paper tears

There is a prince. Or maybe he’s a wolf, but he’s a prince, too. A prince in the guise of a wolf or a wolf playing dress-up as a prince. No one is so sure anymore exactly what the prince’s family really is, but everyone speaks as though they’re authorities. This is what they know: his parents and his grandparents and his great-grandparents back through the ages, all the way to the beginning, and maybe even before that, they were all wolves. So, too, it is logical that the prince would be. Nobody knows which of the prince’s ancestors is responsible for this quirk, only that it had to start somewhere. Only things that have begun can be passed down after all.

Some say this ancestor was cursed; some, that they were loved by a god. Maybe it’s both. That’s for you to decide. There are families like this in the world, blessed or burdened. Some are not wolves. This is the way of things.

At this very moment, the blessed-or-burdened prince in wolf’s clothing has been critically wounded by a predator near a heavily-trafficked road. Who is this predator, you might ask? It’s a man, of course, a man with a bow and a quiver bursting with arrows and a fair eye for prey, haunting the forests surrounding a town nobody really cares about, least of all this predator-man. But fair is not good and he hadn’t known what he’d struck when he drew his weapon, so eager for a kill. It might be unfortunate that this man is dying now for daring to attack the prince from a rival kingdom. His throat has been ravaged and the culprit, our wolf prince, is trying to crawl away, whining, smearing blood in a thick trail behind it. It is not human right now, the wolf. All it knows is pain, the same pain his would-be murderer is feeling as his life gushes out from the wound in his neck.

The gushing stops eventually, but the wolf keeps going.

Perhaps it is right that this should be so: the dead man is a prince, too, and not a very nice one. Most aren’t. Rather, he’s a corpse masquerading as a prince. Close enough still to a prince to count, much like the wolf.

The corpse-prince’s father will regret not training him better in the art of hunting even as he is ecstatic to put to work his own training in the art of declaring war. For his son—or for himself—he would do anything.

You may have heard this one before.

All stories are old stories, even the new ones.

As soon as Lan Zhan stepped into the apothecary’s shop, the gnarl-knuckled woman who ran it stopped speaking with her current customer. Rheumy, yellowing eyes focused on him as he approached the counter. It was always her with whom he dealt; there seemed to be no family to assist her. He knew better than to ask. It would force him to confront questions about his commitment to his own family, what he was and wasn’t willing to bear for them, and why he wasn’t there for his mother and brother and uncle if he was so willing to judge.

Were the world a fair place, the man she’d been speaking with would see his errand completed before Lan Zhan’s. In this world, the man whispered urgently to the apothecary and pointed indiscreetly at him. The townsfolk had all agreed, seemingly independently of one another—though if there had been some kind of meeting, it wasn’t like Lan Zhan would have been invited—that Lan Zhan should be given no reason to stick around anywhere longer than the time it took to help him complete his errand and send him back from whence he came. The villagers he sometimes served would suffer no more of his presence than necessary before their expressions and words soured beyond what he was willing to stomach from them.

As he valued expediency, this didn’t hurt him overmuch. So much of his day was devoted to study that he had no reason to concern himself over whether others wanted him around or not. If the man wished to allow him to complete his errand first, that was his business. Besides, it left him with a little extra free time with which he might snatch a few minutes of reprieve. As such, he refused to quibble.

With hands prone to shaking, joints twisted by arthritis, the woman retrieved a basket from beneath the ancient wooden counter where she worked. Her skin, thin and delicate as rice paper, was spotted with a lifetime of discolorations, scars, and burns, proof of her experience with these ingredients that were her livelihood and his. Her eyes were not kind when they met his own. “Your order.”

They were never kind, her eyes.

He studied his purchases carefully as he transferred each one into his own basket. Every packet and parcel was expertly processed, preserved, and packaged. Some were dried and powdered already; some, by his request, were fresh—or as fresh as a once-weekly trip into town could allow them to be.

He’s back again, they would say if he showed his face twice within one ten-day period. What can he possibly want now?

Satisfied that everything was accounted for, he passed the commensurate compensation into her palm along with a list of the ingredients he will need to pick up next week.

“Good day to you, witch,” she said, only as mannered as was required of her to avoid his nonexistent wrath since it was said of witches that they abhorred discourtesy. While that was true of him, the rest of what was said rang false: when witches were displeased, they cursed those who displeased them. This was nonsense. In Lan Zhan’s long, lonely life, he’d never cursed another person, not even when they deserved it.

It was useless to return her good wishes and so he did not. He’d long grown weary of trying to earn the kind regard of strangers. That was a desire harbored by a child and he was no longer a child.

She, like her customer, like everyone he met, sighed in audible relief when he left the store.

A cold wind accosted him as he stepped outside, unusual for summer. Were his brother here, he might have teased him for influencing the weather with his foul mood, but he’d done no such thing since he was an toddler, when he sometimes caused a very localized storm in the backyard of his mother’s cottage if he didn’t get his way. When this happened, his mother used to laugh, unafraid despite the fact that she had none of his skills, none of his powers. She found books for him and taught him to read from them and eventually he could control himself enough to stop destroying the tender shoots which sprung optimistically from the vegetable patch.

His brother, too, bore up well under the torrential downpours of his childhood. On the rare occasions he risked writing to Lan Zhan, he often reminisced about them, particularly at this time of year, when it was hot in the village of his youth. He would insist that Lan Zhan should return and bring with him the rain. Lan Zhan never did, but Lan Huan never stopped asking either.

Basket awkwardly hitched onto his elbow, he fussed with his cloak until it was pulled more tightly around his frame. Gaunt, his mother might have called him if she could see him now.

Though it was chilly, though he knew better, though he was unwelcome, he stopped outside the village’s lone tea house. There was truly no avoiding it, though he really ought to know better by now than to linger outside its doors, wide open and welcoming to all save him. The flag hanging from the eaves fluttered viciously in the whipping wind Lan Zhan might or might not have conjured.

From a quick peek inside, he saw that almost every table was filled with patrons, all leaning on the tables that dotted the room, transfixed. On a raised dais in the back of the room, a storyteller weaved a tale. He was a frequent guest in the village, beloved by all, including Lan Zhan, who often ruminated on his stories long after his voice faded from memory.

Today, he didn’t have the spare coin with which he might buy refreshments or compensate the storyteller—there wasn’t much compensation in being able to perform magic for others, no matter how often they came fearfully calling for it—but nobody stopped him from standing outside the door and listening that way. Though it was likely terror that kept him from being sent away, he pretended it was mercy, that it was grace, that as long as he could make himself ignorable, he wouldn’t be turned away.

Though he’d missed part of the story, he could guess well enough what it was about: doomed lovers destined to part forever. It was the storyteller’s favorite type of tale and Lan Zhan liked them, too, liked the thought of loving another person so deeply that nothing could break the bonds of loyalty between them. He wasn’t as sanguine about the unhappy endings, but they seemed like a reasonable enough price to pay for having gotten to experience something so moving. In this life, most things weren’t fair. It stood to reason that love couldn’t be either.

To have such a love would make any pain worthwhile, he believed regardless.

Despite being so near to the well-trod road of salvation, a full day passes before the wolf arrives at the edge of civilization. More than once, he’s stopped and gnawed on his wounded hind leg in the hopes of shedding the pain ripping through him. It only makes him hurt more, of course, but he’s in no position to think so logically about these things. At least it’s a different sort of pain. There is relief to be had in that.

His body collapses in the dust only a few centimeters from a divot in the road carved by years of carts’ wheels taking the journey to and from the nearby town. One farmer, perhaps braver than the rest, hauls him out of the way. The rest ignore him entirely, neither willing to put him out of his misery nor willing to save him. The people here know too well how to mind their own business.

Slowly, his sanity returns to him, mind grown used to the constancy of the pain. He knows now that he needs help desperately or he will die. But who will want to help a wolf in these parts? Wolves aren’t so welcome here as they are back home, where wolves are venerated on the off chance that they are a member of the imperial elite. People there have died thinking they are pressing a suit with a prince or princess of the realm when they are merely conversing with a wild animal.

His subjects, the greediest of them, aren’t always the smartest people in the land.

The one thing he realizes as he yelps pitifully and paws at the dirt is he cannot show his human form here, not to anyone, not when he knows who has attacked him, if not the reason why. Though he can transform into a wolf, he cannot also read the minds of men. Better to be careful and safe.

His blood wets the earth, mixing it to a thick mud paste that coats his fur. He is disgusted, the parts of him that are still capable of feeling disgust, and he can do nothing, not even crawl toward help.

That farmer might have saved him from getting run over by a cart, but he hasn’t made it any easier for him to be helped.

If one of them helps me, he thinks, wild, if one of them helps me, I will give everything to them. Even if they are my enemy. Even if they are worse than that.

This he tells himself as he whines one last time, high in the back of his throat.

After that, he doesn’t tell himself anything at all.

There was and had always been only one way into and out of the village, butted as it was against a forest on all other sides, but though there was only this option, once outside of it, branching paths worked their way through the woods, leading to who knew where. Lan Zhan was not welcome to travel those roads and so he found his own way home.

He overheard talk of spirit paths sometimes, new walkways opening and closing again behind the mischievous creature responsible for them. There was no such thing as spirits, not of the sort they meant, but there was Lan Zhan, who painstakingly cleared various areas to allow him to return to his home without bothering others.

Choosing his favorite, the one he so rarely allowed himself to travel—useful herbs, flowers, even mushrooms grew along the way, whatever he needed whenever he needed it, he did not want it to become sick of him—he set off.

The crisp, late summer wind transformed into a simple breeze the further he got from the village. It whispered teasingly of autumn’s coming despite the sun, high and bright overhead. Were he to have taken his usual route home, it would have beat down on him until he was unpleasantly warm, robes stuck to his back and midsection. Here, the thick-thin-thick canopy dappled the ground, cooling it pleasantly. The sunlight sparkled and shone through the sharp-edged leaves, glowing green. Despite the time of year and the unseasonable chill, it felt welcoming. He turned his face up and breathed deeply, his chest expanding and loosening from the pressure of going into town.

While he walked, he plucked mushrooms from the ground and the bark of trees, gathered a beetle’s carapace, picked a few wild growing gentians that he would dry and press into a bookmark. He was always in need of bookmarks as there were always so many books in need of reading. Every year his library grew larger and every year he grew stronger. No matter how despised he was, he might one day protect the people who were his.

Not that anyone belonged to him. Or with him. It had been years since he’d even seen his brother and mother. A witch living on your outskirts was already an omen. Seeing a witch loved and protected was reason enough to attack and ostracize the people who dared to love and protect.

As he admired a small patch of grass, hardy and bright even this late in the year, nothing that was useful in his work, but wonderful all the same, he heard a shout of pain coming from somewhere to his left. A flash of pink caught in the corner of his eye, visible through the wide, thick trunks of ancient-grown trees. It came from the clearing on the other side of this particular copse.

The vicious, trilling hoot of an owl echoed, an ill omen. He had seen such birds before and death always followed.

As he rushed through the underbrush, thin, whip-like branches caught him across the face and snagged in his robes. He held his basket close, not wanting to lose it in his desire to reach the clearing. The last thing he wanted to do was return to the apothecary’s. Too many tongues would wag. The woods agreed with him for they didn’t take his parcels from him as he rushed forth.

Another low, pained sound filled the air and then: nothing, only the sound of twigs snapping under Lan Zhan’s feet.

Not even a moment later, Lan Zhan burst through the tree line. All was quiet but for the rustle of the wind and a brown-black tail feather floating gently on the breeze.

In the trampled, dying grass, a small, shimmering pink creature fluttered and bucked.

Coming closer, he realized it was a moth, large for an insect of its type, unusual, too, in its coloring and the fact that it was out in daylight hours, so conspicuous. One of its wings, delicate and sparkling in the sun, was mangled. As it tried to correct this deficiency, it listed sideways, fuzzy antennae twitching wildly.

It was very clearly in pain, or whatever sensation would be analogous for a moth, but Lan Zhan had no idea how to help. He didn’t want to hurt it further, but he didn’t believe its wing should remain twisted either.

