Chapter Text
There's a Beauty in the north
Who is peerless on this earth
Her glance makes the city bow
Her second will make the empire fall to ruin
Yet there will never be a city or empire
More rare than this beauty
And the one I usually prefer
All foxes love to sing. It is in their blood from the day they are old enough to open their eyes. Whether the old paeans that tell their stories, the battle hymns that can call upon angry spirits to come to their aid, or even just the casual songs created by all for all, the melodies arise from their very bones.
It is said that you can mark a fox by the way they sing throughout the day, not pausing for breath as often as they should. It is said that four and five tailed foxes should be challenged in competitions of songs, for they will end their lives if bested by a human.
It is said that nine tailed foxes know every song ever sung. That they choose solitary valleys and canyons where the sound of their voices can echo without competition. That they are as immortal as the dragons dwelling atop lonely peaks or the phoenixes soaring in the sky. That they can disguise themselves as common humans the better to slip within walls meant to keep them out in order to hunt the most tantalizing prey.
It is said to be common knowledge, for no one who has met a nine tailed fox has survived, of course. From the powerful Jin sect leader who challenged a vixen to a duel between the sheets and found himself bleeding from all orifices shortly after, to the team of hunters who chased a fox cub to its mother’s den only to wander back into the village they came from as corpses rent from throat to bowels, to an entire clan of Wen healers disappearing off the face of the earth overnight. It is perhaps most fortunate that nine tailed foxes are rare, and solitary. How could humanity survive if such powers were commonplace?
A-Qing knew very well the importance of being understated, underestimated. Fox spirits were somewhere between dragons and demons ipn terms of societal acceptance. Not actively hunted down, but hunters would not turn down the chance to add to their rows of tails on a wall should one be presented, or to harass the more powerful for gifts only prestigious tricksters of many years with many tails could manage.
With only a single tail to her name, it was rather less likely that such opportunists would come after her, but then she was barely more than a kit with no mother left in the world to fend off hunters. So it was that she took advantage of her unusual eyes and crafted a pole to lower humans’ defenses against her. She tapped and swayed it along the ground, begging for food until eventually they grew too wary of even a kit to let her stay, and drove her out with nothing but what she could grab before they came for her.
A fox, even a single tailed one, was suspicious. A blind girl fox fumbling about the roads less so. And if someone sought to take advantage of her, well, she had picked up enough tricks and gambits over time to be able to defend herself. And she had sharp teeth as well. So many people hadn’t expected sharp canines in their hands or arms and let her go with pained shouts as she sprinted for the safety of the woods.
She wanted to be strong enough that it didn’t matter if people chased her off. She wanted to be clever enough that they wouldn’t think to pursue her.
But more than anything, what she wanted deep down when she curled up in small hollows with her tail tucked over her toes to keep them from freezing, was a pack to run with and a home to go to, rather than only people and places always behind her on the long winding roads.
Spring was a good season to be a lone fox, A-Qing thought, stretching awake beneath a bush. Spring meant the animals came back out and people were so happy to see the sun again - they were more careless with guarding their gardens from little fox cubs in need of a snack. Spring meant that she could wash in the streams and sleep beneath the stars without having to stay awake all night keeping her fire alive with a song until her voice gave out.
Spring meant that the mountain passes would reopen. She’d heard over the winter of a valley beyond the Singing Peaks where mythical creatures like her lived peacefully, hidden away by the powerful guardians of the mountain range.
It had long been her goal to find a place where she could, if not fit in, at least not stand out. The cultivation sect of the area had long feared foxes after one of their leaders was slain in his bed by what they said was a nine-tailed fox, but that had to be an exaggeration because there were no more than three tailed foxes in this part of the world. And even they were hard to find and not willing to let a cub join their pack so easily, not after they’d been chased and hunted by cultivators.
Humans were bad, and cultivating humans even worse. She’d never met one who didn’t look at her ears with suspicion or fear; cultivators thought they owned the world. Even though she was still young, she’d met more than enough of both kinds of humans to know that there was nothing to be found there. No place for A-Qing to make her own little nest in, nor be welcomed into another.
So now that the spring had come, it was time to move onwards. If there was no place for her here, she’d find another place to belong. Somewhere beyond the Singing Peaks, just on the edge of the horizon, a dark blue smudge at the edge of the fields. Several days’ journey ahead for an ordinary human, but not so difficult for a fox.
