. “Hahaha for a minute I thought you were serious!”

Zhao Ye stared at him. “I am.”

Daqing put his hands on his hips. “If the moon was haunted, don’t you think I would tell you? Cats can see ghosts; everyone knows that.”

“If it’s not haunted,” Shen Wei said tensely. “Then what’s out there?”

Daqing peered out at the expanse of ship they could see. Then he shrugged. “Feels like the ship to me. Lots of ships? Maybe some baby ships?”

“Are there more ships here?” Lu Xinzhu asked. She was leaning further into the room, but still turned determinedly away from the window.

“Some. And a lot of ship spirits, maybe?” Daqing said. “I don’t know; the big ship has been here a long time, right?”

“How is a spirit different than a ghost?” Yunlan asked.

“To be a ghost, something has to be alive, and then not be alive. These are more like --” Daqing wiggled his fingers. “Energy. Potential. Not ghosts.”

And apparently they’d been waiting for an airlock to cycle, because Zhao Ye said ‘Oh’ again, and the wall next to her suddenly slid back. Lights flooded into the room -- not light like it was bright on the other side of the wall, but an actual swarm of little balls of light, swooping and bouncing around them.

“What are these?” She could hardly see Lu Xinzhu through the lights, but her voice was more curious than alarmed.

“It’s the spirits!” Daqing answered. He was lying on the floor, the lights a veritable blanket on top of him. “They’re very friendly!”

Shen Wei and Yunlan were completely obscured by a cloud of the lights, but she could hear Yunlan laughing. Even Zhao Ye was smiling. The lights weren’t entirely silent; their humming was a softer counterpoint to the enthusiastic rumble from their ship. She sat down, and in seconds her lap was filled with them.

Several things became clear very quickly. First, the spirits seemed just as interested in them as they were in the spirits. Second, their ship was absolutely enthralled by the unexpected company, and started lighting up the ceiling -- and then the walls and floor as well -- with a lightshow of her own.

Third, it was nearly impossible not to smile when you were surrounded by lights that were practically broadcasting good cheer. She let herself enjoy it.

Finally, they all pulled themselves together enough to meet in the center of the room. The lights still tumbled around them, but some of them were settling down, and they could at least all see each other. Zhao Ye had a light spinning lazily around his hand, and Daqing had one on his head. She waved at both of them. “Where did they -- how did this happen?”

“After the meteor, some of the ships came back here, and some stayed on the surface,” Shen Wei said. “But I’ve never read about anything like this in the ship’s history.” He held up one of the lights and tilted his head to the side to study it. The light rolled to the side too, mirroring him.

“History! You could just ask them,” Daqing said.

Zhao Ye shook his head. “They don’t know.”

“And now we know that!” Daqing answered. “Knowledge gained is never useless, right?”

“They’re babies,” Lu Xinzhu said dryly. “Where do you think they came from?”

“Look,” Yunlan said. When she looked over, it was clear he was talking to Shen Wei, who was indeed looking. Yunlan scooped up one of the lights and tucked it into his hood. ”Our new younger siblings are pocket sized!”

Shen Wei smiled. “I see,” he said. “In numbers, I believe they still have the advantage.” He patted the one still in his hands, and several dozen lights converged on Yunlan, who laughed again.

“They do!” He sounded delighted, and he pulled Daqing closer to cover him in lights as well. It was only a matter of time before -- there it was; Shen Wei waved Zhao Ye over to join them.

She made her way over to Lu Xinzhu on the far side of the room. “They seem happy,” she said.

“It’s good to see, right?” Lu Xinzhu carefully moved some of the lights so she could pat the floor next to her. “Our ship too. She was worried. But the bigger ship has been trying to make contact with her too; she thinks something about the energy of the meteor fragments is disrupting the way they communicate. Now that we’re here they can finally talk.”

She nodded. “And what about you?” she asked. “What do you think?”

Lu Xinzhu wrapped her arm around her shoulders, and they leaned back against the wall together. “I think our family just got a lot bigger. And also -- ah, you know that saying, about parents giving their children roots and wings? I was thinking potatoes and spaceships are a pretty good start.”


***************
SECTION 3A
***************

Chapter 19: Inquiring minds want to know, but sometimes guessing is more fun

“Should we talk to them? Again?”

She looked at the ceiling like it might respond, even though the Alliance headquarters ship didn’t seem to use visual cues much.

Lu Xinzhu dropped into the cushions next to her. “Do we really think it would make any difference? It’s not like they don’t know what people talk about.”

She nodded. It was true; the boys were hardly unobservant. And the talk didn’t stop when they were around. But people tended to avoid asking her and Xinzhu about it so directly when they might have to look the subject of their gossip in the eyes right around the next corner.

“I know. I just — sometimes I miss the days when it was just the six of us,” she admitted.

“Ha. Don’t let Daqing hear you say that.”

“The seven of us, then. The time before there were so many people around who thought we wanted to hear their opinions about our family.”

Lu Xinzhu sat up and frowned at her. “Did someone say something new?” she asked.

She sighed. “Nothing we haven’t heard before. Who’s together with who, are they all together, are we together, are they really ours — the same things they’ve been asking since we got here. I’m just tired today. Worried about the kids.”

“If it was any of their business, they would know,” Lu Xinzhu said. And then, much more indignant, she added, “And of course they’re all ours, who else could keep up with them?”

“I’m not sure even we’re able to do that,” she said. “They were only here for a few days last time before they headed back out.”

She could see Lu Xinzhu nodding next to her. “At least they’re staying on-planet now. For a while there, I thought they might take off into space, like some kind of extraterrestrial gap year.”

They’d had plenty of late-night conversations about it. Zhao Ye said some of the ships wanted to travel again, and the Alliance wouldn’t really need them for a while longer. How he knew that, she hadn’t asked. Some things you just accepted.

Lu Xinzhu had adamantly declared that she wouldn’t be participating in any more space travel than was absolutely necessary, but the boys were more than capable of managing without them. Especially if the ship was with them.

“I’m glad they stayed,” she said. “Even though I’m not sure what they’re doing now is any safer.”

For months, the boys had spent most of their time on the moon. She and Lu Xinzhu had moved in with the Alliance -- she took up teaching, and Xinzhu helped in the gardens. That they would need to resign themselves to watching their children depart on a prolonged space journey had seemed like a real possibility.

But then Fu You had asked for their help. They’d recovered some unusual meteor fragments, she’d said. None of their scientists seemed to know what to make of them. They had powers that no one could explain, they kept changing their appearance, and they were emitting some kind of energy. Would the leader of Cat Tribe accept a formal request for his allies to offer their observations and theories?

“You would think the Alliance would know better than to mess around with things it didn’t understand,” Lu Xinzhu said.

She choked on a laugh. “This, from you? Who never met a button they didn’t want to push or a trail they didn’t want to follow?”

“That’s different,” Lu Xinzhu said. She paused, and then added, “All right, not entirely different. Still, once anyone started suggesting things like ‘maybe we could try fusing them together to make an unimaginably powerful source of energy,’ you would at least think extra security would have been justified, right?”

She did. But of course it was easy to see looking back; things were never so clear in the moment.

The leader of Cat Tribe had been happy to accept such a request from the Yashou High Chief. Daqing’s prediction that she would easily win the selection process had proved correct, along with his prediction that they would like her. Plans had been made for the boys (and the ship) to come back.

And then the meteor fragments had been stolen. Fu You had stepped up as the de facto leader of the Alliance at that point, almost certainly because no one else wanted the job, with all of the recriminations and finger-pointing and blame that were being spread everywhere. She’d gone back to Daqing with another request. Would the leader of Cat Tribe and his allies be willing to lead the search?

“I’m sure they’ll take that into consideration when they get them back,” she said, and Lu Xinzhu laughed.

“I’m sure. There will be a meeting about it, probably. ‘Operational security planning to prevent the theft of these mysterious, shape-changing, energy-producing rocks we just happened to find lying around and then lost, and then recovered, to keep us from losing them again.’”

Lu Xinzhu had opinions about the meteor fragments. Opinions she shared loudly with her family and with Fu You herself. Shen Xi didn’t necessarily disagree, but what was the alternative? It was tempting to see conspiracy in coincidence, but either way they would benefit from more information, and that meant getting the fragments back.

“I know they’re the best choice, and they offered, and they want to help. But I still miss them when they’re gone.”

The boys had thrown themselves into helping the Alliance the same way they’d done with everything else in their lives -- fully and immediately. Suddenly their days were full of meetings and training, and an ever-increasing number of trips away, trying to track down the meteor fragments. She didn’t regret their choices, or her own, but she worried for them.

“There’s always something to miss,” Xinzhu said. “But we‘ve gained a lot too.”

“Mm,” she agreed, happy to change the subject back to lighter concerns. “Good food. Good training. Good people, except when they’re gossiping about our kids and bothering us about it.”

Lu Xinzhu groaned. “And the worst part is that we don’t even know!”

That was also true. She knew some things. She knew that they all introduced each other as family. She knew Yunlan called Shen Wei his soulmate, and Zhao Ye his brother, and Daqing his best friend -- except when he called Daqing his soulmate, and Shen Wei his brother, and Zhao Ye his best friend. She knew it worked for them.

She didn’t know if any of them were romantically involved, or if any of them were (romantically or otherwise) having sex with each other. She wasn’t uninterested, exactly, but her interest was mainly in the sense of ‘these are four people I care about very much, and who are an important part of my life, and I would be very sad if any of their hearts were broken, especially by each other.’

There was also, maybe, the tiniest bit of sheer curiosity. But for the first concern, her knowing wouldn’t reduce the chance of heartbreak, and as for the second, it was really, truly none of her business. She and Xinzhu did what they could to make sure the kids knew they loved them all, and trusted them to make their own choices, and were there if they ever wanted to talk about those choices, or just to sit and not talk at all.

They had tried, very awkwardly and only once, to talk with the kids about relationships. Yunlan had immediately assured them that Fu You had already “told them everything,” and that they would definitely go to her if they had any questions.

She and Yunlan had carefully navigated another conversation later on, about Zhao Xinci. It had been both more and less awkward -- more because she still didn’t know how to talk about it, even though it felt long overdue, and less because it turned out that Yunlan had a lot to say on the topic. She thought they’d both been relieved, to have the conversation, and to get through it and move on.

She only realized she’d drifted into her own thoughts when Lu Xinzhu tapped her knee. “Hey -- you know you’re allowed to change your mind about being okay with all the gossip. Ignoring it isn’t our only option. Can I help?”

She shook her head, then shrugged. “I wish I knew. It’s not the gossip, really. It feels like -- people are judging me, as a parent,” she admitted. “Whether because I won’t tell them anything, or because of whatever they think is going on with the kids. But that’s mine to deal with.”

“What’s yours is ours,” Lu Xinzhu said. “Good or bad.” It made her smile, and Lu Xinzhu added, “I feel that way too sometimes, you know. And whenever I start to doubt myself, I imagine how I would feel if they said those things to you instead. And every time, that makes me realize that their words said more about them than about me, because they would never make me doubt you.”


Chapter 20: If only all dangerous objects came with a ‘don’t touch’ label

“They’re back!”

“They’ve returned!”

“They found one of the lost meteor fragments!”

Rumors raced faster than news, so she heard the whispers long before any official announcement, and Lu Xinzhu was right behind them. “Let’s go,” she said, and there was an urgency in her tone that made Shen Xi’s stomach drop.

“What happened?” she asked, already following Lu Xinzhu into the hallway.

“Yunlan and Shen Wei are in the infirmary. I was already there for the inventory check, so I volunteered to come get you. I didn’t get a full explanation, but they brought back one of the meteor fragments, so odds are it’s involved somehow.”

“Daqing? Zhao Ye?”

“They’re fine -- they brought the other two in. Yunlan and Shen Wei are unconscious, but stable.”

‘Stable’ was the word they used when they didn’t know enough to call it good news or bad news. It was better than ‘unresponsive,’ but nowhere near as good as ‘resting.’

She wasn’t sure what her face was doing, but Lu Xinzhu grabbed her hand and tugged her to a stop just outside the infirmary. “Hey,” she said quietly. “Zhao Ye and Daqing need you to be the strong one right now. They need you to be okay.”

She didn’t think how she was feeling was anywhere close to okay, but for her kids, she could pretend. She took a deep breath, blinked back the tears she could feel trying to start, and squeezed Xinzhu’s hand. “All right,” she said. “I’m ready.”

They swept into the infirmary together. It wasn’t crowded, and her eyes were immediately drawn to the boys. And her ears. Daqing started howling as soon as he saw them, and he launched himself out of Zhao Ye’s arms and into Lu Xinzhu’s. Zhao Ye threw his arms around her with only slightly more dignity.

She rubbed his back while she looked at Yunlan and Shen Wei. They were side by side in a single infirmary bed, and they looked -- better than she had feared. The medical volunteers were close, but not hovering, and one of them gave her a reassuring nod when they made eye contact.

“It’s all right,” she said softly. “We’re here. We’re so grateful you were together, that you brought them back, that you’re okay.” It was mostly rambling; whatever she thought Zhao Ye might benefit from hearing.

“It’s my fault,” he said.

“It’s not!” Daqing wailed. “It’s my fault! I was supposed to be watching them!” It was a little muffled, because he had buried himself inside Xinzhu’s jacket, but it was clear enough.

“We’re family,” she said firmly. “You’re all our children, no matter what.” She had absolutely no doubt that Zhao Ye and Daqing wouldn’t have been able to stop Yunlan and Shen Wei from doing -- whatever it was they’d done -- once they’d decided to do it. She also had no doubt that telling them she didn’t blame them wouldn’t help at all. Stubbornness was a trait they all shared equally, it seemed. Luckily, she and Lu Xinzhu had years more practice to draw upon.

“You’re stuck with us,” Lu Xinzhu agreed.

“And we wouldn’t have it any other way. Can you tell us what happened?”

Zhao Ye wiped his eyes, and squared his shoulders. He stepped back and looked at the bed. “It’s like we thought; the meteor fragments disrupt the balance between dark energy and light energy. They can make both of them stronger, but it’s dangerous.”

Daqing stuck his head out and said, “And they attract both kinds of energy!”

Zhao Ye nodded. “We think the rebel group that stole them tried to split them up to reduce the effects, but it made things worse. When they’re apart the energy balance shifts back and forth even more. Shen Wei thinks they’re trying to get back to each other.”

“You’re talking about them as if they’re alive, and making conscious choices,” Lu Xinzhu said.

Daqing groaned. “They might be.” She could see his tail twitching under Lu Xinzhu’s jacket. “Who can tell? It won’t talk to us! It only likes him!”

“Him?”

Zhao Ye made a face. “Yunlan. We’ve been tracking one of the fragments, and we finally found it in the mountains. There were guards, but they’d been fighting off ghost beasts attracted by the fragment for days. When we showed up, they were mostly grateful to have backup against the latest wave.”

“They had no idea what the meteor fragment was,” Daqing said. “They were talking about burying it and running away.”

She thought she could guess where the story was headed next. “And so you tried to recruit them?”

“They practically recruited themselves,” Daqing said. “Which apparently some people thought was a problem.”

“It was suspicious, and you know it,” Zhao Ye shot back.

It was almost impressive how well Daqing could convey pouting in his cat form. “It was a little suspicious,” he admitted.

“Let me guess,” Lu Xinzhu said. “They offered to hand over the meteor fragment, hoping it would incapacitate all of you, and then they’d have the fragment and four of the Alliance’s most valued people, to negotiate with whichever side they decided to approach.”

There were a few seconds of silence. “That would have been a good plan,” Daqing said admiringly.

“As soon as the ghost beasts retreated, the meteor fragment became active,” Zhao Ye explained.

Daqing sighed loudly. “It was glowing and flying around, what did you expect me to do? Cats have excellent instincts.”

Zhao Ye hesitated, like he was trying to figure out the best way to respond. “Daqing obtained the fragment by pouncing on it,” he said finally. “Nothing happened, except it stopped glowing. That was enough to encourage the rebels to fully surrender, and we all agreed no one else would touch the fragment.”

“And then I looked over and there they were, both touching it! And then they were like this!” Daqing was glaring at Yunlan and Shen Wei. When she looked more carefully, she realized that both their hands were wrapped around something.

“They’re still holding it?” she asked, and Zhao Ye nodded.

Lu Xinzhu frowned. “Not to state the obvious, but has anyone tried taking it away from them?”

“It won’t let us get close enough,” Zhao Ye said. “We can touch them, but not the meteor fragment itself. The same thing happens with dark energy.” He looked frustrated. “The doctors think they’ll wake up on their own.”

“Do you disagree?” The Alliance’s medical team was exceptional, but Zhao Ye knew Shen Wei better than anyone, and the meteor fragment was a completely unpredictable element.

If anything, the question just made Zhao Ye more frustrated. “No,” he muttered.

“He’s bad at waiting,” Daqing said.

Zhao Ye gave him a half-hearted glare. “Speak for yourself.”

Daqing seemed to consider it. “I’m also bad at waiting,” he said.

Lu Xinzhu patted his back. “We know. Us too. We’ll all wait together.”


Chapter 21: If you can’t find your own common sense, ask a friend if you can borrow theirs

Watching her family relax after a long day had always been something she looked forward to. Quiet evenings by the river, or tucked up with cushions and blankets inside the ship during the colder seasons, were some of her favorite memories.

Watching her family relax in the infirmary, because two of them still hadn’t been released, wasn’t quite the same, but it was as close as they could get at the moment.

“We’re fine,” Yunlan said. “They just can’t figure out what we did, so they keep coming up with different tests just in case.”

Yunlan and Shen Wei had woken up on their own, as predicted, several hours after they’d been brought to the infirmary. The meteor fragment had returned to a non-glowing, non-flying state, and was lying innocuously on a tray next to their bed. They had so far politely declined to hand it over to anyone else, and no one with sufficient authority had come along to push the issue.

Both the boys appeared to have suffered no ill effects, and insisted they were fine. They hadn’t actually made any attempt to get up and leave, though, which meant ‘fine’ was being used as a relative term at best.

“Do you know what you did?” she asked.

Yunlan shrugged. “Of course.” He looked at Shen Wei, who was braiding Zhao Ye’s hair less than an arm’s distance away. Shen Wei looked back, and nodded.

“The fragment wants to balance energy,” Yunlan said. “Mostly between the fragments themselves, but when it couldn’t do that, it tried to do it --” He waved his free hand expansively, carefully avoiding Daqing. “Everywhere. Which was bad, and too hard anyway. We just gave it something easier, so it could do what it wanted.”

