Second Time Around

17. Bedtime Rituals, Part 1

A'Yuan required four stories, two cups of water and three kisses before he would settle down into his bed. Lan WangJi, having never had the opportunity to put a small child to bed, was more than slightly bewildered at the process. He remembered from his own childhood being simply sent to bed and obeying his uncle with alacrity. Wei WuXian smiled sadly. "I think my parents must have told me bedtime stories, because I remember telling them to myself when... before Jiang FengMeng found me. After I moved to Lotus Pier, ShiJie would tell both Jiang Cheng and myself stories. It's such a simple and easy thing to do for a child, and helps let them know they're loved. At least that's what QingJie says." Wei WuXian smiled a happy smile at his friend. "I love him as if I had birthed him myself."

"But he sleeps in Wen QiongLin's room. Why?"

Wei WuXian rubbed at his nose. "Well.... He slept in my room back in Lotus Pier, as you know. So when we moved here, he did as well. But back there, I had a workshop, and here?" He waved his hands at the cramped rooms. "It was one big room when we first moved in. We built the interior walls to make three small rooms. QingJie needs her privacy. At the time, we thought A'Ning should have privacy, too. But I was keeping A'Yuan from getting a restful night's sleep with my tinkering. So NingDi offered to take him into his room." He shrugged. "Those two adore each other, so it's not as bad as it could be. And I make a decent bit of money off my tinkering, so...."

"You make talismans?" Lan WangJi looked over the messy table at the scraps of papers strewn amidst proper journals and the occasional wooden unidentified thing.

"Most of what I sell is talismans to keep vermin away or food fresher longer. A cloth merchant lost months of income because several mouse families built nests in their goods."

Lan WangJi picked up a small device. "What does this do?"

Wei WuXian laughed. "In my last time, I called it a compass of evil. I got it to work, but not very well." He took the device and clicked it open. "If there's any yin infused creatures around, the needle will point to it."

"You could sell this to cultivation clans."

"I did. In my last life. They called me Yiling Laozu. Rogue cultivators bought these in droves." He laughed again. "And then I'd see a full fledged clan member using them, so I guess some of the so-called rogues were just pretending to be. Between these compasses and stygian lure flags and radishes, we earned enough money to not starve."

"So why won't you sell them now? This would give our junior disciples a good advantage on their early night hunts."

"The Yiling Laozu who tamed the Burial Mounds and gave consciousness to a fierce corpse was feared by most and respected by few. The coreless Wei WuXian doesn't have any of that."

"Wei Ying is respected by enough people."

Wei Ying could feel his skin heating up at the compliment, so he changed the subject. "Would you like to wash before you sleep? We enclosed a corner of the kitchen so we can bathe with some privacy and we don't have to lug the tub from room to room. Or water."

Lan WangJi nodded, but refused to change the subject. "What is a lure flag?"

"Oh, well, if you were on a night hunt, and you didn't know exactly where the critter was, you could plant a bunch of these flags in a circle or around a pentagram or whatever. The critter gets lured into the middle of the flags, and you can kill it easier," he explained as he lugged water from an outside cistern into the kitchen. "Someday I'm going to figure out how to run water from the cistern directly into the tub. I've thought that if I simply placed the cistern on the roof, we could have some sort of removable plug and the water would just fall into the tub below. But, did you know, Lan Zhan? Water is heavy! I made a small prototype to see how it would work, and the whole thing just collapsed from the weight. It also splashed everywhere, instead of neatly falling down. So..." He dumped one last bucket into the tub. "The idea still needs work." He slapped a heating talisman on the tub and stepped back. "Here you are. If you're not too dirty, I'll use your water when you're done."