There had to be someplace where she could go out in this world where her ears and tail wouldn’t immediately mark her as the outsider, a place that she could call home. All she had to do was find it.
All of her songs were self taught, but that meant that they were the perfect songs for her . Songs to hide her from prying eyes, songs to carry her along the wind, songs to keep people calm around her - for a time at least.
She’d heard that packs made songs to sing together, where each overlaying harmony strengthened the spell until they could overwhelm any army that came against them. But that required many strong singers and many old songs, and she was just one little kit, skipping down to the road, pausing just long enough at the edge of the road to make sure that there were no cultivators ready to ruin her journey before it could start.
She pricked an ear first to the east, then the west. Only when she was certain that all she heard was the chirping of birds and the subtle singing of the wind did she step out.
With the warmth of the sun above her and the soothing feeling of the spring breeze in her fur, she set off down the road, tapping her pole rhythmically until the right song came into her mind.
"There's a Beauty in the north,” she belted out to the empty road ahead of her, flicking her tail in time, “who is peerless on this earth. Her glance makes the city bow ,” she sang to the flowers on the side of the road, bowing teasingly to them.
Ah, there was nothing like the freedom of the open road! No one to judge her and no one to stop her song. No reason to hide and no reason to run. Just her and the song and the vast sky above.
She saw the traveler ahead before he saw her, too small to make out anything but that he was a person who could walk on two legs. She immediately slowed down and halted her singing, switching to moving the pole from side to side and pretending to listen for rocks in the road. She couldn't hide her ears entirely, but she was able to make it seem as though she were keeping her distance and listening for threats.
Which she was, there was no lie there, but lowering her threat level by appearing blind made threats less likely to turn into a threat she had to handle.
The indistinct blur on the horizon continued to become clearer as she cautiously worked her way down the road, solidifying into a man in dark robes well suited to the dust of travel. He waved at her from a distance, looking very friendly.
A-Qing frowned slightly, listening for any unusual rustling in the grass around them. Plenty of bandits on the road would send one more affable-looking member ahead to lure travelers into a trap. But nothing came to her sensitive ears besides the whisper of the windsongs and his distant calls.
Even so, as they came closer, she slowed still further, tapping her cane and swinging it into the pebbles of the road. “Hello?” she called out. “Is someone there?”
“Just ahead, guniang,” the man’s voice came again. “A sole traveler on the road.”
A strange scent passed her nose as she came to a stop entirely, loosely swinging her pole in front of her to see if he would be considerate and move out of her way.
He didn’t, but he also didn’t walk into her. Instead he stopped a few feet away, a man in simple homespun robes with long dark hair tied up in a high ponytail with a red ribbon. She made sure to keep her eyes slightly unfocused, pretending that she wasn’t sure where he was. “Sir? I can’t hear you anymore?”
“No worries, I’ve stopped,” he said in response, his voice perfectly pitched to show exactly where he was. “You may go ahead if you wish. There’s plenty of room.”
She swept her stick in front of her as if she were testing to be sure, taking a single step forward. Even though he stood slightly off to her left, she made sure that she never let her eyes track over to him. “It’s really no trouble, sir. I can go after you. Please, I don’t want to hit you with my pole by accident.”
To her growing concern he didn’t move at all. Instead he stood there with his arms crossed, waiting for something she couldn’t determine.
She couldn’t move so casually, not when the hairs on the back of her neck were prickling. What was he doing? Why was he doing nothing?
She swung her stick out, making sure that it didn’t directly swing into him, but near enough that he should have taken a step back. “Do not come closer,” she said before he could move, lifting her stick up enough that she could ward him off. “I will defend myself!”
The man laughed warmly, tapping his foot slightly. “I will stay right here, I just had to stop and consider something first. You’re very clever, little fox.”
A-Qing felt her hackles rise at his tone. The same instinct that told her when to leave town and get off the road suggested that he’d already seen through her blind disguise, but cracking and demanding would only confirm what needn’t be confirmed at this time. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean, sir. Is someone else here?”
The man paused for a second, then began to laugh heartily. A-Qing slowly lowered her stick to the ground again, resisting the temptation to clutch it at a better angle to hit away an attacker. While he definitely smelled suspicious, he still hadn’t actually said anything. And it went against her core to attack someone who hadn’t directly threatened her.
“Don’t worry, you don’t have to be on guard around me,” the man said when he’d finished laughing, wiping at his eyes. “Trust me, I understand your wariness.”