Lu Xinzhu said, “Right, okay. Which was to balance things.” She didn’t look up from where she was carefully threading another bead into Daqing’s hair. They joked that she gave him another one every time one of the kids made it through a life-threatening situation, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t actually a joke.

“Exactly!” Yunlan looked pleased, like his explanation made perfect sense and now there would be no need for further questions.

“We have no idea what that means,” she told him.

“I could have told you that wouldn’t work,” Daqing said, poking Yunlan in the shoulder. “That was so vague even I got suspicious, and I’ve been with you the whole time!”

Yunlan took a deep breath. He looked at Shen Wei again, who looked back. He looked at her. “It’s still affecting us,” he said, much quieter. “It’s -- learning, maybe? I don’t think it wants to hurt us,” he added quickly. “But the fragments want to be together, and it’s possible that this one doesn’t completely understand the concept of balanced but separate.”

“Now you’re making it sound like it’s fusing you into one person,” Daqing said, exasperated. “How are you so bad at this?”

“It isn’t,” Shen Wei said, which was reassuring.

“We don’t think,” Yunlan added, which definitely wasn’t. Daqing glared at him. “What? We don’t! That’s good news!”

“But you’re still physically touching,” Lu Xinzhu said. “And you have been ever since you woke up. Is that because you have to be?”

“Not -- exactly?” Yunlan and Shen Wei looked at each other again.

Daqing sighed loudly. “They don’t have to be. But they have each others’ powers now, so Shen Wei is figuring out this one’s third eye.” He nudged Yunlan, more gently than usual. “And also keeping him from accidentally blasting anyone with dark energy when he’s startled, which is more often than usual because they didn’t sleep for two days while we were tracking the meteor fragment.” He looked at Zhao Ye. “Did I get everything?”

Zhao Ye appeared to consider the question, and she took a second to try to absorb everything Daqing had just revealed. “You skipped the part where the fragment didn’t affect you because you’re already balanced,” Zhao Ye said.

“That’s right!” Daqing tipped his chin up and preened. “As expected of Cat Tribe.”

“Will getting more sleep help you balance everything faster?” she asked. “I’m not asking you,” she told Yunlan, who was obviously about to insist again that they were fine. “A-Ye? If it’s affecting Shen Wei, it’s affecting you. Will sleep help?”

“Probably.” He looked uncertainly at Shen Wei, at the door, at the infirmary staff that were hovering just far enough away to give a sense of privacy.

“We can’t sleep yet,” Yunlan protested. “We need to meet with Fu You.”

For a moment, all she could think was that they were all still so young. There was an echo in his words of Yunlan at eight years old, at twelve, at fifteen, every time he’d insisted on staying up to finish just one more thing.

“Why?” Lu Xinzhu asked.

He smiled, and batted Daqing’s hand away from where it was reaching out to poke him again. “Because we figured it out. We can use this fragment to find the others. We can get them all back.”

She gathered all the patience she had left and said, “Yunlan. Can you do it tonight?” She held up a hand before he could answer. “Please think. Be truthful with yourself. Could you safely implement this plan tonight? Can you be reasonably sure it’s worth the risks it would entail?”

To her, the answer was fairly clearly ‘no,’ but she understood that safety was relative. It was possible they’d learned something about the meteor fragments that changed the situation more than they’d revealed. If they truly believed it had to be done immediately, she would get Fu You herself, and they’d push ahead.

They thought about it for longer than she’d expected. Yunlan and Shen Wei muttered back and forth, while Zhao Ye stared pointedly at the wall, and Daqing appeared to doze off against Yunlan’s shoulder. Finally, Yunlan said, “No. You’re right; it would be safer to wait.” And if he sounded only grudgingly accepting, she was willing to overlook it.

Zhao Ye was less gracious in his victory. He scowled at Shen Wei, and pushed him back against the pillows. “I told you,” he said. “You can’t help anyone if you don’t figure yourself out first.” He fussed with the blankets until Shen Wei grabbed his hand and pulled him closer.

“You did,” Shen Wei said. “You were right.”

“Ha, now you admit it,” Zhao Ye answered, but it was softer, and she could see him smiling.

Daqing roused himself when Lu Xinzhu moved off the bed. “Hm? Sleeping time now?” Zhao Ye was already maneuvering the others to shift over so he could curl up next to Shen Wei. Daqing blinked slowly, and then switched to his cat form and tucked himself into the middle.

“You can sleep,” Lu Xinzhu agreed. “We’re here. We’ll keep watch.”


Chapter 22: Sometimes even the good news is bad news

“We could speculate for weeks, and be no closer to action.” Fu You put both hands on the table and swept her gaze around the room. “What do we know for sure?”

They’d managed to put off the meeting with Alliance leadership for three days. Yunlan and Shen Wei spent most of the first two days sleeping. The third was spent as a family, but it was hard not to feel like time was running out.

“We know the meteor fragments are drawn to each other, and we’ve identified the location of the remaining three fragments,” Shen Wei said calmly. “They’ve been moving, but they’re currently stationary, in this area.” He pointed at the map.

“Isn’t that by the cliffs?” someone asked.

“The falls are here,” Zhao Ye agreed, adding a light to the map near Shen Wei’s finger. “The rebel leader is likely counting on the terrain to be a natural deterrent.”

“Our greatest weakness,” Yunlan joked. “Scenic waterfalls.”

She thought Shen Wei was trying not to smile, but all he said was, “Portals make the terrain a non-issue.”

Zhao Ye nodded. “Best case scenario: we retrieve the remaining three meteor fragments and return them here. The ship here has agreed that it’s both willing and able to stabilize the fragments and ultimately use them as a power source to assist in the terraforming and recovery of Dixing.”

“That’s the good news,” Yunlan said. “The bad news is that if the rebels have already found a way to activate the other fragments, or if they destabilize on their own, it could be too late to move them safely.”

“Worst case scenario?” Fu You asked.

Yunlan rubbed the back of his neck. “Worst case scenario is the fragments react badly and the cliff becomes a crater instead. But!” He held up a hand. “We think it’s very unlikely that will happen.”

There was an instant increase in the noise level in the room as everyone started talking at once. Fu You sighed. “I did ask, I suppose. What can we do to reduce the chances of the worst case scenario?”

“We must act quickly, and without panic,” Shen Wei said.

“And don’t touch the meteor fragments!” Daqing added.

It wasn’t until hours later -- after multiple plans had been discussed, and the room had emptied out as people dispersed to their assignments -- that Fu You turned her focus back to them. “Now,” she said. “Tell me what you wouldn’t say in front of the others.”

She leaned forward, and felt Lu Xinzhu doing the same next to her. They’d tried to get this out of the boys the day before, but they’d insisted on waiting.

“The fragments are already too volatile to be moved,” Yunlan said bluntly. “They have been for days.”

Days, she thought. How many days?

He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Probably ever since the one we already have was activated. At that point, the best case scenario might have been possible, but the worst case scenario was, ah --”

Shen Wei stepped in. “There was a risk that the combination of our own unstable energy, along with that of the fragments, could have irreparably distorted the balance of energy between Haixing and Dixing.”

“Causing the planet to explode,” Yunlan finished. “Or implode. Now that our own balance has stabilized, that definitely won’t happen.”

Fu You looked at Daqing, who nodded. “If the fragments can’t be moved, what is the alternative?” she asked.

“Our ship can come to us,” Zhao Ye said.

Fu You frowned. “I thought that plan was discarded because your ship isn’t powerful enough to contain the meteor fragments.”

Zhao Ye shook his head. “She isn’t. But we are, the four of us, and she can make sure it works. She’s the backup.” He smiled, and it hurt, because the ringing in her ears that had started when he said ‘we are,’ suddenly vanished, and she knew what they were planning.

“No,” she said immediately. She gripped Lu Xinzhu’s hand tightly and turned to Fu You. As calmly as she could manage, she said, “We would like to discuss this, please. As a family.”

Some of her desperation must have gotten through, because Fu You nodded, and her voice was soft when she said, “Of course.” She closed the door behind her on her way out.

“Please don’t do this,” she said, as soon as the door was shut.

“Mama.” Yunlan’s voice was soft too.

“I could have told you she’d figure it out,” Lu Xinzhu said, and she spun around to face her.

“You knew?”

Lu Xinzhu shrugged. “Heard them talking about it when you were asleep. I wasn’t going to let them, of course. I figured we’d sneak out tonight with the ship and get there first.”

Daqing was looking back and forth between them. “And we were going to sneak out during dinner so you couldn’t stop us!” His eyes went wide. “Ah, I probably wasn’t supposed to say that.”

She felt as if her heart had broken and reforged itself, stronger than before. These were her children, and she could smile through her tears. “It’s a good thing the ship still listens to us first, then.” Xinzhu squeezed her fingers in confirmation. The four boys together had more power than the ship alone, but the two of them plus the ship would be enough.

“A-Lan,” she said. “Do you think if anything happened to any of you, that we could still be all right?” She took a deep breath. “Please, let us be the ones to rescue you this time.”

He threw himself into her arms, and the others were right behind him. He was crying, and she felt her own tears start up again. “I don’t know how to do this without you,” he said.

“You do,” she said. “You always have.” Their brave children. She met Lu Xinzhu’s eyes over their heads. She could be brave for them, one last time. “You give your heart to the world, and you hold on to each other, just like you’ve always done.”

“Look at it this way,” Lu Xinzhu said, carefully running her fingers through Daqing’s fur. “We have no idea what the meteor fragments are capable of. Who knows? Maybe we’ll meet again someday.”


***************
SECTION 3B
***************

Chapter 23: Just because there’s no map doesn’t mean you can’t keep going

Objectively, the sky pillar was beautiful. None of them had known exactly what to expect, but the ship absorbing all four of the meteor fragments and transforming herself into a column of light had somehow still been a surprise. All four fragments, and the people holding them.

By the time the light dimmed enough to see what was happening, it was over. The ship and the meteor fragments had been replaced by a glowing pillar. It stretched up into the clouds as high as they could see. A (probably unwise) trip below showed that it stretched down as well, all the way through Dixing until it pierced the ground, a beacon in the ashy darkness.

He hated it, and he couldn’t stop looking at it.

There was a noise behind him -- too loud for Daqing, too tentative for Shen Wei. Zhao Ye, then. He didn’t turn around.

“Did they decide you were the least likely to get yelled at, or just the least likely to care?” It was too harsh, and he knew it. He was mean when he was hurting, and he lashed out at the people he cared about most. That’s why he was trying to be alone. He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“I volunteered.”

Zhao Ye sat next to him, and they stared out at the pillar together.

“I miss them,” he said finally. It felt like too small a statement to hold everything he was feeling, but he had to say something.

Especially because he wasn’t sure they were gone, exactly. Not completely. Sometimes, deep inside the swirling mass of energy contained in the pillar, he thought he could feel something. An echo, maybe. Or maybe he was just imagining it.

Zhao Ye leaned against his side, and stayed silent.

“I never thought about what would happen after,” he said. At first it had seemed too uncertain to even guess, and then he’d thought he wouldn’t be around to worry about it anyway.

He turned enough so he could drop his forehead onto Zhao Ye’s shoulder, and block the pillar from his view. “There’s too much,” he said. “They were wrong; I don’t know how to do this.”

He felt an arm wrap around his waist from the other side, and Daqing climbed into his lap one paw at a time, like maybe he wouldn’t notice if he did it slowly. His anger was already gone, though, and he couldn’t help but feel grateful for their presence. Still -- “This doesn’t feel like letting me have time alone,” he said.

“You were outvoted,” Shen Wei told him.

“We didn’t want to be alone, and we didn’t want you to be alone,” Daqing said. “That’s two against one.”

He smiled, and rubbed a finger over Daqing’s ears. “I’m not sure that’s how the math works.”

Daqing sniffed. “You should leave math to cats; we always do it the best way.”

The best way, he was clearly meant to understand, was not always the mathematically correct way. “I accept your wisdom,” he said, which was easier than saying they were right, and they knew what he meant anyway.

“Thank you,” Shen Wei answered, which was easier than saying either ‘we need you’ or ‘you need us,’ and they knew what he meant too.

Zhao Ye tugged one of his braids. “You said you don’t know how to do this, but you are. You’re doing it right now, because you’re here, and it’s happening.”

He thought about it. It sounded much too simple, but he couldn’t deny that it was true. Faced with an answer to one question, his brain immediately propelled him to the next. “What are we going to tell Fu You?”

There had been a plan, and then they’d arrived, and things had happened. Things that were not in the plan. It turned out there was a limit to the number of portals you could put in one place, for one thing. Also, the meteor fragments had done exactly zero of the things they’d expected, and his mom knew how to throw knives.

One of the rebels had turned out to be using mind control, and that had been the least surprising part of the whole mess.

“The objectives of the plan were accomplished,” Shen Wei said, in his ‘I don’t see why there’s any need for further questions’ voice. “The meteor fragments are safely contained; the sky pillar will connect Haixing and Dixing as the energy balance is restored.”

Zhao Ye added, “Daqing suggests we all stick with ‘I don’t remember the details’ and leave it at that.”

He frowned. Fu You was well known for her lack of patience with polite half-truths and verbal maneuvering. “Will she believe that?”

Zhao Ye shrugged. “No, probably not. But it’s a convenient answer for everyone, and she’ll know that. It’s better for her and the Alliance if she has plausible deniability about what happened and how much she knew ahead of time.”

It was probably true. Zhao Ye was usually right about that sort of thing. There was another long silence. “Is this a bad time to mention that I actually don’t remember the details?” he asked, when the question got too loud in his head to ignore.

“I thought maybe it was just me,” Zhao Ye said, although he didn’t sound concerned. “Because of my --” He waved his hand, and he either meant ‘because the ship and I shared a special bond and when she turned into a beam of light I collapsed on the ground’ or ‘because I can sometimes see the future and I haven’t been able to see past today for the last fifteen years.’ Either way, really.

Shen Wei stayed quiet, but it was a very specific quiet that probably meant he didn’t remember either, but had been planning on keeping it to himself forever and never telling anyone.

He reached for Shen Wei’s hand on his waist and laced their fingers together, then used his other hand to tug Zhao Ye closer. He poked at his memory of the day’s events, but they remained stubbornly vague. “Adrenaline?” he guessed out loud. “Shock? When in doubt, blame the meteor fragments?”

“It worked,” Daqing said sleepily. “We’re here. Who needs details? You always make things so complicated.”


Chapter 24: Take a step forward, a step back, a step to the side; from certain angles it looks a little like dancing

“You will always have a place here, or with the Yashou, should you wish it.”

“Thank you.” He bowed, because Fu You was the kind of person you bowed to, whether she asked you to or not. “We appreciate it.”

They had started talking about leaving almost immediately after the -- well, after. Traveling, maybe. But the days had turned into weeks, and then to months, and they were still waking up each morning in the Alliance headquarters. There were still skirmishes with scattered rebel groups, and there was the harvest to help with, and his mother’s students. There had been memorials to plan, and attend.

And there had been, somewhat to his surprise, treaties to write.

“The Alliance should continue,” Fu You had said. “There’s plenty more work to be done.”

“Ah, yes, yes, of course. I don’t disagree, I’m just -- surprised you would want us there.” They had never had any sort of formal roles in the Alliance. Daqing was the only one of them who was even nominally a leader, and they’d all gained a -- not entirely unwarranted -- reputation for lurking in the back of meetings and then doing whatever they wanted.

“Peace is a worthy goal, but peace isn’t simply the absence of battle,” Fu You had explained. “It’s active; it takes work, every day, often for things that will provide no benefit in the short term.”

When he nodded, she kept going. “Things that were easy to agree on when we were uniting against a common threat sometimes become less clear when we’re uniting for a more nebulous purpose.” She hesitated, and then said, “A visual reminder of what a determined group of people can accomplish would perhaps be beneficial to the effort.”

It was Daqing who had asked, “You want us to stand behind you and look important?”

Fu You smiled at him. “I would like for you to be present in the room and express your support for the continued cooperation of our three peoples. You’ve read the treaty; I welcome your thoughts on it.”

“It’s admirable,” Shen Wei said. “But vague.”

Zhao Ye frowned. “And non-binding. Without action, treaties are just words on a page.”

“So are spaceship schematics, at one point in their existence. Words matter.”

They had joined the meeting. Shen Wei spoke about justice. Zhao Ye spoke about space travel. Daqing spoke about gardening, in what was either a beautiful metaphor about growth or an impassioned defense of potatoes. Zhao Yunlan had spoken about his mother. The treaty had been signed.

“Have you decided where you’ll go first?”

“North,” he said. “We’ll head north, while the weather is still good. We’ve heard stories of a warrior in the mountains, whose people guard the cavern passages between Haixing and Dixing. Kunlun, they call him.”

“I’ve heard of him,” Fu You agreed. “I wish you luck; he’s said to be difficult to find.”

He spread his hands out to the sides. “It’s a good thing we’re not in any rush, then!”

“We’ll definitely come back to visit,” Daqing said. “Or if you need us. This one already promised me I wouldn’t have to sleep in a cave all winter.”

They were saying their goodbyes to Fu You while Shen Wei and Zhao Ye double-checked their supplies. He was the first to admit he’d gotten used to having a spaceship as both their home base and their actual flying home. Being on their own was -- it was good the others were figuring out supplies.

“You’re the one who said a bed is anything you can sleep on,” he answered. “You’d be sleeping on us anyway; we should be the ones worried about caves!”

“Yes, you should be,” Daqing retorted. “Shen Wei and I have to do all the worrying for you.”

He made a show of looking around. “And yet he’s not here!” Which was a relatively new development. Whatever the meteor fragment had done to their energy, it had been easier to be close together. Less disorienting, if their powers suddenly decided to flare up or swap around.

Also, he suspected they had some kind of rotation, for keeping an eye on him, after. But recently they’d been spreading out more, giving each other more space. He was restless, and the others were too — it just wasn’t clear whether they were each restless of their own accord, or if the others were absorbing the feeling from him.

“Whose fault is that?” Daqing muttered. “Not mine!”

He looked back at Fu You, who had watched their bickering with her usual unruffled demeanor. “The truth is, I’m not sure I’m ready for peace.”

She nodded, like the words were unsurprising. Maybe she’d heard them before. He hadn’t realized until he said them out loud what a relief it would be, like a weight lifted off his mind.

“Will you stay in contact?” she asked. And then, “Would you prefer I keep your plans to myself?”

“It’s not a secret,” he said, after what was probably an awkwardly long pause.

He’d somehow been imagining their trip as the four of them striking out into the wilderness, depending on their wits and skills alone. But every person they told turned out to have a recommendation of a scenic spot to stop at, or asked them to pass on a message to an auntie or uncle that they might just happen to pass along the way, or said they looked forward to hearing about their travels when they returned.