Crouching, he gently guided the moth into his palm. Its legs, its wings, the fuzzy antennae, they all brushed lightly against his skin, slightly ticklish. Once it was safely settled in the cup of his hand, it slumped, a puppet parted from its strings. As though it realized it would not be harmed further, it stopped fighting, stopped moving entirely, except for the awkward twitch of its wings as they settled, the one still bent at an angle.

A ragged tear in the chitin disrupted the delicate pink patterning of the wing. What a pity. The pattern was rather beautiful.

Lan Zhan carefully studied the rest of its body for signs of injury, but found nothing of note. Its ruff appeared soft and full, such a pale shade of pink that it was almost white. When Lan Zhan skimmed one fingertip over the bloom of fur, the moth leaned into it.

When Lan Zhan attempted to place it atop the small cloth covering the contents of the basket, it thrashed afresh, startling Lan Zhan with the sudden violence of its reaction. Only when Lan Zhan held it again did it settle down, body trembling minutely.

Warmth bloomed in his chest as it calmed, an overwhelming protective instinct expanding within him at the sight. If Lan Zhan curled his hand into a fist, he could crush it. Surely it was aware enough of its surroundings to know that and yet it trusted him anyway. That meant something to Lan Zhan. It meant everything to him.

In return, Lan Zhan didn’t deny himself the gentle, insistent obligation he felt to this small creature.

“All will be well,” he insisted, holding it close the rest of the way home.

It didn’t stir beyond the delicate, excited waving of its antennae as Lan Zhan carried it.

As night falls, the heavens weep cold, heavy tears to match the falling temperature, a perfect coupling. It makes for an unlucky combination for the unconscious wolf prince. But to suffer while so desperately injured? This is balance. After all, he’s lucky he’s even made it this far. At first, no one had bothered him save that single, pragmatic farmer, but the weaker he’d grown throughout the day, the more people had stopped, wondering if they could successfully kill such a large, fearsome creature quick enough to avoid any last ditch effort at survival. Some had determined they could, only stopped by the realization that they couldn’t bring their prize home even if they did succeed and anyway, it was taking too long to die, the sad, selfish wretch.

Now is a different story. Now, it’s too dark to see more than a few feet in front of one’s face. Now, the rain and cold is as likely to kill a person as it is a pathetically gasping wolf.

Now, there is only one young man trudging through the same hellish storm. This young man is alone in the world, though he’s found he hasn’t minded it so very much through most of his life. He’s known so little of anything else with which to compare it. How can he miss companionship when he hasn’t experienced it in so many years?

But even if he is alone, this youth, there are others who rely on him back home, even if they are only the handful of chickens tucked away in their shelter, the pair of goats who like to graze the sweetest grasses in the spring, the rows of vegetables he plants diligently year after year, barely enough to feed himself and keep his tiny homestead from falling into complete disrepair. It is a small life he leads, but it is his alone and no one can take that from him.

If the wolf prince vacillates between the state of luck and its opposite, the youth persists in a perpetually unlucky state. This, too, hardly bothers him. You might have guessed: a lack of luck and loneliness go hand in hand. Like his loneliness, he’s known so little of anything else with which to compare it that struggle can’t register as anything except normal.

Maybe just this once, a little bit of luck rubs off on the youth, though he doesn’t know it yet and might not consider it as such when it finally arrives. Despite the wolf’s dark fur, fur as black as the night around it, no moon to light its way, the youth spots it by the glinting knife’s blade of a single slash of thunder.

Unlike the others who’ve come across the wolf, the youth considers neither leaving it behind nor killing it for its pelt and the thick, life-giving sustenance its muscle and sinew and organs could bring. No, the youth considers none of this as he determines how best to relocate the wolf to the cart he’s been pulling through the sticky, sucking mud.

Were the prince in his human form or even merely cognizant of what’s happening, he might object to the ease with which the young man lifts him, but pain has worn him to nothing. Though he whines, breathing slow and hindered as it is, he barely rouses. He is large even by a wolf’s standards, as tall as the youth, but the youth is strong and his empty cart is near. It isn’t impossibly difficult for him to haul the prince back even in the dark, even in the rain, even when his foot nearly slips out from beneath him. Nothing is impossibly difficult for the youth, just difficult.

When the wolf is settled, he croons nonsense words as he smooths the wolf’s fur, searching for the wound he’s sure must be there. Why else could he find a wolf on the side of the road?

When he can’t properly find it, he dithers over what to do. He’s not far from home, but far enough that he worries about the cold and how it might affect the wolf’s injury.

Can you guess what he does? What would any kind, thoughtful youth do under the same circumstance?

Making the decision is easy in the end: he has a cloak, you see, one that his mother left to him. It’s soft and warm and he’s always prized it for its excellent waterproofing. It is a precious heirloom, the only thing he owns that has been given to him specifically. It had been sewn for an adult, the man he’d one day become, he thinks she must have told him. He was very little back then, far too small to fit it; even today, it’s a little big, too wide in the shoulders and long in the sleeves and he might never truly fit it, but it’s his, though he can’t truly remember her words.

It’s his and he places it over the wolf’s wet, shivering body.

In its too restless sleep, it whines again and tucks its nose under the hood. The youth cannot help but smile. Though these circumstances are dire, the wolf is lovely. There can be no regrets in sharing even though the rain pummels the youth’s body like so many freezing needles.

The back path leading to Lan Zhan’s home seemed to have elongated since the last time he’d used it. Surely it didn’t normally take this long to get home. The moth’s wings fluttered, agitated, against the skin of his palm, his fingers. It itched and tickled in turn and Lan Zhan was afraid that calamity would befall if it didn’t calm properly. It’s life was in his hands in far too literal a manner for his tastes. The sooner he reached his home, the sooner he could place it somewhere safer than his own person. If only the path would agree.

After an interminable stretch of minutes, he finally reached the perimeter of the barrier that protected his home. With a wave of his hand, he lowered it. The garden contained within seemed almost to exhale in relief, spreading itself as far as it dared while the barrier remained down.

Vines curled around the wooden gate as though it wished to escape into the larger world. Though Lan Zhan used to fight it, he chose in the end to let it do what he would. The flower beds and vegetable patch and berry bushes were all warded against the spread of the vines, as were the windows and doors and the walkway of his home. Everywhere else was fair game and they took shameless advantage of that fact. They stretched and stretched forth, inching across the ground toward the path. From the outside, it might look foreboding, but Lan Zhan found it comforting to be so cradled in fresh, green life.

This garden of his, beautiful and wild as it was, the very antithesis of him, provided food and medicine. It was a feast for the heart and the mind and the stomach, every important thing in the world that one person could need. When he looked at it, wandered about it, he was always surprised and pleased to discover new growth so different from the empty space inside the four simple walls of his home.

What might nature do if he dropped the wards and let it fill the space as it would?

As Lan Zhan untangled a vine from where it had wound around the gate’s latch, the moth lifted its head, antennae twitching wildly as it marched back and forth across his upheld palm, roused by the change in scenery perhaps. Despite the ache forming in his shoulder, Lan Zhan kept his hand raised.

“Would you like to look around?” Even though there was nobody around to overhear him speaking to the moth, embarrassment curled around his heart at his whimsy. The moth, no matter how intelligent it looked, could not understand him. Still, he showed it around the garden and noticed that it seemed to enjoy the berry bush most of all.

Placing the basket on the grass, he crouched down. The moth patted at one of the leaves, climbing onto it. Unsteady, it prodded as best it could at one of the small, tart blackberries clustered against the thorn-riddled stem. “Be careful.”

The moth tipped sideways, precarious, and tumbled into Lan Zhan’s waiting palm.

“Take more care than that,” he said, holding it close as he plucked a few berries and placed them atop the basket. “Are you always like this?”

The moth stared up at him. Its eyes seemed wider like this, plaintive. It was a trick of the light, Lan Zhan told himself.

In the kitchen, he sat the basket on the floor next to the clay stove, generously sized, the only thing in the house that was bigger than was truly necessary. When he’d seen it, he’d had to have it. It reminded him of his mother’s kitchen, though the memory of that kitchen had mostly faded to generalities. At that stove, he’d learned how to cook, how to brew the medicines and elixirs and teas that would prove to the world it was worth more to leave him alone than run him off. He might not have been wanted by them, she told him often, but they would need him and that was almost as good.

He held tight to the belief there was power in that.

Needing both hands, Lan Zhan encouraged the moth onto the counter next to the stove with gentle brushes of his fingertips against its back legs. It barely stumbled as it made the transition and began investigating as widely as it could, going first to one corner and then the other, lingering over each jar that lined the wall before moving on to the next.

Though secure in the knowledge that it couldn’t find itself in any danger, he kept an eye on it anyway as he retrieved a plate from the cupboard, a ceramic spoon from the rack on the wall.

After scattering the berries on the plate, he mashed them with the spoon until they were more purplish-black juice and pulp than berry.

The moth bumped repeatedly against the edge of the plate, as though to nudge it. It was too small to have any effect, of course, and lifted its front legs, eventually catching them on the rim. Before Lan Zhan could assist, slow to realize it might be difficult for the moth to climb, it flitted its uninjured wing and successfully pushed itself up to lumber around awkwardly.

It patted at the juice with one foot, testing, before stepping fully into it. At first, it did little, twisting this way and that, but finally it lowered its proboscis and drank until a startling amount of it was gone. When it was done, it swiped its feet over the cleanest portions of the plate’s surface until it didn’t leave juice-stained smears behind.

Once it was satisfied, it looked up at Lan Zhan. Though Lan Zhan insisted to himself that he could parse nothing from its large, luminous eyes, he still felt as though it wanted something from him.

Only once he held his palm open to it did he figure it out. Immediately, it tramped its way into the cup of his hand, wing fluttering for balance. When he lowered his hand again to the counter, it took a few careful steps and hopped down, lower half wiggling as it turned itself around to better face Lan Zhan.

As though it hadn’t been cute enough before—if cute was the right word for what Lan Zhan was feeling; somehow, the affection in his chest knotted itself in a more harrowing tangle than mere amusement could convey—it ducked its head, until its antennae lowered almost to the counter.

Though Lan Zhan had no reason to believe the moth truly understood, he couldn’t abide showing it any degree of rudeness.

“You’re welcome.” He waited in vain for the embarrassment that was sure to follow such a declaration. This time, he couldn’t find it.

Instead, he was content and remained so as he put away his purchases, his eyes turning occasionally to what the moth was doing and whether it might be on the verge of getting into trouble. For some reason, Lan Zhan felt it could very well be one for trouble.

Lan Zhan didn’t mind quite as much as he ought to have.

It was only once he’d filed away the last packet of herbs that he allowed himself to turn to the question of the moth and its broken wing. “I will return shortly,” he said. “Be careful here.”

To Lan Zhan’s immediate relief, it went still. To his subsequent disappointment, it began to stomp around in a large, agitated circle not three seconds later. A bit of dust from its wings trailed behind it in elegant, glittering arcs.

“It will only be a few minutes,” Lan Zhan insisted. “I want to help you.”

And this, searching his library, was helpful. But as soon as he turned away from the moth, it no longer felt like it. Rather, it felt as though he’d left the creature to suffer its own fate. Did the moth even realize what Lan Zhan was doing? Probably not. Did it actually care that Lan Zhan had left its sight? Unlikely. Did that stop Lan Zhan from worrying that the moth thought itself abandoned? Not in the slightest.

What tomes, scrolls, and pamphlets he did have relating to the care of animals showed nothing with regard to how one would care for an insect beyond using them or their byproducts as ingredients in potions and poultices. There was even an entry about how moths’ wings could be used in spells of protection, an insult added to injury.

A handful of spells and decoctions described how to care for the broken wings of birds. These, he copied down on the off-chance they’d be useful to him. If nothing else, they might serve as inspiration for one he was beginning to believe he’d have to create for himself.

Too bad the moth wasn’t a cow or a goat or even a pig, an animal arbitrarily deemed useful by the world. There were plenty of options with regard to them.

Unhappy with his discoveries or lack thereof, he returned to the kitchen to check on the moth. He hadn’t been gone more than thirty minutes at the most, but the moth was shuffling around still and, more unfortunately, flicking his broken wing back and forth in a way that looked painful.

“Stop thrashing,” he said, sharper than intended. The moth froze and peered up at him. Its head dipped as Lan Zhan crouched, going to eye-level before it. Its antennae flickered forward slightly and its front legs rubbed together. Like this, it looked almost bashful. Lan Zhan held its finger out to it, gently stroking its ruff with one fingertip. “You’ll hurt yourself further if you keep doing that.”

