The Nine-tailed Fox has a terrible day

Time seems to come to a standstill as Wu Yun watches Jiang Tanmei fall back towards Lu Meng's arms. He's frozen in place, watching the arrow protrude out of his chest, and the spread of the red bloom of blood on his robes.

Lan Tian flies his whip at the Prince, and wraps its length around him, throwing him to the floor.

"No! It wasn't supposed to be him," Min Guifen says, struggling against the whip and looking at Jiang Tanmei with eyes wide with panic.

Lu Meng holds on to Jiang Tanmei's face, caressing his clammy skin, "Darling, please don't go, I'll find a way to save you."

Jiang Tanmei raises his hand to touch Lu Meng's face, and tries to speak but can only cough out blood in a thin steam.

Wu Yun is suddenly set into motion, and picks up the sword that fell out of his slack hand. He walks towards Min Guifen and steps on his chest to make him look up at him.

"Look what you've done," he says, spitting out the words. It's only when he feels moisture running down his cheeks that he realizes he is crying.

He raises the sword above his head, and thrusts it down through Min Guifen's chest, on the same place the arrow struck Jiang Tanmei.

The Prince convulses on the spot, looking at the sword piercing him in disbelief. He mutters, "The goddess, it's all her fault, the goddess..."

He turns on his side with the last of his strength to look at Jiang Tanmei laying in Lu Meng's arms. "You have your mother's eyes," he says, almost smiling, before letting out a gasp and saying no more.

Wu Yun pulls the sword out of his chest and throws it to the floor, disgusted.

"Meng-er, don't cry," Jiang Tanmei says, straining to speak through the blood clogging his throat. "We'll meet each other in the next life."

Lu Meng wipes his eyes, and bends down to kiss Jiang Tanmei's bloody lips. "I'll follow you to the underworld."

Jiang Tanmei groans. "Don't say that. I want you to live well."

"How can I do that without you?"

Wu Yun turns away from the two of them, trying to make his own tears stop falling. He doesn't understand why he feels like this. He should have told Lan Tian to keep riding past the Jiang estate, they should never have come back to this place. They should never have gotten involved in the first place. What does a nine-tailed fox know of human matters? What does a dragon?

A gentle hand rubs his back. "Are you hurt?" Lan Tian asks him softly.

Wu Yun flinches away from his touch. He's ashamed of the way he feels and doesn't want Lan Tian to see it on his face."Yes, but you can't do anything about it."

Lu Meng is still holding Jiang Tanmei to his chest, whispering soft words into his hair, although Jiang Tanmei no longer answers. The grief written across his face is hard for Wu Yun to look at directly.

"I'll bring you back, I'll bring you back to me," he whispers in a broken litany against Jiang Tanmei's ashen face.

That's when Wu Yun remembers something and runs out of the room in a sprint.

The phoenix is still where he left her, sullenly wrapped in the sling.

"Can you really bring someone back to life?" he asks her, falling on his knees in front of her.

"Of course I can, what that stupid Prince never understood is that it has nothing to do with tears! Why would a creature as majestic as a phoenix even cry?" she says, outraged at Wu Yun's question.

"How do you do it?"

"With one of my tail feathers, freely given," she says.

"Can you give me one, please?" Wu Yun asks, hopeful that bringing Jiang Tanmei back will release the iron fist crushing his heart.

"No, and don't try to take it from me! I has to be freely given, or it won't work" she says turning away from him.

"Please, I saved you from the Prince, and now he killed a human who did nothing wrong. Help me, like I helped you," he asks. Maybe there's no point in trying to reason with her, but he has to at least try.

"You want to use it to save a human?" she asks, her small beady eyes narrowing in suspicion. "Why do you care about a human? Our kinds don't mix, nothing good can come of it."

"Can't you just give me the feather?"

The phoenix looks at him through the narrow slits of her eyes, accessing him. "It will cost you."

"Fine, I'll owe you." Wu Yun says with a sigh. Wondering how much he'll regret this later.

"Remember those words." She turns around and plucks a long colourful feather out of her tail with her beak and drops it into Wu Yun's waiting hand. "I don't think they have ever been used to bring back a mortal human, to my knowledge only mystical beasts, immortals, and gods have been restored with phoenix feathers. In any case it will take thirty days until the dead comes back to life. Feed him the feather and wait."

"Thank you," Wu Yun says, getting back up with the feather held gently between his fingers.

"Don't thank me yet, you won't be around to see if it all works out. Remember that you owe me."

Wu Yun is already running back towards the pavilion and barely listens to her words.

"Where did you go?" Lan Tian asks, once he's back inside.

Wu Yun goes straight to Jiang Tanmei's side, still being cradled protectively in Lu Meng's arms. "We need to give him this," he says, showing the feather to Lu Meng. "It will bring him back."

Lu Meng looks up at him, his eyes clouded with tears. "What is that?"

"A phoenix feather," Wu Yun answers, and pries Jiang Tanmei's jaw open to feed it to him.

Lu Meng supports his neck while Wu Yun struggles to make his stiff muscles swallow down the whole feather. Once all of it has disappeared down his throat he leans back on his knees with a sigh. "Now you need to wait 30 days, to see if it works."