A-Qing frowned in what she hoped came off as confusion. “Sir, I really don’t understand what you mean.”
He chuckled again. “Oh, I think you do, little fox.” Before she could demand for him to explain himself, a vulpine grin crossed his face as he took two steps closer to her and snapped his fingers.
The air around him shimmered slightly and melted away like a summer mirage when one got too close to it. As it cleared, two black ears tipped in tufts of red fur sprang up from the top of his head and two tails unfurled from behind him, the same colors. His light eyes sharpened to liquid silver and as he smiled at her pointedly, she could see teeth sharper than any human ever had.
A-Qing had to concede defeat in her lie, because he’d just proved to her that she couldn’t fool him.
The only ones who had ever seen through her blindness disguise had been other foxes.
“I do have to compliment you on your acting,” he said as if they’d been casually chatting and not in a standoff on a well traveled road. “I think anyone else would have been completely fooled. Even other beings like us.”
“How could you tell?” she asked, walking over closer to him. Now that his illusion had fallen, she could smell the fox in him. Stronger than hers, but not as mighty as the nine-tailed foxes of stories. Just cunning enough that ordinary cultivators would not come out ahead against him and strong ones wouldn’t consider the fight worth it.
Perhaps some day when she earned her second tail, she would have an easier time in this world.
He smiled and turned on his heel, back on the road towards the Singing Peaks. “I heard you when you were still far away. A truly blind fox would not sing a song of speed if she were frightened of what she might not see on the ground.”
“So then did you come out to meet me?” she asked, switching her grip on her pole so that it hung at her side, out of the way. “Do you live around here?”
“You could say that,” the man said with amusement. “My house is further up that way,” he gestured vaguely. “Are you going to follow me home, then?”
A-Qing huffed, refusing to directly name her reason for following the black fox in case he tried to turn her away. A question not answered was a question later denied if necessary.
Maybe she didn’t need to answer. He didn’t tell her to stop following, and he didn’t stop talking to her. When he grew tired of wandering through a pine forest where needles kept slipping through their shoes and stabbing them painfully, he even carried her in his speed song, a tune without words that unexpectedly went up high when she expected it to go lower, and vice versa.
That first day ended with him starting a fire, not with magic, but with his own hands, striking rock and flint together until the tinder sparked to life. When the flames were rising to a cheery peak, he motioned for her to come sit down with him.
“If you’re going to spend time with me, I should at least know your name,” he said with a grin, fangs flashing in the firelight. “Otherwise I’ll have to call you little kit the entire time.”
A-Qing sat down with a flick of her tail to brush any unwanted sticks out from underfoot, crossing her legs and setting down her pole next to her. “How about you tell me first, old fox, and I’ll tell you mine after that?”
The fox barked in laughter, throwing his head back and letting his amusement ring out. “All right then, if you want to play it that way. I am Wei Ying, but my teacher gave me the courtesy name Wuxian when I was ready to go out on my own like the rest of her pupils.”
She clicked her tongue, a strange feeling muddling through her stomach. She didn’t even have a den name of her own, but he had both that and a name bestowed from a teacher when he came of age. Her own name felt a little small next to that. “A-Qing,” she said, tossing a small stick next to her into the fire and watching it catch. “No den name, no teacher name.”
Wei Wuxian smiled kindly at her, leaning over to ruffle her ears till she lay them flat. She might be a kit still in their reckoning, but it didn’t mean that she was so soft as to let him treat her like a kit. “Nice to meet you, A-Qing. And where are you going, since you seem to be following me home?”
She shrugged, trying to keep the motion careless. “You were headed to the Singing Peaks. We were going the same way.”
“Ah, of course,” he said with a grin, “better to travel with a companion than alone.”
She nodded, humming lightly as her stomach twinged with hunger. She’d eaten the day before; she’d be fine for another few days. The hum was the first song she’d invented by accident, one to make herself forget hunger for a few hours. Already the twinge was settling.
Across from her, Wei Wuxian frowned slightly, tails twitching before his brow abruptly smoothed and he reached into a pouch at his hip. “A long day walking always makes dinner that much better,” he said with a smile, pulling out several pieces of dried meat. “Catch!”
A-Qing blinked and got her hands up just in time to catch two long strips, the scent of spice and salt catching her sensitive nose quickly. Her stomach growled again, louder this time.
