voidtreckerexpress | ( open ) i am so high, i can hear heaven

Entry tags:

( open ) i am so high, i can hear heaven

Who: Lan Jingyi (

jingyeets) & ( OPEN )
Where: Quiet Carriage; Garden Carriage; elsewhere in train carriages.
When: Merriment 16 to Merriment 21!
What: Arm wrestling; drunken/tipsy wanderings; memorial construction w/calligraphy/painting; etc.
Warnings: Alcohol consumption! Relationship discussions, including potential mentions of gay panic, depending. Will warn as applicable.

ready to rumble (closed to dennis)

Time on the train is a construct even more apparent than the time otherwise passing on worlds, when they're on worlds. He's only seen three platforms and two worlds, but there likely is another coming, and that's something nice to look forward to, assuming he gets to fly. He'd love to fly, he aches for it, having been minimal in application in the illusion world, and always caught and constrained on platform.

Anyway, that was for another day, and for tonight, he has other plans, involving Dennis, the unmarked bottle of alcohol he's ordered, and the two sauce sized ramekins. When he does manage to track Dennis down, he quirks up his brow, holds up both bottle and ramekins (go with him here, the teacups won't work right and no one has proper drinking bowls or cups in his opinion, and there's only so much alcohol in the bottle anyway). "Ready?"

For the talk they need to have, for the arm wrestling already promised, and for tiny, tiny shots of the best alcohol Jingyi could possibly have ordered from back home. A wine, technically... but don't be fooled. It's hard liquor.

arm wrestling and other shenanigans (ota, merriment 16)

Tipsy, Jingyi eases open the quiet car door, and makes a surprisingly upright drift throughout the train, made more chaotic by use of the transgates. For the most part, in human form, he can be found:

in the standard carriage, challenging anyone who feels like it to arm wrestling at the chairs facing each other over a fold down table where he will lose for any younger Voidtrecker who takes him up on it, and most the rest depending;

to the spa carriage where, after prodding at the ICP, he finds the tutorial video for massages and tries to nab a buddy for him to learn on (yes, while clearly inebriated, but don't worry, it'll be fine), after which he'll think going into the pool is the best idea. Which is the last time he'll be in clothing, after making sure no one around is... around, or asking them if they care; sometime in soaking in the hot water he decides he wants to swim, and ends up dragon, the fox-sized form he takes on capable of swimming sinuously through.

At some point he drags himself out and beelines in the air, bouncing himself off walls, ceilings, just about anything, aiming for an eventual stop in the Garden carriage, hoping to swim in the lotus pool there. He's hot.

memorial construction (merriment 16-merriment 21)

Starting from Merriment 16 onward, Jingyi can be found working on using spiritual energy to carve words into a stone in the garden; or sitting and using a bench to work on calligraphy of an odd alphabet that looks pointedly like something untranslated, shown on his SCA. He's using a calligraphy brush and black ink on paper to make sure he has the form right.

Only after he's finished perfecting that does he return to the stone, taking time in the days after to channel spiritual energy through his calligraphy brush to "carve" those letters into its face. He's taking quite a lot of time, because this is not the ideal way to do this (as far as he knows), and the concentration it takes is enough he gets through a few letters then stands up to walk around and be physically active, before returning to his work.

The day he finishes, he brings the censer he ordered and sets the first incense alight. To those who recognise the scent, it's clearly sandalwood based. Pressing his hands together before him, he says, "May you find what it is you're looking for."

On the stone, now automatically translated for all to read, it says:

'What is past I cannot reach again, and what is to come I cannot keep.
The candle has a heart—it too hates parting. In our place, it sheds a tear at dawn.
Dedicated to the Missing and the Lost.
You are remembered.'

wildcard

Hit me up OOC for a starter, or tag in anywhere on train with your own! Roommates, feel free to hit him up for shenanigans.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He nodded. Taiki was like a title, though it was his name as well. He blinked at the nickname but nodded. "If you want..." He doesn't mind even if he is a little taken aback by the suddenness. But Jingyi seems a very forward and confident person and so Taiki nods and smiles a little nervously.