More and more, it was starting to feel like the semi-supervised camping trips of his childhood, and not the rugged outdoor expedition he’d envisioned. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that yet. Backup, he reminded himself. It was important to have backup.

“Do you want us to stay in contact?” he asked finally.

“I would like that,” Fu You said graciously. “If you would as well.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure he does,” Daqing said cheerfully, and started pushing him towards the door. “We’ll leave first; we need to go so we can come back!”


Chapter 25: When it’s too dark to see the horizon, look to your heart

Why did they always end up having these conversations at night? When they were younger, it had been the easiest time to avoid having their parents interrupting them -- maybe it was just habit. Or maybe it was easier to talk about certain things in the dark.

“I’m sorry,” he said, because it seemed important to put that out there first.

There was a long pause while Shen Wei waited to see if he would say anything else -- one of his deliberate ‘I expected more’ silences. “All right,” he said finally. “For what?”

“This.” He waved his hand at the forest around them. They were tracking an unusually destructive group of ghost beasts that seemed to have been agitated by volcanic activity in Dixing. Unfortunately, they also seemed to be unusually good at hiding, and the trip had dragged on longer than expected.

He thought he’d planned out what he wanted to say, but once he started, the words seemed to disappear. He stared at the tree line, and took a deep breath. “I know this isn’t what you wanted.”

He felt Shen Wei startle next to him. “What do you mean?”

“You always talk about --” He waved his hand again. “Settling down, and community, and building a life. Not an endless trek through the mountains chasing pests. I just -- I feel like I dragged all of you out here, because I couldn’t handle being around anything that reminded me of my mom.”

Shen Wei made a noise that could have been a cough. “You think you dragged us out here?”

That was Shen Wei’s ‘I can’t believe I’m having this conversation right now’ voice. “Yes?” he said slowly.

“The week before we left the Alliance --” Shen Wei hesitated, like he wasn’t sure what to say. “How much attention were you paying to what we were doing?”

He winced. “Not -- none? But not very much.” He wondered if he should apologize again.

For some reason, that answer made Shen Wei relax. “Well. That’s good. Fine, I mean.” He looked away. “The point is, we would have stayed for you, if you wanted to, but we were all satisfied with the decision to leave.” Another hesitation, and then he added, “Sometimes more people only makes everything worse. I feel like I can breathe here. ”

He squinted at Shen Wei through the darkness. He wondered what had happened during the week he hadn’t been paying attention -- considered asking; let it go instead. “So you’re saying there was no dragging.”

Shen Wei gave a decisive nod. “There was no dragging,” he confirmed. He turned, and they were close enough so their knees could touch. Zhao Yunlan nudged them together, just so he could smile when Shen Wei nudged back.

“Those things you said -- I have those with you,” Shen Wei said. “With all of us, together. Settling down -- there’s a difference between not being at home, and not having one. We have multiple places to call home; we’re here now, but we have somewhere to go back to. Community? We find that everywhere we go.”

Shen Wei leaned forward, and poked his shoulder just like Daqing. “Building a life? What do you think we’re doing right now?”

He looked around. “Talking?”

He didn’t need light to know Shen Wei was rolling his eyes. “Having experiences. Learning. Living. That’s all building a life is.”

“Oh yeah?” He knocked their knees together again. Maybe it was. “You could do those things anywhere, though. With anyone.”

“Yes,” Shen Wei said, and whoops, that was his ‘you’ve missed the point entirely’ voice. “And we’ve chosen to do them here, with you.”

He deliberately mimicked Zhao Yunlan’s look around the clearing. “And you’ve chosen to do them in the least hospitable forest in Haixing. But we love you anyway, and Daqing has assured me that he’ll forgive you as long as you provide a --” He paused, to make it clear he was quoting. “A really, really, really good present after we’re done.”

It was too much and just enough. The declaration of love tucked in between a veiled insult and a second-hand demand for gifts -- he could feel his tension dissipating, and he laughed until there were tears in his eyes. “Thank you,” he said, when he could talk again. “I still said it first.”

“You were a very expressive child,” Shen Wei agreed.

“I know!” he exclaimed, because joking about it was easier than almost anything else. “And cute, too! What happened?”

Shen Wei said, “You got taller,” and Zhao Yunlan laughed again.

They both froze when they heard a howl in the distance. Just one, and after a few seconds, Shen Wei shook his head. “They’re still too far away. I can’t accurately portal us there until they get closer, or we do.”

He could admit it when a plan turned out to be a bad idea. To himself, at least. “This plan has not turned out the way I’d hoped,” he said, and look at that -- personal growth. “Should we give it one more day? We can talk about our options in the morning.”

“Two more days,” Shen Wei said. “I think they’re on the move. They’re running out of places to avoid us; if they retreat to Dixing, we can seal the caves against them from this side.”

That was -- a significantly better option than he’d hoped for. “So this hasn’t been an enormous waste of time?”

“Of course not.” Shen Wei’s voice was sharp. “Were you listening? Regardless of what happens with the ghost beasts, it was our choice to be here. Your choice. My choice. Not a waste of time.”

There was silence after Shen Wei finished talking. He wanted to hug him, or maybe run away, but neither seemed quite right. “Wise words,” he said finally. The wind had picked up while they were talking, and he shivered.

Shen Wei caught it, because of course he did. “Are you cold?”

“Mm.” He tapped Shen Wei’s knee, and then flipped his hand over to let dark energy gather in his palm. “Can you?” he asked.

Shen Wei put his own palm on top of the energy, and then carefully drew his hand up and away. The energy followed -- it spread around them like a soap bubble, and the air inside it was comfortably warm.

“Thank you,” he said, taking the excuse to move closer.

“You know you could do that yourself,” Shen Wei said, but it sounded like he was smiling.

He could. Technically. “Sure,” he agreed. “But I like it better when you do it.”

“Your choice,” Shen Wei said pointedly. “And mine.”

It was enough.


Chapter 26: Time flies whether you’re having fun or not

“‘Let’s spend some time in Dixing,’ you said. ‘It’s much better than before,’ you said. It will be fun.” Daqing shook his paw, and bits of ash scattered around it.

“It is better,” Shen Wei said. “And I never said it would be fun.”

He didn’t even need to look to know the expression on Daqing’s face -- a combination of irritation and dismay that had been all too prevalent since they’d arrived. “It was implied,” Daqing said.

Dixing was -- not awful. The area closest to the sky pillar was already showing significant improvement. ‘Significant improvement’ in this case mostly meant a lot of weeds, and a few alarmingly energetic bugs, but still. Improvement.

“Better doesn’t mean good,” Zhao Ye said. He stuck his hands in his pockets and kicked a rock out of the weed zone. It clattered out into the dim grayness that seemed to lurk in all directions. “But it’s not that bad.”

“Really?” Daqing put both paws on Zhao Yunlan’s knee, and then leapt into his arms as soon as he looked down. “Hm,” he said. “I thought maybe it looked different from up here, but it doesn’t. Gloomy.”

“Full of potential,” Zhao Ye retorted. He nodded his head towards Shen Wei, who had his eyes closed. Already, he looked better than he had in weeks, maybe longer.

They’d spent months following rumors of hidden Yashou tribes, all the way to the shore of the ocean. Everywhere they went they only found more hints -- old stories, unverified sightings, a friend of a friend who once knew someone who’d heard something. The hidden tribes were out of reach, either by choice or chance. He wasn’t sure whether it was worse to imagine that they refused to be found, or that there was nothing to find.

Daqing had been all smiles and easy acceptance during the day, but every night he’d snuck under Zhao Yunlan’s blankets and curled himself into a tight ball. It had been hard on all of them, which still wasn’t any kind of excuse for the way they’d missed Shen Wei’s decline.

As a whole, the balance of dark energy and light energy between Haixing and Dixing was improving, but it wasn’t a straight line. The energy ebbed and flowed; it built up in unexpected places and drained away from others. They all knew that, because they could feel it.

They could feel their own energy balance too, and he’d thought they were all doing fine -- well, even -- at managing it, until Shen Wei collapsed after a council meeting and it turned out he’d been shielding all of them by dumping his own energy into the mix. It was hard to argue nothing was wrong when you couldn’t go more than half a day without passing out.

On the plus side, it had kept him in one place, so they’d all had plenty of time to talk about all the reasons he should never do something like that again. Rest had helped. They were hopeful Dixing’s more concentrated dark energy would do even more to speed his recovery.

Daqing blinked, and said, “Ah, if you say so, it must be true. Enlighten us, then.”

Zhao Ye smiled. “Dixing has two things in its favor that you may have overlooked.” He gestured broadly at the space around them. “One, absolutely no one is going to pester us here about negotiations, or training, or map-making, or any of the other things they seem to think require our input.”

That was definitely a benefit. Being an ‘honored ally’ seemed to come with far too many pointless meetings and requests of ‘respectfully, if you could just look over this proposal and provide feedback.’

“Two, I brought food.”

“Oh!” Daqing perked up immediately. “Well, why didn’t you say so earlier?”

Zhao Ye pulled a large blanket out of seemingly nowhere, and spread it out over the weeds. “I’m saying it now.”

As soon as the blanket touched the ground, though, Shen Wei’s eyes snapped open. “Something’s coming.”

There was a noise like a rumble of thunder, except it kept going, and it seemed to come from all around them. Like a growl, he realized suddenly. Like a very large, very angry growl. And it was getting closer.

Daqing dug his claws into his arm. “Remember how I said cats can see ghosts?”

He wondered if they had a plan for ghosts. “Are you saying there are ghosts coming?”

“I’m saying there’s a ghost here, now.” The claws flexed again. “Put me down.”

He did, even though his first instinct was to hold on, grab the others, and portal their way out of there as fast as possible. Daqing was moving in the wrong direction for that plan, though. He padded carefully towards the edge of the weeds, where the fog was slowly solidifying into -- something.

Zhao Ye went pale. “It’s a Ghost Cat.”

“A what?” He squinted at the fog, trying to make out what it was transforming into, and then wished he hadn’t. That was not a cat. Daqing was a cat. That was an enormous, vaguely tiger-shaped beast. With teeth to match.

“They’re a myth,” Zhao Ye whispered, keeping his eyes on the not-cat. “I thought they were a myth. They guard things.”

“What things?”

“I don’t know; things they decide are worthy of their protection? I’m not an expert on mythical beings!”

Daqing took one final step, and then sat down, well within tooth range. He wrapped his tail neatly around his paws, and looked up.

The rumbling growl got louder. He thought they might all be holding their breath. He could feel his heart beating, and all the hair on the back of his neck was standing up.

“He’s doing the eyes, isn’t he?” Zhao Ye asked.

“I think so. Will that work?” Were Ghost Cats susceptible to extreme cuteness?

Apparently they were, because the growl abruptly shifted into a purr, and the Ghost Cat ever-so-slowly leaned down. Daqing stood up, tail hooked in a pleased curl -- they touched noses, and then the Ghost Cat faded back into the fog. He felt like he could breathe again.

“It’s fine,” Daqing said nonchalantly, sauntering back in their direction. “She’s guarding the pillar. I explained we’re family. She says we can come back any time.”


Chapter 27: That feeling when running away and becoming a hermit is not only a legitimate option, but a well-reasoned choice

It was impossible to get close to the sky pillar on the Haixing side without attracting attention. Having a picnic lunch there and spending hours talking about the things they’d seen in their travels would probably have required an Official Visit, and advance scheduling, and no matter what, they would have wound up with an audience. Worse, there would have been paperwork involved.

Despite the weeds, the gray murk, and the Ghost Cat, the Dixing side was actually much easier to get to. He considered that, while he poked at the ground and waited for the words to come. He still wasn’t sure how he’d wound up nominated to share this particular news -- he suspected it was safe to blame Daqing, who would think it was funny whether it had been his idea or not.

“Ah, it’s hard to know how to say this,” he said finally. He looked at Shen Wei, who was meditating with his brother and being no help at all.

“We came to talk to you -- about everything, but also about something specific. We think the meteor fragments may have had more of an effect on us than we originally guessed.”

It was Kunlun who’d asked them about it first, back when he’d been teaching them the sword. He said he had a sense for things like that. They’d brushed it off, but now look at them. The old man was probably laughing himself silly in his mountains.

He looked at the pillar again, and imagined his mother in front of him. She’d probably be standing with Auntie Lu right next to her, both of them encouraging him to get to the point before they started worrying. “It turns out we’re -- unusually good at staying alive. And, ah, no one’s really sure how long that’s going to last.”

Dixingren were notorious for their long lives (and long memories), and who could say Cat Tribe didn’t have the equivalent of nine lives? He had joked that he’d tricked his body into aging more slowly through the company he kept, but he always thought it was just that -- a joke.

But the seasons continued to roll on, one into the next. Fu You had pulled them aside the last time they’d visited Flower Tribe. “There are rumors,” she’d said. “About the four of you.”

There had always been rumors, of course, but these ones had been a surprise. “The seven guardians, they’re calling you. Three who ascended to the heavens; four who remained to walk the earth. It’s poetic, I suppose, if you like that sort of thing.”

He’d insisted he didn’t feel any different. “Yes,” she’d said, giving him the look she’d perfected in her time leading the Alliance, the one that said the recipient was being particularly obtuse. “Exactly.”

“We’ve told them it’s ridiculous -- if they thought you’d ascended anywhere, why did they build a whole city around the pillar? And you know Zhao Ye is going to drag us all back into space as soon as one of the ships grows up enough to come find him, and that will be the end of the ‘walking the earth’ part.”

He sighed. “But it’s caught on, somehow. You know how people like stories. And it’s not helping that we’re --” He waved his hand at all of them. “Still here. Still involved.” It started with rumors. But there were only so many times they could go on epic journeys, and then come back from them, before people wanted more.

Daqing draped himself over Zhao Yunlan’s back and nodded his agreement. “We’re thinking about becoming hermits,” he said. “So we might not be able to visit for a while.”

“We need more information. And a plan.” He held up his hand and ticked each point off on his fingers. “Backup plans. Someplace we can be out of the public eye for a while.”

“Snacks,” Daqing added.

“Snacks,” he agreed.

“You know,” Daqing said. “Fu You moved her people pretty far off the map. And she’d take us in for sure if we asked.”

That was true. “Are you doubting our ability to be hermits?”

Daqing dropped onto the ground next to him. “I’m just saying I have concerns about you being able to support me in the lifestyle to which I’ve become accustomed.”

He tugged one of Daqing’s braids. “Oh? Did I imagine you declaring your independence earlier today? Something about claiming the last sweet bun thanks to your sovereignty over Cat Tribe?”

“That was different,” Daqing said. “You and Shen Wei are the older brothers. Me and A-Ye are the younger brothers. You have to take responsibility; that’s the rule.”

His words were teasing, but there was an echo of uncertainty in them too. It felt like the memory of Daqing curled up against him after another day of not finding anything. “Oh, well, if it’s the rule.”

He held out his hand, pinky extended. Daqing beamed, and hooked their fingers together.

“I, Zhao Yunlan, do solemnly swear and pinky promise, to take responsibility for Lu Daqing,” he said. And then he threw his other arm around Daqing’s shoulders and tackled him to the blanket as Daqing laughed.

“Happy now?” he asked, when they managed to rearrange themselves so they were lying side by side, looking up at the pillar.

“Yes.”

“That’s good, then. Me too.”


***************
SECTION 4
***************

Chapter 28: Is it really spying if they know you’re there?

“Coach Zhao, Coach Zhao! Watch me!”

“I’m watching, YiYi.”

Zheng Yi flung the basketball at the hoop with considerably more enthusiasm than she’d shown for any of the passing drills they’d been working on for the last hour. But she didn’t look upset when it missed, and she didn’t make any attempt to go after it when it rolled off the court and down the hill.

“Oh no,” she said, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes. Her acting wasn’t bad; maybe she’d like theater more than basketball? “What will I do now?”

He raised his eyebrows. Usually it was up to the kids to retrieve their own missed shots, but what could he say? He was curious. Also it was funny to watch Lin Jing jump when he realized he’d been caught playing on his phone. “Assistant Coach Lin,” he called. “If you would offer your assistance?”

The ball had traveled quite a way by that point, and Lin Jing looked incredulous when he pointed at it. “You want me to --?”

He spread his hands apart. “Yes? What are you waiting for?”

Once Lin Jing was -- slowly -- headed towards the ball, he turned back to Zheng Yi. “All right. Why am I making our Assistant Coach do more exercise than he’s gotten in weeks?”

“He’s not an Assistant Coach; he’s a spy,” Zheng Yi whispered loudly.

“Ah.” He wondered how she knew. Her mother, maybe? Had she seen him somewhere? Why wait until practice was over, in that case? “How do you know?”

Zheng Yi glared in the direction Lin Jing had gone. “Because I could hear him talking about it, just now. He was playing a game on his phone, but he has a --” She gestured at her ear. Some kind of wireless earbud, maybe.

“He said he was a scientist, and something about protecting his hands, and then he said that if the SID wanted to spy on you so badly, they should have picked someone who knew how to play basketball.” She scoffed. “Who doesn’t know how to play basketball?”

He shook his finger at her. “It’s our job to teach him, then! No one is ever too old to be a student!”

“You would know,” she retorted, and he gave a mock gasp.

“What is this? Age jokes? Am I being mocked by my own student?”

Zheng Yi giggled. “Coach Zhao, you said it’s okay if it’s true!”

“I did say that! Very good; full marks for today.” He smiled. “You were the first one on the team to figure out he was a spy, too!”

“You already knew?” She looked disappointed, and he was glad they still had a few minutes before her mother arrived.

“I did,” he said. “But I appreciate you telling me.”

Zheng Yi frowned. “Why are you letting him stay, then?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” He held up a hand to fend off more questions. “No, no, that’s your homework assignment now. Pros and cons; you can send me your list when you’re done, and we’ll talk about it.”

Lin Jing -- finally -- made his way back with the basketball, just as Zheng Yi was leaving. She gave him one last glare, and then waved cheerily to both of them.

Lin Jing looked confused. “What was that all about?”

He stuck one hand in his pocket and rocked back on his heels. “Ah, that? Zheng Yi wanted to share her concerns about your day job. Night job? She thinks you’re here to spy on me.”

The silence went on for a few seconds too long, and then Lin Jing tried to laugh it off. “Haha, who’s a spy? Kids, right?”

He wasn’t expecting a masterclass in deception, but that was terrible. He put on his best disbelieving expression. “You can’t lie or play basketball? How did you get picked for this assignment? Is your boss mad at you? What did you do?”