Lu Meng looks down at Jiang Tanmei's unmoving chest with a dazed look, trying to reconcile the pain of having lost him, with the fleeting hope that he might still return. He looks up at Wu Yun with a confused expression. "I don't know how to thank you."

Wu Yun shakes his head, he doesn't want to be thanked, what he wants is for none of this to have happened. He turns to Lan Tian, and finds him looking down at him with an expression that makes him have to avert his eyes. His skin burns under the raw tenderness of that gaze.

"Where is Jiang Tanmei's father? We should let him know about what happened," Lan Tian asks.

Lu Meng averts his gaze, and cards through Jiang Tanmei's lank hair. "He was one of the first casualties. It's only A-Tan left, now. Because of what happened on his birthday, old master Jiang cut off relations with everyone who could be called an 'uncle' to A-Tan, he didn't know who he could trust. The two of them have been all alone for a long time."

"We'll help take young master Jiang to his room, to make him feel more comfortable," says an elderly servant, coming forward from the group still shuddering in the corner.

Lu Meng picks up Jiang Tanmei under the knees and shoulders. "I'll take him, please go ready his room." He leaves the blood spattered room, followed by the remaining servants.

"How did you get the feather?" Lan Tian asks, watching Lu Meng's retreating back.

"I'm still not sure, but it's going to cost us."

---

They learn exactly how much, when they go back outside to find the phoenix.

"You're going to take me back to the Kunlun Mountains," she says, raising her long neck. "That's where our clan lives. I'm too weak to fly all the way there, and with my depleted powers I'd be easy prey for greedy humans, anyway, so you'll escort me there."

"How far away is that?" Wu Yun asks, envisioning a torturous journey, with the phoenix yapping in his ear along the way.

"Very far, but it shouldn't take us long, your handsome friend can fly, can't he?" she says, craning her neck towards Lan Tian.

"Uh, I can't."

"But aren't you a yellow-eyed dragon? All yellow-eyed dragons can fly!" She thinks they're trying to fool her and it sours her mood. "What about you? You have brown human eyes so I have no idea what beast you are, you could be anything," she says, meaning Wu Yun.

"I'm a nine-tailed fox, and I also can't fly," Wu Yun admits with a shrug.

The phoenix shakes her head. "You can't be a nine-tailed fox."

Now Wu Yun is the one whose mood is souring. "I am a nine-tailed fox!"

"Prove it, show me your true form."

"I can't! That's why he and I ended up in this mess in the first place. We ate some pearls he was guarding, and now we're stuck looking like humans."

"You can't change forms? And you're a nine-tailed fox born outside of the Kunlun Mountains? outside of my clan's knowledge?" She still sounds skeptic, but like she's willing to believe that they're just very strange instead of bluntly lying to her face.

"Apparently! Wait, there are other nine-tailed foxes where you came from?"

"All manner of mystic beasts are born in our clan, but nine-tailed foxes especially are never born anywhere else," she says eyeing Wu Yun up and down. "Master will want to see you."

Wu Yun exchanges a look with Lan Tian. Those words don't sound particularly encouraging, but they can always just take the phoenix there and leave.

"Since neither of you can fly, our only choice is to ride there," she says with a put-upon sigh. "I suggest you rest well tonight, the road ahead will be long."

---

Wu Yun goes back inside to find Lu Meng and asks him for their room back. He tells them the room is the same as they left it. His voice now as an heavy quality to it that wasn't there before, as if he's aged several years in the span of a day.

Wu Yun hesitates before asking, "Could you also send in a tub and water for a bath?"

He's glad he asked for the bath once he and Lan Tian are both inside, luxuriating in the warm water. Well, he's luxuriating, Lan Tian is once again complaining about the temperature.

"This can't be good for your health," he says, meaning the pink glow on Wu Yun's pale skin.

"Let me have this, I had a terrible day, Jiang Tanmei managed to annoy me more than ever by almost dying. I deserve warm water," he says with a frown.

Lan Tian is silent for a moment. "He did die."

Wu Yun closes his eyes tightly, wrinkling his brows. "That won't matter when the phoenix feather brings him back."

Lan Tian opens his mouth, but Wu Yun silences him with a finger over his lips. "Which it will, and then I will stop feeling so miserable about it."

Lan Tian's gaze softens and he pulls Wu Yun against his chest, who splutters before giving up and hiding his face in the crook of his neck.

"You told me that I was good, not too long ago," he says, running his fingers through Wu Yun's wet hair. "Well, I think you're good too."

Wu Yun leans down further against Lan Tian and blows bubbles when his lips touch the water. "I don't care about being good."

"That's what makes you good. You don't even try, you just are."

He wants to sink further into the water at Lan Tian's soft words. They make something inside him feel honeyed and tender, too fragile to be examined closely.

"You can't say those things," Wu Yun looks up at Lan Tian's eyes, searching. What for he isn't able to say. "They hurt me very gently."

"Like being flogged with a silk whip?"

Wu Yun nods, that's exactly how it feels. An exquisite kind of pain, that makes him confused because he doesn't know whether to avoid it, or lean into it.

Lan Tian wipes the water out Wu Yun's face, and smiles sadly. "Now you know how I feel."