Chapter Text
The tip of Nezha’s shoe kicks at the rough grains of sand beneath his toes, scattering the glittering yellows across the hem of his robes.
“Stop that.” He hears the hiss of his mother’s voice as she shifts away from the spray of sand, shaking out the silk fabrics of her gown. With an irritated huff, she smooths the palm of her hand across the heavy swell of her belly.
Nezha had never thought of his mother as particularly kind, even if she loves him. But as her pregnancy progressed, her mood has only gotten worse. He can’t help the flare of annoyance that tugs at his lip as he glares at the creature in Mother’s belly, taking away any little scraps of love she’d managed to show to Nezha in the past.
He stills his feet with immense effort, turning his glare to the sand below instead. He’s not used to spending much time with his mother, and his nursemaid is much more patient with his outbursts. “Sorry, Mother.”
He tries to behave himself, even as the scorching noon sun beats down on his scalp from above, even as sweat gathers under his tight topknot and underneath the seams of his uncomfortable robes. He much prefers the loose fabrics of tunics and trousers. But today is important, or so his nursemaid tells him. He needs to look like the Yin that he is, he needs to make his father proud.
Gathered here at the edge of a glimmering blue strait, snaking its way through the city of Arlong, Nezha and his family await the arrival of their newest guest.
He’s not sure why this guest is so important. He’s been told that she comes from a powerful lineage, although nowhere near as important as the Yins. He’s been told she’ll be part of their family, one day. He’s been told to keep a distance from her, that she’s been through a lot, that she’s dangerous and uncivilized and will need time to adjust.
From the whispers of servants gliding through the Arlong palace halls, unaware of Nezha’s little body hiding behind a pillar as he plays a hiding game with his best friends, he hears that the rest of her people are dead, entirely eradicated by Mugen forces.
He hears that she can make fire with nothing but her bare hands.
Around a nearby bend of the winding strait appears a sampan, its passenger hidden by heavy veils of fabric, one of Father’s men steering the boat and hiding from the sun under a wide-brimmed hat. Nezha sucks in a breath, both excited to be done with all this waiting, to go back to the cool halls of the palace and return to his friends, and nervous about coming face to face with this terrifying creature of a girl.
Nezha stretches his neck, straightens his legs as tall as his six-year-old body can make him. Standing between the towering figures of his eleven-year-old siblings, his pregnant mother, and his powerful father, he wants to feel as strong and imposing as they are. He is a Yin, after all. He puffs out his chest, wills his expression into the kind he’d seen Father wear whenever he was hoping to intimidate an adversary into doing what he wants.
Nezha had practiced it in his mirror, so he thinks he’s doing quite a good job.
He won’t let himself cower before the girl, no matter how scary she appears to be. He imagines her as a monster – covered in scales, flames licking through the cracks and scorching at Nezha’s eyelashes. What kind of creature would it take to make fire?
The sampan drifts to a slow, creaking stop by the sandy bank before their feet. The man who had been steering jumps out onto the shore, holds the vessel steady with a sunburnt hand.
He knocks a quick, heavy fist against the side of the boat. “Alrighty, little miss, we’re here. You can come out, now.”
Something shuffles from behind the curtains swathing the sampan, the boat creaks again. Nezha keeps his expression steady as a small, brown hand reaches through the fabrics, peels them aside.
The intimidating glare of his face crumbles into the abyss the moment he sees her face.
This is no monster. But he can’t be sure this is a person anymore, either.
She shuffles forward, slowly, as if emerging from a deep sleep, a horrific nightmare. Her face is hollow. The full baby fat of her cheeks is sunken into her skull, eyes swollen red but so utterly dry, as if laid out too long under the sun. There are old, dried tear tracks on her cheeks, her lips, her chin, her neck. The sleeves of her tunic are wet and crumpled.
Her lips don’t tremble. Instead, they’re cracked and loose, as if she’d strained them so hard that the muscles forgot how to work.
She shuffles to the end of the sampan, stares down over its edge, uncomprehending. She’s so small. She can’t be older than Nezha. A small, pitying look flashes over the steering man’s face, and he reaches under her armpits carefully, lifts her out of the sampan, sets her down on the sandy bank.
Her hands fold together neatly, a long-ingrained instinct of politeness, and she continues to stare at her feet.
She is no monster.
A short, strained moment passes, and then Father clears his throat. “Mai’rinnen, we welcome you to Arlong. All your needs will be attended to over the upcoming years, until you are… ready to fulfill your womanly duties. I am certain your betrothal to my eldest son will then result in a fruitful marriage.”