“Nothing!” Lin Jing insisted. Then he frowned. “Nothing they know about.” Zhao Yunlan waited. “Fine. Nothing they can prove. He’s not mad at me.” Lin Jing made a face. “I don’t think, at least.” He sighed. “I’m the tallest.”

Zhao Yunlan laughed. Ten thousand years, and bureaucracy was the one thing that never changed. “That’s it? You’re the tallest, so you got the basketball assignment? You used to work in the lab; you know half of Shen Wei’s students already, and you got the basketball assignment?”

Lin Jing ran his hands through his hair. “That’s what I said!” He suddenly seemed to remember who he was talking to, and he jumped backwards. “Ah! How do you know all that?”

“Didn’t they tell you? I’m ten thousand years old; I know everything.”

Lin Jing rolled his eyes. “No one believes that old rumor. The Seven Guardians are a myth; it’s a made-up story to cover up the alien intervention that took place between the meteor strike and the introduction of the sky pillar.”

“Really?” That was a new one. The current leaders at the Haixing Bureau were largely boring -- the usual performative respect covering a deep undercurrent of suspicion. Loudly opinionated disbelief was much more interesting. “You don’t believe in myths?”

Lin Jing scoffed. “I’m a scientist. I believe in science.”

“And aliens,” he pointed out.

“Aliens are real,” Lin Jing said. “And I can prove it. Or I could, if they would let me near the sky pillar.”

“Because the sky pillar was built by aliens?” he guessed.

“They didn’t build it. They grew it!” Lin Jing gestured dramatically, illustrating -- some aspect of his declaration, Zhao Yunlan assumed. “The sky pillar is made of materials not found anywhere else on this planet. And it emits energy, as if it was alive!”

Then he lowered his voice, like he hadn’t already shared far more information than he was supposed to know. “And it’s changing.”

“The sky pillar?” He was only half-listening at that point.

“The energy! It’s definitely increasing. If they would just let me get close enough to scan it, I could determine if it’s a signal. It might be calling the aliens!”

“It’s not,” he said, suddenly interested again. “But it’s increasing, you say. What kind of energy? Just here, or in Dixing as well?”

Lin Jing spluttered. “I’m not -- I don’t -- what?”

“The energy.” Zhao Yunlan studied Lin Jing carefully. He talked too much -- no one was that bad at being a spy. He was too surprised at being caught out, and not surprised enough at everything else. But why? Double agent? Triple agent? Genuine scientific curiosity? “Is it increasing in Dixing the same way it is here?”

But Lin Jing just shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m not on the diplomatic team; I’ve never been to Dixing.”

“Well.” There was an easy solution to that problem, at least. Zhao Yunlan clapped him on the shoulder. “There’s a first time for everything!”


Chapter 29: Everyone loves a field trip

It turned out to not be quite as easy a solution as he’d hoped. It could have been easy, if he’d tossed the policies and procedures out the window and just kidnapped Lin Jing to Dixing like he’d originally planned.

But Lin Jing said he liked his job, which was rare enough that it should be taken into consideration, and he also said he needed the scanner from his lab. Which meant they were going to need official permission. Which meant diplomacy. Which meant they needed Shen Wei.

“He’s Professor Shen! The Professor Shen! You can’t just burst into his classroom!” Lin Jing said. Then he threw his hands in the air. “What am I saying? I shouldn’t be giving you ideas!”

“I’m not going to burst into his classroom.” He waited until Lin Jing gave a sigh of relief, and added, “I’m going to burst into his office.”

(He hadn’t burst in. He opened the door with a flourish, as was appropriate for surprising one’s beloved soulmate at work.)

“Hi Coach Zhao!” Shen Wei’s students both waved enthusiastically at him.

“JiaJia! Li Qian! I need to borrow Professor Shen; can you spare him?”

They assured him they could, and excused themselves with a speed that probably meant this visit would be all over the campus gossip network by evening. “This is Lin Jing,” he said. “The new assistant coach for the youth basketball team.”

It never failed to amaze him, watching Shen Wei piece facts together. “You worked with Professor Zhou,” he said. Then he frowned. “Are you particularly good at basketball?”

“He’s tall,” Zhao Yunlan said, when it looked like Lin Jing was still too awestruck by being in the presence of the famous Professor Shen to form words. “Can you believe it?”

“Yes,” Shen Wei said, and Zhao Yunlan laughed.

“Yes,” he agreed.

The thing was, Shen Wei wasn’t actually any more diplomatic than the rest of them. He definitely wasn’t more patient. But he was the best at using neutral silence to get politicians to agree with him, and an absolute expert in offering insults so veiled in calm politeness that people couldn’t possibly take offense without looking unreasonable.

“Lin Jing says the energy output from the sky pillar is increasing.”

Shen Wei frowned again. “Only in Haixing, or in Dixing as well?”

“That’s what I asked! But he’s not on the diplomatic team, apparently, so he’s never been to Dixing.”

Shen Wei caught on immediately. “I’ll contact the others,” he said. “We’ll try the direct route first.”

Guo Ying wasn’t the worst Chief of the SID they’d met over the years, even though he had shamelessly hired his nephew onto the team almost as soon as he’d graduated. He seemed to embrace the ‘live and let live’ approach more than any of his recent predecessors. The direct approach would give him a chance to save face, if he chose to do so. And if not, they’d be in the perfect place to create a diplomatic incident and still wind up with what they wanted. A win-win, really.

Lin Jing finally found his voice again. “Do I get any say in this?”

Shen Wei looked surprised. “Of course. Do you not want to go to Dixing and study the energy readings from the sky pillar?”

“No! I mean, yes, I do, I definitely want to do those things. But you can’t just -- people don’t just go to Dixing. You need an escort, and credentials, and there’s a schedule.”

Shen Wei looked at him. Zhao Yunlan did his best to convey ‘I told him, but he didn’t believe me, what could I do?’ with his eyes. Maybe he dragged it out a little, but who could blame him? Shen Wei’s undivided attention was well worth it.

Shen Wei looked like he was trying not to smile. “I’m sure we can find a solution,” he said. Then he opened a portal into Guo Ying’s office, and swept them all through it.

Lin Jing yelped, but managed to stay on his feet when they came out on the other side. Chief Guo was clearly prepared for their arrival, or maybe he just had an exceptional talent for looking unsurprised. He stood up and nodded at each of them in turn.

“Honored Ambassadors. Lin Jing. Welcome.”

Zhao Yunlan leaned backwards so he could look through the office windows, but the rest of the SID building was significantly emptier than he expected. “Where is everyone?” he asked.

Chief Guo coughed. “Ah, yes. They’re all -- busy. On assignments. Not able to be here today.”

Shen Wei waved his hand, a practiced gesture that was equal parts regal and dismissive. Even Zhao Ye couldn’t pull it off quite so effectively. “We’re offering a courtesy notification of a trip to Dixing,” he said. “Lin Jing will be accompanying us.”

“I see.” Chief Guo clearly did not see. “May I ask about the purpose of the trip?”

“It’s a family matter,” Shen Wei said. He stopped there, and waited.

Chief Guo’s phone sounded loud in the silence, and Lin Jing jumped. “Excuse me,” he said. He took a single step away -- a tactful choice, likely to avoid the appearance of trying to have a secret conversation right in front of them. “Hello?”

Shen Wei could probably hear both sides of the conversation. Zhao Yunlan reminded himself to ask about it later.

“Ah,” Chief Guo said. “The directive was to continue operations as usual. An unscheduled audit does not constitute an emergency; therefore my team is unavailable due to prior assignments.” He looked at Lin Jing.

“Yes, including Lin Jing,” he said. “I’ve -- nominated him for the diplomatic team; he’s currently engaged in a supervised training exchange.” There was a pause, and then he added, “I have the necessary credentials.” He stepped over to the desk and tapped his screen. “Yes, the paperwork is already filed.”

Zhao Yunlan nudged Lin Jing. “Go get your scanner; whatever equipment you need.” He had a feeling they’d be making an abrupt departure.

Chief Guo was starting to look mildly irritated. “Yes, of course. The SID is always prepared to serve the people, as is our mandate. The inspector is welcome to come at any time, but I will not compromise that mandate so that someone can act as a tour guide.”

Another pause, longer, until he finally ended the call without saying anything else. He turned back to them just as Lin Jing returned. “My apologies,” he said. “We are always happy to assist the Honored Ambassadors any way that we can.”

Shen Wei nodded, like petty political maneuvering was beneath his notice, but Zhao Yunlan couldn’t resist poking at it.

“A supervised training exchange?” he asked.

Chief Guo nodded decisively. “Yes. Starting immediately.” He looked at his phone. “In fact, I’ll go with you.”


Chapter 30: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; only transferred or changed from one form to another

They portaled directly into the receiving room at the palace, because when Shen Wei decided to throw his authority around, he didn’t believe in half measures.

Zhao Yunlan waved at the familiar faces in front of them. “DanDan, hello!” An Bai glared at him. “Your Majesty,” he amended.

“Guardians,” she acknowledged formally. Then she laughed. “Teacher Zhao, Professor Shen, it’s good to see you! It’s been too long.”

“Didn’t we tell you?” he said. “The years fly by.”

“They do, they do.” She looked at Chief Guo and Lin Jing. “But this isn’t a social call.” Chief Guo, at least, looked appropriately respectful. Lin Jing was focused on his scanner and ignoring everything else.

“Sadly, no. Next time, for sure! We need to visit the pillar.”

“With them?” An Bai asked. Always so suspicious.

“Yes,” Shen Wei said.

“Then you will all visit the pillar.”

Zhao Yunlan beamed. That’s why DanDan was his favorite. She looked around, as if Daqing might suddenly appear and leap out of the shadows. To be fair, it wouldn’t be the first time. “Are you waiting for the others?”

Shen Wei shook his head. “They’ll meet us there, if they’re not there already.”

“We won’t keep you, then.” Her eyes flicked to Chief Guo, and her smile didn’t exactly disappear, but it certainly turned less welcoming. “Be safe.”

Did she think Guo Ying was dangerous? Did she think he was in danger? He was thinking about the possibilities as he stepped through the final portal, and wound up bumping into Lin Jing on the other side.

“Sorry, sorry -- gah!” Lin Jing finally looked up from his scanner, and leapt back. “What are you -- why do you -- you look different.”

“We’re in Dixing,” Zhao Yunlan said. He looked at Chief Guo and raised his eyebrows. “What is the SID teaching these days? There used to be a --” He was pretty sure it used to be a scroll, actually. Someone’s idea of a joke. Possibly his, when he thought back.

Chief Guo sighed. “There’s a presentation,” he said. “He’s seen it three times.”

Lin Jing made a surprised noise. “This is Dixing?”

What good was the scanner, if it couldn’t tell the difference between Haixing and Dixing? Zhao Yunlan made a show of looking around. Blue sky, green grass, Shen Wei looking fantastic in dark robes and long hair, easy access to the sky pillar -- definitely Dixing. “Yes? Were you expecting something else?”

“Ya Qing made it sound --” He cut himself off, seeming to remember his audience. “Haha, it’s nothing. I just wasn’t expecting Dixing to be as lovely as it obviously is,” he finished.

“Dixing’s magnetic field is different than Haixing’s,” Zhao Yunlan offered, while Shen Wei slipped away to consult with the team watching the pillar. “Apparently it makes more of a difference when you have wings.”

He gestured in front of them, in case Lin Jing had -- along with missing the transition between worlds -- had also failed to notice the enormous pillar directly ahead. “The sky pillar,” he said.

Lin Jing’s face lit up. “The sky pillar!” His attention immediately went back to the scanner, and he wandered towards the pillar. Zhao Yunlan waved the guards off, curious, and Lin Jing walked right up, close enough to touch it. Went as far as reaching out a hand, even, before dropping it and frowning at the scanner.

He felt Chief Guo’s eyes on him. “You’re not going to stop him?”

Zhao Yunlan shrugged. If they wanted to stop him, they’d hardly need the guards for that. “It won’t kill him,” he said. “I don’t think.”

The Chief sighed again. “Despite appearances, he actually is good at his job. If you want someone to analyze the pillar; he can do it.”

Leading one to wonder why he wasn’t being asked to do it in Haixing. On the one hand, it was a potentially interesting mystery. Was it a scandal? A conspiracy? An elaborate underhanded plot to destabilize relations between Haixing and Dixing?

On the other hand, ten thousand years of experience all pointed to it being something mundanely boring. Odds were good Lin Jing had offended someone important at a department mixer once, and had forever after been shut out of high profile investigations. Zhao Ye would probably know.

One of the guards sidled over. “Is Zhao-ge coming?” he asked.

He put his hands on his hips. “How come he gets to be Zhao-ge, and I just get ‘Guardian’ every time I show up?”

Zhu Jiu rolled his eyes. “Because you refused to stop calling me JiuJiu until I was twenty, and Zhao-ge taught me how to dye my hair.”

There was a rush of dark energy next to him, and Zhao Ye dropped his arm over his shoulders. “Face it, little brother; I’m the cool one.”

“Ha! Untrue!” He leaned into Zhao Ye even as he shook his finger at him. “One, you’re a professor, which automatically disqualifies you. Two, I have it on excellent authority that only one of us is cool, and it’s not either of us.”

Zhao Ye made a face. “Not Shen Wei.”

He shook his head. “No. Zheng Yi says Daqing wins on a technicality, but she won’t tell me what it is. Where is he, by the way? He skipped out on coaching again today.”

“Mm, he was with me. Right now he’s checking with the --” He glanced at Chief Guo. “Other guards.” The Ghost Cats, then. “That’s probably Zheng Yi’s technicality, you know. ‘Doesn’t like basketball.’”

“I was thinking about that today, now that you mention it. Do you think she’d like drama better? Dr. Cheng might know someone who could lead a group; or one of the students?”

“Have you asked Zheng Yi?”

He laughed. “I have not! See, this is why I came to you with this question. I knew you’d have the best advice.”

Zhao Ye was staring at Lin Jing. “What is he doing?” Jin Ling had moved on from waving the scanner at the sky pillar -- as they watched, he switched to waving it at the ground and then -- somewhat alarmingly -- at himself.

Zhao Yunlan snuck a glance at Chief Guo, but he was determinedly ignoring his employee, and had struck up a conversation with Zhu Jiu about Dixing’s horticulture strategies. He looked back at Lin Jing. “He’s scanning things.”

They both watched Lin Jing bump into Sha Ya, who yelled less than he expected. “And what are we doing?” Zhao Ye asked.

“We’re waiting to see if he can tell any real information with that scanner.” Also a little bit to see what he would do. He still couldn’t tell how much was an act, and how much was genuine.

Next to the sky pillar, Lin Jing handed Sha Ya the scanner, and seemed to be showing her how it worked. Zhao Ye said, “Isn’t he the one who was spying on you?”

He waved his hand -- the spying was hardly important. That part was practically written into the SID’s charter -- serve the people; protect relations between Haixing, Dixing, and the Yashou; keep tabs on the theoretically immortal Guardians. The only things that changed were how the SID framed it and how much they knew.

“Yes. But he’s better at science than spying.” Hopefully. Or not, he supposed. It wasn’t like they couldn’t request a scan of the pillar themselves, but he’d like to think this generation of the SID had potential.

He didn’t have to look to know that Zhao Ye was raising his eyebrows. “Really. Well, he could hardly be worse.”


Chapter 31: It takes twenty-one days to build a habit, but it only takes one fight at game night to break it

“Ya Qing’s been insulting Dixing again.”

They had finished dinner, but they were all still crowded into the kitchen to help with the clean-up. It was one of his top five favorite parts of the day, especially when they were in Dixing. Their house in Haixing had a nicer garden, but the Dixing house had a better kitchen.

“Crow Tribe,” Daqing said, somehow managing to make it sound like that was a complete explanation. His ‘help’ was largely limited to eating the best bits before they ever made it to being leftovers.

Shen Wei nodded, carefully passing one of the larger dishes over to be dried. “The other tribes are able to thrive in both Dixing and Haixing, and pass back and forth easily. It’s unsurprising that she would feel a certain sense of frustration.”

Crow Tribe Yashou could adapt to either of the worlds, but the differences in the magnetic field made it impossible to travel back and forth without an acclimatization period. Ya Qing was the first Crow Tribe leader in ages to encourage the flocks to mingle, but it wasn’t without its challenges.

“She’s the High Chief of the Yashou; she should be more careful with her words,” Zhao Ye said.

“We don’t know exactly what she said,” Shen Wei pointed out. “Lin Jing doesn’t appear to be the most -- reliable, of sources.”

Zhao Yunlan leaned over the counter so he could rescue the remainder of the fish before Daqing ate it all. “What I want to know is, when did the High Chief of the Yashou have a chance to exchange chit-chat with an SID scientist.”

“Hey!” Daqing swiped at his hand, and he dodged out of the way.

“You’ll thank me later, when you have something to snack on later tonight,” he said. “Remember last time?”

Daqing made a face at him, but he didn’t reach for the food again, so he clearly did remember the last time. “I’ll thank Shen Wei later, you mean; he’s the one who cooked it.” Then he brightened. “Oh! Also, I know this one -- they probably met at trivia night.”

“Trivia night?”

“It’s one of Ya Qing’s new schemes,” Daqing said. “I think she has the fledglings helping her come up with ideas.” He leapt onto the counter in cat form and sprawled out over the newly cleared space. “She should just ask Ying Chun out on a date; it would have to be easier than all of this.”

Zhao Ye obligingly rubbed his stomach. “I think it’s sweet.”

“You think it’s funny,” Daqing said. “Which it is.”

“I can think both,” Zhao Ye retorted, poking at his paw. “I contain multitudes.”

“Can we get back to trivia night? How did Lin Jing get involved in Ya Qing’s courting schemes?”

Daqing flicked his tail. “You should pay more attention. The new one at the SID, the nephew, he’s friends with one of Ya Qing’s fledglings. She brought him to trivia night, and then he wanted to know why Zhu Hong didn’t go, since it was ‘so fun, and benefits everyone whether they win or lose.’”

Even Shen Wei took a few seconds to process that. “Is he for real?” Zhao Yunlan asked finally. Ya Qing was a cutthroat competitor in everything from resource allocation to what kind of snacks were served at the Yashou holiday gatherings. He couldn’t imagine her being any different at trivia, even to impress Ying Chun.

“Apparently.” Daqing gave his cat version of a shrug. “So Zhu Hong went, but she took Lin Jing, because she hates to lose, and he’s some kind of trivia genius.”

He spread his hands out wide. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

“That we should definitely keep avoiding trivia night forever?”