It ducked its head, an acknowledgment of sorts.

“What will keep you from doing that?”

In answer, the moth padded forward—this time, it kept its wings carefully still, both of them—all the way to the edge of the counter, and stretched forward, as though attempting to reach Lan Zhan himself.

Absolutely preposterous.

“Nothing can hurt you here,” he pointed out. “There are no birds in the house or any other predators that can attack you. You’re safe.”

The moth tilted its upper body forward and extended itself again. Its wings batted against the air, unable to give it the lift it needed. Straining so, it almost tumbled. Almost, except for how Lan Zhan cupped his hand quickly under the lip of the counter. Faltering, it fell into his hand. After righting itself, it hunched down, the fuzz around its neck soft against the meat of Lan Zhan’s palm.

Well. He supposed he would just have to bring the moth with him if it wouldn’t behave itself on its own. With his luck, it would stubbornly careen off the counter and wind up squished under Lan Zhan’s boot as it crawled toward the other room if he left it alone any longer.

Though there was little left to do in his cramped, useless little library, he brought the moth back with him and placed it on the desk before taking a seat. Pretending to study the notes he’d copied from his books and halfheartedly writing new ones, he mostly watched the moth as it explored its new environment. It avoided the precariously stacked books at one corner, but took an especially keen interest in the characters Lan Zhan wrote. At one point, it got too close while the ink was still wet and left behind a few smudges on the page.

“Be good,” he said, fighting the smile that threatened to form. That only seemed to goad it on as it marched back and forth, stopping every so often to study what Lan Zhan was putting down.

It was only when the natural light began to fail that Lan Zhan stopped, sky turning a bruised shade of purple. In that time, he’d altered one of the spells intended for use on birds. “Shall we try it out?” he asked as the moth busily patted its front legs in the stroke of a still wet character. To get its attention, he tapped the back of his brush against the page near the moth’s leg.

The moth tapped the page in the same rhythm Lan Zhan had used, seemingly enthusiastic.

Lan Zhan closed his eyes, breathed out, chanting a few words as he stroked the moth’s wing. Energy from within him curled across the physical divide between them, that infinitesimal space that made the moth a moth and Lan Zhan a human, and poured as much of his intention into the transfer as possible.

The moth’s eyes sparkled in the flickering candle light. Its head tilted curiously. Nothing changed in the quiet moments that followed.

For one afternoon of work, he shouldn’t say he was disappointed, but he couldn’t deny in his heart that he was.

Just as the youth reaches his home, the sun breaks from behind the nearby foothills and spills across the stretch of field he could call his own, burning off the mist clinging persistently to the ground. Far from the main road, it will prove a safe enough place for the wolf to recover. The day promises to be a beautiful one, clear and comfortingly bright, the sort of day he’s always loved and has never been able to share with another. The light, only pink-tinged lavender as yet, sure to turn to sweet gold later, heartens him so greatly that he can’t help but reach back into the cart to pat the wolf’s head and scratch behind its large ear. Despite the cold and the wet it had suffered through the night, its skin has warmed with morning’s approach. Its fur is soft against his calloused palms, tender and throbbing from a night of dragging the wolf and the cart through the mud. Though there are already blisters forming and more than a few splinters to pick out later, he doesn’t regret it.

“It’s going to be fine.” The youth speaks from a place of resolute optimism. He doesn’t care that the wolf might be dangerous and he doesn’t care that he can’t guarantee any such thing. He still believes in the power of words and personal will. After all, he’s survived this long through sheer stubbornness. Why shouldn’t this creature that’s found itself under his care?

The wolf barely stirs though the youth, tired and aching, brings the cart as close to his house as he can get it over uneven, bumpy ground.

In the light of day, he’s shocked he managed to lift the wolf the first time. Perhaps he wouldn’t have if he’d been able to see the wound fully. There’s no mistaking the violence inflicted upon its body; he dares not haul it around on his back or across his shoulders, his original plan.

A litter will have to be made. Perhaps a ramp of some sort.

The youth’s perseverance pays off around midday, when he’s gathered enough supplies to build something that will help him get the wolf off the cart. Once done, he deposits it before the hearth, yet cold without anyone to tend to it. The floor, too, is cold, with little beyond a threadbare rug to cushion the wolf.

Within a few minutes, he has a fire burning away in the fireplace. Only a little later than that, the room has warmed beyond the youth’s comfort. Right now, the only thing he wants to do is find a cool stream to jump into, hot from exertion and plagued with itchy, drying sweat.

“I’ll find you something more comfortable to sleep on soon,” the youth says, patting the wolf’s flank gently. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”

For a time, he continues to stroke the wolf’s side. His spirit fills with the helpless bewilderment of having another living, breathing being in his cottage. No matter how soft the bed is that he makes or how filling the meals are that he cooks, there’s nothing quite like the strong, heavy beat of this heart beneath his palm.

Into its warm, twitching ear, he says, “You’re magnificent, did you know that?”

Lan Zhan rarely dreamed or, if he did, he rarely remembered them. They were not good experiences, his dreams, those that he could recall. He often cried in those dreams, six years old again and unable to understand that his family—his mother and his brother and him, all three of them—were hated for what Lan Zhan was, what he could do.

At six and twenty, he understood the world better, but the feeling of helplessness remained.

There was crying in this dream, too, but it was not his own. This crying was choked, secretive. It belonged to someone older, the kind of crying a person, ashamed to cry at all, might feel moved to express when they were alone. Lan Zhan knew a little something about that.

Around him, the world resolved into the overgrown path he’d taken through the forest earlier. It took on a hyperrealistic quality here, every bit of foliage sharply picked out, disorienting as he pushed his way through whipping, clinging branches. Beneath his feet, the ground felt too springy, the mossy, messy undergrowth too green, the dirt beneath too bright. Ahead, light filtered through the treeline. It, too, shone too fiercely.

As he burst into the clearing, his toe caught on a tree root, nearly sending him sprawling. At the last second, he regained his balance. He wasn’t certain how.

Pink and red ignited in his vision, so many flower petals caught in a vicious windstorm, settling only when a crouched wash of purple-black ink and rich cream solidified in Lan Zhan’s vision.

Tears welled in the wide, wide eyes staring at him, dashed aside by their owner’s hand. Their owner’s voice, when he spoke, carried music, even though, “You,” was all he said.

“Are you alright?” Lan Zhan asked, taking in the hunched form, now resolving better into something Lan Zhan could truly comprehend. Cream and ink became skin and hair. Pink and red petals became clothing, became—wings.

One broken, one intact.

Before the man, young, about his age—and it was a man, not merely a collection of colors shifting around him—could stop him, Lan Zhan walked around him, took in fully what his eyes couldn’t comprehend before.

These blossom-bright clothes were filthy and torn, as torn as the man’s wing. The join of the shoulder, visible through a slit in the cloak and fabric beneath, was bent and crooked. His back seeped blood. The wings, from what Lan Zhan could see, were attached from the tip of his shoulder down toward the center of his back, held in place by muscle and sinew and ligaments. The injured wing had been snapped, ripped, and clawed apart.

Each time his body shivered, the broken wing would tremble and the man would make a noise he attempted valiantly to muffle, but in this dreamscape, nothing could be truly hidden. The sound echoed as loud as a clap of thunder.

“I can help you,” Lan Zhan said, the same words he offered to the villagers whenever some calamity befell them. On those occasions when they took his services, they were begrudging about it, resentful. This man only shuddered.

“No need. There’s no need for that.”

Lan Zhan reached out. The man flinched viciously from his touch.

“Don’t put yourself out for me,” he said, twisting away. “Don’t—”

“Alright.” Maybe it was okay to lie in a dream because he didn’t plan to listen. He held his hand out. I’ll wait until you’re ready.

After several moments, the man took his hand and allowed himself to be pulled upright. From the front, he looked almost normal, princely. The front of his robes were fine save for a few streaks of dirt. The embroidery that covered the fabric was fine and detailed, the color rich and stark. There was even a lining of white fur around the collar. The only real sign, from this angle, that anything was wrong was the grief on his face and the wild tangle of his hair.

“I know what you’re doing. You’re far too good,” the man said. He was the first person since his mother to say such a thing to him. “You shou—”

Lan Zhan startled awake.

For a long, long moment, it was too dark to see. Lan Zhan’s heart pounded as he searched out what might have woken him up. The night was quiet, very quiet, and the dream, though less vibrant in his remembrance of it, was not one that generated fear.

Even so, he couldn’t still his beating heart.

Once his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, he roused himself fully. Though little illumination diffused through his paper-screened windows, he saw enough. More than that, he heard enough. So late at night, not even the crickets stirred outside. All was quiet except for the whispering flicker of a moth’s wing.

Summoning a sprinkling of light in his palm, he studied the moth, perched on his bed stand. Its legs were tucked in neatly beneath it and it didn’t otherwise move. Could moths dream? It didn’t seem possible, but it also didn’t seem like the moth was awake either. Perhaps it was some kind of autonomous response during sleep?

He didn’t even know if moths were meant to sleep at night. He’d never seen one active during the daylight hours anyway, not like this one was.

With desperate care, he stroked his fingertip down the length of the moth’s uninjured wing. “Rest,” he insisted, imbuing only a hint of suggestion into the command. Whether it helped or not, Lan Zhan couldn’t say, but it did relax a bit under Lan Zhan’s touch.

Exhaustion dogged his step throughout his usual morning rituals and ablutions. He scrubbed himself a little harder as he washed up, used colder water in the hopes of rousing himself more comprehensively. His breakfast was leftover rice made into porridge and little else except for a few sliced green onions and sesame seeds, nothing as nourishing as he would normally have made for himself.

His tea, of course, was brewed more strongly than normal, a waste of resources, but a necessary one if he wished to be of any use today.

The only true effort he went through was for the moth, though when he placed the plate of mashed berries near it and attempted to guide it onto the plate’s edge, it merely circled the lip, darted into the juice, and hopped back out, more interested in playing than in eating. Eventually, bored of this, it tumbled over the edge and proceeded to explore the table, waving its antennae at Lan Zhan’s bowl.

“There are a few chores I must complete,” Lan Zhan explained before rising from the table, the moth following his movements through the kitchen. Its wide eyes seemed to capture everything he did as he did the dishes. Lan Zhan reminded himself that he shouldn’t assign human emotions to what he saw, but he couldn’t explain the sensation of being observed with gentle curiosity in anything other than human terms.

When he went outside to hang the linens and his freshly washed robes, he looked into the kitchen through the open window, watching as the moth padded awkwardly around the table, antennae twitching frantically. Every so often, it looked at the window. From where it was, it might not have been able to see Lan Zhan easily.

He worked more quickly after that.

He was forced then to turn away and weed the vegetable patch, replacing the various spells and incantations he used to keep the worst at bay. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t rid his garden entirely of the hardy plants. He wished there was a way to allow them to grow, but if he were to give any ground, they’d take over everything and he couldn’t survive offering such generosity. In some cases, these plants were useful, but for his purposes, they generally weren’t.

By the time he was done, ready to return to work on helping the moth, he found the moth splayed out, its legs crossed under its head as it pushed itself along, uninjured wing flicking listlessly.

“Is everything alright?” Suddenly, his chores seemed like pointless things he clung to for no other reason than because habit drove him. Could the weeds not have waited a day?

It flinched, scampering to its feet. Its wing and antennae fluttered indignantly before it plopped down again on its hind legs.

“Are you hurt?” It shook in response. “Hungry?” Another shake. It can’t understand you, he reminded himself, but if he couldn’t talk to a moth while he was alone, what could he do? “Bored?”

As though caught, it went still.

Pushing down the guilt he felt at leaving the moth on its own for so long, he scooped the moth into his hand and brought it to his desk. Though the pink, flickering motion of the moth in his peripheral vision was disruptive to his concentration, he didn’t dare scold the moth for it.

In truth, he enjoyed the reminder of the moth’s presence far too much.

Several hours and one awkward reminder that humans needed to eat later, he was just as stymied as when he’d started. Nothing he found in his books was helping and the various spells he’d begun writing felt like they would go nowhere. Sheet after sheet of torn paper littered the desk and the floor around his feet. If he weren’t so concerned about the moth, he might have worried more about the state of the room and how he intended to get more paper if he continued treating it like an endless resource.