The girl with the lyrical, foreign name, Mai-rin-en, sniffs – a tiny, pathetic sound, the first she’d made. Her head lifts, just enough to raise her swollen, bloodshot eyes to his father, and for the first time, Nezha can make out a sign of life within the broken girl.
Her large eyes shine with emotion like a polished obsidian stone.
“I-” she opens her mouth, and a cracked noise brushes past her lips before she chokes on it, gulping back a sob.
She tries again, the words spilling like blood from a festering wound. “I want to go home.”
Her voice is unlike any Nezha had ever heard. It shakes with a grief that he cannot comprehend. It lilts and flows with an accent not native to any he’d encountered from the many visitors to the palace of Arlong, but strangely enticing.
A sudden gurgle of disgust grates at his eardrums, so painfully familiar as it scratches up his older brother’s throat. But this time, it’s not directed at Nezha.
“Why do you sound like that?” Jinzha asks with unrestrained contempt.
“Jinzha!” Mother snaps loudly, reaching over Nezha to pinch at Jinzha’s ear until he yelps. “Where is your decorum?”
Jinzha huffs, rubbing at his ear with a petulant little pout once Mother releases him. “So not only am I going to have to marry some savage Speerly, but I’ll have to listen to that voice for the rest of my life?”
“Jinzha.” Yin Vaisra doesn’t yell, doesn’t snap. He doesn’t have to. All his father says is his name, and Jinzha cowers immediately, lowering his face as shame flushes across his cheekbones.
His father turns his gaze back to Mai’rinnen, and Nezha follows suit. Her bottom lip is trembling, now, and she’s staring at Jinzha’s towering figure in confusion and terror, her hands tucked into her chest for comfort.
“I apologize for my son,” Nezha’s father says evenly. “He should know better.”
Jinzha cowers further, lips pursed tightly at Father’s condemnation.
“Now, you must be tired from your long journey. Let’s go inside, give you a chance to see your new home.”
Nezha doesn’t get what happens next, not really, not until later. The Arlong palace is amazing, the best place to live. Anyone should be honoured to be here. But somehow, something about Father’s simple statement, it’s enough for Mai’rinnen to freeze at the words, new home, new home, for just a second, before a massive crack breaks through her unsteady composure.
And then, she starts to cry.
Or starts again, Nezha supposes. But something about seeing it happen right before his eyes stabs like a hot knife into his chest. It’s a weakness, he knows that. Father had told him not to fall for anyone’s tears, for they must be a manipulation. And last time Nezha had dared to cry in front of him, Father had backhanded him hard enough to leave a mark.
But he can’t help it. Seeing this trembling mess of a girl sobbing loudly, palms pressing into her eyes in a fruitless attempt to stanch the flow of tears, reminds him of his own long, lonely nights crying himself to sleep after Jinzha told him to get lost once more, or Muzha pushed him away when he tried to play with her, or Father chastised him for being too weak to call himself a Yin.
He'd thought he was alone. But at least he has the distant but existing love of his mother, he has the care of his nursemaid, the companionship of his friends.
The loneliness of this girl is incomprehensible to him.
But when he looks at Mai’rinnen, he feels like he’s drowning alongside her.
“No- no-” Mai’rinnen continues to sob as Nezha’s father gives a quiet command to a nearby servant to take the girl into the palace, as the servant picks her up and Mai’rinnen beats her fists against his back with a sudden ferocity. “I want to go back, I want my home, I want my mama-”
She continues to weep and struggle even as the servant walks away with her, even as her heartbreaking cries fade away, even as Nezha and his family are left there standing by the sampan, utterly quiet, all of them waiting for Father to break the silence, terrified to make a noise otherwise.
Yin Vaisra sighs, purses his lips as his only sign of discomfort. “Pitiful thing. Try not to antagonize her too much, children.”
And with that, with matching ‘yes, Father’s from all three of the Yin children, they all make their way back to the Arlong palace, Nezha’s feet particularly heavy in his shoes.
She’s cold. She’s really cold.
Rin doesn’t remember ever feeling this cold.
She remembers the warm sands of Speer, shifting under her toes. She remembers the heat of her cousin’s fire as he began his Speerly training, sending little wisps of heat at Rin’s face until she giggled. She remembers the bonfires that lit up the night sky and warmed her fingertips as she reached for the flames, held secure in her mama’s lap. She remembers the warmth of her mama’s arms around her, drifting off to sleep safe and protected.