He leaned back out of claw range and pointed at Daqing. “That we should definitely not keep avoiding trivia night forever, because it’s the perfect opportunity to do our own reverse spying.”

“Reverse spying?” Shen Wei asked.

“Aren’t you curious to know why such an incompetent-seeming person has such an interest in the sky pillar?”

Shen Wei gave him his ‘I’m onto you’ expression. “I believe Sha Ya and Hua Yuzhou already have that line of investigation covered.”

“I didn’t want to know that,” Zhao Ye muttered. “Why do you tell me these things?”

Zhao Yunlan gave his best dramatic sigh. Shen Wei was right, of course. “But trivia!”

“Do you remember what happened last time you participated in a trivia competition?” Shen Wei asked.

“Yes!” Daqing called loudly.

“It ended with us breaking you out of jail, in case you were too concussed to remember that part,” Zhao Ye added.

“That,” he said, shaking his finger at Zhao Ye. “Was a long time ago. Years!” He didn’t say he’d mellowed since then, because he tried to save the outright lies for times when there was a chance someone would believe him.

“It doesn’t matter how long ago it was,” Daqing said. “Because you’re not invited.”

He was definitely coming around to the idea. “But you are,” Zhao Yunlan said. “And we should be; Ya Qing is just still holding a grudge because you fell asleep during her speech when she took over as High Chief.”

“It was a nap!” Daqing insisted. “Cats nap; that’s our thing! She should be happy I’m embracing my heritage. Besides, if her speech hadn’t been so long, I wouldn’t have needed one.”

He nodded. “Completely outrageous. Fight the system. So you’ll go to trivia with me?”

Daqing sighed. “Fine.” He shifted to his human form and made grabby hands in Shen Wei’s direction. “If we’re enabling his bad habits, I should get my fish back.”

Shen Wei managed to keep his expression neutral, but Zhao Ye laughed. “That’s fair,” he said.

Daqing crowed in victory and snatched the fish out of the fridge. He pointed at Zhao Yunlan. “Also, when this turns into a shouting match and we get kicked out, I am definitely going to say ‘I told you so.’”


Chapter 32: It’s all fun and games until someone gets the facts wrong

“You can say it, if you want.”

It was dark, but the stars were bright overhead. He let his eyes trace over familiar patterns, and tucked his hands behind his head.

Shen Wei pulled one of them out and laced their fingers together. “I’ll leave that to Daqing. My understanding is that he has a plan. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said automatically. Shen Wei just waited. Finally, he added, “I should be fine. It’s not a big deal; historians get a thousand things wrong a day. It was a game. I know that.”

He knew he’d overreacted. The funny thing was, even when they’d been joking about it, he had really thought it would be fine. Most things got easier with enough time and perspective. And even though she didn’t remember it, he’d met Ya Qing when she was a fussy baby who wouldn’t stop crying, and it had left an impression. He truly hadn’t intended to do anything disruptive.

Shen Wei was close enough that he could feel him breathing. “The question was wrong,” he said. “And you were not disruptive.”

In her defense, Ya Qing had tried to ban history questions from the start, but she’d been outvoted by the other players. It was possible she was the only one there who knew -- and believed -- who they were. The other participants had all been Yashou and Haixingren, and the Guardian myths hadn’t stayed quite as prominent outside of Dixing.

They told people, of course. He’d told Lin Jing himself! But there was a difference between hearing and acknowledging, just like there was a difference between knowing and believing.

He sighed, and squeezed Shen Wei’s hand. “It has literally been ten thousand years. I should have learned how to let things go by now, don’t you think?”

The question had been about the Alliance -- his mother’s name had been in it, and he’d walked out without a word. He’d kept walking until he felt Shen Wei catch up, and then they’d walked together. The field was close enough that the others could find them easily, but far enough so no one was likely to stumble over them by accident. And it had a good view of the sky.

Shen Wei squeezed back. “I’ve always thought your willingness to hold onto things was one of your most admirable qualities.”

He looked over, but Shen Wei kept his eyes firmly on the stars. “Really?”

“It’s what made us stay,” he said. “When we first met, it was the one thing we could agree on -- that you would hold onto us, and wouldn’t let us be kicked out.”

“Ah, Shen Wei.” He knew his voice had gone soft. “Never. You’re stuck with me forever.”

“Exactly,” Shen Wei said, sounding satisfied. “The fact that you listen to your heart first, before your head, is a strength, not a weakness.”

He wanted that to be true. He held onto the fact that Shen Wei believed it, even if he couldn’t always believe it himself. “Even when it means I can’t make it through a game of trivia without making a scene?”

“The question was wrong,” Shen Wei repeated. “You left the game without incident.” He hesitated, and there was humor in his voice when he added, “This field is a significant improvement over the jail cell.”

It was. “I don’t remember it,” he lied.

“Yes you do.” Shen Wei was definitely laughing at him. He moved even closer, so he could use Shen Wei’s arm as a pillow. If he was going to get laughed at, he was at least going to be comfortable while it happened.

“I remember what I said afterwards,” he offered.

“Families only ever get bigger,” Shen Wei said. “You were right.”

The stars seemed extra bright, and in the darkness it was easy to pretend it wasn’t because he had tears in his eyes.

“There you are!” Daqing transformed mid-leap, and he suddenly had a purring weight of cat on his chest. “Hey, isn’t this the Yashou Market field? Are you supposed to be here?”

“Is it?” he asked, pretending innocence. “It looks different when it’s empty.”

“Not that different.”

Daqing didn’t make any move to get up, though. Zhao Yunlan propped his head up so he could see him better. “What’s your excuse, then?”

“We were looking for you. Guess what? Zhao Ye just got banned from trivia!” He sounded delighted.

When he listened for it, he could hear Zhao Ye muttering as he followed Daqing in their direction, albeit at a slower pace. “Really? What happened?” he asked.

“There were a weird amount of questions about the days of the Alliance, is what happened.” Daqing settled his head on his paws. “Very suspicious, if you ask me.”

“I just did ask you.” He rubbed the spot between Daqing’s ears, and the purr got louder. “Do you really think it was suspicious?”

Daqing closed his eyes, a sure sign he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “Eh, who can tell?”

“It was ridiculous, that’s what it was,” Zhao Ye said. “What are they teaching them in schools these days?”

It didn’t seem like the moment to remind Zhao Ye that he and Shen Wei were both professors, so he really should be able to answer that question himself. He patted the grass next to him instead. “Come lie down with us. It’s more fun to complain when you can look up and ignore the world when it’s too much.”

Zhao Ye grumbled, but he also lay down, and dropped his head onto Zhao Yunlan’s shoulder. Daqing flicked an ear at him, and he reached out a hand to ruffle the fur along his back.

Zhao Yunlan nudged his ankle. “Did you really get banned from trivia?”

Zhao Ye sighed loudly. “Yes. And I would do it again! Fu You was the undisputed leader of the Alliance. She did not ‘co-lead’ with Ma Gui! It shouldn’t be called trivia if they’re just going to make things up.”

He frowned. “Who’s Ma Gui?”

“Not the co-leader of the Alliance!”

“He was there,” Daqing said, sounding like he wasn’t entirely sure. “I think. He took notes during the meetings, right? He wrote a lot of books, afterwards.”

That sounded vaguely familiar. “He didn’t make things up though, did he? I thought we read those.”

“Apparently they were recently rediscovered in a document exchange, and now they’ve been ‘re-interpreted,’” Zhao Ye said.

“As if anyone would have had time to take their notes using coded symbolism and poetic euphemisms. When he said spaceship, he meant spaceship! When he said Fu You was the leader, it meant she was the leader, not some secret message about his own contributions!”

He winced. “Do I want to know more?”

“No,” Daqing said emphatically. “Don’t tell him any more; I’m too tired to keep you from running off and fighting researchers in the middle of the night.”

“Researchers.” Zhao Ye scoffed. “Fine. Only because I don’t want to miss out on my fair share of head scratches.”

Zhao Yunlan obligingly moved his free hand to Zhao Ye’s head, and he gave a happy sigh. “Much better than trivia.”

“I’m not spending all night in a field,” Daqing warned. “Not when we could be at home, with blankets, and snacks.”

He stretched, just enough so he could feel the solid comfort of his three favorite people all around him. He wondered sometimes -- over all the years, how many fields had there been? How many stars? How many times had they all found each other in the dark, and every time it was still the best thing.

“Soon,” he said. “Just a little while longer.”


Chapter 33: The three key elements of any effective plan: know what you want, know what you’re willing to do to get it, and bring backup

He looked at the papers in front of him. Paper! Who used paper any more? Except for Shen Wei, he amended. But even that wasn’t real paper. Shen Wei used dark energy to form a representation of paper -- he could make it look like anything; he just thought paper notes were cute. Which they were.

The pages laid out on the counter were far from cute. They were little better than a ransom note. Dressed up in formal language and peppered with scientific jargon, maybe. But the essential message was glaringly clear -- we have what you want; show up or else.

He had no interest in going through the proper channels. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do it anyway. He let his phone switch to speaker so he could gather supplies while it rang. And rang. Really, no voicemail? No call forwarding?Finally, it connected. ”What?”

He looked at the phone, startled. That wasn’t Chief Guo. “Zhu Hong?” he asked.

”Who is this?”

Definitely Zhu Hong. “I’m hurt!” he said. “Your Chief Guo doesn’t have my number saved in his contacts?”

”You have three seconds before I hang up,” she said.

He couldn’t help the laugh that escaped. “This is Zhao Yunlan,” he said. “Please don’t hang up.”

There was noise in the background of the call, like someone had dropped the phone. He thought he heard swearing too, but that might have been wishful thinking. ”Guardian.” Zhu Hong’s tone was no more respectful, but she didn’t hang up. He really did have high hopes for this group. ”How can the SID offer you assistance today?”

“I need to speak with Chief Guo.”

”He’s not--” She cut herself off. ”Ah. High Chief Ya Qing is here; she’s asked to speak with you.”

“Put me on speaker.” She must have gone straight there. He could feel his patience starting to burn away, and he took a deep breath. “High Chief Ya Qing.”

“Zhao Yunlan,” she said, and he startled again. That was either a very good sign, or a very bad one. “I received your message.”

”What message?” he heard someone say in the background, and he smiled. The SID was due a courtesy notification; that didn’t mean they were his first call, or even his second.

Ya Qing ignored them. ”SID Chief Guo is missing, along with his nephew and the Crow Tribe fledgling Dong Nan. The primary suspects are members of the Haixing Inspectorate; it’s unclear if they’re acting on their own or with the support of their superiors.”

From the commotion in the background, the SID hadn’t been prepared for her to share that, or possibly even to know it.

”Their scientist hasn’t been able to locate them, so it’s likely they’re either in Dixing or being deliberately hidden from SID scanning technology.”

More background noise followed that declaration. He’d know that part already, but he wasn’t interested in sharing how. Ya Qing came back after a few seconds, and her voice was pitched to carry.

”The Yashou stand as one,” she declared.

He wasn’t too proud to ask for confirmation. “Including Cat Tribe?”

He got even more than he was hoping for. ”Including Cat Tribe. All members of Cat Tribe.”

“Thank you,” he said, and he knew Ya Qing would understand what he meant.

”When they attack one of us, they attack all of us,” she answered. ”We will follow your lead, and your plan. Bring them back, Zhao Yunlan.”

He nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. “Yes, High Chief.”

”Crow Tribe will liaise with the SID to provide backup as necessary,” she said, and he heard ‘Crow Tribe will watch the SID and if it turns out they were involved, we’ll take care of it.’

He was sure Zhu Hong had heard it too. Her voice was cautious when she came back on the line. ”This is SID Deputy Chief Zhu Hong,” she said. ”Standing in for Chief Guo.”

“This is your courtesy notification,” he said. He’d been trying to keep his tone closer to ‘respectable public figure’ than ‘ready and willing to destroy anything that gets in my way,’ but he could admit -- to himself, at least -- that he wasn’t actually succeeding.

He took another breath and tried to sound reasonably diplomatic, all while his brain was racing in ten different directions at once. “Someone has threatened myself and my fellow Guardians, and may or may not be holding them hostage. I’m invoking my rights as a Guardian to cross borders at will to recover my family and apprehend those responsible.”

The SID might believe ‘Guardian’ was a legacy title, but it still came with rights.

”Understood,” Zhu Hong said. ”Is there anything the SID can do to assist?”

It was incredibly unlikely that the Chief of the SID going missing at the same time as Shen Wei and Zhao Ye was a coincidence. There was also a very good chance that the SID’s resources could offer insight into the printed pages of the ransom note. He found that he didn’t care.

”No assistance is necessary at this time,” he said.

Information was only useful if there was a chance it might change the course of action, after all. And ever since he’d read the words on those pages, his choice had been set.

”Wait! That was Lin Jing’s voice.

He hesitated, his hand hovering over the phone.

”The energy being released by the sky pillar is still increasing. It could indicate an even larger buildup of energy inside the pillar.”

There was an uncomfortable hint of panic in the words, and he frowned. “Meaning what.”

”I don’t know! I thought you would!” There was muffled talking in the background, probably someone trying to figure out if he actually had something important to say. He heard Lin Jing say, ”Yes, it’s important! Fine, it’s fine, I’m calm.”

And then, much closer to the phone, ”Look, you know what happened when the sky pillar was created, right?” Being there didn’t actually mean he knew what happened, but Lin Jing didn’t seem to require a response. ”Well, there’s a good chance it’s going to be like that, but in reverse.”

He still didn’t know what that meant. A chance it would be like which part? Hopefully not the almost blowing up.

But there was nothing he could do about the pillar without the others. “Keep working on it,” he said.

It was time to get his family back.


Chapter 34: Just another family outing to the mountains

“Please tell me this wasn’t your entire plan.”

He looked around. A dark cave, underneath a volcano, confronting the person who’d sent an overly wordy ransom note? Pretty much the entire plan, yes.

But he obligingly said, “This wasn’t my entire plan,” because agreeing with your captors was supposed to help build rapport, or maybe it was to encourage them to let their guard down?

And then, because he really didn’t know when to leave well enough alone, and he was much better at the ‘irritate your captors into giving you more information’ strategy, he added, “Not exactly, anyway. It really depends what you mean by ‘entire.’’

The man in front of him laughed. “And you’re supposed to be one of the mythical Guardians?”

“That’s what they tell me!” he said, with obviously false cheer. “And who are you supposed to be?” His suit didn’t look quite expensive enough to be Haixing Inspectorate level. An associate, maybe, or someone in a branch department.

“Ah, there will be plenty of time for that later. We’re still waiting on one more, isn’t that right?” He looked towards one of the tunnels and waved his hand. “Perhaps you were counting on the cat to save you?”

A miserable-looking Daqing was carried into view. He mewed piteously when he saw Zhao Yunlan, and his ears drooped.

He had to put a significant amount of effort into breathing, but he managed to keep his voice steady. “It’s actually better not to scruff an adult cat,” he said mildly. “It stresses them out.”

“Put him with the others,” the man said, waving his hand again.

The hench-captor hesitated. “Are you sure? The dampening doesn’t work on Yashou; he could--”

“I’m sure!” the man snapped, and then he turned to Zhao Yunlan with an exaggerated smile. “A loyal assistant is so hard to find. But you would know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

A few more pieces came together. The science jargon in the note; the suit. The unusually hands-on approach to negotiating. “You know Lin Jing, then.”

“His work on the interaction of dark and light energy is revolutionary. The things he’s created are fascinating -- I hated to send him to the SID, but he was the only one they wouldn’t suspect. You, though -- you picked him out right away. Why is that, I wonder?”

Zhao Yunlan raised his eyebrows. “He’s a terrible spy, and he can’t play basketball?”

The man ignored him. “Could it be that you’re familiar with a lack of loyalty? Your so-called fellow Guardians -- perhaps once you were allies, but you could be so much more! Haven’t you ever wondered how far you could go if they weren’t holding you back?”

The monologuing was a ten out of ten for drama, but a minus five for coherence. “We’re not allies,” he said.

“I knew it!”

He shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. We’re closer than allies. We’re family. We’ve known each other for longer than you’ve been alive. We’ve raised children together.” That last one was a stretch, but the ship spirits counted, right? Close enough.

“We live together. I rushed here to rescue them. You’re a scientist, yes?” He had to be, if he was that familiar with Lin Jing’s work. “The evidence is right in front of you.”

The man gave a deep sigh. “I suppose it was too much to hope for, that you could be swayed. You’re correct about one thing, though -- I am a scientist. If the first method is unsuccessful, we will simply move on to the next.”

Zhao Yunlan raised his hand. “As a scientist, you must be working towards a goal of some kind, correct? What is it that you want?”

“It’s not what I want -- it’s what everyone wants!” The man gestured wildly at the rock wall -- or past it, Zhao Yunlan guessed, probably in the direction he thought the sky pillar was in. “The sky pillar holds the secret to unlimited energy! The advancements we could unlock -- the power we could harness! All at our fingertips, if it wasn’t for you!”

He pointed at himself. “Me?”

“You! The Guardians! Haixing restricts access to the sky pillar based on centuries-old superstitions, and you sit back and do nothing. I was willing to offer you a chance at glory, but if you won’t join me, you can join your friends.”

Finally. He was more than ready to move on from the ranting part of the situation. “You seem very sure that we won’t escape,” he said. “Are you that confident that the Guardian powers are only myths and superstitions?”

The scientist shrugged. “Whether they are or not, I’ve accounted for it. These caves have a natural dampening ability on both dark and light energy. When amplified by the power of science, it’s quite impressive.”

He tried to look impressed. The disappointed look on the scientist’s face let him know he’d failed, which was no great loss.

“You’ll change your mind soon enough,” the man said. “If the Guardian powers are exaggerated, the dampeners will be enough. If not, I’ve done my research. I know your secret weakness.”

He frowned. Secret weakness -- his sweet tooth? Seeing Shen Wei with his sleeves rolled up? His absolute inability to say no when Daqing and Zhao Ye teamed up to ask for something? None of those seemed particularly secret, or like they would be enough for such a high level of gloating.

“You didn’t think anyone would find out after all this time, did you? It was recorded in one of the last Alliance strategy sessions before the creation of the sky pillar. ‘Our secret weakness: running water.’”

The scientist burst out laughing at his expression. “I’m kidding, of course! No, that’s what the other guests are for. All equipped with one of Lin Jing’s more ingenious devices -- they keep dark and light energy powers from being used on whoever is wearing them. So you see, even if you could escape, you would have to leave them behind. And you would never do that.”

Ah. Well, that was probably true, actually.