A nervousness that grows when he starts asking questions. Taiki doesn't really fully understand how life in his world is made. He knows about praying and the egg fruits. But when he was a child he had just accepted it all as being the way the world worked. He didn't know enough about how it worked on earth to understand the difference.

When he returned to Tai he wasn't really in a situation where he could ask questions. So... "I don't think the animals sign marriage contracts. I think more... It just happens? In farming and such the farmers pray for new animals... I think... And um... There's different days, to pray for different animals or people."

But he isn't... He doesn't know. And Lord Gyousou is no longer on the train, so he cannot ask. Just thinking of that hurts and that leads him to the next part of Jingyi's interrogation.

"I... I never have. But I can't imagine... How kirin feel for their kings, I think humans... It would be complicated."

He has never heard of a kirin who fell in love. But that doesn't mean none have ever. But he never has.

There is a very unflattering thought in the back of Jingyi's head that doesn't quite make it out of his mouth, that people are still animals, so one some level, when did this system start acting the way it did? But he's also distractible right now, thinking of babies popping out of fruits like some bizarre harvest, and the pauses in words, the 'I think's and the 'um's incline him toward...

... Patting Taiki on the head, petting his hair. It would have been a ruffle, but he's too into the stroking motion right now.

"It's fine, Xiao Ki. If you don't know for sure, you don't know for sure. It's not something you had to worry about, so why would you?" Presumably a king would if suddenly no trees were bearing babies for the local populations, because even with his less than fine sense of health in cities, towns, and villages, birthrates needed to keep up with deathrates, right? For stable populations. A kingly problem to worry about, pending a king is a leader of the region who does actually care for their people. Not a qilin problem, not if qilin's weren't supposed to fall in love, because who fills up that much paperwork for a baby fruit if they're not in love?

(The politically enough motivated, but who cares about them? Wasn't Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan originally a childhood betrothal and political gamble by their parents that broke off then came back together by their own merits, and they're at what, five children and counting? One busy baby tree, only there are no baby trees back home, simply women and birthing chambers and stressed out spouses needing more breathing help than the ones in labour.)

"Love can be," he agrees, which isn't really helping any of this, but it's also the extent of his statement. No one should or has to or must; love to him happens or it doesn't. And it happening doesn't make it easy, or smooth, or uncomplicated. So it makes perfect sense. Love is complicated. Even if someone isn't a qilin, let alone if they are. "Probably almost always is. Well, if you do, you do, if you don't, you don't. 'Snot a big deal."

Thankfully for Taiki's sake, Jingyi's attention is back on... backs, as it were, the ICP having merrily played right on through. He holds up his hands and makes a sort of wiggle finger gesture, looking from said hands to Taiki's back and back again. "More? We're onto the lower back!"

He doesn't seem to mind the head petting at least, he likes having his mane stroked even when he's in human form. He nodded though he knows he should know more about how it all works. He just doesn't because he has barely spent any time in his own world at all.

He nodded, "I think it is... Yes." Very complicated. Especially romantic love. But other love as well. People are complicated and even though kirin were different, they still were very human in many regards. At least he was, as he had been brought up believing he was a human.

"Oh." His attention was drawn back to the ICP. "Okay... I can try on you next?"

Something Jingyi, drunk, is not going to ping to at all, because he definitely needs to be sober to put together implied timelines.

As it is, with the okay, he's back to reaching out and working fingers over Taiki's mid back, downward on either side of his spine again, thumbs pressing down and rocking over the cording of muscle there. His brow unfurrowed from one kind of thought and went back to furrowed over another.

"My back'll be messy," he says, not that saying so means anything in particular. "My tail. Changes up the way muscle lays, you'll feel it."

He sits still, letting Jingyi press muscles and not moving or disturbing his work at all. It feels pretty nice and he watches the ICP for a moment as they continue to explain different muscles and ways to massage.

Jingyi's back would be messy? Different? He tilted his head slightly, trying not to move too much.

"It will be alright..." Though this video doesn't seem to be explaining about how to massage people with tails. "Unless you're worried I'll hurt you... I can avoid your lower back..."

He shakes his head, slowly because faster makes his head spin, muttering to himself. "No, not that, it's just there's more muscles, my spine's a bit..."