She remembers the bloody screams and scorching pillars of fire as monstrous foreigners swept through her home with swords and battle cries. She remembers being dragged from the ashes by harsh hands, so harsh and quick that she didn’t even get a chance to find her favourite toy before she was taken away, the doll she takes everywhere.
She doesn’t remember cold.
It seeps in from every angle, every corner. It drips through her coarse, foreign clothing, nothing like the colourful, pretty fabrics from home. It emanates from the hard, stone balcony beneath her, the sharp rails digging into her back, the biting Nikara air, the cloud-hidden sun. It spills from somewhere deep inside her lost, broken heart.
She doesn’t understand what’s happening.
She doesn’t understand why she’s betrothed to that mean, scary boy. She doesn’t understand how she’ll be married to him, even if it’s years away, because people who marry are in love, and she doesn’t think her collapsed heart will ever let her feel that feeling again.
She doesn’t understand why she’s not home. She doesn’t understand why her mama isn’t here.
She doesn’t understand.
They’re dead, she was told as she screamed and clawed as she’d been dragged off the Speerly beach, away from all the ash and smoke and piles of misshapen flesh.
It doesn’t make sense.
Dead is for the elderly grandmother, passing away surrounded by her loved ones. Dead is for the sick, fading away inside the house of healers. Dead makes sense for them; it means they were ready to move on to a better place, to leave their home behind.
Dead isn’t for her friends, her cousins. Dead isn’t for her mama.
They weren’t ready to move on, to leave their home. They weren’t ready to leave Rin.
They weren’t. They weren’t. Her mama wouldn’t leave her like this. She wouldn’t.
Would she?
Rin’s lungs warble again, exhale in pathetic, broken gasps that claw past her parched, wounded throat. She has no more tears left to cry. She wishes she did, because all that’s left now is a pounding headache and the terror gripping her chest in the worst pain she’d ever felt in her life.
Rin wasn’t ready to leave her home behind. She was dragged off it, nonetheless.
Perhaps her mama was dragged away from her home, screaming and clawing, just like Rin.
And yet, it still feels like Rin had been abandoned. Abandoned to these tall, cold foreigners that forced her into this awful, dreary palace, into this bedroom, into the adjoining balcony she now huddles in, trying to get as far away from everything as her body will let her.
Rin wants to go home.
Rin wants her mama.
Her dry, blurry, pained eyes blink harshly, look over the arms she’d wrapped around her knees, across the balcony, over its edge, down to the hard, packed earth far below. She wonders, not for the first time, if maybe her mama is waiting for her there, at the bottom.
If she searches for death, maybe it will deliver her to her family.
It scares her, that thought. She’d fallen pretty awfully, once, tripping off a small cliff on Speer, twisting her ankle badly enough that it took her weeks to walk again. It hurt. It hurt so much.
She doesn’t want it to hurt.
But she’s already in so much pain, that internal pain she doesn’t know how to heal, an internal pain she knows no medic could fix. She doesn’t want to feel that pain anymore. She’d been good, she’d been going to all her lessons and helping her mama with chores. She doesn’t deserve this pain.
Somehow, miraculously, her eyes find the final slivers of moisture her body has to offer, and she feels just a little warmth in the form of the tears trailing down her cheeks. The familiar heat just makes her cry harder.
She doesn’t think she’ll every truly feel warm again – the warm of Speerly air, the warm of her people’s flames, the warm of her mama’s embrace.
She wants to go to her mama.
“Mai’rinnen?”
Rin gasps at the small, quiet voice, stumbling over the syllables of her name in his best attempt at making it sound right in that awful, scratching Nikara accent. Her shoulder blades dig harder into the railing behind her as she scrambles back desperately, fresh fear grappling with her heartbeat. She hadn’t even heard him come in over her sobs.
It’s the little boy who was there when she’d arrived here, one of the three Yin siblings. He’d been looking at her with the same big, sad eyes he is looking at her with now. He’s holding a worn leather bag in his hands.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She watches him silently, her tears stunned away by his sudden, startling appearance.
She doesn’t say anything. She hates this Nikara language, the rough, ugly syllables rolling off her unpracticed tongue. But it’s the only language anyone here will understand her with. It only reminds her how far away from home she really is.
He shivers, once, a cool gust of wind chilling him through his simple tunic. She thinks he’ll go back inside, now. He must have gotten lost. She doesn’t know why else he would be here.