Though there was little enough room left for the moth between all these ragged bits of paper, the moth didn’t seem to mind, skittering between, and nosing at, them. Every time it moved, it left behind a glittering spray of pink dust in its wake.

“You’re more energetic today,” he said. “Are you feeling better?”

In answer, the moth shook itself. More of the pink dust puffed into the air, sparkling amidst the plainer dust motes caught in the beams of light slicing through the window. It bobbed its head a few times and pushed one of the torn pieces of paper about. The paper slid out from beneath his feet, launching itself in Lan Zhan’s direction. Trapping it beneath one finger, he considered. Then, tearing a smaller piece from it, he crumpled it into a lopsided little ball and rolled it back.

If anyone asked, he wouldn’t have been able to explain why he thought to do this, but then the moth pounced on it, headbutting it at Lan Zhan.

The lumpy ball rolled to a stop halfway between the two of them. If Lan Zhan had been more careful when rolling it, the moth might have been more successful. This time, he squashed it into a suitable shape and flicked it back, ensuring it went a little further so the moth would have to give a bit of chase. Still, the moth crowded around it within seconds. In its exuberance, the moth lost control of the ball and had to follow it nearly to the end of the desk to retrieve it.

Too late. The ball fell and so did the moth, almost.

Startled, Lan Zhan stretched forward and cupped his hand over the moth to keep it from slipping. Heart in his throat, he said, “Don’t you want your wing fixed first?”

The moth couldn’t answer, but with a degree less concern than was necessary, it began striding around the desk again, nudging at another sheet of paper and stamping its foot on the edge of it.

“You want another ball?”

The moth stamped its foot again. Lan Zhan could only oblige. Though it was more careful as it played this time, it occasionally batted the ball toward Lan Zhan and stared at him in expectation. Lan Zhan, making no progress anyway, was happy enough to indulge.

This continued for another few minutes until the moth seemed to tire itself out, half slumping over as it tapped lazily at the crumpled wad of paper. The moth’s uninjured wing flapped seemingly at random, a periodic reminder of what was at stake.

To others, it might not have been important, this moth’s well being, but Lan Zhan often found others had skewed, selfish priorities. To him, the moth deserved a chance at the quality of life afforded to others of its species. More than that, he felt it had a personality and thoughts and wishes, even if Lan Zhan couldn’t understand them. On that metric alone, it deserved Lan Zhan’s best effort. But more than that, the desperate need to do this mangled Lan Zhan’s heart, left it as shredded as these pieces of paper.

Lan Zhan returned to work.

Eventually, the moth wore itself out entirely. As soon as he noticed the lack of activity, Lan Zhan was worried that it might have died, but when Lan Zhan nudged it, it startled awake, fluttering wildly before stumbling to a stop. Lan Zhan didn’t do that again, trusting that it was just sleeping when it stopped moving a second time.

By the time he was done, he’d come up with a few spells and an ointment to try. Though he was determined to help the moth as quickly as possible, it was too late tonight to gather the ingredients. Fighting back a yawn, he put everything away, including the little paper balls he’d made. His exhaustion was a heavy weight over his eyes as he gathered the moth and brought it to the bedroom with him.

He hoped he wouldn’t dream tonight of the beautiful man with a moth’s broken wings.

And, of course, he hoped he did.

The youth wakes with the sun. It has always been this way and always will be. But much to the youth’s surprise, the wolf rouses, too, following his progress through the room with its luminous gray eyes. It looks tired and world weary as it repeatedly loses the fight to stand. Finally, it gives up with a disdainful snuffle, pressing its nose under its paw. Bone-cracking exhaustion slows the youth down, too, but he smiles as he makes breakfast for the both of them. He isn’t entirely sure what a wolf should eat, certain that his own meager stores will hardly satiate it, but figures he can’t go wrong with the brace of rabbits he’d already dressed, having planned on preserving the meat for later.

The wolf huffs as the youth places two of them before it on a wide wooden tray. He makes a low, mournful sound in the back of his throat, sniffing at the meat without eating it.

“You should eat,” the youth says.

The wolf huffs again and turns its head away. The youth doesn’t know, of course, that this is no ordinary wolf. His tastes are too refined for stringy, uncooked rabbits.

“Have you eaten recently, then?” the youth asks, carefully removing the meat from its sight.

The wolf tries again to follow. This time, it levers itself up. Success, of a sort.

“You shouldn’t move too much,” the youth says when he returns, which seems to settle the creature. It flops back to the floor. “I ought to have wrapped you up tighter. Are all of your kind as troublesome as you?”

The wolf yelps. The youth chooses to think of it as agreement.

For himself, he boils a few greens and heats rice leftover from yesterday. A strange impulse overtakes him and he decides to stew a few chunks of rabbit meat into the meal. He sits near the wolf, cross-legged, his bowl warm in his palms and arches one eyebrow when the wolf gazes keenly at him.

He tips the bowl in the wolf’s direction and is pleased, if bemused, when the wolf buries his muzzle in it. It only comes up for air when the meat and all the rice is gone. The youth stretches forward and wipes his fur with the hem of his shirt, sending grains of rice flying.

“You’d better not get ill,” the youth says. “Do wolves even eat vegetables?”

The wolf croons in melancholic reply. The youth refuses to be moved. There are more important things to do today than let himself be hoodwinked by a wolf.

“I need to look at that wound now that it’s daylight. Will you allow me?”

The wolf stares at him for a long time before finally shifting around. In the sunshine, it doesn’t seem quite as bad as he’d feared. The wound is ragged, but smaller than he’d expected from all the blood. If the wolf would remain still, the youth could even sew it up. At least he feels safe assuming his always dwindling store of herbs and salves will help.

“This may hurt,” he says, patting the wolf’s flank after he’s made up a poultice to help with healing, a recipe he’d learned from an itinerant physician, “but it will help.”

He scoots close and looks down into those sweet silverine eyes and pets the soft, thick fur of its coat, lulling the wolf into a half doze before pressing the thick, wet glob of medicinal plant matter to the wound. Though the wolf bucks and cries, it avoids striking out at the youth in retaliation. The youth is prepared, holding the poultice in place until the wolf settles. Only then is he able to wrap linen around the wolf’s body to keep it in place.

In his life, he’s learned that all important things cause pain.

A voice called to him in the dark. Clear as a bell, it was built upon the foundation of a gorgeous, crystal-bright laugh. “Lan Zhan! Lan Zhan, look at me. Open your eyes!”

He hadn’t heard his name spoken in years and it was rare that he was referred to in letters as anything other than brother or, more rarely, son. It was this, more than the gentle, mischievous tone of voice that clued him into the fact that this was a dream. A nice dream, but a dream nonetheless, made nicer still when Lan Zhan did as asked, seeing again the beautiful face from last time. “How do you know my name?” he asked, fuzzy from sleep.

Blessedly, the man’s eyes weren’t filled with tears on this occasion. No, instead they were filled with light, shining silver in the low light. They were in a wild-grown garden, he thought, but the only thing to illuminate the way were fireflies that hovered around the man as he crouched, exposing what might have been a plant. “How can I know anything? Magic, of course. Or maybe I read it somewhere. I’ll leave you to decide.”

When the man straightened up, he grinned, moonlight catching on his gleaming white teeth. In his hand was a gently curling flower, its petals bell shaped and glowing. Its scent perfumed the air, a fragrance Lan Zhan couldn’t recognize. It seemed too fragile to serve any other purpose than as a beautiful, ephemeral decoration.

“For you!” the man said, tucking it behind Lan Zhan’s ear before Lan Zhan could protest. “There you are.” His hands braced against his slim, velvet clad hips. Though the cool, weak moonlight gilded everything in cool, pale tones, Lan Zhan thought the suit, sumptuous, might have been pink. He studied Lan Zhan’s face. “To think such a handsome man has saved me from myself.” Though Lan Zhan didn’t take the hands he held out, he didn’t seem offended. “Who else could be so lucky as to find you here, too?”

“Where are we?”

“This is your dream, Lan Zhan. You tell me.”

His life wasn’t one of travel or adventure. He could not imagine such a place as this for himself. His mind was too preoccupied by the usual concerns a witch like him would harbor, things like whether the nearby townsfolk would continue to suffer his presence and how he would survive through the harsh winter months without the warmth of family or community to buffer against the cold. “I’ve never dreamed anything like this. It must be yours.”

The man only laughed. “How can I dream such a big dream? I’m just a moth.” He twirled around and for one brief moment, Lan Zhan saw the still mangled twist of a wing through the slit in the man’s robe. Lan Zhan wanted to investigate it properly. Within the confines of this dream, he was so certain that he could fix the man’s wing, but the man was too quick and spun back around. He eyed Lan Zhan suspiciously. “What’s wrong?”

Lan Zhan gestured. It didn’t need to be said, did it?

“Oh,” the man said, abashed. “Don’t worry about that. That’s just—it’s fine.” The wing fluttered as though in demonstration. If it was meant to console Lan Zhan, it failed. Though the man winced, he smiled, too. If that, too, was meant to console, it failed with equal valor. “See?”

“You cried last time,” Lan Zhan pointed out.

“Because it hurt then. Anyone would cry.” He chewed on his lower lip and looked away. Pink stained his cheeks and dripped down his neck. “But it’s better now.” His shoulder shifted in a way that told Lan Zhan he intended to do something stupid.

“Don’t!” Reflexively, he grabbed the man’s arm. “You don’t have to prove anything.”

His widening eyes sparkled in the moonlight. Gray wasn’t such a pretty color in real life. Lan Zhan wished it was.

“I know it still hurts,” Lan Zhan said. “You don’t have to pretend otherwise. I’ll help you.”

“You don’t—”

“I can help you,” he promised. It wasn’t a promise he should have been making, but he could do nothing else except make it. If it was within his power to accomplish, he’d pull the pain from the man’s body. He wouldn’t be trapped within the prison of Lan Zhan’s dreams.

The man reached up to stroke the flower still tucked behind Lan Zhan’s ear. His finger, skimming lightly over the fringe of the petal, accidentally stroked Lan Zhan’s ear, too. “It’s almost as beautiful as you now, Lan Zhan.”

Lan Zhan suppressed a shudder and hoped the man couldn’t feel the way his skin warmed at the contact. This might have been a dream, but he still felt exposed, vulnerable. Nobody touched him this way, not even within the confines of his own mind.

Besides, the man was the beautiful one, not Lan Zhan.

He’s not real, he told himself, unsure if he was arguing for or against leaning into the gentle brush of the man’s knuckles. “Who are you?”

“A prince sent to sweep you off your feet, of course!” When he spun this time, a shimmer trailed after him. “Isn’t that what all the stories say?”

Lan Zhan enjoyed many stories, the ones with lovers caught up in one another most of all, but they weren’t real either.

The man, the prince, batted his eyelashes. “Have you been swept?”

He ignored the question, rounding on the prince and using one finger to stroke down the length of the prince’s injured wing. The prince didn’t argue against his touch this time. Not right away. But no matter how careful he was, the prince shivered and flinched away.

“That’s a little forward, don’t you think?” A brittle smile affixed itself to his mouth. Though his expression hadn’t changed all that much, he seemed a bit warier than before.

Having been castigated so gently, Lan Zhan’s skin heated and his heart slammed against his chest. Shame flooded him. He did not know what to do with other people, but not touching them unexpectedly was a good starting point. He wiped the shimmery substance coating his fingertip onto his robes. “I just want to check your injury. It wasn’t my intention to make you uncomfortable. My apologies.”

The prince stared at him, bemused. “It can’t be fixed, Lan Zhan.” As the prince’s expression softened, the wings settled against his back. “But it’s okay. You didn’t hurt me or anything. You can—you can touch them if you want.”

“How was it injured?”

“Would you believe there’s an owl that has it out for me?” the prince said. “An owl! I didn’t even do anything to him.” Kicking at the dirt, the prince scowled. “It’s not my fault he’s boring and stupid.”

“Who is he?”

The prince’s eyebrow climbed his forehead. “The second prince of the never-setting sun. Surely you’ve heard of it?”

Lan Zhan shook his head.

