2nd Water Tiger, Spring Beginning 1st
(After Noon)
Huālíng blows over the chipped bowl filled with a tisane he’s carefully brewed in his now-vacated and washed sleeping kettle.
Zhì, for her part, huffs impatiently as she squats beside him by the cleaned-up fire pit.
“This is a lot of waiting just for something I coulda eaten with my hands,” she grumbles, the blue of such earlier exploits still staining her lips and fingers.
“Patience is a virtue,” he chides gently, without any bite.
“Grown-ups say that.”
“I am a grown-up,” he points out idly, testing the temperature of the simple tisane with the back of one knuckle.
“You’re a vay-ga-rant.”
“How rude,” he says, raising the bowl out of her reach, “Who taught you to call people that?”
She pouts, her frown deepening, “People just say it,” she defends, eyes flickering between the bowl and the steaming surface of the liquid within the cauldron, “Nobody says what a vay-ga-rant is,” she whines in her defense.
“Hm,” he glances at her sidelong as he mimes a long, loud sip from the bowl, “Is it a nice thing to call someone?”
Her face falls, first as he sips from the bowl, then further as she thinks about the question, turning it over in her head.
He waits, enjoying the sweetness of the tisane on his tongue and the warmth radiating from the cauldron.
It’s chilly in the hut, even with most of the walls shored up and pats of mud and grass temporarily filling the holes.
‘It doesn’t seem as though it was built with snowy winters in mind.’
There had been scraps of clothing in a chest that he’d managed to regain the barest shreds of his dignity from, and a few pieces that hadn’t been suitable for wear had become wrappings for his hands and feet.
The winter weather had been biting in the early morning, but some warm hint of spring and respite could be found on the sunward side of the hut.
In the early afternoon the cold is only unbearable in long stretches, and he’s been banking the fire and collecting wood to dry for most of the day in order to spend a more comfortable night outside a pot.
Now, however, the biting in his stomach has finally overwhelmed his caution and he’s decided to indulge in a tisane of the water enoki growing abundantly in the icy wet around the hut.
‘-the stones around the wellspring can be rearranged easily. That’ll redirect all of that water--most of it. Perhaps leave enough to keep patches of enoki sprouting. It’s a blessing it’s here. Uncle Witch knew a good spot when he saw it-’
Huālíng considers the figure on the painting behind him, and wonders if there’s a weight to those inked-in eyes, or if it’s just his imagination.
‘-more firewood. A trip to the little village to walk Zhì home and see where I’ve ended up. Perhaps the tisane will sell. There are plenty of empty jars-’
Uncle Witch, who--Zhì’s informed him--has no other name, seemed to have once left things in fair condition. Though neglect and disrepair has taken a visible toll on the hut itself, some of the contents are still in fair enough order. Including the collection of jars and the cauldron itself, he’s found the dusty chest, a few sturdy pottery bowls, a sleeping mat rolled up in the rafters, a serviceable rolling mortar, and--surprise of surprises--a retort, cap, and curcubit: all the makings of a genuine alchemical still.
‘I’m beginning to think Uncle Witch was a proper alchemist after all,’ he thinks to himself as he hands Zhì the bowl of tisane, cooled enough not to burn the tongue, and pours himself a bowl to sip on while he organizes his thoughts.
“I don’t think so,” Zhì’s little face is still screwed up in serious consideration as she ponders the bowl cupped in her hands.
“You don’t think so?”
She looks up.
“I don’t think calling someone a vay-ga-rant is a good thing.”
Huālíng blinks at her.
He feels his chapped lips slowly pulling into a small smile.
Game Mechanics:
(Selected for the Garden Plot)
Water Enoki
- ★★ - PLANT - Bog (5) - Forest (10)
- Add 1 point of Sweet
- Caps of adult mushrooms (over 10ft tall) can be BOILED for [MAGIC]
Journal Entry:
Clusters of these slender, fast-growing, blue mushrooms spring up in shallow water overnight and often take only a day or two to reach their full height of ten feet.
Because of their sweet, sticky spores, they’re often eaten by animals (and lucky children) long before they reach their mature height.
Mature mushrooms are sturdy and flexible, with caps approximately the size of an adult’s spread hand that glow with an attractive blue light when in darkness.
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Some Years After The Fall of the Demon King
(On A Particularly Bright Morning)
They squint.
She stomps her tiny, clawed foot and the brittle straw at the threshold billows dust into the brightness streaming past her, “You’re late,” she repeats slowly, with greater emphasis.
They take her in for a long moment.
Her clothes are plain, but in good condition. She’s scrappy, but well-enough fed. She has a streak of glimmering blue still stuck to her lips and swiped absently along one cheek.
“Who-” their voice rasps before they clear their throat, “Who are you?”
“I’m-” with a child-like tell, she pauses and her eyes widen, then she beams at them with a full, toothy smile.
“I’m the witch!”
“Nh,” they acknowledge with the barest necessary sound.
They stretch and settle themselves as comfortably as they can in their--pot? Kettle?
“So?” she prompts, blinking her huge, orange eyes at them with a judgmental sweep thrown in for good measure, “Who are you?”
They open their mouth and find something on the tip of their tongue, but it slips away before any sound comes out. They snap their mouth shut again and think, then look themselves over.