“Don’t look so glum!” The scientist laughed again. “You’ll be far too busy to worry about it soon.”

The ranting might be over, but he wasn’t sure the ominous threats were an improvement.


Chapter 35: The family that fights off monsters together always has plenty of stories to tell at reunions

One dark cave under a volcano was essentially like any other, but at least the new one offered better company.

“Caves, villains -- this reminds me of the old days, fighting bandits. You know, I never thought about how we don’t call anyone bandits any more. Why is that?”

Daqing had switched to human form as soon as the guards had left him alone, and distributed the supplies he’d stashed in his pockets. Which was good, because it meant that Zhao Yunlan had a packet of dried fish handy that he could throw at him. “What old days?” he said. “We lived in a spaceship.”

“Sure, but we camped. There were caves, sometimes. I met you in a cave!”

Dong Nan giggled, which had probably been the point. So far she and the nephew -- Guo Changcheng; they’d been formally introduced and everything -- had been ideal hostage situation companions. Guo Ying appeared to be very quietly panicking, but Shen Wei was talking him through it.

“That was a nicer cave,” Zhao Ye said. “Better lighting. More exits.” He finished yet another loop of the cave, and dropped down next to Zhao Yunlan.

“Did he really say you’d be too busy to worry about it soon? Because -- and I don’t mean to make it sound like I’m complaining -- it’s been a while.”

“It definitely sounds like you’re complaining,” he said. More quietly, he added, “You found all the amplifiers?”

Zhao Ye made a face. “Seven.” He leaned their shoulders together, so Zhao Yunlan could see their locations. “But with the power we have access to right now, we’d have to take them out one at a time, and it wouldn’t be subtle. I don’t know how the energy would react.”

There was a crackle of static, and then a voice echoed through the cave. ”Apologies for the delay. Technical difficulties; you know how it is. Cameras, speakers; with everything being touted as wireless these days, you wouldn’t think there would be so many cords.”

He looked at Zhao Ye, who shrugged. “Is there a point to this?” he said.

”There’s always a point to science. In this case, the point is recording and broadcasting data. You’re being live-streamed right now. Don’t worry about being entertaining; it’s about to get interesting. With your powers limited, how will you fare?”

“I think the power’s gone to his head,” Zhao Yunlan muttered. “He wasn’t this melodramatic before.”

”The world will see the Guardians fail, or it will see them abandon their duty.” The communication ended in another burst of static, and they could hear a low growling getting louder. Getting closer?

“Is that Ghost Beasts?” Daqing hissed. “You know I hate fighting them.” For better or worse, the cave only had one entrance, and he narrowed his eyes as he stared down the tunnel.

“They look like Ghost Beasts,” Daqing said, after a few seconds. “And they sound like Ghost Beasts. But they don’t smell like Ghost Beasts.”

“I don’t see anything,” he said. He looked at Shen Wei, who had his eyes closed.

“Some of them are illusions. Projections, maybe?” Shen Wei had his palms open, but they held only the tiniest flickers of dark energy.

There was a screeching sound from the tunnel, and they all flinched. Sparks briefly lit up the Ghost Beast swarm as one of them ran its claws along the rock wall. “That one is definitely not a projection,” Daqing said.

“Some of them are -- mechanical, somehow.” Shen Wei looked frustrated. “They’re moving slowly. I can’t tell more than that.”

“They’re robots?” He spun around to Guo Ying. “Did our taxes pay for this?” Then he waved his hands. “No, never mind, that’s not important right now.”

There weren’t any areas of the cave that could truly be called defensible, but he urged Guo Ying, Guo Changcheng, and Dong Nan towards the farthest spot from the entrance. To his surprise, it was Guo Changcheng who resisted. He stepped forward with blazing -- though probably misguided -- determination, despite his white-knuckled grip on his bag. “I’ll help you fight.”

“You are helping,” he said. “You’re protecting Dong Nan.” He pointed at Dong Nan. “And you’re protecting him. You hold onto him; don’t let go.” He moved the finger to Guo Ying. “You, keep them here. Don’t move from this spot unless we tell you to.”

The SID Chief looked like he wanted to protest, but he just nodded. “We’ll do as you say.” When Guo Changcheng started to speak, he cut him off. “Protecting others is as important as fighting.”

They dropped into a hushed exchange that Zhao Yunlan pretended he couldn’t hear. He focused on the others, talking at the cave’s entrance.

“Do you think they couldn’t find any actual Ghost Beasts?”

“Ghost Beasts are drawn to dark energy. They would naturally avoid this cave system.”

“They might be too unpredictable. He’s a scientist; he could be trying to control variables.”

“He stated a very specific goal.”

To see the Guardians fail or flee. In other words, not to broadcast a civilian child being threatened, or to start a war with the Yashou. So they might be programmed to avoid the hostages. They couldn’t count on it, but it was something to hope for.

Dong Nan reached out and tugged on his sleeve. “What about you?” she said. “What are you going to do?”

He resisted the urge to pat her on the head -- that was really more Cat Tribe than Crow -- and winked at her instead. “We’re going to win.”

Even with minimal access to dark and light energy, there was a certain amount they could do, especially if they pooled their power. For Shen Wei and Zhao Ye, that meant the four of them could team up to yank their swords out of the slightly-shifted space they stored them in. For Zhao Yunlan, not so much.

He sighed -- he’d never hear the end of it, now. As if on cue, Zhao Ye poked his shoulder. “Oh, and who was it who thought it was so clever to ‘just manifest a sword made of energy itself; it’s more convenient that way.’ What about when you find yourself needing to fight Ghost Beasts in a power-dampening cave? What then?”

“One time!” he insisted. “All these years, and that’s still only happened one time. And it is convenient -- think how many metal detector explanations I’ve been able to avoid.”

“Mm-hmm.” Shen Wei’s expression said they’d be revisiting the topic later, which was fine -- they could talk about it right after they discussed how exactly an overdramatic scientist had managed to capture them in the first place. “Are you ready?”

He took a breath, and closed his eyes. Shen Wei and Zhao Ye bracketed him with more energy than they should probably be wasting, but he didn’t have time to stop them, because Daqing reached out and pushed --

And when he opened his eyes, his perspective had shifted lower, and he heard someone gasp -- probably Guo Changcheng. His tail lashed, and he grinned, all teeth. Daqing made a pleased sound, and Shen Wei rubbed his head.

“Show-off,” Zhao Ye said, but he sounded fond, and he tweaked Zhao Yunlan’s ear with soft fingers. “Be careful, little brother.”


Chapter 36: Volcano cave fighting: zero out of five stars; do not recommend

It was too much to ask that the Ghost Beasts would continue their slow motion approach. By the time they reached the cave, they were at full speed. His third eye couldn’t see any of them, and his regular eyes couldn’t tell the difference between projection and solid.

It would have been funny, if it hadn’t been so frustrating. The robots were harder to take down than a true Ghost Beast, so they were all hitting harder than usual. The projections, on the other hand, offered no resistance at all, so they were misjudging their momentum seven times out of ten.

The projections weren’t dangerous on their own, but the combination of projections and robots was causing chaos in the enclosed space of the cave. There were too many targets to maintain any kind of strategy and still protect the hostages.

He wasn’t sure how long it had been when Daqing dove underneath him, panting. “Cover A-Ye,” he said. “He’s going to take out the amplifiers.” He nodded. There was a stinging pain in his side from colliding with a wall, and at one point a robot beast had made it dangerously close to Guo Ying. He’d promised Dong Nan a win, but so far all they had was a resounding draw.

Zhao Ye had been right to be concerned about the energy balance -- the amplifiers had to have been designed to be turned on and off all at once, because as soon as Zhao Ye destroyed one, the others went haywire. Dark energy surged, and then disappeared entirely under a deluge of light energy. Zhao Ye was glowing with it, and he blasted it into the second amplifier.

They got through five of them before a robot beast got in a lucky hit on Shen Wei’s shoulder, and he went down hard. If sheer rage could have destroyed the final two amplifiers, they would have been dust. He threw himself against Zhao Ye’s chest. “Keep going.”

Zhao Ye turned his dust-making glare on him, but he kept moving along the wall. Faster than before, and it turned out the robot beasts were programmed well enough to gather in a coordinated defense in front of the last amplifier, which was enough to push his worry to the back of his mind, at least.

As soon as all seven amplifiers were destroyed, everything went dark, which he was relatively sure wasn’t supposed to happen. He shook his head, trying to clear it. Energy was roaring in his ears, and he realized it was Zhao Ye, pouring power into Shen Wei by using him as a conduit. That was fine, then.

Worth it, when Shen Wei stood up and swung his sword in a sharp arc. Two thirds of the ghost beasts vanished. The projections were gone. “Everything left is mechanical,” Zhao Ye confirmed.

The robot closest to them snarled, and he bared his teeth in return.

It went quickly, after that -- flashes of swords and sparks and the satisfying crunch of taking a robot to the ground and ripping apart its machinery with his claws. He leaped for the last one still standing and slammed it down, letting the impact do half the work for him. A quick slash did the rest, and it was over.

A noise at the cave’s entrance made him freeze. “Wow.”

“I see we’re too late for the rescue, but hopefully we’re still welcome.”

“Of course we are. We were invited, after all.”

He turned his head slowly, one paw still in the air. Two people. Two people he knew, but who couldn’t possibly be there.

Everyone stared at each other. He assumed they did, anyway. He felt frozen -- like if he moved, or blinked, they might be gone again. But he could hear his heart beating, and Shen Wei breathing, and that meant he was alive, and that was good. Scratch one possible explanation off the list.

It was Daqing who broke the silence first.

“Mom?”


***************
SECTION 5
***************

Chapter 37: When in doubt, hug it out

“We came straight here, but we ran into a few people leaving, so we detained them. That took some extra sorting out, and by the time we found you --” She gestured around the cave, full of downed robots. “You already had things wrapped up here.”

He had no idea how he was supposed to be reacting. He didn’t think panic was the ideal choice, but it felt like he was surrounded by buzzing static, and it was making it hard to think of anything else. That was his mom, and Lu Xinzhu, and everyone else could see them too. Was there a plan for what to do if your long-lost family members suddenly reappeared?

Guo Ying stepped forward and bowed. “We’re very grateful for your assistance.” So formal! No one ever bowed to them anymore. Probably because they kept asking people not to.

His brain jumped from one thought to the next. He’d always been the first to insist that they weren’t gone, not really, but he was facing the sudden and alarming realization that he hadn’t actually expected them to come back. It made something that felt like shame twist in his stomach, and he buried his face in Shen Wei’s side. Being a cat was easier.

And Shen Wei seemed willing to pretend he was still healing the scratches along his side, so maybe they could just -- keep doing that. Until the world started making sense again.

“What about the broadcast?” Guo Ying asked. Very reasonable question; he approved.

“That was being managed from somewhere else,” Lu Xinzhu said. “You’re Chief Guo, yes?” He nodded, and she added, “Your team was tracking it. They must have been able to shut it down by now.”

He nodded again, more deliberately, and Lu Xinzhu brightened. “Ah, but I’m sure we would all prefer to be -- somewhere else! Not in this cave!”

“Is -- did the spaceship come with you?” Guo Changcheng looked around, like he might have missed the presence of a spaceship in the cave.

“Of course. She’s outside, guarding the entrance, and the people we -- encountered.”

“I’m sure we can make our own way there, now that the danger has passed,” Guo Ying said, tactfully not mentioning any of the many things he was probably desperate to ask about. “We’ll leave first.”

That one had a real future in politics, Zhao Yunlan thought. Very diplomatic. Once it was just the six of them, Lu Xinzhu said, “Can I--?”

He had no idea what she was asking, but he felt Shen Wei nod, and suddenly they were -- somewhere else, and he was human-shaped again, and everything was glowing.

“Where are we?” Daqing asked. He was managing to combine glowing with floating in mid-air, and he looked extremely smug about it.

Lu Xinzhu hesitated, and then said, “We’re -- ah, inside the sky pillar. It’s fine! We can leave any time. It just seemed like it would be preferable to have privacy.”

He wanted it to be true. He wanted it to be true in equal proportion to how much he feared it wasn’t. And once he’d had the thought, he couldn’t ignore it. He reached for Shen Wei’s hand. Zhao Ye was with Daqing; they were safe. He knew Shen Wei would read the question in his grip.

“It’s real,” Shen Wei said quietly. “They’re real. As real as us.” He overlaid their vision together, and with it, his surety that what they were experiencing was truly happening. And if it was really happening--

“Mama?” She must have been waiting for it, because as soon as he spoke, she swept him and Shen Wei into a hug.

“A-Lan,” she said. “Xiao Wei. I missed you so much.” He felt Zhao Ye and Daqing join the hug, and then Lu Xinzhu. “We missed all of you; we’re so glad you’re all right.” He was being crushed, and it felt like he could finally breathe again.

They couldn’t hug forever, as much as he might be willing to try. He felt Daqing’s paw tugging his jacket pocket. “I’m hungry,” he whispered loudly. “Do you have a snack?”

“Why are you whispering; we can all hear you,” Zhao Ye said.

Daqing scrambled up to his shoulder. “In that case, does anyone have a snack? I’m a cat; we have to eat every two hours.”

He laughed. Daqing always knew just what to say to pull him out of his head. “That is not true. Do you see the rest of us claiming we need to eat every two hours? No.”

He handed over food anyway, and Daqing made a triumphant noise. “True!” he said. “Which is why I, the King of the Cats, am acting as your role model and mentor in this.” He shook the snack at Zhao Yunlan. “Eat more snacks! Ask for things when you want them!”

It was a push as much as it was a joke, and he sighed.

“About being all right,” he said, closing his eyes. “Which we are!” His eyes flew open again and he looked at Shen Wei. “We are, right? Are you all right?”

“Yes. Yes,” he repeated, probably for Zhao Ye’s benefit. ”I am fully recovered. That was a reckless maneuver.”

“But it worked,” Zhao Ye retorted. “And you said we could do reckless things in an emergency, which that definitely was.”

If they got into another shouting match about how Shen Wei’s definition of ‘reckless’ and ‘emergency’ were different for himself than for the rest of them, they’d be there for hours. He cleared his throat. “We’re all glad you’re all right,” he said. “I was -- less all right, for a moment there.”

He squeezed Shen Wei’s hand again, and Shen Wei said, “It’s not uncommon for new dark energy powers to develop over time, and they often become known during times of unrest or upheaval. Within recent memory, we faced a Dixingian with the power to create and manipulate waking dreams. The experience was -- extremely realistic.”

“Yes,” he said, very carefully not looking at anyone. “Extremely. I reacted badly. I’m still working through it, obviously.”

His mother pulled him into another hug, and he knew she had heard all the parts he and Shen Wei had left out. Very quietly, she said, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you for real when you needed me.” When he was able to pull back, he wasn’t the only one casually wiping his eyes.

“We never meant for this to be a surprise,” Lu Xinzhu said. “There should have been plenty of time to figure out how to --” She waved her hand, and then made a face. “All right, it was never going to be simple, exactly.”

His mother nodded. “We only recently reached a point where we could try communicating. When our ship picked up your message to the others, we --”

She hesitated, and Lu Xinzhu said, “We panicked, and the meteor fragments reacted to it, and here we are.”

“We were already working towards figuring out separation,” his mother added, and he remembered the rising energy levels around the pillar.

“Working towards,” he repeated. They seemed separate when they appeared in the cave. Although, he supposed, they weren’t in the cave any more, were they?

Lu Xinzhu wiggled her fingers. “We’re mostly separated. Right now the meteor fragments are still adapting, and we’re helping to regulate the power exchange. Once it levels out, we’ll see about finishing the process.”

Shen Wei was the only one brave enough to ask the question they were all thinking. “But you’ll still be here? After?”

“We’ll be here. We’re not leaving you again.”


Chapter 38: Ten thousand years doesn’t make relationships any easier to figure out, at least from the outside

“This book says you married Shen Wei.” His mother tapped on the screen in front of her. “And this website says Shen Wei married Daqing after you broke both their hearts and left them, which -- clearly not.”

He waved lazily from the couch, where he had his head in Shen Wei’s lap, and Daqing curled up on his chest. “Clearly,” Shen Wei said, and Lu Xinzhu laughed.

“But in this article, Daqing is quoted as saying he’s married to Zhao Ye, and I’ve seen at least three peer-reviewed articles claiming that Zhao Ye and Shen Wei’s relationship status was mis-translated as brothers, and should have been husbands.”

She looked at her notes. In an actual notebook; they both seemed to be enjoying the physicality of being able to interact with tangible objects again. “All that’s missing is Zhao Ye and Yunlan.”

“Oh, we’ve done that too,” Zhao Ye said. He was leaning against the wall, with one hand flat on the floor. The ship had missed them all, but Zhao Ye was definitely still her favorite. “How many times now? More than five, definitely.”

“At least seven,” he agreed. He raised both hands in victory, careful not to disturb Daqing. “I have married everyone the most times, making me the reigning champion of marriage vows.”

“Ha,” Daqing said. “You’re only in the lead because you keep asking, and no one wants to hurt your feelings by saying no.”

“I would be heartbroken if you refused,” he said. “And I would make sure to tell everyone who would listen, so that it would be recorded for future generations.”

His mother and Lu Xinzhu were watching the exchange with interest, but neither of them looked upset.

“We’ve all married each other, in various combinations, at various times and places over the years,” Shen Wei explained.

“Ten thousand years is a long time,” Zhao Ye said. “It’s not like we didn’t have the opportunity.”

Daqing’s ears perked up. “And wedding parties are the best parties. So much food. And presents!”

“It wasn’t our first strategy,” Shen Wei said. “We tried to ignore the rumors that sprang up around us, and then, for many years, to correct them. Eventually we realized that people would make up whatever stories they wanted regardless of our input, so we might as well do what we could to enjoy it.”

Zhao Yunlan beamed. Shen Wei always made it sound so reasonable. The echo of all the (many) years of shouting and silence and avoidance was there in his voice, but it just made the comfortable peace they’d all built together that much better.

“Shen Wei and I are the most married,” he said proudly. “Because we actually like being married to each other.

“Congratulations,” his mother said warmly. “I am not even the tiniest bit surprised to hear that.”

“I like the presents,” Daqing said.

“And I like confounding historians,” Zhao Ye added.

“Congratulations to all of you,” his mother amended. “You know we’ve been family for a long time, and that hasn’t changed. Coming back, and finding you still here, still together? It’s everything we could have asked for.”

Lu Xinzhu nodded. “Yes. Although actually, I do have another question.” She held up a tablet. “Why does this say you have a feud with Ya Qing? I thought you liked Ya Qing.”