Wei Wuxian was already chewing on another piece, sharp teeth making quick work of the dried meat. “What? You’re sharing my fire, I can share my dinner too if I want,” he said with a careless flick of one tail. “I would be a terrible host if I let my guest go hungry.”
A-Qing weighed the likelihood that she should tuck the pieces of meat away for a time when the hum could not lessen the hunger against the chance that she might be able to get more food from him in the future. So far he’d had no problem letting her follow him or in sharing his fire. He’d even made a point to get to know her name.
And he was a fox. So she could trust him.
She couldn’t just let on all of that at once though, so she bit down on the meat before he could suggest taking it back. “I would be a poor guest if I offended my host by not eating the food he gives me,” she said through her mouthful. “Obviously we have better manners than that .”
He cackled again, but spoke no more until they had finished eating and A-Qing had licked the last of the lingering scraps of salt and meat from beneath her claws. “You can stick with me till we reach the passes, if you’d like,” Wei Wuxian said with an unreadable look in his eyes. “There’ve been more cultivators causing trouble in these parts recently.”
She nodded, curling a lip at the thought of that particular breed of human, with enough power to take on a being like them and enough ego to decide that it was the right thing to do when they were just trying to survive. “Are they trying to find the hidden pass?”
Wei Wuxian snorted. “Trying and failing. I couldn’t even find it if I tried, and I’m not a young pup like they are. But they do make traveling around here more difficult than it needs to be.”
A-Qing yawned, and yawned again. Now that her belly was full, with a warm fire and someone she could trust to not hurt her, her body was calling for sleep. “Then we should stick together, just in case they think one fox is easy to pick on.”
Wei Wuxian laughed again. “They’d have to stumble across us first to even try and pick a fight. But you can stay with me till then.”
She nodded, yawned again and then curled up close enough to the fire that she could feel her skin gently burning against it like how naps under the sunlight felt. “Good night, Wei Wuxian,” she said, closing her eyes and flicking her tail over her feet.
She was asleep before she heard if he said it back to her.
They were perhaps a day’s travel away, even for mortal feet, from the Singing Peaks when a gang of cultivators caught up with them, stumbling loudly through the underbrush.
A-Qing cursed loudly as the man in golden robes caught sight of them, eyes going wide. Next to her, Wei Wuxian sighed dramatically and snapped his fingers, sealing the man’s mouth shut before he had a chance to scream.
Unfortunately, his friends were just far enough behind that they stumbled into the clearing before they could make their retreat, and abruptly there were ten or so swords pointed at them.
Wei Wuxian took a step closer to her, his ears laid back flat against his head, but apparently that was too dangerous for these cultivators. “Stay away from her!” one man in gray robes shouted, gesturing with his sword as he marched up to stand between them. “You’ll pull none of that nonsense!”
“We know your tricks, vermin,” another one of them said with a sneer on his face. “You’ll sing at us to make us see something not there, or make us throw up and fall over. Well, you’re out of luck!” He brandished some sort of talisman at them. “I am immune to all songs foxes of your power level could make, and I’m not the only one.”
Wei Wuxian sighed and shook his head. “I promise we mean no harm, good men,” he said, lifting his hands. “Are any of you fathers? Would you not be worried for your daughter if a bunch of strange men appeared from nowhere and threatened her? She can’t even see you all.”
Two of the men looked at each other, apparently reconsidering the situation, but neither of them were the gray-robed leader. A-Qing knew it was a lie, Wei Wuxian was just trying to make them back off, but nevertheless she tried to step closer to him, holding onto her pole and cautiously tapping the ground as if she really couldn’t see. “Baba? What’s happening?” she called out, making her voice as meek and confused as she could manage. “Where are you?”
The man in gray robes didn’t even move his sword in the slightest as she tapped her way forward. While she kept her gaze unfocused and her pole tapping, she could feel her stomach twinge as he lifted it so that she could walk into it neck first without any knowledge of it.
Fortunately Wei Wuxian wasn’t pretending to be blind. “Stop, A-Qing!” he called out, his voice having a very real note of strain in it. “What sort of man are you to hold your sword up to a young girl’s throat?”
For a moment the clearing went quiet and she dared to hope that it might work. Then a few of the men started laughing. “I see no good maiden here,” the man in gray said with a leer. “Just a fox whore who’ll stay quiet if she knows what’s good for her, and three tails I can tack up on my wall.”