Instead, he takes one deep, steadying breath, and slides down to the cold balcony floor, sitting directly across from her. He shivers again.
They sit in silence, for a moment, just staring at each other, two children from worlds apart.
He’s the first to make a move, opening the bag in his hands, reaching in.
He pulls out a misshapen cylinder. As he unwraps the tissues around the object, Rin begins to see little lines of steam rising from his hand, a nice smell emanating from the object.
The boy clears his throat, revealing fully a strangely familiar length of what looks like fried dough.
“I heard you wouldn’t touch your food,” he says softly, chewing on his lip in contemplation. “I don’t blame you. That stuff the chef made today was pretty gross.”
Rin purses her lips, hugging her knees tighter to her chest. She didn’t touch the food. It has very little to do with the food itself, more so the pain roiling through her stomach with the thought of putting this foreign food in her mouth. She hadn’t eaten since she left Speer. If she concentrates hard enough, she thinks she can still taste the soup dumplings her mama had made her for breakfast the morning Rin’s life had been cracked into pieces.
The boy’s face flushes, just a little. He holds out the dough in his hand. “Anyway. I always ask my nursemaid to bring me steamed buns when I’m sad because they remind me of… of better times. I thought you might like something from your home.”
He reaches out again, further, and this time the warm, warm, so so warm, edge of the dough brushes against her trembling hand, and her fingers open automatically, grasping onto the offering weakly.
“The kitchen staff told me this is called youtiao, that it’s popular on Speer.” The boy shrugs, as if it’s nothing, as if a fresh splinter of pain isn’t wedging its way into Rin’s chest right at this moment. “I hope you like it.”
She does. It’s not something she’d eat often, something more popular on Nikan than Speer, which is likely why the kitchen staff were even able to make it on such short notice, but it’s a snack her mama always bought for her on the rare occasion the Nikara traders would come by their shores.
She doesn’t realize she’s crying again, until the tears drip on the hot length of dough and evaporate with little hisses.
“Oh no,” the boy says quickly, desperately, eyes growing wide. “I’m sorry. You don’t like it?”
Rin breathes in roughly through her nose, once, twice.
Finally, she speaks. “Thank you.”
Her voice cracks around the harsh Nikara syllables.
She takes a bite of the steaming youtiao before she can fall into her spiralling thoughts once again.
It doesn’t taste like much; it’s not supposed to. But the moment she bites into the familiar treat, her body remembers just how hungry she is.
She devours the dough in mere bites, so quickly that she doesn’t have the time to ponder how the familiar taste makes her feel.
The boy cracks a smile. He’s missing a tooth, Rin notices. She’d started losing her own baby teeth, recently. But it looks surprisingly funny on his noble, otherwise perfect face. She snorts a little giggle through her mouthful of food, barely stopping herself from spitting it out onto the balcony floor.
His eyebrows rise in surprise, and then he flushes scarlet. “What? What’s funny?”
Rin chews through the rest of her mouthful, swallows. “You’re missing a tooth.”
The boy scowls. “My nursemaid said that means I’m becoming a man.”
Rin snorts again, clutching at her stomach. It feels like it’s been ages since she’d last laughed. The last time she remembers laughing was with her mama.
Pain lances through her heart again, then, familiar and so, so awful. Her mama is gone. Her smile drops, her lip trembles.
The boy’s scowl immediately slips away, something gentle settling on his features.
“I’m sorry,” he says, eyes flitting down sadly. “For- for what happened to you.”
Rin swallows, refuses to meet the boy’s gaze when he looks back up.
She desperately searches for a way to change the subject, to chase away that awful feeling clawing at her throat.
“Your brother is mean,” Rin blurts. She winces. Not a good subject change.
The boy grimaces, pain flashing across his features. “Yeah. He’s mean to me too.”
A moment of silence flows, stretches between them. Rin chews on her lip.
Once again, the boy is the one to break the quiet. His ears go red. “I- um- I don’t agree with what Jinzha said, actually. I like your voice – if that makes you feel better. It’s a nice voice.”
Rin blinks, eyes wide. “It’s a Speerly accent. Speerly is my native tongue.”
“Speer has its own language?”
Rin’s lip wobbles again, and she buries her face in her knees.
“Yes,” she mumbles shakily, sniffling softly. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get to speak it again. No one knows it here.”
“Oh,” the boy says in reply. His voice is small, shy. “Can you teach me a word?”