Personally, he wasn’t sure what one had to do with the other. He was more than capable of liking someone and being in a feud with them at the same time.

“What are you reading?” he asked. He was positive there were no peer-reviewed articles that talked about Ya Qing’s feelings. And if there was a secret Yashou gossip newsletter that he wasn’t getting, he might actually start a feud over it.

She waved it off. “I’ll show you later. You have a feud? With the High Chief of the Yashou? I’m impressed, not angry -- just, really?”

He shook his head. “We don’t have a feud with Ya Qing.”

Speak for yourself,” Zhao Ye said. “She may have said your name -- once, in literal decades -- but ‘bring them back’ is ambiguous at best. She could have been talking about Dong Nan and Guo Changcheng; he’s practically a Crow Tribe adoptee at this point.”

“She specifically said ‘all members of Cat Tribe,’” Shen Wei pointed out. “That implies acknowledgement, at the very least.”

“She could have been speaking hypothetically.” Zhao Ye made a face, and then sighed. “Not likely, I know. It’s hardly an apology, though, is it?”

Lu Xinzhu leaned forward. He didn’t remember her being so interested in gossip before, but then again, she hadn’t had any access to it for ten thousand years. They were all adapting in their own ways. “What did she do?”

He tried to deflect. As soon as Zhao Ye gave in, Shen Wei would switch back to defending him, and Shen Wei’s ability to see multiple perspectives was far outweighed by his ability to hold a grudge. “It’s a long story.”

Sure enough -- “It’s not a long story,” Shen Wei said. “She called you an abomination. We disagreed. She ignored the existence of Cat Tribe from then on, until this latest incident.”

“She what?” It looked like they were both ready to go find Ya Qing and confront her, which was -- surprisingly nice, actually. Unnecessary, but nice.

“It was a long time ago,” he said.

“And this has to do with you being a tiger?” Lu Xinzhu guessed. His mother elbowed her in the side, and she jumped. “What? You weren’t going to ask?”

“They don’t have to tell us if they don’t want to.”

“Sure, but they should, because if someone’s been disrespecting our kids, I want to know. We would be excellent at feuding and could definitely help.”

He laughed. “It’s fine, it’s fine -- it’s not a secret.” It wasn’t exactly not a secret, either, but it’s not like they were asking for a detailed blueprint. He looked at Shen Wei, who had a much clearer view of the rest of the room, and Shen Wei nodded.

“It’s like this,” Zhao Yunlan said. “Ah, there was a time when someone was sad about not being able to find any other Cat Tribe Yashou.”

“That was you,” Daqing retorted. “I was fine.” His claws flexed into Zhao Yunlan’s chest, just enough. Some secrets weren’t his to share.

“It was me,” he agreed easily. “And there we were, four very clever people with time on our hands, and an entire space fleet’s worth of knowledge to reference. So we --” He waved his free hand. “Did a thing. A Yashou thing.”

“All of us,” Shen Wei clarified. “It was an honor,” he added quietly, and Daqing’s tail curled.

Zhao Yunlan ran a finger behind his ears. “Ya Qing’s not actually the first High Chief we told, but she has strong feelings about Haixingren in general, and my lack of respect for tradition in particular. And then someone fell asleep during her first speech as High Chief.”

“Hey! That was -- okay, no, that was me.” Daqing shrugged. “It was a nap!”

He nodded. “I know, your heritage, you’ve said. Anyway, that’s why there have been occasional interactions between us and Ya Qing that might, from an outside perspective, have appeared similar to a feud.”

“Mm, I see.” Lu Xinzhu nodded. “Understood. Unrelatedly, when can we meet her?”


Chapter 39: Conversations in the midnight garden

Maybe it wasn’t surprising that ten thousand years as a non-corporeal energy being didn’t encourage a regular circadian rhythm. He was still startled when he stepped into the garden and realized the shadow next to the pond wasn’t just a shadow.

“Mom?”

She smiled up at him from where she was kneeling by the pond, with her fingers dangling in the water. “It’s beautiful here,” she said. “Dixing is -- everything I would have hoped, back then.”

“I always said that was your influence,” he said, dropping down next to her. “You’ll get pins and needles if you sit like that for too long.”

She smiled again, more wryly. “No I won’t.”

“No, you won’t,” he acknowledged. “It’s hard to break the habit, though.”

She looked back at the water. “How long did it take you to get used to it?”

“The not dying?” She nodded, and he tried to give the question the answer it deserved. They’d talked about it a lot, at first. That had been a long time ago.

His mother and the others had been vague about how they experienced the passage of time inside the pillar, but some of the things they said made him think it was a recent development. They’d shared enough to know that what felt like ancient history to him was -- closer, for them. He still didn’t know if he felt relieved or disappointed that they definitely hadn’t heard any of his one-sided conversations with the sky pillar over the years.

Finally, he said, “There are a lot of times I’m still not sure I have. We don’t really understand it, and it’s not one of those things we’ve wanted to test the limits of.” He looked up at the sky, and took a deep breath. “In some ways, that uncertainty makes it not all that different than how everyone else lives. You do what you can with what you have, one day at a time.”

She leaned in and nudged their shoulders together. “When did you get so wise?”

“I inherited it from my mother,” he said, and she laughed.

“Good answer.” She hesitated, and then said, “Ten thousand years.”

He was pretty sure he knew what she was trying to ask. “We were in space for a lot of it, after the fleet grew up, so it was shorter for us. Shen Wei could explain the science better.”

“Light-speed travel?”

He wiggled his fingers. “Close enough. Among other things. We came back when -- when people I knew would have been born. Just in case.”

Re-adapting to Haixing and Dixing had been a challenge; he couldn’t wait to see what historians would make of those days in another hundred years or so. “We found your parents -- the people who were your parents before. We shopped at the same market as them for years until Zhao Ye finally won them over.”

He smiled. Those had been fun years. “We waited for you. But you’re not -- there’s not two of you. Your parents had a baby girl around the same time you would have been born, but she’s not you.” He looked over, and said, “She’s an actress, actually. Stage, not screen.”

“Really?” She looked intrigued. “You’ve met her?”

“Sure. We keep in touch.” They kept in touch with a lot of people. “We couldn’t find Auntie Lu’s family, but we’ve run into some people with similar powers. All of them were very intrigued by our ‘hypothetical questions’ about multiple timelines versus single timeline alternation.”

“Still no answer?”

He shrugged. “A lot of guessing. Nothing definitive.” The world was undeniably different than the one he’d grown up in. He couldn’t see how it would change his choices whether there was one timeline or many, so he didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.

But it seemed like his mom was waiting for something else, so he offered, “It was strange, meeting someone who wasn’t you. I thought it would be better, but it was just -- strange. I missed you more, afterwards, even though I felt like I shouldn’t.”

“Does she --” His mother cut herself off.

“Have children?” he said, and she nodded. “Two girls. They’re traveling now, but they took one of Shen Wei’s classes at the university. Smart kids.”

There was an even longer pause, and then she said, “Is it all right if I ask about Zhao Xinci? I’m not -- it’s just curiosity. That’s not something I would change, even if I could.”

He kept his eyes on the pond, and tried to keep his voice light. “He’s around. He works for the Xingdu Bureau now. He was the Chief of the SID for a while; that was before Guo Ying took over. Never been married; no children.”

He could feel her eyes on him. “That sounds a lot like the way you said you weren’t having a feud with Ya Qing.”

He winced. “We’ve met. Several times, now.”

“Oh?”

“None of those meetings were particularly, ah, successful? I have strong feelings about the Bureau in general, and his lack of respect for non-Haixingren in particular.”

He sighed. “And I have a hard time not being more angry about those things than I should be, just because I’m trying not to be angry about things he did in a different timeline.”

He waited while she worked through the truly terrible grammar of his confession, and then she leaned against his side. “That sounds very reasonable to me,” she said, and that was it. “Is Zhang Shi still--?”

He shook his head. “He’s around, but he’s off planet. He’s on the moon, actually. Now that’s a fun story. Remind me to tell you when the others are here; they’re better with the details.”

“I’d like that. In the daytime, maybe.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d noticed,” he said, one of those ‘I’m joking if you want me to be, but actually serious.”

She laughed. “I noticed. Just not sure what to do about it yet. My brain doesn’t seem to want to --” She wiggled her fingers, because there wasn’t really an easy way to say ‘I was incorporeal energy for ten thousand years and I haven’t gotten used to having a physical body again, also I probably don’t need to sleep anyway.’

“What about you?” she asked instead. “Couldn’t sleep?”

He wiggled his fingers too, to make her laugh again. “The full moon makes everyone restless. Shen Wei and A-Ye are grading; they’ll be at it all night, probably. Daqing’s around somewhere -- the palace, maybe. They keep all his favorite snacks stocked just in case he shows up, and he knows it.”

“Mm. I liked DanDan. She reminds me of you.”

That startled him out of his thoughts. “Me? Really?” He spread his hands apart. “I’m honored -- I did teach her everything she knows about basketball. Except her free throw. I refuse to take either credit or blame for that.”

“She deflects like you, too.”

He had no idea how she knew that. “She’s very good on defense,” he agreed. It was a deliberate misinterpretation, but he’d much rather talk about coaching basketball than his personality -- with anyone, really, but especially his mom. “You should see this year’s team.”

She turned so she could face him. “I’d like to meet them.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You want to meet my basketball kids?” He’d mostly been joking, but Zheng Yi would love her.

She nodded. “Of course. Only if that’s all right with you, but yes, definitely. Lu Xinzhu and I are both starting over learning this new future; what better place to start than with the people who are important to our children?”

It wasn’t the worst idea. They’d been officially acknowledged by the Dixing government, but Haixing was dragging things out. Which meant they didn’t officially have to tell anyone in Haixing what they were doing -- a bonus he doubted the Bureau had fully considered. Also, the kids would like it.

“I’m proud of you, A-Lan. And I want to see this life you’ve made for yourselves, and how big your family has grown. So yes, I want to meet your basketball kids. And Shen Wei’s and A-Ye’s students, and Daqing’s, too.”

“Fair warning, Daqing’s are mostly just stray kittens who follow him around sometimes.” He took a deep breath. “But -- I’d like that. We’d like that.”


Chapter 40: If you had a chance to ask a famous person from history one question, what would it be?

“Why doesn’t the ship have a name?”

Zhao Ye’s class was -- on paper, at least -- a seminar on the confluence of history and folklore as they related to the differing social norms of Haixing and Dixing. Zhao Yunlan suspected the syllabus had been constructed primarily for the purpose of taking the kids on a vast number of field trips (“experiential research projects”).

Lu Xinzhu leaned forward. “She does. She just prefers not to share it, and we respect that.“

Professor Ye was also famous for his willingness to answer any question in his classes. Anything. If the student was willing to ask, he would answer. He said it kept him sharp, and the students deserved someone they could talk to. Shen Wei said it was the reason he kept being ‘politely discouraged’ from returning to teach in Haixing.

“What food did you look forward to having the most when you returned?”

He’d extended that offer to include his ‘guest lecturers,’ but either the students were nervous about being in the presence of all seven guardians at once, or they had been inspired to be on their best behavior by the sheer magnitude of parental energy being exuded by his mom and Lu Xinzhu.

“Fruit,” his mother said. “Oranges, especially. Kiwis. Winter melon.”

He looked at Zhao Ye -- where had these questions been the last time he and Shen Wei had been guest lecturers? They’d been grilled on everything from their political predictions to the size of their mattress. None of these easy icebreakers.

One of the kids in the back of the room spoke up next. “What do you miss?”

Zhao Ye cleared his throat. “Specific to something, or was that intended to be open-ended?”

The student blushed. “Specific,” they said. “What do you miss about being part of the sky pillar?”

He watched his mother and Lu Xinzhu look at each other, and Lu Xinzhu nodded. “Communicating things takes a lot longer now,” she said. “That’s been an adjustment. If I miss anything, it would be that -- instantaneous communication and understanding.”

His mother added, “There are benefits too, though -- much easier to plan surprises, for one thing.”

He wondered what would be considered surprising to any of them at that point, and then quickly shut down that train of thought. He definitely didn’t need to know, and he was relatively sure he didn’t want to know either.

“What’s the weirdest thing about being back?”

“Being younger than our children, absolutely.”

“Are you going to travel now, or stay here?”

“For now we’re staying here, and getting reacquainted with everything we missed. Travel is a potential longer-term plan; we haven’t talked about it yet.”

“Is it true you ate potatoes every day ten thousand years ago?”

Zhao Ye pointed at the student who had asked. “When we were lucky we ate potatoes every day -- remember that next time you’re complaining about the lunch options on a field trip.”

Lu Xinzhu coughed, clearly trying to cover a laugh. “Potatoes were one of the easier foods to grow, since the ship was already set up to support them. I couldn’t say if it was every day, but it was a lot.”

“Are you married?”

He looked up sharply. That was Zu Ma -- he was an unapologetic troublemaker, so naturally he was one of Zhao Ye’s favorites. Zu Ma looked back, all deliberate innocence.

“Not exactly,” his mother said. She held up her hand to hold off any potential follow-up questions. “There are certain things that can only be understood in their proper context, yes?”

Zu Ma gave a reluctant nod. “And in this case, the context includes a significant amount of time spent experiencing a state of being that can’t be adequately described in words.” She shrugged. “It’s complicated. Most things are.”

He thought it was as good an answer as any, but Zu Ma frowned. “Are you saying I’m not old enough to understand?”

“I’m saying that in order to appreciate how accurate ‘not exactly’ is as an answer, you would first have to accidentally travel ten thousand years into the past, then return to a changed version of the present you remembered, after having spent most of the intervening time existing as pure energy.” Zu Ma’s eyes were wide, and his mother smiled. “It’s a very specific frame of reference.”

“Next question,” Zhao Ye said firmly.

“What was Professor Zhao like as a kid?”

Lu Xinzhu leaned forward again. “Shorter.”

That was clearly all she was planning to say, and after a pause, another student called out, “What do you think of the latest interpretation of Ma Gui’s work during the time of the Alliance?”

His mother frowned. “Ma Gui. Who’s Ma Gui?”

“Ha! That’s exactly what I said!” Zhao Ye looked vindicated.

“He was a writer,” Shen Wei explained. “Among other things, he wrote a detailed account of life at Alliance headquarters, leading some recent historians to see his role in a new light, as a potential co-leader of the Alliance.”

Lu Xinzhu laughed. “Fu You didn’t need a co-leader,” she said. “She led the Alliance and acted as High Chief of the Yashou, and it wasn’t easy. She had many, many advisors, and there were plenty of times when she struggled to convince others to agree. Plenty more times when she struggled to decide herself.”

His mother nodded. “She surrounded herself with good people who asked questions.”

“Professor Zhao, is it true that you and Professor Shen will be co-teaching a class?”

Zhao Ye nodded. “We’re still discussing the possibility, yes.”

They’d been ‘discussing the possibility’ for years. Relations between the two schools were less tense than they used to be, but joint classes were still being held up by political wrangling. They said they were close, but whether close meant ‘next year’ or ‘next generation,’ he wasn’t sure.

“Final question,” Zhao Ye said. “Keep in mind that if you make a good impression, we might be able to convince them to come back.”

There were a few minutes while the students conferred amongst themselves. Well -- conferred, argued, plotted -- it could be hard to tell with Zhao Ye’s classes.

Finally, one of the students stepped forward. “If you could give just one piece of advice for the future, what would it be?”

Their final question to him and Shen Wei had been ‘what’s the longest you’ve ever gone without touching each other’ -- where had these suspiciously well-behaved and tactful students been then? He looked at Zhao Ye again, who was carefully avoiding his gaze, and sidled closer.

“I’m onto you,” he said quietly, shaking his finger.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Zhao Ye replied easily. “Oh look, I think they’ve decided what to say.”

They both turned back to watch, and Lu Xinzhu said carefully, “If we could give just one piece of advice, it would be this: always keep learning.”


Chapter 41: The breakfast strategy session is what makes it the most important meal of the day

“I’ve been asked to take over Professor Ouyang’s classes for the rest of the year.”

Shen Wei kept his eyes on the dishes as he spoke. So it either wasn’t important, or he didn’t think they’d like it.

It was just the four of them at breakfast; the others were visiting the moon, which was definitely just an excuse to have some time alone without anyone hovering over them. He couldn’t blame them for it, any more than he could blame the rest of them for not wanting to be too far apart. There were times when it was still a surprise, to see the sky pillar in the distance and remember that it had given back what it took away.

“Who’s Professor Ouyang?”

Shen Wei actually looked embarrassed. “He’s the one who --”

“The cave?” Zhao Ye looked outraged. “That was Professor Ouyang? And now they want you to do his job?”

“I thought he worked at the lab attached to the Inspectorate.” Zhao Yunlan pushed a dish towards Daqing, and used the distraction to tap Shen Wei’s ankle with his foot.

It made Shen Wei smile, which was what he’d been hoping for. “His main work was with the lab, yes. But the university allowed him to recruit graduate students directly in exchange for teaching at least one class each academic semester.”

“Good classes?” Daqing asked.

“They’re within my ability to cover,” Shen Wei said, which wasn’t an answer. Probably not great classes, then.

“The university has been impacted by the negative publicity surrounding Professor Ouyang’s actions and the broadcast,” Shen Wei added, which was a very tactful way of saying ‘it really looked bad for them when one of their teachers abducted people, gave a villain monologue, and then tried to kill them with robots.’

“The Chancellor suggested that if I took over the classes, it would help reduce any lingering concerns. And make it clear that there were --” He hesitated, and then said, “‘no hard feelings’ between us.”

His expression said he was well aware of the ridiculousness of the situation. “No hard feelings?” Zhao Ye repeated. “I definitely still have hard feelings. A child was endangered! Tax dollars were wasted! We had to spend time in a cave!”

“You like caves,” Daqing pointed out.

Zhao Ye scoffed. “I like nice caves. On the scale of nice caves to unlikable ones, that cave was very low. Three out of ten.”

He couldn’t help asking, “What did you give it three points for?”

Zhao Ye held up three fingers. “One, despite its volcanic proximity, no lava. Two, we won. Three, the acoustics weren’t bad.”

“Really?”

“Have you watched the recording of the broadcast? The audio is surprisingly clear.” Zhao Ye gave Shen Wei a pointed look. “Very easy to hear Professor Ouyang threatening us.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Shen Wei said mildly. “However, the Chancellor has agreed that if I do this, he’ll support our proposals. Not just for a joint class, but for a shared degree program between Dixing and Haixing universities.”