Against all odds, in spite of their nakedness, it does produce an answer of sorts: a flower pendant hangs on a sturdy chain at their neck. Pulling their head back and frowning at the characters written on the pendant reveals a name.
“Huālíng,” they turn the sound over in their mouth absently and it feels familiar.
The girl’s lower lip presses up, continuing to judge even that brief utterance.
“You don’t look like a ‘Huālíng’ to me.”
He tries to tamp down on his affront at the brashness of this child, “You don’t look like a witch,” he counters with an even tone.
The girl raises her chin once more, “Well I am now that I have you.”
“Have me?” he snorts.
“Yes,” she says firmly, stamping her foot once more, “You’re my familiar. That makes me the witch.”
“Who says I’m your familiar?”
She wrinkles her face and points to the ground around their kettle, marked with an array of sigils and characters painted in big, bold strokes of ink on the wooden floor, “I called you. I’ve been doing the ritual thing.”
“You came to me,” he settles back against the cold metal, letting his eyes wander the-
‘Quite frankly, this place is a hovel.’
Age has rendered no kindness upon the building’s sagging beams, and light cuts through the dust in bright spears from the holes where roofing tiles have slipped and broken. The wooden floor slopes slightly and looks visibly rotted in the spots where broken pottery hasn’t been used to collect any liquid the weather cares to pour in through the patchy ceiling. The woven bamboo walls bow in and outward in places where they’ve fallen away from the ceiling slightly. The firepit below him is a mess of piled ash and half-burnt char-
‘It is incredibly chilly.’
“You live in a drafty hole, Little Witch,” he grumbles, not-quite shivering as they lower their head so that the lid upon it might trap what little heat remains in the kettle.
The girl scoffs as she steps inside, closing the door behind her and plunging the hut into sudden darkness.
“I don’t live here,” she says with audible disdain.
He sees her eyes first, glowing orange in the shadows, just before his own fully adjust.
“Although,” she turns a circle and takes in the hut, as if appraising it, “I should live in the witch hut now that I’m the witch.”
She wrinkles her nose, “I don’t think mom will let me.”
He watches as she navigates the questionable floor with familiar ease, circling the central fire pit to a flat bar of wood near the back of the space.
“Thanks, Uncle Witch,” she says as she snaps her fingers and brings a spark of light to a broken bit of incense.
The flicker of flame briefly illuminates a shoddy scroll held up by slivers of wood pressed into the gaps in the wall. The figures in the painting summon up some sense of deja vu in him, but it winks out just as quickly as the flame at the girl’s fingertips and everything goes dark again.
Her face is serious as she carefully places the stub of incense into the cracked bowl filled to the brim with ashes, then gives the portrait a little bow.
Then she whirls on him with a frown.
“You better get out of there if you want me to warm this place up, else you’ll just end up getting boiled.”
“I’ll need clothes, first,” he points out, setting aside the mystery of the painting for more immediate concerns.
“Why would you need clothes?” she says, her nose wrinkling and her head pulling back to cock to one side in clear puzzlement.
He blinks slowly at her.
“I’d rather not bare myself to a little girl, nor the elements.”
She puts her hands on her hips again, “I’ve seen dog dingles when they pee and watched the cats go yowling at night. What’ve you got that needs covering?”
“That’s-”
‘Aren’t girls meant to have modesty? Propriety??’
“Those are animals.”
She narrows her eyes, “Aren’t familiars animals?”
He stands up--partially, keeping his lower half out of sight within the kettle.
The girl’s eyes widen hugely, even for a little owl.
Game Mechanics:
Familiar, Ability: “The Owl” Joker
- A Clue!
Clue, First Steps: “The Carnival” 3 of Diamonds
“You find something that shows you what the witch looked like. A photograph, drawing, or maybe a carving?”
(Drawing 2 Abilities because of the Joker <3)
Familiar, Ability: “The Wanderer” 4 of Hearts & “The Desert” Jack of Diamonds
- Cute - Whenever someone would give you a reagent, you may draw twice and take the higher card.
- Magic Eye - Reduce the Foraging Value of all [MAGIC] reagents by 3. Minimum 1.
“You get used to it,” a familiar-sounding, sardonic promise.
-it must have been years-
“You know. Something like that.”
-they’re so close, but so tired-
“You’ll be fine. I guarantee it.”
They breathe in with a start, eyes blinking then wincing at the sudden slice of morning light.
It’s cramped, curled up as they are, and they gasp in a breath when their limbs protest movement all the way down to the bone. They would stay, except their joints and side are throbbing with the pain of laying still and confined for-
They blink their eyes open again, huffing against the rude glint catching the crescent opening of the stifling hole serving as their sleeping hollow.
They take in a bracing breath--as much as they can manage within the tiny space--and begin working their pressed and sleep-numbed limbs free of themselves, shoving and grunting to slide upright.
They press the top of their head against the slightly-ajar lid capping the opening at the top of the space, cracking it open just slightly.
Sunlight beams directly into their eyes and all other aches and bruises dim into a shadow beneath the stabbing spearpoints of it. They rest their forehead head against the rim of the hole--perfectly circular and metallic--with their eyes closed. Their groan of pain reverberates uncomfortably within the hollow.
“Oh,” a young voice sounds from within the light, “It’s you.”
They blink open their eyes and wince in the direction of the voice.
A fledging owlish girl in a plain shawl and pants stands in the doorway with her arms akimbo, her chin raised.