“You humans are lucky then,” the prince said. “Imagine going through life without ever hearing of Wen Chao. Unfathomable.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“Knowing Wen Chao personally? Every day.”

Lan Zhan leveled a glare at him.

The prince hesitated, smiled more brightly, and shook his head in that order. Somehow, Lan Zhan knew this was a lie, every bit of it, and still the moth exposed his back for Lan Zhan. This time, when Lan Zhan touched his wing, he was even more careful. This time, the prince didn’t flinch away from him.

“You can tell me the truth,” Lan Zhan said, though it didn’t matter. In a dream, who cared what was the truth and what wasn’t? There was no prince in his world who wore pink and grew wings from his back. No real prince needed Lan Zhan’s help. Only a defenseless moth.

The broken wing trembled as Lan Zhan examined it.

“It hurts,” the prince said, “a little.”

“Only a little?”

“Only a little,” the man confirmed. Before Lan Zhan could expose the lie for what it was, the ground shook. The garden around them shuddered and tilted. Lan Zhan managed to keep his balance, but the prince, already on edge from Lan Zhan’s examination, crashed to his knees.

Lan Zhan kept his balance only a moment longer than that.

He woke in an instant, frantic. Except for the hectic flap of the moth’s wings, his room was quiet.

Snapping his fingers, he conjured a ball of light in his palm. The moth wasn’t anywhere that he could see. Careful, so careful, afraid of crushing the defenseless creature, he looked over the edge of the bed.

On the floor was the moth, struggling heroically to right itself on the hardwood. It flapped and flapped its uninjured wing. Even the injured one moved in a sickly flutter. Before it could hurt itself further, Lan Zhan stretched toward it and carefully scooped it into his hand. Only then did the moth settle down.

“How did you wind up down there?” Lan Zhan asked, heart stumbling over each staccato beat, a danger to itself. “Why aren’t you more careful?” What will I do if you keep falling?

Though he held the moth against his chest, protective, he was unable to return to sleep, not even after the moth settled over his sternum, legs tucked neatly beneath it as its antennae drooped in respite.

Lan Zhan didn’t let the moth out of his sight after that. He found a small box to keep it in at night. He hated the thought of confining it even if only at bedtime, but Lan Zhan feared too much for it. When he worked, he ensured the moth remained nearby, whether it was on the same desk Lan Zhan used or a nearby table. He considered erecting a pen before deciding against it. The thought of further limiting the moth’s freedom didn’t sit well with him.

The week passed in this fashion and again came the time when Lan Zhan had to go into town. There were many ingredients he needed this week. Though he wanted to put it off, he knew he couldn’t.

He didn’t dare leave the moth here alone. His conscience couldn’t allow it.

At first, he attempted to devise a shelter for the moth to stay in, but it scratched at the sides, wings fluttering unhappily after Lan Zhan had placed it carefully inside, so different from how he accepted the box as long as Lan Zhan held it in place over his heart. After thinking about it for several minutes, he placed the moth on his shoulder. In short order, the moth had nestled itself against Lan Zhan’s neck. Its wings and ruff and even its thin, delicate legs all tickled gently against his skin. Even if it was a bit of a nuisance, he wouldn’t have stopped the moth from finding a hiding place inside of the collar of his robes. Lan Zhan, too, would want to burrow away if he was that small and defenseless. Sometimes, he wanted to burrow into something larger and safer than himself anyway.

He thought again about the prince and his encounter with the owl and wondered if the moth had gone through some similarly upsetting incident. There’d been a feather left behind in the clearing, hadn’t there? He couldn’t remember.

Compared to that, enduring the skin crawling sensation of having the moth pressed against him was nothing.

He made his purchases more quickly than normal, not bothering to ensure the quality of the ingredients as thoroughly as he was used to doing. The apothecary seemed pleased with this turn of events, watching him with satisfaction when he concluded his inventory at least ten minutes sooner than he usually did.

It was only when he reached the tea house that he hesitated, but though he wished to linger and listen, he didn’t dare. If he ever found the chance, he would pick up a book of tales instead. Perhaps that would suffice in lieu of his preference to stand around and listen. This week, he didn’t have much money left anyway. It would be rude to stay while being able to offer nothing in return.

From inside, he heard, “The youth was diligent in his care for the wolf prince, using the last of his medicine to treat it, more doting and gentle than any court physician had ever been to him.”

The moth patted his skin lightly, like it was trying to get his attention. The pressure it exerted was so small that Lan Zhan could have easily ignored it. Shaking his head, he resumed his journey to his cottage, leaving the tea house behind. The further away they got, the more incessant the pats grew.

“Calm,” he urged, quietly, fighting the impulse to brush at his earlobe where the moth’s antennae were tickling lightly. “We cannot linger.”

Almost the entire way home, the moth continued to tap at his neck, a constant pitter-patter against his skin. Only when he stepped onto the path leading directly to the back gate did the moth calm down, slumping against him, perhaps tired from the strain it had put itself through.

If it wanted to hear a story, perhaps Lan Zhan could tell one to it. He remembered every tale the storyteller had ever weaved.

Having come from a palace in a kingdom far from things like poverty and scarcity and the general lack that most people suffer, the wolf consumes everything he’s given with no thought as to whether there will be more the next day or even in the next few hours. As a wolf, and an injured one at that, there is little he pays attention to besides the pain in his flank and the gentleness of the youth’s presence in comparison to it. Were he still as righteously princely as he’d been taught to be, he might have noticed more, but he is caught as this for the time being and cannot know the weight he is putting on the youth’s shoulders.

The youth would consider the exiguity of his situation worth it as the wolf grows stronger and is able to move around again, albeit slowly and with a great deal of difficulty at first. The wolf might not. All the wolf knows is how nice it is when the youth tuts at him and fusses and pets him. Though the costs haven’t come into it yet, he would trade every bit of power he possesses to retain the kindness he has known here.

Sometimes he can even draw a smile from the youth, a genuine smile, not the obsequious smiles of the staff that typically followed him about his old home, when he noses at the underside of the youth’s chin when he sees that the youth is behaving rather more stoically than his usual. The wolf doesn’t understand the youth’s moods, but he does know the youth suddenly cheers up when the wolf does this and that’s good enough for him. Were he a poet, he might have more to say on the subject, but even as a prince, his skills with a pen had always been bested by the same hand bearing an instrument of war instead.

Weeks pass in this way, until he begins to think of the youth as his companion. When he works, the wolf follows lazily, finding a spot to sun himself or shade himself depending on the weather. Sometimes, the wolf assists when he can or tries to. On the few occasions the wolf has insinuated his way into the youth’s work, the youth has mostly wound up cleaning up after it—as had been the case when the wolf accidentally overturned a vegetable cart in its eagerness, leading to the youth laughing as it picked out cabbage leaves from the wolf’s fur—or more seriously, when he’d had to clean up the wolf’s wounds when he had gone after a deer. The deer had fed them both for days, but the wolf had walked with a limp for a lot longer after that.

The youth had scolded him then, harshly enough to shame even the most shameless of wolves, but he still doesn’t know if the youth has realized he understood what the youth was saying. He hasn’t tried it again, hating the fear he’d seen in the youth’s amber gaze. In apology, he learns how to properly move carts around when the youth becomes too tired to be of much use.

If he could help it, he wouldn’t change a thing about his circumstances. He’d stay here until he died of old age, always at the youth’s side, even when the youth isn’t so very youthful any longer.

Instead, he hears a bit of gossip from a trader, a man who ventures across the countryside when he grows weary of city life. The wolf understands this impulse, though he’ll loathe this chance meeting soon. He tells the youth, an acquaintance, of the sparks of war in distant lands.

Not just distant lands, the prince’s lands. The youth won’t pick up the nuance, but the wolf does.

It requires no true philosopher to understand that a hunter-prince found ravaged in the woods by a wolf’s teeth could only have been killed by one sort of wolf. There are no accidents for princes. It will not matter that the hunter-prince struck first. What matters is the taste of blood that floods the wolf’s mouth, both the hunter-prince’s from back in and the wolf’s own blood now as sharp teeth cut into the rough meat of his tongue.

The wolf, the prince, has unwittingly brought tales of woe to the youth’s doorstep.

The trader, when he finishes relaying this news, half-concerned, half-eager to share this gossip, spares one glance in the wolf’s direction, then the youth’s. He cannot possibly know the truth, but fear of discovery guts the wolf all the same. He is conspicuous. He is a danger to the youth. This trader likes gossip. What can be more interesting than a boy inheriting a pet wolf?

He has a duty to protect his people. That now, and maybe always has, even before he’d known it, included the youth.

It would be selfish to stay; it will be equally heartbreaking to go.

Once he was done putting away his purchases, Lan Zhan said, “You’ve been agitated ever since we walked past the tea house. Did the storyteller trouble you?”

The moth stilled, stared up at him balefully. Lan Zhan still couldn’t explain how he knew it, but he did: it was a baleful expression.

“There are no wolf princes,” Lan Zhan said, “and no youths to take care of them. It’s just a story.” He did not linger on the rather loathsome thought that it would be far easier to take care of a wolf than this moth. The moth’s wings fluttered as it roamed the edge of the table, agitated. It tried to edge toward the stove, but Lan Zhan shooed it back, feeling helpless, useless. “It’s just a story,” he said again, sharper than he intended, “but I’ll find an answer anyway.”

That night, the moth again slept in the small box Lan Zhan had found, a comforting little weight on Lan Zhan’s chest, already fluttering away inside the thick wood. Lan Zhan recognized the pattern, too lazy to match the moth’s motion during waking hours. It was asleep and so, soon, was Lan Zhan.

He dreamt. Of course he dreamt. And he dreamed of now familiar shades of pink and red, luscious velvet cloaks and well-cinched robes beneath it. The prince, wrapped so lovingly within such rich clothes, had somehow grown even more handsome since they last met here.

A bitter, unpleasant smile almost pulled at the corner of his mouth. This was loneliness talking, nothing more.

“Lan Zhan!” the prince called, ruining the elegance with childish enthusiasm. “Lan Zhan! You’re finally here. You’re late. What took you so long?”

The dream’s logic brought the prince from the far side of this wild-grown garden to his side within a few blinks of his eyes. Lan Zhan’s mind smoothed easily over the moments between.

“I’m here,” he agreed. Though he was not a loquacious man, he still found himself stymied by how few words he could gather for the lovely man in front of him. This was a dream. He might do or say anything and yet, he couldn’t.

The prince cocked his head to the side. “You seem sad today. Was it the story?”

What could Lan Zhan say to that? “I have been stymied in my work,” he offered. He couldn’t admit to how envious he was of that youth, who could so easily tend to the creature under his care. “There is no point in dwelling on a story with no ending.”

“I’m sure you’re working hard.” His brows furrowed. A strange smile crossed his mouth, rigid for a moment, crumbling the next. “But Lan Zhan, that story is old. It has an ending. Everyone’s heard it.”

“I haven’t.”

“I can tell it to you if you’d like.”

“Perhaps I don’t want to know.”

The prince pursed his lips and his countenance grew serious, shuttered. “Alright. You don’t have to know.”

Before Lan Zhan could do something to repair the prince’s expression, the prince smiled again then and it was pretty enough to steal Lan Zhan’s breath, the kind of smile that did truly sweep people off their feet. Before, Lan Zhan sometimes hadn’t understood the storyteller’s tales. Though he enjoyed the romance of it all, he hadn’t known until this moment why people would fight so hard for beauty and love. When it looked like this, how could one not want to? “What shall we do today, Lan Zhan? You left me so soon last time.” Pouting, he clucked his tongue. “We barely got to play with one another.”

“My apologies. I don’t know how to play.” Even when he was a child, he buried his nose in books or trailed after his older, more sophisticated brother, demanding he help Lan Zhan understand what he was reading. Even his mother, who used to smile in a way that matched the prince’s, couldn’t always convince him to stop studying. Even cajoling him to eat could be a chore, let alone convincing him to play.

“Ah, Lan Zhan.” The prince leaned in, tapped Lan Zhan on the nose. “You’re such a cute, serious liar. You really believe that, don’t you? Are you always so serious?”

“Unfortunately.”