That was well beyond what they’d been hoping for. The publicity must have been significant. Zhao Ye looked conflicted, but Shen Wei said, “I’ve already agreed.” Then he turned to Zhao Yunlan. “I’m sorry.”

He startled, but that was Shen Wei’s ‘I’m serious, but also secretly amused’ voice, so he made a show of looking around, and then he spread his hands out and said, “You’re forgiven! Of course! Sorry for what?”

Daqing took advantage of his distraction to steal the last bit of food out of his bowl, and he waved it cheerily back at Zhao Yunlan before he ate it. “You know,” he said, “You really should ask for more information first, before you forgive him. What if he had murdered someone and needed help hiding the evidence?”

He raised his eyebrows. “I would wonder why he hadn’t brought it up before breakfast, since that seems like the kind of thing that’s time-sensitive.” He leaned back, and studied Shen Wei carefully. “And I would trust that there was an explanation that came after the apology. Tell us, Xiao Wei, should I get my gloves? Daqing can carry the shovels.”

“There’s no body,” Shen Wei said, clearly trying not to smile. “As it turns out, Professor Ouyang delegated a significant amount of his teaching curriculum to his graduate students. They happened to mention the situation to one of their former colleagues, who happens to now be associated with the SID. Chief Guo was more than willing to offer his assistance to arrange a reassignment, and now Lin Jing will be taking on the role of primary instructor.”

He did smile, then, and added, “So, I’m sorry, but you’ll need to find a new assistant coach for the basketball team.”

“Ha! You’ve done me a favor.” He leaned further back and shook his finger at Shen Wei. “No apologies necessary. Make sure he doesn’t slack off, though. Remember, you can always threaten to send him back.”

“I hope he’s better at teaching than he is at basketball,” Daqing said. He suddenly straightened up and poked Shen Wei in the shoulder. “Wait, wait -- you said grad students, and the lab. Zheng Yi’s brother is there, right? Tan Xiao. Can we trade?”

Zhao Ye said, “You want to trade your SID spy for an actual legitimate lab employee?”

Daqing sniffed. “Yes, but I don’t know why you would say it like that, when you could say that I want to inspire future generations to embrace teamwork and physical fitness by inviting positive role models to participate in their extracurricular activities.”

“Zheng Yi might enjoy basketball more if her brother was coaching,” Zhao Yunlan agreed.

“And we know he can play,” Daqing said.

Shen Wei smiled again. “I’ll ask him. If he’s willing, I’m sure we can work something out.”

“Thank you,” he said. And then, since he was feeling magnanimous, he added, “Lin Jing can come by too, if he wants. For educational purposes.” More help was always better than less help when it came to coaching, after all.


Chapter 42: It’s all about how you play the game

He was carefully rolling up the sleeves of Dong Nan’s shirt when heard his mother greeting someone at the edge of the court.

(The shirt was huge. Her cheerful explanation of, “Brother Chu gave it to me!” and Guo Changcheng’s red ears had told a story all their own.)

“Who are you?” Zheng Yi had volunteered as the day’s co-greeter -- he might occasionally despair at her manners, but she knew everyone who usually showed up, and could be counted on to call out any newcomers.

More politely, his mother asked, “Are you here for the practice as well? Coach Zhao is helping everyone get ready.”

A voice he didn’t recognize said, “I’m an investigative journalist; I’m here for a story.”

“A story about youth basketball?” It was very impressive how she managed to make the idea sound both admirable and unlikely at the same time.

“Haven’t you heard?” The journalist’s voice got quieter, like he was afraid of being overheard. “The Seven Guardians have all returned to Haixing.“

His mother’s voice, on the other hand, wasn’t quiet at all. “Really?”

“Not so loud! I’m following a lead -- I can’t reveal my sources, but I’ve been told there’s a good chance they may make an appearance here today.”

“All of them? That’s incredible.” She sounded like she was barely holding back laughter. “Ah, how will you recognize them?”

“Of course I’ll recognize them,” the journalist said. “They’re -- they’re the Seven Guardians! Anyone would recognize them.”

He thought she must be nodding. “Of course, of course. That makes sense.”

He wasn’t sure how Zheng Yi wasn’t giving them away, but maybe the journalist wasn’t paying attention to her? His loss, really.

Dong Nan pointed towards the conversation. “Are we going to say hello?” she asked.

He looked at her in surprise. “Do you want to?”

She nodded seriously, but her eyes were bright with laughter. “If he wants to see all the Guardians, he should see you too, right? And I want to see Zheng Yi.”

“Do you think we should make sure he sees all the Guardians?” he asked, and she giggled. “Even if he doesn’t know what he’s seeing?”

She blinked innocently at him. “I don’t know what you mean, Coach Zhao. He said he would definitely recognize them.”

He sent a quick message to Daqing, and then after a few seconds of hesitation, Shen Wei as well -- maybe he’d be able to wrap up his student meetings early and join them. His mom was already there, of course, and Lu Xinzhu was on the far side of the court introducing an older woman to some of the parents. The ship was trying out a human form -- so far she seemed unimpressed, which he thought was fair -- but it was a good way to keep learning new things, she said, from a new perspective.

He waved at them, and then leaned down so that Dong Nan could climb up on his back. “Let’s go, then!”

They weren’t far from where the journalist was standing, but Daqing and Zhao Ye beat them there. “The Guardians!” Daqing was saying. “Really? All of them?” He draped himself against Zhao Ye’s side and added, “All seven Guardians in one place. Can you imagine?”

“Incredible,” Zhao Ye said dryly. “You’d think they would have other ways to spend their time.”

Zhao Yunlan let Dong Nan slide down to the ground, and she immediately pulled Zheng Yi aside and started whispering. He wondered if he should discourage them from plotting anything too dangerous. Then again, the journalist clearly expected something to happen; maybe he should see what they came up with.

“You have no appreciation for the mysterious nature of the Guardians,” Daqing said, and his mother choked on a laugh. “Maybe they’re coming to learn how to play basketball.”

“Maybe they don’t think activities that involve so much running are an essential skill,” Zhao Ye answered. “When’s the last time you scored points in a game?”

Dong Nan piped up with, “Brother Guo says it’s not about winning or losing. It’s about playing a game you can be proud of.”

He did, did he? Maybe there was more hope for the SID than he’d thought. Zhao Yunlan gave her a thumbs up, and then sent Daqing a suspicious look. “You don’t even like basketball; why are you suddenly so enthusiastic?”

“Tan Xiao made food for everyone who plays or helps out today,” Zheng Yi said, and yes, that would definitely explain it.

Daqing sighed happily. “Dumplings.”

And that was when Shen Wei showed up, trailing Lin Jing and his own students behind him. Zhao Yunlan waved. “You made it!”

Shen Wei held up the note he’d sent and read it out loud. “‘Come quickly, bring friends, it will be fun.’” He looked up. “Signed with a smiley face.”

Zhao Yunlan spread his hands out wide. “Because I’m always smiling when I see you!”

Lin Jing stopped short when he saw the journalist. “You! Cong Bo!” He pointed an accusing finger. “What are you doing here?”

The journalist bristled. “What am I doing here? What are you doing here? Are you following me?”

“Of course not! I was --” He gestured briefly at Shen Wei, seemed to realize ‘I was following him instead’ probably wouldn’t be his strongest argument, and switched to, “I just got here; how could I be following you?”

“I have a right to be here! “ Cong Bo exclaimed. “If the Seven Guardians are going to show up, the public has a right to know!”

“If the --” Lin Jing looked around. Lu Xinxhu and the ship had joined them just after Shen Wei had arrived. The ship gave a little wave when Lin Jing’s stare went on for a few seconds too long, and he jumped.

Zhao Yunlan deliberately met his gaze and shrugged. “Right,” Lin Jing said slowly. “If they show up. Which they -- haven’t, yet?”

“Of course not,” Cong Bo said.

“What is it that you think they’ll be doing here?” his mother asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“I -- they’ll be --” For the first time, Cong Bo seemed unsure, but then he shook his head. “I’m sure they’ll have a good reason,” he said.

“Of course!” Zhao Yunlan exclaimed. “And what better reason than to spend time with family, to support our community spaces, and to encourage future generations!”

Cong Bo opened his mouth, and then closed it. He looked at the group around him, and then did a double take and narrowed his eyes. Zhao Yunlan could practically see him counting, trying to match up what he was seeing to what he knew. Finally, he said, “You -- this is impossible!”

Zhao Ye smiled. “Congratulations,” he said. “You found us.”

Cong Bo shook his head. “Was this a game to you all along?”

Yes, he thought, but Shen Wei gave him a stern look, so he said, “No, of course not.”

Shen Wei pulled out his best ‘I’m a reasonable professor and you can definitely trust me’ voice, and said “You were hoping to see the seven Guardians, and here we are. We’re not hiding. It’s simply that many people in Haixing, even after the broadcast, have a similar mental picture of us that you yourself expressed. They hear stories, and rumors, and they expect --” Words seemed to fail him, and he waved his hand at the group. “Something different,” he finished finally.

It was true. To be fair, the video quality on the broadcast had been nowhere near as good as the audio, and the cave had been fairly dark. But a lot of it was that if people were thinking about seeing people do things like fighting killer robots and flying in space, they didn’t necessarily connect that to seeing the same people picking vegetables in the market, or teaching a class.

Cong Bo still looked lost. “But the Guardians are --” He trailed off.

“Figures of legend?” Zhao Ye offered. “Maybe. But what about when they’re not doing those legendary things? There’s always more. There’s always -- sharing tea at the end of a long day, and seeing the next star on the horizon.”

He looked at Shen Wei, who nodded. “One of the first things we learned when we all met was how to build a home worth coming back to. I still consider it one of the most important lessons of my life.”

Zhao Ye turned back at Cong Bo. “We haven’t only spent ten thousand years leaving for adventure; we’ve also spent ten thousand years coming home.”


Chapter 43: That feeling when the love of your life proposes again, even though you’re already married

“I think we should get married.”

The words pulled him out of his drifting thoughts, and he answered, “Yes, absolutely,” before he’d even had a chance to fully appreciate them.

Shen Wei’s hands were in his hair, so he couldn’t turn around to see his expression. He did angle his head up to try to catch a glimpse, but Shen Wei gently nudged him forward again. “Hold still; I’m almost done.”

He reached back a hand blindly and patted Shen Wei’s arm. “Ah, Shen Wei, I would marry you every day. I’ve told you that, right?”

He could hear the smile in Shen Wei’s voice when he answered. “You’ve mentioned it, yes.”

It had been a long day, full of meetings -- meetings with the Haixing Inspectorate about the sky pillar, meetings with the University about the shared degree program, meetings with the SID about internships and cross-training. Some days were like that.

(Somehow those days often just happened to coincide with times when Zhao Ye and Daqing had gone with the ship to visit some of the more remote Yashou tribes. He hadn’t figured out how they were timing it so accurately, but he would.)

His mom and Lu Xinzhu were back in Haixing, and had joined them for the first round of meetings. They’d disappeared after that, with the excuse of ‘needing to realign their energies.’ It was a good excuse; he was definitely going to remember it for future use. No one had quite believed them, but no one had openly questioned it either.

But the day was ending in one of his favorite ways -- with him and Shen Wei together, in their home in Dixing. With Shen Wei behind him braiding his hair, and nothing but possibilities in front of them.

“Excellent,” he said. “You should always be hearing things that make you smile. And because you know I would marry you every day, you also know it’s only curiosity that makes me ask: why now?”

Shen Wei tugged the last braid into place. Probably giving himself time to think. “Our family has grown so much,” he said finally. “And every day we spend together is important. But we’ve never had a chance to get married like this -- it’s our first chance to do it when all of us can be together.”

He wasn’t sure how that hadn’t occurred to him before. His mom had never seen him get married, and now she was going to. “I’d like our parents to be there,” Shen Wei added quietly.

For all that they’d been adopted into the family, it was unusual for Shen Wei and Zhao Ye to claim anyone as their parents. Zhao Yunlan leaned back against his legs in solidarity. “My husband is so good to me,” he said. “I knew getting married to a professor was a good idea!”

Shen Wei tugged his hair again. “All done. And you were a professor before I was; don’t think I’ve forgotten.”

“Which is how I know how smart you are!”

He reached up his hand again, and Shen Wei laced their fingers together. He pulled him down so they were next to each other on the floor. “I’d like that too,” he said. “What else?”

“What else?” Shen Wei repeated.

He nodded. “The updated and amended marriage rules say the marriage requestor also has to pick the location and date.”

Shen Wei frowned. “Who added that?”

They had a set of loosely-adhered-to rules about marrying each other. The constant amendments were really just for fun, but as far as he was concerned, that was all the more reason to follow them.

“A-Ye, I think, after Daqing wouldn’t let him get married on the moon.” He shrugged. The ghosts would surely have been inauspicious anyway. “I can’t believe it took him that long to tell us the moon really is haunted.”

“You weren’t surprised, though,” Shen Wei said.

That was true. He thought about shrugging again, but he’d already gotten comfortable. “Some things just make sense, even without an explanation.”

“Like us,” Shen Wei said, and he beamed.

“Like us.”


***************
EPILOGUE: The garden is a metaphor (and also literal)
***************

“This is where we met. I would never have guessed it was the same place, if the boys hadn’t told us.” Shen Xi ran her fingers over one of the flowers.

The first time they’d been there, it had been a bleak, forgotten walkway between abandoned buildings. Her mind tossed up images of cracked concrete and a feeling of desperation. Now, it was full of life. Everywhere she looked there were bright colors, a sprawling tapestry of plants and pathways. Even the walkway itself had been restored.

“It’s beautiful,” Lu Xinzhu agreed. “According to this, it’s Dragon City’s largest botanical garden, open to the public free of charge, and maintained by donations.” She looked up from her phone and wiggled it back and forth. “I missed these, in the past.”

Each area of the garden was designed to feel secluded, but she could hear children laughing closer to the building. In the other direction, there was a waterfall somewhere nearby, and people splashing in the water. Even as the day shifted towards nightfall, it was clearly a popular destination.

She held up her own phone and took a picture. “Very useful,” she agreed. Lu Xinzhu was surrounded by plants -- a sight that wouldn’t have been uncommon ten thousand years in the past, but looked just as natural in the present. Funny how some things stayed the same. “Texting would have been nice.”

“I would have taken a picture every time the boys all fell asleep on top of each other,” Lu Xinzhu said. She pushed aside a curtain of vines to reveal a small bench. “Ah, that’s more like it. You’d think ten thousand years of rest would be enough, but somehow my feet still get tired after walking.”

They’d been given access to the staff-only areas, so they could get off the general-access paths if they wanted. They’d explored the garden for hours, finally making their way to the back corner, where it was quiet enough she could imagine they were outside the city entirely.

The same flowering vines formed an arch overhead, and she leaned back on the bench to get a better view. “It’s impressive how many night-blooming plants are here.” Some of them were glowing, and she touched it carefully. “Didn’t we see these in Dixing, too?”

Lu Xinzhu waved her phone again. “The site says there’s been a significant amount of cross-pollination between Haixing and Dixing plant species, both deliberate and inadvertent. So, yes, probably.”

She nodded. It had been a dream of Fu You’s, all those years ago -- to see the natural landscape of Dixing restored, and then to see how Dixing and Haixing could grow and evolve together. It was a comforting thought -- they were so far from what had become familiar, but the legacy of that time was all around them.

“Imagine what they’ll come up with next,” she said.

“I am,” Lu Xinzhu said. “In more ways than just gardening. It’s -- daunting and inspiring, all at the same time. It’s good to be back, but it’s a lot. It feels like everything is happening, all the time.”

She sighed, and then laughed. “Which is funny, because that was actually true in the sky pillar, and I was fine with it. It only feels overwhelming now, when it’s not true.”

And really, what could anyone say to that? “Feelings and truth don’t need comparing,” Shen Xi offered finally. “You feel what you feel, regardless.”

Lu Xinzhu nodded, slowly. “Wise words.” Then she reached out and poked Shen Xi in the shoulder. “How did you know what to say? You didn’t know that in the sky pillar.”

“I asked Yunlan,” she admitted. “After we visited Zhao Ye’s class. I told him he was the one who was older and wiser now, so he had to give me some good advice for the next time I needed it. That’s what he told me.”

“Smart. I do mean it, you know; I’m glad to be back. I missed --” Lu Xinzhu waved her hand broadly around the space. “All of this. Everything.”

“I missed take-out.” It was nice, being in a time when they could go outside and find something to eat, and it meant getting something from a street vendor, not foraging. And it was nice making Xinzhu laugh.

“Is that your way of saying you’re hungry? I’m sure we could find some food around here.”

“Soon,” she said. “There’s no rush.”

They could take their time. See what new things the world had to offer, and what old things they would rediscover. She looked at Lu Xinzhu -- she was looking at the walkway, but her eyes were far away. “You okay?” she asked.

Lu Xinzhu took a deep breath, and very deliberately looked away from the walkway. “I’m good,” she said, smiling. “I was just thinking about that first night. We fulfilled our promise -- we stayed together.”

“We did.” She never could have predicted where that promise would take them. So many unexpected journeys along the way, to lead them all back together again in the same place, at the same time. “And even with all the worrying we did, the kids are all right.”

“Ha -- I still say the worrying helped. But they’ve done well,” Lu Xinzhu said. “I think Shen Wei and Yunlan are talking about getting married again. Shen Wei asked if we would be part of the ceremony.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That we would be honored, of course.”

She nodded. It was true -- she was pretty sure they could watch their kids get married a hundred times, and they would enjoy it every time. From the way they talked, they might get a chance to find out.

“Do you know when?” she asked.

“He didn’t say. He, ah -- he asked if we were planning on sticking around for a few months, though. So, probably soon.”

“Are we?” She hadn’t actually thought that far ahead.

Lu Xinzhu shrugged. “I said yes. Long term, I don’t know, but I’m not sure any of us do. I thought you might have some ideas.”

The options felt endless, spread out in front of them. But she could admit there was one that called to her more than the others.

She looked up at the sky. Through the vines, she could see the stars coming out. “We spent ten thousand years as boundless energy. I wouldn’t mind feeling grounded for a while.”

She could feel Lu Xinzhu nodding next to her. “I agree. The ship too. I think she missed being a physical entity. ”

“It has its benefits. We get to experience one thing at a time, now.” She was still getting used to it, but she liked it.

“And you have some thoughts, about what we might experience next?”

“I was thinking -- maybe find a river, plant a garden.” She smiled, and leaned their shoulders together. “Grow some potatoes?”

Lu Xinzhu laughed, and leaned back. “Sure; that sounds good to me. We can grow anything we want.”