He trails off, fingers trailing to a stop at Taiki's lower back.

"I've got a tail. Have you see my lower back?"

"No." He shook his head. He hadn't seen much of Jingyi but he twists now, curiosity growing over his slight embarrassment.

It was interesting that he had a tail, even in human form. Kirin didn't have any kirin parts when they were human. Neither did hanjyuu.

"Can... Can I see?"

Jingyi blinks, then smirks, because he finds that funny for no good reason.

"Yeah, sure. Stand up?" He waits for Taiki to do so, scooting forward and off the massage table, before he does similar, to Taiki's left. The way Jingyi's pants fit have a strip of fabric over the top of his tail, kept in place by a tie he's left in a bow, and so he presents his back with little fanfare for Taiki's eyes.

The musculature is different, from midback on, with his tail changing the shape by flowing out from his spine and staying close to his body, skin going from human to gently scaled, and the fur along his tail's spine starting in a thin, soft later at his midback. It's easy enough to trace, but even how his tail rests is over the curve of his glutes in such a way as to allow his tail free movement, but implying (rightfully) his range of movement starts from about where his spine naturally would end as a human; everything else is pure muscle and a layer of fat making the transition smoother than it would be otherwise.

~~Katy this is the most thought I've had to put into his clothed backside lmasdf~~

"Can you see?"

Jingyi, who's turned around to show off his back, tries looking over his shoulder to verify that somehow he's not lost his tail--though if he did, his pants would promptly have a... large... hole. Where his tail normally sits.

He stands and turns to look at Jingyi's back. His knowledge of biology and his knowledge of non-human people might come from two very different worlds but he can tell i meanseven just by looking what Jingyi meant. How his skin went to scales and his tail carrying on from his spine but not as more bone, as muscle and flesh.

"Yes." He nodded. "Um... I think it will be alright, I can probably work out the muscles... Even if the video definitely didn't cover dragons as part of the lesson.

"Are um.... Is everyone in your world a dragon?"

"You think you can?" Jingyi tries to look at his own back, twisting around enough to look down over his shoulder and cause his tail to arc away in the opposite direction, trying to helpfully contort along with him. "Would that mean you're doing a tail massage?"

He pauses, then snorts, lifting his hand to snicker behind it. Sounds so patently absurd, though probably it was useful, he wasn't a medical cultivator. Massaging limbs would include the tail, right?

He's amused by his passing thought as he answers the question, "No, no, most the world is human. Cultivators can be dragon-souled, but don't have to be—there are other spiritual creatures they might be souled as. I haven't met any in the realms where I'm from, but I've read about them elsewhere."

He glances up. "Xiao Ki, what about you?"

He smiles at that. He could muddle through, as long as it wasn't going to hurt Jingyi. That was the important part. He gestured back to the massage table, this time moving behind Jingyi and finding the oil.

Most of his world was human, but there were some spiritually souled creatures. "Are you the only one in your sect?" He tilted his head and then answered Jingyi's question.

"Most of my world are human. We do have Hanjyuu, they are people who can turn into animals and back again. They just... come from their egg fruit like that. Even if both their parents are human." There might be more specifics that he doesn't know.

"And um... There are twelve Kirin. One for each kingdom."

The blessing when Jingyi was going to be fairly bulletproof, pending Taiki didn't end up using supersaiyan strength to massage his spine or something. Ow!?

He pauses, then shakes his head. "No, most the sect's like this. We used to think it was linked to being born with a certain core, but..." His face draws into thoughtful lines. "We've learned better. Or remembered better."

Wei Wuxian is a fully capable dragon souled even without a golden core, and that had been believed to be impossible. Explaining that feels beyond his brain in the moment, so while he frowns, and his tail starts to lash gently side to side as an extension of that muddled frustration, he sighs. He's been gestured to the table, and he looks back at it, the flops himself down across it. Arms hanging off one side with his head, stomach and chest pressed to the massage table, and his hips and legs and, well, tail hanging off the other side. Which only works when he bends his knees so he can fully flop-hang for the moment.

Taiki might want to tell him that's not helpful.