The prince’s eyes widened in surprise. His smile broadened to such a degree that the happiness seemed to consume his face. His eyes, too, closed in pleasure, tucking away his delight behind the falsely demure fan of his eyelashes. A full, hearty laugh followed, sealing Lan Zhan’s fate as one who could be charmed by such things.

His hands wrapped around Lan Zhan’s and pulled them close as he clutched them to his chest. His still injured wing fluttered, but the pain of it hardly showed on his face. “I like you so much. You’re so kind, did you know? I’ve only met one person as kind as you.”

You’re a figment of my imagination. Who else could you meet?

This fact didn’t stop warmth from spreading across the tips of his ears.

The prince squeezed his hands. “Lan Zhan, are you shy? Is this what you’re like when you’re shy? Should I stop saying such things?”

“No.” It was just the prince’s words that made him feel shy. Others couldn’t do this to him.

The prince, letting him go with a gentle pat on the back of his hands, said, “I hope you never change, shy or not.”

A pang of disappointment at the loss of contact struck him in the chest, resonating through his body. It was not in Lan Zhan’s nature to ask for more, but he almost did anyway, realizing belatedly that he was being selfish again. He hadn’t even asked after the prince’s health.

“Your wing is—”

“It is what it is.” The prince waved him off. “The nature of the thing. Can’t be helped.”

Lan Zhan frowned. It could and should be helped. “What will you do?”

“Eh? Live like this?” He twisted around to look at the wings. “What else is there?”

“No, I don’t believe that.” Lan Zhan turned, intending to search for a way to help, but where could he go? This was a dream. He was even distantly aware this was a dream. The prince wasn’t even real, just Lan Zhan’s imagination running wild, using this moment to prove how useless he really was in his waking life. Still, Lan Zhan fought against the unfairness of it. Here, if nowhere else, he should be able to assist.

“Lan Zhan, it’s… it’s fine!” The prince rounded on him, placed his hands on Lan Zhan’s shoulders to stop him. “I’m the one who wasn’t careful. It was my fault. It’s… good of you to want to help, but it’s not your job. You shouldn’t have to put up with this, too.” He pulled his hands away as though burnt. “I brought this on myself. If I was more careful…”

He shook his head, as solemn now as he’d been happy before.

“But if I was more careful, I might not have met you. That would’ve been a shame, wouldn’t it? Can’t it just be the price of something so wonderful happening?”

Could it? Lan Zhan didn’t believe so.

As his mind raced helplessly to find an answer that would restore his smile, his cheek began to itch, incessantly distracting even within the confines of the dream. The garden shivered around them and the prince’s expression softened. “Oh, Lan Zhan, don’t.”

Too late: the dream disintegrated.

When he dragged his hand over his face, he startled at the feel of fur beneath his fingers. His eyes flew open, heart pounding. Wetness streaked across his palm. Evidence of tears.

The moth flapped its wings, half hopping out of the way. It landed between Lan Zhan’s eyes before tumbling down the other side of his face to land somewhere on his pillow. The box the moth had been sleeping in was gone.

Something tickled against his neck, fluttering as the moth pulled itself up Lan Zhan’s neck and onto his chest.

In the dark, he couldn’t tell whether he’d harmed it. It didn’t seem more injured as it walked up and down his sternum, stamping around in displeasure as it tried to make its wings work. “Rest,” Lan Zhan said, but the moth continued, this time crawling up his neck again to touch his chin. No matter what Lan Zhan did, it refused to settle. When he attempted to capture it in his hands, it revolted, so much so that Lan Zhan feared hurting it in the attempt. Once Lan Zhan gave in, it continued on its way, finding its way back onto his face, its little feet patting against his skin as though to dry the tears before they slipped down his cheeks.

He ought to have roused himself enough to find the box and place the moth back into it. Instead, he reclined against the headboard of his bed, face tilted slightly back as he breathed slowly, gently, willing himself to calm. The moth finally settled in his hair, occasionally touching his forehead. Lan Zhan did not stop it.

He was tired of fighting his own mediocrity.

Until morning arrived, he let himself feel the despair of his ongoing failure. Then, he got back to work.

Once the trader has gone on his way, accompanied on his journey by too many of the supplies the youth has worked too hard to procure—a thank you, he’d insisted, for the news—the wolf prince thinks about all the things he will have to do and all the things he should do and all the things he wants to do and how none of them overlap.

“You’re quiet tonight,” the youth says, thoughtful, as he scrubs his hand through the thick fur around the wolf prince’s neck. He shivers under the touch, gentle and sweet and kind all at once as they sprawl before the hearth’s dying, unnecessary fire. The wolf prince, after all, is warm enough for the both of them. “Not even a single growl for our guest.”

The wolf prince snorts and noses at the youth’s face until he laughs. That helps for a time, but the youth falls into a melancholy as the night stretches before them. “It’s awful news, isn’t it?” He studies the wolf prince’s face. “You think so, too, don’t you? You’ve been unhappy since the trader left.”

The wolf prince gathers what courage he can and pushes himself upright, making for the youth’s bed, flicking his tail. When the youth doesn’t follow, he barks over his shoulder.

“I’m not tired yet.”

The wolf prince barks a second time and pulls himself onto it, circling the end and plopping down. Because he is a coward, he’ll only sneak away once the youth is asleep, but the youth only ever sleeps in his bed or braced against the wolf, too habituated to it to rest anywhere else. The wolf prince would never be able to sneak away if the latter were to happen. If he doesn’t go tonight, he’s afraid he won’t go at all.

Finally, the youth capitulates; within minutes, habit betrays him. His breathing slows and his hands take their customary position across his chest, such a strange affectation, but one that the wolf prince has always found endearing. Even as the wolf prince drags the thin blanket over the youth’s body, he doesn’t wake up.

Throughout the next day, the moth wandered back and forth across the desk, listless, as Lan Zhan worked. Even when Lan Zhan tried to play with it, it was very difficult to convince it to do more than nudge at the small wads of paper Lan Zhan kept crinkling up for it. After a time, he rose from the desk and held out his palm for the moth to climb into. He remembered how interested the moth had been in the garden. Maybe some time spent out there would be good for it. Maybe it, too, was exhausted from the night they’d shared. A change of scenery might do a bit of good.

He wasn’t getting anywhere with his work anyway. Again. Always. If determination could remake the world, the moth would be safe and whole already. Alas.

Its delicate steps and the flutter of its wing tickled Lan Zhan’s palm as Lan Zhan walked around the garden, crouching before various plants and bushes for the moth to investigate.

The moth waved its antennae around as it nosed at the patch of gentians, transplants from his mother’s house. It crawled over the petals and down around the rich, green leaves. As it waddled, Lan Zhan was content to watch, wrapping his arms around his legs as he settled in.

“You have good taste,” he said, simply to fill the air with sound. The moth turned, lifted itself up, and flapped its wings again. Though it could hover a bit, it was unable to get very far. When Lan Zhan held out his palm, the moth crawled back into it.

Just in time.

Overhead, an owl screeched, appearing out of nowhere. It wheeled in wide circles through the air over Lan Zhan’s home, dark and trailing smoke. It dove so suddenly that Lan Zhan could only close his hand over the moth and throw his other out as he conjured enough magic to protect them both. The owl almost hit the wall of the barrier and cried out again, winging away only at the last second. The moth flapped wildly against his skin, but he didn’t open his hand, not until the owl was thoroughly cowed, returning from wherever it had come. He had no idea how it might have gotten through the protective spells set over the perimeter of the grounds Lan Zhan had declared his own.

Unused to using his magic this way, he scraped his hand against the barrier. A flare of pain raced up his arm and the scorched scent of burnt meat filled the air before dissipating. Lan Zhan’s heart thrashed in his chest at what might have happened if he had been just a little slower to react.

All the while, the moth fought against the prison he’d made of his palm; he unfolded his fingers in increments, allowing the moth free movement only when it finally settled. He studied the wound on his other hand as the moth calmed.

The pain abated slowly. In the end, it wasn’t so different from any normal burn.

To give the moth more room to move, he held his injured hand open and cupped the other beneath it.

The ruff of the moth’s neck was raised as it rushed across Lan Zhan’s hands until it reached the edge and kept going, forcing Lan Zhan to turn it lest the moth tumble to the ground. It nudged around the vicinity of the wound, barely more than a scratch, and patted one foot, then the other again and again, back and forth and back.

It stared up at Lan Zhan and stamped its feet one last time.

“I’m fine,” Lan Zhan insisted, but the moth kept twitching nervously as it walked a semicircle around the injury. “I’m well.”

Still agitated, the moth dipped its head and brushed its antennae against his skin.

It reminded him of the way, on those rare occasions when he hurt himself, usually while practicing when he oughtn’t have been, his brother used to tend to him, fluttering about in a similar manner.

Aching at the memory, he rose to his feet. “I’ll clean up.”

As he applied a salve that would help with healing, the moth watched on, attentive. The salve, cool and soothing, already tempered the pain.

If only it was as easy to heal the moth as it was to heal wolves, to heal himself.

If only it was as easy to heal the moth as it was to heal himself.

Before the moth, he placed a small plate filled with liquid, thick and acrid, nothing at all like the fresh, tart scent of mashed blackberry juice. “I combined the intentions of several spells,” he told it, who only stared at the plate as though it was something untrustworthy. As it climbed onto the edge, its antennae wavered. “There’s a bit of fruit juice to sweeten it.”

In his own hands, he held a cup with the portion he didn’t give to the moth.

The moth stepped forward and pulled back, stepped forward again and lifted its head to look at Lan Zhan. It tapped at the edge of the sludgy puddle and jumped back, ruff blooming around its head.

“Drink it,” Lan Zhan said, harsh. Then, softening his voice, “Please. It won’t cause you harm.” He showed the cup to the moth. “I will drink it, too.”

The moth approached, lowering its proboscis. Within a second or two, it shook all over, sending dust from its wings flying, and skittered backward, almost falling off the edge of the plate. It flapped its wings and raised itself up, staring accusingly at Lan Zhan.

“I’m sorry it doesn’t taste better.” He sipped, fighting the urge to grimace. It really did taste abhorrent. He shouldn’t have tried to mask it.

Following Lan Zhan’s lead, the moth tried again. In turn, Lan Zhan tasted more of his until the moth finally consumed enough of it to be effective. Then, he drained his own cup in its entirety.

He waited. The moth waited.

Nothing happened as they stared at one another. Nothing happened for a long stretch of moments. Nothing happened until—

Agony lashed itself up his spine, ripped through his muscle and bone. He felt as though he was being split in two. In his life, he didn’t think he’d ever felt this much pain. Distantly, he heard the sound of porcelain smashing on the floor, the cup.

Shortly, he followed, knees buckling beneath him. Catching himself on his hands, yet more pain lashed through him, arms shaking with it. His chest tightened. His vision darkened. Pink flashed before his eyes, the color muted. He tried to speak, but the comforting words he wished to give the moth couldn’t make their way out of his blood-filled mouth.

Even so, he promised with all of his heart that it would be okay.

“Lan Zhan,” the prince said, his voice a pleasant sing-song. “Lan Zhaaaaaaaaan, you work too hard, did you know?” Today, he was weaving the stems of flowers together into a wreath or… or maybe a crown. The circle was a little small for a wreath. The flowers were all in varying shades of pink to match his robes and cloak and wings. It was hard for Lan Zhan to tell. Here, the pain of what he’d done to himself was muted, but it still took up too much of his attention. “You should take a break sometime.”

His back throbbed.

“I often take breaks.” He felt useless standing in the middle of the garden while the prince diligently worked away. “There is…”

Between one blink of the eye and the next, the prince was done weaving the flowers together. They formed a little circlet and the prince brought it over to Lan Zhan, placing it atop his head. “Hmm? There’s what?” He adjusted it until he was satisfied. “You’re very sweet, Lan Zhan.”

“I’m not.”

“Tsch. I get to decide what you are. And I’ve decided you’re sweet.”

“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan! It’s so funny to see you looking so angry with that on your head.” He swiped the crown from Lan Zhan’s hair and shoved it onto the thick, wild tangle of his own. “Much better. I can take you seriously now. Castigate me again so I can truly appreciate your wrath.”

But Lan Zhan could not.

His wings glinted in the sun when he twisted around to pick more flowers.

Unlike before, each wing laid appropriately against his back. Already, the chitin was weaving itself back together, ragged edges joining, whole and perfect.

