Chapter Text
Once upon a time, in the small town of Qiaoying village, found in the relatively peaceful valley of Chenyu Vale, a pair of twins were born underneath the chilling light of a shivering blue moon.
Aside from the exuberant cries of newborns ringing out from the small hut, the night was quiet, mournful in a way it shouldn't have been. It wasn't to be helped. The world around them was marked for death.
A mother and a father cradled the children in their arms, smiles hesitant and withdrawn.
The father, Zhuang, held the eldest child, born with inky black hair and piercing purple eyes, and settled him against his shoulder, his hand cupping the back of the child's head to calm him. The eldest's cries were shallow, his gaze narrow and cheeks chubby, little arms and legs shifting as though he were running a race. Zhuang laughed at the dull kicks hitting his chest, but the laughter was hollow and sorrowful, just as most things at the time were.
The mother, Shiqin, held the younger one tightly in her arms like he was the whole entire world, cradled to her chest as she stared down into his eyes. Unlike his brother, the younger one was born with a shock of soft green hair, deep pink eyes blinking curiously up at her as though she were the most interesting thing he had seen. She was at the time, after all.
The midwife had left just moments ago to announce the birth to the town and bring back some clean water to clean the children off. Shiqin was tired, her eyes drooping shut as she leaned back against the edge of the bed. Having children was meant to be a joyous occasion, but neither parent could bring themself to be cheerful. They hadn’t expected a second one. The doctors and healers they’d visited had never once mentioned anything of the sort. The second set of contractions that had started after the first birth had been a surprise. In another life, it wouldn’t have been an unwelcome surprise, but with the poverty and sickness surrounding them, caging them in, it was almost a deathmarker. One child was a setback, but two might genuinely kill them.
For tea farmers, the tea trees of Chenyu Vale were everything. Originally a gift from an adeptus that protected the region, the tea was their livelihoods, their connection to the world outside of their small village. It kept them afloat in the ever growing competitive economy of the nation of Liyue. If there was no tea, there was no Qiaoying Village. The people had lived there and farmed their tea for years. Nothing should have changed, not when it hadn’t for the longest time.
But the world grew rough. The actions of gods and archons always fell down upon mortals to clean up and deal with. The deadening of the tea of Chenyu Vale was no different.
Sometime ago, a long time before the birth of these twins, the valley had come to a stand still. The tea plants began to wilt. It was as though they had been poisoned, leaves falling and decaying, the tea shriveling before it could fully grow. That which could be harvested was processed but impotent, lacking the unique taste and effect it had once been famous for. It sold, but for less than half of what it once had.
At first it was an inconvienence. The decay set them back a season or two, but they had other trades. They could have been fine with selling the clearwater jade was found abundantly there. But the tea plants dying was only the beginning of the plague that would take over their small village, taking it off the map for a very long time.
The miasma, or what the people called the plague, began its infection on a small scale. It started with the tea—the farmers watching in progressing horror as their long-pursued efforts were slowly but surely deadened—then the water and the air. None of them knew what exactly had caused this plague upon their lands, but it was not too difficult to presume. Their adepti were weakened still by the Archon War though hundreds of years had passed already, and their protections were only as powerful as the adepti themselves. It wasn’t too farfetched to assume that something had slipped inside through the cracks in the veil.
People began to complain of headaches and bellyaches more often, sickness spreading though not yet deadly. The tea-making process slowed with so many workers out sick and their water cleansing methods sometimes failed, the disease persevering through even the sharpest of heats that were lit to burn away undesirable additions. They began to cover their mouths upon leaving their houses, worried about stumbling into the stronger patches of miasma while trying to work.
Then it began to affect the soil, many of their other crops failing or refusing to grow at all. The plague left the small town destitute and hungry. The tea they were able to process and other products they made sold less and less over time, no longer providing them with the comfortable living the townspeople had once been accustomed to. People left, heading towards Yilong Wharf and Liyue Harbor to search for work and opportunities to pull themselves from poverty.
Shiqin and Zhuang had stayed, still hanging onto their dream of raising their child—children—where they both had grown up. But the effects of the miasmic plague were only growing worse and Zhuang had been warning Shiqin about the side effects since the early stages of her pregnancy. He was concerned about the complications the miasma might cause, but Shiqin brushed him off every time, claiming she and their child would be fine. And they had been, in the end, but that was not the end of their worries.
“He’s got your eyes,” Shiqin laughed, voice watery as she caressed her son’s face gently, “and your smile.”
“Yeah?” Zhuang smiled, happy his wife was happy, even as the fact that this would never work was slowly dawning on them both. Their house was barely big enough for three, let alone four. They had been preparing over the last few months to take care of a single child. A second was another mouth to feed food they didn't have, taking up more room they didn't have space for. “This one has your hair. And, by the way he’s squinting, your need for glasses as well.”
“What should we name them?” asked Shiqin, smile slipping slightly. They had prepared one name beforehand, Baizhu, but not a second one. And which one would get the name?
Zhuang was silent for a long moment, looking between the babies thoughtfully. Then, he said, “The one you’re holding, he’ll be Baizhu. This one, I think we should call him Baishi.”
Humming, Shiqin’s eyes flickered back down to the baby in her arms. “My little Baizhu.”