"Were you just from the egg fruit like that, too?" Like the Hanjyuu, he means, though the lack of clarity and half muffled question aren't the greatest.

Taiki would rather die than tell a friend they were being less than helpful. So he will just have to make do with how Lan Jingyi is lying. This way is sure to be more comfortable for the boy, and Taiki doesn't know how it is to have a tail, at least a tail like that. His own tail is much smaller, swishier and only when in kirin beast form.

He moves to the side and glances at the ICP, they are onto more complicated things but he remembered what they said from before. He is going to start up high, mostly so he can try and get some experience before tackling the less-than-human part of Jingyi.

"Ah. Yes. Sort of. Kirin aren't prayed for. We don't have parents. Just... When the kirin dies a new one grows on a tree in the centre of the world. But they are born in beast form, and live like that for their first few years, until they learn how to shift."

This is totally not going to be a trainwreck of a friendship at times, will it? Of course. Jingyi doesn't expect Taiki to work with him flopped like this, and lifts his head to peer back over his shoulder when his friend does, cracking a delayed smile. His tailtip fwaps against the ground, and he returns to his boneless draping and all the impacted breathing it's causing.

It's fine.

"Like some firebirds," he says. "I heard... heard... what did I hear. Born from... one dies, big fire, fwoosh! Then there's an egg there, in the ash. A whole new firebird." He lifts his arms and resettles himself in the same absurd position, with less blood rushing to his head when he crosses his arms and settles his chin on top of them. "D'you remember back then? Being all... small and cute and fluffy." A pause. "You were small and cute and fluffy, right?"

"I think... With a firebird they are the same bird. They remember their time before even if their body is new?"

He thinks, from the legends he has read. But it might be different in different worlds. "I am a different kirin. A whole different person. I just... have the same duty as the one before."

He tilted his head, "Are dragons fluffy when they are born?"

He... Wants this to be so. Not that Jingyi wasn't quite cute in his dragon form already.

"Do they?" He tips his head to the side, then gives it a slow shake. "Maybe some, but not the ones I heard. New firebird, new personality. Some might share memories... I don't think they do, but maybe."

He hums and his tail sways, from the tip back up to his... well, not quite his backside. The limitations on movement seem more obvious closer to where his tail curves over his covered rear and firmly attaches to his backside, not just in musculature but also in bone.

"Super cute. Super fluffy. Don't fly much for the first two years, need coordination." A long pause, and he tries looking back at Taiki. "You weren't, were you. Were you bald?"

Yes. That must be the case instead. A bald kirin.

"Oh." Firebirds in Jingyi's world must be different. He pressed his thumbs into Jingyi's shoulders again, feeling the muscles and where they were too tense, where they needed help to relax.

He smiled slightly as the thought of Jingyi as a super fluffy dragon, one that couldn't fly yet and then lets out a laugh at the thought of a bald kirin.

"No. Kirin aren't bald... They don't have their full horn yet and can't speak human words. They just follow their nyokai... um... a creature who is born at the same time as us, to nurse a baby kirin and then protect them... around. I think... They aren't super fluffy, their manes are still short."

He made a muffled sound at the press, but a better muffled sound as his muscles twitched and then slowly started to relax.

A hornless kirin? With his eyes closing again, he imagines that, which seems sensible enough, all things considered. "It's a horn, though, right? You don't have an antler." He's distracted by this useless information. The image or reality of a kirin being born with a caretaker who is... more functional than they are would be laughable for another reason to him, because babies taking care of babies even if spiritual beasts and the like developed far faster.

The thought that comes to him has his eyes opening again, as he turns his head to look at Taiki once more.

"Wait, do any babies where you're from drink milk?!"

He was as careful as he could be, not wanting to cause any harm, but soon Jingyi's noises became better and it seemed his muscles were loosening. He smiled and shook his head, making a small sound. No antlers.

"Ah. Yes they do, female mammals still produce milk." How? He was no idea. All his biology knowledge comes from earth. "Even kirin drink the milk of their nyokai.... They are Youma so they come out of their egg fruit fully grown. I don't think baby youma exist..."

"... Somehow that's weirder than the whole fruit-birth thing..."