Lan Zhan breathed out in relief.

“Not my wings again. Aren’t they rakish, don’t you think? What’s wrong with a good scar or two?” the prince said, looking over his shoulder at them. “Not…” He flexed his back, fluttering them. “Lan Zhan?”

Lan Zhan bit his lip. Blood rushed in his ears in time with the pulsing ache in his back.

“Lan Zhan, what did you do?”

Lan Zhan drew in a deep breath and let it out. He smiled, lips barely up to the task. “You should be more careful.” His vision dimmed again. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry it took me so long.”

“What does that—Lan Zhan!” The prince’s eyes widened in horror. “Lan Zhan!”

Of course it’s raining when the wolf prince sneaks outside. You didn’t think we’d get this far without a bit more rain, did you? The heavens, too, must cry from time to time. For the sake of irony if for no other reason. The heavens are cruel in their way.

There is only one thing he’ll wish he’d done before returning to his own lands, his own place in the world. To have gotten to look at the youth with human eyes, to have allowed himself to be known in his entirety, would have been a gift. It’s too late now. Though every loping stride pains him, he cannot go back.

When he reaches the outskirts of the city he no longer calls home, he pilfers clothing from the line outside of some merchant’s home and drops his wolf’s guise. Dressed, he feels constricted, confined, no longer himself.

No matter how lovingly he is greeted when he arrives, a hero returning with dawn at his back and hope in his hands, it has nothing on the earnest way the youth had greeted him every morning.

After every war counsel, his mother looks at him strangely and behaves as though she has something to say, half torn between tears and fury. She only gives voice to them once. I think you’re more wolf than man now, she says. I understand.

She might understand, but she sends him off to war anyway.

His duties overwhelm him, as the business of death and destruction ought to. Come to think of it, he might be more domesticated canine than wolf. He dreams of curling up beside the youth, his farm the only kingdom the prince wants to safeguard.

But it is just a dream, he knows. With every day that passes, he grows more certain. Soon enough, he will return to nothing.

The rainy season returns, telling the youth with every stirring storm cloud that it’s been a year since he’s seen his wolf. Every morning, rain pelts his home and he looks to the empty space before the hearth. Every afternoon, he searches the empty space beneath the shady trees near his flooded fields. Every night, the end of his bed remains as empty as the rest of his home.

The trader returns only once, bringing with him no good news.

If fluttering wings of hope didn’t pull him upright day after day, he feared he would drown under the weight of so much water.

Lan Zhan’s scapula shattered, a firecracker burst beneath his skin, trailing sparkling agony in its wake. A rib, then two more, cracked. Sinew snapped away from muscle and bone alike. These wounds he distanced himself from, cataloging each while he fought to ensure the spell was working.

The moth’s little body tumbled midair, righted itself, tumbled again. Its wings flapped violently, compensating for how inefficiently it flew. It relearned its own healing body as Lan Zhan watched, the only comfort he could feel in this moment.

Tears obscured Lan Zhan’s vision, half from the pain and half from relief as the moth finally took confidently to air. Its soft, fuzzy antennae brushed his cheeks. It bumped repeatedly against his nose, his lips, his chin. As he fought to catch his breath, it collided again and again with him, pushing at his throat, too, and his chest. All of him was attacked, but the moth was small. It could not harm him, not more than he had willingly and happily harmed himself.

Stumbling to his feet, he rushed over to the window. It required both hands, shaking and pale, to unlatch it. His knees buckled as he braced himself against the windowsill.

The moth hovered, hesitated.

“Go!” he called, short of temper. The moth weaved in surprise, darting to and fro. Still, it made no attempt to secure its own freedom. Softer, “Go on, please.”

With the last of his strength, Lan Zhan called up a breeze and wove a protection spell into it, the first he’d ever learned, certain to keep the moth safe until it made its way home. This breeze, relentless, carried the moth, tumbling, out of the window. Lan Zhan quickly latched it closed. Without any witnesses, he could fall again unimpeded, palms bracing against the wooden floorboards.

The price of his body was expected, required, welcomed.

The cost to his heart was harder to square.

For the privilege of taking the moth’s injuries, he’d given up a beloved companion.

But when tears splattered those floorboards beneath his hands, glittering with the dust from the moth’s wings, they were tears only of gratitude at having succeeded.

Though the pain receded within a month, a scar remained no matter how many healing draughts he took. It pulled sometimes when he stretched too far, having raked its way up from his lower rib cage to his shoulder blade, twisted and ugly. His back ached with the weather. It was more difficult to carry heavy objects than before, a small price to pay.

He often looked at it in the mirror and found he did not mind the reminder.

Lan Zhan stood just inside the door of the tea house and listened to the storyteller, heedless of the worried eyes that occasionally darted his way. They could stare. It wasn’t like staying outside stopped them from doing so.

He waited only long enough for the storyteller to finish his latest tale before he approached the desk at which he knelt.

Whispers carried to his ears as he wound through the many low tables that dotted the room. When he reached him, the storyteller looked up, a warm smile on his mouth. “I was wondering if I would ever get to meet you properly,” he said. “Please sit. Have tea with me.”

Because of the prince, he’d learned a little about how to accept kindnesses. It wasn’t so difficult to sink to his knees and place a gracious string of coins onto the wood between them.

“Will you tell me about the wolf prince?” he asked, abashed. “I never got to hear the end of it.”

“That’s my favorite tale to tell,” the storyteller said. “Some even say it’s true.”

Lan Zhan wasn’t surprised when he learned it ended sadly. All the most honest stories did.

“What were their names?” Lan Zhan asked.

“Who can know now? The story is very old.”

As he walked home, his attention drifted to the clearing when he passed it, habitual. There was no flash of pink. Thankfully, there was no flicker of a wide, brown wing against the bright blue sky either. There never was. He didn’t think there ever would be. That was okay. He didn’t want to see the moth again if it meant the moth had to be hurt first. That was not a price Lan Zhan was willing to pay. There wasn’t enough money in the world to cover such a cost.

The youth is weary from a day’s hard travel into town and doesn’t particularly know what to do with the retinue of people standing in his yard. They are dressed far too nicely to be locals, a few bedecked in armor that is well-cared for. Swords gleam at their sides. The others wear robes and furs that remind him of the wolf’s thick, dark pelt. Though the youth welcomes them, they hesitate to enter his home.

It’s just as well. He’s not used to hosting anyone these days. They can conduct their business in the yard. “What can I do for you?” he asks mildly, thinking of the trader’s story, of war coming closer and closer by the day. Are they friend or foe or neither? Does he care?

What do you think?

The most resplendently dressed says, “We were told a man by the name of Lan Zhan lives here. Are you he?”

“I am.”

The man pushes aside his night-black cloak and retrieves several overfull pouches from his belt along with a thick, cream-colored envelope, sealed with red wax that carries the imprint of a wolf. Lan Zhan only takes the letter.

“His highness wished for you to have this.”

Lan Zhan’s fingers trace the edges of the wax seal. “Who?”

“Prince Wei Wuxian.”

The name means nothing to him, but as soon as he opens the letter, he understands.

All this time, his wolf has had a name. This name means everything to him.

“Can I see him?” Lan Zhan asks before he’s read more than the first line.

The man presses the pouches into his shaking hands. They are heavy, filled to the thick ribbons of leather that hold them closed with rubies the color of congealing blood, diamonds as glittering and dark as the wolf’s eyes, ingots of gold and silver that sparkle in the sunlight. They are, to the last, items Lan Zhan has no business possessing.

The man doesn’t answer.

He tries to give this wealth back. “I just want to see him.”

This time, the man answers. Lan Zhan doesn’t like what he has to say. He reads the letter through only once and considers burning it when he’s done.

It’s the only thing he has left that belonged to his wolf prince. Throughout his life, all he can do is cherish it, keep it safe.

There was a clatter in the garden, a shout, a struggle cut short, noises Lan Zhan should not have been hearing in a yard where nobody came.

He rushed the last few yards, basket abandoned by the gate in case he would require his hands to help or fight or—

At first, he did not register what he saw as he entered the garden.

Scarlet cloak thrown rakishly over one shoulder as a body righted itself. Pink wings settled neatly. Hair dark as a cormorant’s feathers caught on the breeze. These were not things he saw when he was awake.

His hand wrapped itself around the gate as he breathed through the giddy nausea threatening to overwhelm him. The metal screeched in protest at the unfair treatment, bit into his palm. His prince spun around, cheeks flushed. Down to the eyes Lan Zhan was sure he’d never forget, everything about him was the same.

“Before you laugh, taking human form after so long is hard, okay? Lan Zhan!” The prince grinned crookedly at him. “Hi! Pretend you didn’t see me tripping over my own feet.”

“I didn’t,” Lan Zhan said, hollow, feeling very stupid. “What are you…?”

“Oh.” The prince’s features fell. “Maybe you don’t remember me.”

His mouth failed for a time to form the sentence that wanted to burst from behind his teeth.

Finally, he blurted: “I remember you.”

“Do you?” the prince replied in amusement. “Tell me, do you often rehabilitate strange moths you find in a field?”

Lan Zhan drew in a breath, pressed his hand over his eyes. When he looked again, the prince was still there. “I don’t generally make a habit of it, no.” Forcing himself to straighten, he studied the moth—the prince’s face. “You’re real?”

“Yes. Not that I always realized it. It’s funny what being a moth for so long will do to you. I was starting to think I was only dreaming I was a prince. I’m sorry it took me so long to come back. I had some unfinished business to deal with.” The prince studied his face. “I hope it was alright, coming back.”

He took one step toward the prince and then another, determined to reach him, determined to touch. Cautious, stunned, he said, “I enjoyed having you here.”

“You ran yourself ragged trying to fix me.” It was only now that his smile faltered. His gaze fell and his head tipped slightly, like he was trying to check for damage. The prince ate what remained of the distance between them in long, quick strides. “You took my injury into your own body.”

Lan Zhan shook his head. That wasn’t what it was like at all. He’d only done what he had to do, nothing more or less. It didn’t pain him any longer. “It was nothing.”

“No. You could have left me there. But you…” His fingers brushed gently over Lan Zhan’s cheek. They were softer than he expected them to be, warmer. His own hand shook as he covered the prince’s, pulling it back so he could study the elegant shape of it. It was perfectly smooth, save for a few small calluses between his thumb and forefinger and on his palm, all as beautiful as the rest of him. “Lan Zhan, it was never nothing. It couldn’t be nothing. You helped a moth that should have died in a clearing. There aren’t that many people who would care about such things.”

Lan Zhan swallowed. If he were to explain himself, would the prince be so understanding? Or would he pity the young man who had nothing else in his day-to-day life but to care for a moth? Would it seem like compassion or selfishness if he admitted he’d been lonely?

“I wanted to come back,” the prince said. “I didn’t know what would be appropriate to offer you in recompense.” He opened his hands wide and shrugged. “If there’s anything you want as a reward for…”

“May I know your name?”

The prince laughed. “Ah, Lan Zhan. So cheap. I would have given that to you for nothing.” Bowing, he said, “Wei Wuxian to subjects of the realm. Wei Ying to you, I would like to hope. It’s the name my parents bestowed upon me anyway.”

Wei Ying. It was a good name, lively. A perfect fit for one such as him. There was little in the world Lan Zhan wanted more than to say that name every day.

And like that, he knew what his reward would be if he could have it. “There is something,” he said, embarrassed, shy.

Bouncing on the balls of his feet, Wei Ying, Wei Ying said, “Oh? Now you’re driving hard bargains, eh? Well, what is it?”

“If…” The thick tangle of his emotions tightened into a knot in his throat. “I would enjoy it if you were able to visit me sometimes.” Not often. It didn’t have to be often. But every once in a while would be nice. To fill his home with the light of Wei Ying’s company even once a year would be more than Lan Zhan could ever hope to expected.

“You don’t get many visitors?”

“Who would want to visit a witch? We are untrustworthy creatures.”

“I would,” Wei Ying said, fierce. “As an untrustworthy creature myself, what if I stayed?”

“Wei Ying?”

“Lifetimes ago, you swept me off my feet and I left you behind,” he said. “I’ve spent nearly that long trying to find you so I could do the same. How can I walk away this time?”