Leaning over, Zhuang traded with her, setting Baishi down in her other arm and picking up Baizhu, supporting his back on his elbow and holding him against his chest. He sat down in the chair and let the baby settle. Shiqin hummed as she brushed through Baishi’s hair. The baby settled into her hold, his cries dying out as he relaxed.
“My sweet Baishi,” she whispered, closing her eyes as she cradled him. “They’re perfect.”
“Perfect,” Zhuang echoed, tone just as mournful as his wife’s. The twins both fell into a peaceful sleep as their parents put aside their worries. They both knew this would be the last moment of calm for a long while, so for now, they basked in it.
—
A few months passed, just as difficult as Zhuang and Shiqin had expected.
If taking care of one child would have been a chore, taking care of two was a heraclean task. A few weeks in, Zhuang had to go back to work in the fields, trying to find tea leaves that hadn’t gone bad for only a portion of what he had been making before. Feeding the kids was simple enough in the beginning, but approaching a few months in, there were even fewer supplies and even less mora to be made.
Some of the other villagers offered to help, but not many had the ability to do so. Yilong Wharf had been sending over provisions when they could, but they weren’t much better off either, much of their trade having depended heavily on the tea and the products that could be made from it as well.
Most of their textiles and clothing were handmade or bought at Yilong Wharf, but with the crop failures, little new clothing could be created and not many of their neighbors had much to spare. Zhuang and Shiqin remade some of their spare clothes into diapers and clothing for the twins, but both knew that method wouldn’t last very long. Something had to be done.
It all came to a head six months in. Both of the twins cried often, either hungry or upset over something neither parent could understand, but today was different. Shiqin sat at their dinner table, her pounding head settled in one of her hands as she sat Baizhu on her lap. Zhuang bounced Baishi in his arms as he paced the small room, trying to settle him.
The older boy had recently come down with a cough. They had procured some medicine from the town healer, but it hadn’t worked. Baishi cried all night long, feeling an invisible pain neither Shiqin nor Zhuang knew how to solve. The town doctor had been too busy to examine him, but the look he’d given him only told them the obvious. The miasmic plague didn't discriminate between the old and the young.
Baizhu, seeming to have sensed his brother’s decline in health, cried alongside his brother much of the time, though he could be calmed by his mother’s embrace. Baishi's cries were nonstop and unsolvable.
“It can't go on like this,” Zhuang murmured to himself, closing his eyes in despair, ears ringing from the harrowing cries of his son. “Not for much longer.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Shiqin asked, tone sharp. “He’s sick, Zhuang. It’d be stupid of us to ignore that.”
“Yes, he needs medicine, but the village doctor can’t provide any that works. The only medicine that would work here…”
“No,” she said, interrupting him. Her eyes watered as she squeezed Baizhu’s chubby yet waning cheeks. He had just started crawling not more than a week ago. Baishi had started just yesterday. The happiness she felt then wouldn’t have been the same if it hadn’t been in this house. She had grown up here. She loved these lands. They were her own and she had never wanted any other. She wanted both of her sons to feel the same. “We’re not leaving, Zhuang.”
“Even if it saves our son’s life?”
Shiqin hesitated. “The plague hasn’t proved to be deadly yet.”
“Yet, Shiqin. ‘Yet’ is the point there. Who knows when that will change? I don’t want our sons to be its first victims, too young and weak to fight it off properly.”
“How do we know it will change?”
Zhuang let out a heavy sigh, falling down into the seat beside her. Baishi had calmed a little, but his wracking breaths and tiny coughs made Zhuang and Shiqin’s hearts burn in sorrow. Neither of them wanted a day like this to come, nor did they want to have this conversation, but it was unavoidable. The miasmic plague didn’t care who it hurt, forces of nature unaffected by how humanity felt about them.
“We don’t,” he acquiesced, “but do you really want to take that chance?”
Shiqin looked away, biting her lip to keep herself from crying. “What do you want to do?”
“I’ll take Baishi to Liyue Harbor,” Zhuang began. “I’ll get him some medicine there and hope the cough clears up with time. While I’m there, I’ll pick up some jobs, make some money and send it back home. I’ll stay until things are better, or until I’ve got enough for us to live comfortably. It won’t be forever. Later on down the line we’ll decide again whether you want to make your way out to the harbor too, or whether we’ll come back home. We don’t have to decide right now. Right now, all that matters is making sure Baishi gets better.”
“What about Baizhu?” Shiqin asked meekly, her grip on the boy tightening the slightest bit. “What if he gets it as well?”
Zhuang shook his head. “I’ll send medicine back too. For you and him. And clothes, and food, and whatever else I can get.”
Finally, the tears broke free and streamed down Shiqin’s face. She had never wanted this, never wanted the plague to tear their lives apart as it was beginning to do. She didn’t want to let go of Baishi, but the circumstances called for it. He would not get better if he continued living in the village, and his health was much more important than her own desires. At least she wouldn’t be separated from Baizhu. She didn’t know if she’d be able to take it if she had been left there all alone.
Lifting up his hand away from Baishi, Zhuang leaned in close and pressed it against Shiqin’s tearstained cheek. He kissed her forehead, then her lips, before he rested his forehead against hers.
“It won’t be forever,” he said again, hoping in his heart that it was true. “Just a little while. Then things will get better, I promise.”
Promises were a fragile, flimsy thing. It was only nature that they were often broken.