Because you were born with a buddy as a kirin, then you drank their milk, even though they were your age, but also born adult, and... what in the world. Youma had to come out fully mentally capable of all that too, which is a whole different deal, and puts a new spin on 'raising' a kirin.

"Sounds like it is a kirin's mom in a way. Obviously not the born way, but someone who cares for you, feeds you, teaches you? That's a parent, right?" He's relaxing under Taiki's efforts, though how much of that is the alcohol in the first place is a matter of debate. "You didn't get to know your nyokai, did you?"

Perhaps. It was quite strange. That Nyokai were already adults ready to look after kirin when they were just born. They were born a little before the kirin, but not long, a week or something.

He nodded, not pausing in his massage and glad that Jingyi couldn't see his face as he did so.

"I met her, when I was ten. She was the one who brought me back from earth, Renrin opened a gate and my nyokai..." Deep breath Taiki. "Her name was Sanshi. She reached through, just one pale arm and she pulled me from one world to another."

Floppy, drunk putty under Taiki's hands, even with this being outright not comfortable for pressure of how he lays. It's fine! He's had worse situations he's landed himself in.

"... Huh. What was that like? How'd you feel about it all?"

He tries to look back toward him a little, mostly getting a visual of Taiki in his periphery. "And who's Renrin?"

"Renrin is the kirin of Ren. She is 'rin' because she is female." He explained, getting the easy question out of the way first.

Because the other is a lot more complicated question. But it hadn't then, back then his feelings about Sanshi had not been as complicated as they were now.

"I adored her the moment I met her." He said quietly, his hands still moving as he closed his eyes, talking very quietly. "I... When I was found I was in the yard of my earth parents house. I was being punished, my grandma was mad at me so I had to be outside. It was snowing and I was in my nightclothes, so it was very cold. But then there was a warm breeze almost. And when I looked I saw a hand from behind the shed. The gap was too small for anyone to be behind there so it was strange to me. I walked towards the hand and even though it was strange, just pale and there, I wasn't scared. She grabbed me and I was pulled through to a warm place and she... She looked very strange."

He moved down slightly, still staying out of the way of where spine met tail. "She had the body and face of a human woman, with long white hair, but her eyes looked almost like those of a fish. Her lower body was that of a leopard and she had a lizards tail. But even so I adored her straight away. I just knew, in my heart that I could trust her and she would keep me safe. Even though there were many adults around me, talking to me and telling me that my name was now Taiki and the place I now was was where I was supposed to be, even though I was scared and I missed my earth family I just wanted to be close to Sanshi. She was very gentle and very protective."

Jingyi furrowed his brow, taking all that in. It was a lot of information, and parts of it made sense (to a guy regularly making his seniors and elders have headaches, he was used to punishment for having made them angry, so that couldn't even register as odd to him, quite, though):

"She made you stay out in the snow? They did think you were just human, right? Did humans on that world not get sick from stuff like that?" He started to frown. "There's punishment, and I'm king of being punished, but that sounds weird."

Drunk enough to say that out loud, and then huff out, unsatisfied. The mental picture he painted of this Sanshi, who he has also a weird whole mental image of being Taiki's missing wetnurse, had his tail starting to twitch, back and forth at the tip, curling this way then back the other direction.

"She sounds... like I wouldn't want to see her, probably, sorry, the eyes would get to me. Fish don't blink. They just stare, which makes sense, they live in water, it's not like their eyes get dry..."

He lost track of what he was thinking, frowning as he tried picking up the thread again. He thought he found it after a moment.

"Did she live up to your heart's hope?"

"Yes they thought I was human and no... Humans weren't... different than humans here. But I was... I was a very troubling child. I made a lot of problems for my family though I never meant to. I wasn't their real child and so I could only make them angry and bring them pain." He sounds very sad when he speaks, hands stilling for a moment before he shakes his head and continues massaging, feeling out muscles carefully and adding more oil.

He can imagine Jingyi as the king of being punished though, he seems very different than the other people with the name Lan that are on the train.

"Yes. She did. And I know to... others might sound weird, but I never once was scared by her."

No back then anyways.

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