The night before he meets his death, Wei Wuxian does several things in quick succession. He writes a letter and browbeats Jiang Wanyin into leaving the front lines with said letter and what remains of his personal fortune. It won’t be needed to fund any future battles. Lastly, he consults a witch.

“If I wanted to fix a memory forever, what would I need to do?” he asks.

Witchcraft is an inexact art. He’s told it depends on the memory and his definition of forever.

“The memory is a man,” he tells her, resolute, “and forever is forever. Every life I live, I want to remember him and find him.”

Though her attention has already drifted to the horizon, to safety from the slaughter to come, she asks, “How did you meet?”

He tells her and before she flees the plains upon which this life of his will end, she births a spell for him.

His mortal enemy will forever be the second son of Wen Ruohan. In this lifetime, their mortal conflict was an accident of fate, but Wei Wuxian’s interference requires balance, sacrifice. In the lifetimes that follow, Wei Wuxian will die by his hands or his weapons, by his beaks or claws or painful venom or Lan Zhan will find him in time to save him. In return, he is allowed to remember how kind one particular shade of gold can be, a blessed name, and a desperate wish to find the owner of such riches as kindness and names can bestow. It’s all the witch can give, but Wei Wuxian is greedy and bold. He asks for one more thing.

“Will you make what I feel for him into something real?”

After Wei Wuxian wins against the Wen Clan’s most fearsome soldiers and perishes for the honor, bringing a lifetime’s worth of calm to the world as it was known then, she tells one person a story, then another, and another in each town she reaches, until they are the ones telling it to each other.

She passes it to her daughter, who passes it to her children, on and on and on until it reaches a son who loves stories above all other things and makes it his life’s purpose to spread them as far and wide as they can go.

“Do you remember that story about the wolf?” As Lan Zhan picked berries, Wei Ying sprawled on his stomach in the grass, chin perched on his hands. Even in his human form he had a sweet tooth that Lan Zhan already enjoyed indulging. His eyes brightened more and more with each handful Lan Zhan presented to him. He would do this every day for Wei Ying if he could.

Lan Zhan basked in the smile Wei Ying bestowed upon him for his efforts. “I do remember.”

“Can I tell you how it ends now?”

“I know how it ends.”

“Ah? How do you know?” Wei Ying blinked.

“I asked the storyteller.”

“Oh.” Between two fingers, Wei Ying squished one of the berries. Dark juice dripped down his fingers, ignored, as Wei Ying stared at nothing. “What did you think of it?”

“I would not want to be that youth.” Ungenerous, he said, “I wish the prince could have stayed.”

Wei Ying’s expression froze.

“He wishes he could have stayed,” Wei Ying insisted, strangely vehement, as he pinched a few more berries between his fingers. “He should have.”

“He had a duty to his kingdom.”

Wei Ying’s gaze sharpened to a knife’s glinting point. He met Lan Zhan’s eyes and never faltered again. “He has a duty to the man he loves.”

“Wei Ying, it’s a story. If you think it reflects on you—”

“It does.”

“Perhaps you and he do share some similarities, but—”

Laughing bitterly, Wei Ying said, “We should.”

Lan Zhan’s stomach turned over. The scent of the berries, too sweet, assaulted his senses, nauseating him. “What are you saying?”

“I’m trying to thank you for saving me,” Wei Ying replied, “twice. And I’m sorry for leaving you behind.” The last of the berries scattered as he tossed them aside. A purple streak formed on his clothing as he wiped his stained fingers clean. He made his way over and fell to his knees before Lan Zhan, clutching at his shoulders. “I’ve known too well how lonely you always are. It won’t happen again.”

Bile crept up his throat, slow and inexorable. “The story is real.”

Wei Ying nodded in answer.

Lan Zhan, disbelieving, said, “You really remember?”

“I remember my regrets. Your tenderness. Those pretty gold eyes of yours. The love I had for you.” His eyes demanded everything from Lan Zhan and Lan Zhan gave it, unrepentant. “You believe me, don’t you?”

Impossible. Impossible, the way all of this was impossible.

But moths, too, shouldn’t have become princes, so why couldn’t Wei Ying recall such things? Why couldn’t it be true, just this once? Lan Zhan wanted it more desperately than he’d wanted anything else in his life. “I can’t do otherwise.”

He considered further. “But I’m not him. I don’t…” He would never know what Wei Ying knew; he couldn’t be what Wei Ying remembered. “I’m not a part of that story.”

“Forget about that story. Let’s make our own, huh?”

“How would we do that?”

Wei Ying blushed, observing Lan Zhan through lowered lashes. Nervously wringing his hands in his lap, he licked his lips and darted in too quickly for Lan Zhan to stop—

Wei Ying’s mouth tasted of tart, fresh berries, of the sun in the garden, of everything Lan Zhan could ever have hoped to want within one press of Wei Ying’s mouth against his. If this moment could be bottled, Lan Zhan might have made it into a potion that bestowed endless joy. Such magic was too potent. Just this once, he allowed himself to hoard it for himself.

Before Lan Zhan was ready, Wei Ying pulled away, brushed his thumb over his own mouth and then Lan Zhan’s, gentle. “I like this ending a lot better.”

“Will you tell me what you did?” Wei Ying asked as they made ready for bed. His fingers trailed gently down the length of Lan Zhan’s back, tracing every ridge of numb scar tissue before slipping Lan Zhan’s long undershirt over his head for him. He understood Lan Zhan too well to ask why he’d done it. They were, the both of them, the same where it counted. They did everything they felt was right, even when it could only cause pain in the aftermath.

“I couldn’t find a way to save your wing.” He trembled uncontrollably under Wei Ying’s touch. “My experience is with healing humans, sometimes other mammals.”

“I was a difficult case for you.”

“It wasn’t you who was difficult. Nobody cared enough to know how to save an insect and similar spells for birds had no effect.”

“Expected.” He gripped Lan Zhan’s shoulder and turned him, cupping his jaw. Lan Zhan, in turn, took hold of Wei Ying’s waist, delicate, small beneath his fingers. Wei Ying’s wings twitched happily. Within a day, he could already decipher Wei Ying’s emotions based on them. It was a gift he never intended to take for granted.

“In my records, there is a spell to generate empathy. I combined it with several others.” He did not mention the somewhat chilling nature of them. Though they were innocent on their own, they could clearly be used to cause harm. “It allowed me to take your injury from you. I had a better chance of healing my body than I ever did of figuring out how to heal yours. That is what matters.”

Wei Ying frowned. “They—Lan Zhan. That sounds like a curse. You cursed yourself to save me.”

“Hardly a curse.” I don’t curse people. “It worked. It was worth it. I will have no need to use it again. I am well. You are well.” Lan Zhan took Wei Ying’s hands in his. “Isn’t that what matters?”

“Yes, but—”

“Promise me you’ll take care. That’s all I ask.”

“Of course, I’ll be careful.” His gaze slid aside, settling somewhere behind Lan Zhan’s head, an abashed expression on his face. “I won’t make that mistake again in this lifetime.”

Lan Zhan touched Wei Ying’s chin, gloried in the fact that he could do even that much with Wei Ying.

When they climbed into bed, Wei Ying clamored onto Lan Zhan’s lap, pressed his ear against Lan Zhan’s chest, not so very different from the way they slept together before. “Do you think we’ll still get to share dreams like this?”

“I don’t know,” Lan Zhan admitted. He still wasn’t entirely sure how it had happened before. Possibly a side effect of one of his failed spells.

“I hope so,” Wei Ying said. “Why don’t we find out?”

Lan Zhan dreamed of his prince in pink, of an overgrown garden hundreds of years old in which they played, and when they woke, they did exactly the same thing. They played and played until they were breathless with laughter. Even then, they didn’t stop. Not a single day passed where they didn’t smile, where they didn’t dream together.

In early spring, Wei Ying decided he wanted more gentians and that meant clearing a new patch of land for them. It was Lan Zhan’s turn to dig when he came across a desiccated wooden box buried in the dirt, his shovel hitting the top with a hollow thunking sound. Crouching, he dug around it and pulled it out. Wei Ying, never far away, bounded over. “What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, open it!”

Lan Zhan cleared dirt from the surface and pried it open with his fingertip.

A brittle envelope filled most of it. The only undamaged part of it was the red, wolf-embossed wax seal. With only the most delicate of touches, he picked it up and turned it over. Though the ink was fading, he thought he recognized the characters that made up his name, a very archaic form of his name anyway.

Beneath it was a bed of jewels.

“Tsch. That silly man.” He crouched then, too, swirled his fingers through a lifetime’s worth of wealth. “I didn’t realize…”

“What didn’t you realize?”

“The village has changed since that lifetime. This house is different. The land is overgrown, but it used to be farmland. I guess we were always going to end up in the same place eventually, huh?” He picked up a few of the jewels, let them fall through his fingers like water. “I wonder why he buried it.”

“It was precious to him. Why wouldn’t he want to protect it?”

“This is worth a lot of money! He could have lived comfortably.” He frowned. “It was the only thing I thought I could do.”

“Perhaps he wanted to live in the way he’d shared with you, to feel closer to you.” The more he thought about it, the more reasonable it sounded. It was what Lan Zhan would have done in his place.

“Well, anyway. Are you going to read it?”

The paper was too fragile. He feared it would disintegrate if he tried to open it. Besides, he didn’t need a letter to know how Wei Ying felt. “Let’s keep it safe instead.”

He rose to his feet and dusted his hands along the length of the trousers he’d chosen to wear today. There was work to be done, more of it than even he realized. He filled the hole the box had sat in and evened out the dirt. “Wei Ying, we should finish planting these seeds.”

While Wei Ying alternated between chattering and working, Lan Zhan thought about curses.

Hundreds of years ago, a witch ensured Wei Ying would remember him forever. The least Lan Zhan could do was the same. He’d find a way to pin his memories, too. In his next life and all of his lives thereafter, he wanted to ensure that Wei Ying could find him.

When they were done with the gentians, Lan Zhan pulled Wei Ying into a kiss, a kiss he would remember for eternity if he had his way.

Wei Ying’s face turned as pink as his wings. “Lan Zhan, what did you do that for?”

“No reason.”

Lan Zhan was returning from his run when he heard it: the loud, metallic thump of a garbage can overturning and a belligerent curse shouted by a voice he recognized well. A small, dark shape dragged itself between Lan Zhan’s legs and huddled behind his ankles.

Two thousand years or more had passed, but his loathing always found a new depth to plumb when he spotted Wen Chao, human this time. He didn’t recognize Lan Zhan; he never did.

If he could have, he would have ended Wen Chao here and now, but he’d learned that Wen Chao’s death meant Wei Ying would suffer a difficult life. For Wei Ying’s sake alone, Lan Zhan stayed the worst of his urges.

Around them, life went about its business, raucous in the way only modern cities could be, something Lan Zhan hadn’t yet acclimated to. In their last lives together, this had still been a rural area, not yet developed in such unfamiliar ways. The village where he grew up was so much more like what he was comfortable with. Despite missing home, he’d come here as soon as he was able to. Without any regrets, he’d toiled in school to earn the examination scores he’d need to attend university here. Luck got him the rest of the way. Not that he wouldn’t have come regardless.

“Leave,” Lan Zhan said. He didn’t need to say it twice. With a sniff, Wen Chao moved on. As soon as he was gone, Lan Zhan crouched and studied the shivering form before him. “Oh, Wei Ying,” he said, cupping his hands so Wei Ying could hop into his palms. Once he was there, he pushed healing energy into Wei Ying’s body. Over the years, he’d gotten good at this. “A rabbit this time, hmm? Did you miss Bichen and Suibian?” He brought Wei Ying close to his face, Wei Ying’s little rabbit nose brushing lightly over the tip of Lan Zhan’s. “That was a hundred and fifty years ago, wasn’t it?”

Wei Ying flicked his tiny, upright ears in acknowledgment. He’d always been sentimental and had loved those rabbits dearly. Sometimes that was reflected in how he arrived on Lan Zhan’s doorstep. Or, in this case, the alley outside of Lan Zhan’s home.

Lan Zhan kissed the crown of Wei Ying’s head, fur soft under his lips.

Though Lan Zhan’s memory wasn’t perfect, he salvaged more and more from each life they shared.

It will be interesting to compare notes.

“Let’s get you taken care of.”