Rin looks up from her knees, uncertainty glazing her gaze.
“If you- if you want to,” he stammers softly, playing with the bag in his hands.
Rin purses her lips, considering. Why does this Nikara boy want to know? Why does he care?
It’s rather pathetic, how quickly Rin decides she doesn’t care about the reason. It feels like a lifeline, a final chance to let her tongue taste the words she misses so dearly.
“Ka-têng,” Rin says slowly, melodically, savouring every bite.
“Ka-têng,” the boy repeats. The word sounds better than Rin expected, coming from a Nikara tongue. “What does it mean?”
Rin lets out a shaky breath, looks out across the balcony, yearning pooling in her chest. “I’m not sure, in Nikara. It means something like… home. Family.”
“Ka-têng,” he says again, more confidently. He smiles. Rin huddles back into her knees.
The boy speaks again, after a quiet moment. “Can we go inside? It’s cold out here. I have some more youtiao in this bag, if you’re still hungry.”
Oh, right. Rin sniffles, wipes a sleeve under her nose. She looks away from the boy, out over the balcony edge once again.
She still wants to see her mama. But maybe a bit more youtiao wouldn’t hurt, first. And the boy does look really cold, so she doesn’t see the harm in going inside for a bit, while she eats.
Rin gets up shakily, nodding. She doesn’t realize just how cold she’d been until she enters the bedroom, the heat of the crackling fireplace hitting her like a tidal wave. She sways in her spot, stumbles when she tries to take another step.
A hand around her sleeve stops her from falling.
“Are you okay?” The boy asks, brow furrowed in concern as he helps her stand. Rin blinks hazily, thoughts blurring with the painful vice around her heart, a mess of feelings and worries.
“I’m tired,” she mumbles, taking another stumbling step, this time in the direction of the large bed occupying the room.
“Okay,” the boy murmurs, already helping guide her towards the mattress. “I’ll make sure the kitchen staff include some youtiao with your breakfast tomorrow morning, okay?”
Rin nods blearily, knees making contact with the edge of the bed as she stumbles into the sheets, already crawling for the warmth hidden within. The many sleepless hours of travel and grief all poke and prod at her tormented soul, now that the veil of cold had lifted from her skin. All she wants is the welcome warmth of bedsheets around her body, now. It’s almost peaceful, this exhaustion, chasing away the worst of her torment.
Rin curls into a ball, sheets up to her chin, shivering. She hugs the pillow to her chest, since she has no toy to hug instead, no mama to hug. She opens her eyes, only to see the boy still there, standing by her bedside awkwardly.
He notices her gaze, flushes again as he reaches into the bag still between his hands. “I have something else for you.”
With a slow, hesitant hand, he pulls out a big, soft object, the size of his head. It takes a confused moment of uncertain blinking until Rin can make out what it is.
“It’s a stuffed boat,” the boy says a little shyly, shuffling his feet in embarrassment, but stretching out the stuffed toy in her direction, nonetheless. “I got it for my birthday. I really like boats. It’s soft so it’s nice to hug, when I feel alone.”
Rin blinks stupidly, taking in the woven edges and curves of the vaguely boat-shaped fabric stuffed with soft feathers, droplets of yellow bringing life to the faded designs on the prow. The spots of colour almost look like the sunlight that would reflect off the roof of her and mama’s home on a particularly bright morning, the rays of warmth that would sink into her skin.
“You need it more than I do.”
At those words, her eyes snap back up to the boy’s. There is a sad, uncertain look in his eyes. But on top of that: determination. He reaches out to her again, pushing the toy towards her chest.
Rin doesn’t have the heart to tell him she knows nothing about boats.
But she misses her toys. She misses her doll. It might be nice to have a toy, for the time being, maybe it will make her feel better. And this way she can actually use her pillow as a pillow, and hug this toy instead.
Rin shifts, placing the pillow under her cheek, before reaching out for the boat and grasping it fully. When she presses it to her chest, she realizes it smells faintly of flowers. The smell brings a small, tender bloom of warmth to her chest.
Her eyes blink slowly, slower, her exhaustion pulling at her once more.
With her final ounces of willpower, she looks back up at the boy. “What’s your name?”
His gaze was stuck to his toy, looking at it with longing. But at her voice, he pulls his eyes away to meet her gaze.
He smiles crookedly, revealing that missing tooth and bringing the tiniest of smiles back to Rin’s face. “Nezha.”