A-Qing swallowed slightly, but kept her composure. It wasn’t the worst she’d heard someone say about her when they thought she couldn’t see them. Apparently they thought that if she couldn’t see, she also couldn’t hear. Humans really were so stupid.
She tightened her grip on her pole and kept her face fearful. “Baba? What’s going on?” It hadn’t worked on all of them, but she’d seen a few of the men on the outskirts look less comfortable every time she’d said it, so why not keep trying? At least until she’d figured out how to get away from this mess.
A muscle jumped in Wei Wuxian’s jaw, but then it smoothed and he smiled at her. She didn’t know what it would look like to have her own father smile at her, but she thought it might look something like how he was, warm and protective. “It’ll be okay, A-Qing,” he said, his voice soothing. “Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry?” another one of the men in gold robes queried with a mocking laugh. “You’re only a two-tail, what can you do to us? Especially since we can just cut your pup’s throat right in front of you before you can even start up one of those witching songs you call magic.”
A-Qing kept her face turned towards Wei Wuxian, tail twitching. They were right: it wasn’t too hard to stop a two-tailed fox from being able to do much either in defense or offense.
But then why did she feel so certain that nothing would happen to her? She couldn’t explain it, but she felt like despite the cultivators blustering and gloating around her that it was actually Wei Wuxian who was in control of the situation.
A cold wind ran through the clearing. The man next to her lifted his sword up to her throat again. “One more movement there, fox, and I’ll slit her throat! She’s not worth enough that you can just - ”
A strange sharp whistle cut him off, chirping twice. The man in front of her froze, then dropped his sword to land at her feet. His whole face went empty and his body hung lax, like a puppet with its strings cut.
A-Qing, never one to miss an opportunity, cracked him over the head with her pole before he could recognize what was going on and start menacing them again, watching him fold in on himself like wet paper before she ran to hide behind the older fox.
Wei Wuxian smiled and this time she could see his fangs in it as he began to sing at the others. It didn’t sound like any song she’d ever heard, whether on riverbanks with the women singing as they worked, or the marching songs to pass the time on the road. The words were unimportant, merely sounds, but the melody itself suggested that she wanted to lie down on the ground and stare up at the blue sky, to let the grass wind around her until she became a part of the field.
She quickly clapped her hands over her ears as the song wound around them and the men set down their weapons, then lay down, completely under the foxsong with no way out.
She could smell them die.
Only when the song ended and Wei Wuxian went over to check on the bodies did she cautiously uncover her ears, collecting her pole from where she’d dropped it. “What sort of song was that?” she demanded, wandering over to poke one of the men where they’d fallen with the end of the pole. “I’ve never heard of a song that could just… kill people.”
Wei Wuxian clucked and nudged her pole away as he stood up, reaching out to ruffle her hair annoyingly. “The sort of song better to be used when you have more than one tail, little pup,” he said, not batting an eye at her annoyance. “Come back when you have three tails and I’ll teach you that one.”
Without another word, he turned on his heel and started uphill again, just as he’d been doing before they were ambushed, his two tails waving merrily behind him.
Her jaw dropped at the sheer audacity. Sure, she’d been telling him how she didn’t need someone to watch out for her, but she didn’t think he’d actually go .
Well, he couldn’t shake her so easily. No matter how many tails he had, she would just find him again until he gave her the answers she wanted. He definitely was not prepared for just how stubborn she could be.
“Three, why three?” A-Qing cried out as she ran to keep up with him, not even bothering to try and keep up the facade of blindness. “You did it with just two!”
Wei Wuxian laughed. “Are you going to follow me home instead? I may just keep you if you do. As long as Lan Zhan likes you, you can stay.”
“Don’t think I can’t tell when you’re dodging my questions,” she huffed, digging her pole into the dirt as the ground continued to grow steeper beneath her feet. “Who’s Lan Zhan anyway? And why do I need three tails?”
“Lan Zhan is my husband; we live up on the Singing Peaks,” Wei Wuxian said with not a hint of exertion in his voice from the climb. “Are you really sure you want to go up so high? Terrifying things live up there.”
If he thought he could scare her away by suggesting that she couldn’t handle it, then he was wrong. And she was going to prove it. “If you live up there, then it can’t be too bad,” she retorted, “unless you’re going to tell me that you’re something far scarier than a fox with two tails.”
His laughter echoed through the trees as they left the dead men behind and ascended the mountain up into the clouds.