It is indulgence. Improper.
I should be alert, follow every beat of her fight. Await for her signal or the mere hint that she is in more danger than she thinks herself to be.
I… I am hers. Her subject. Her loyal… scribe.
But… I am also an average man.
An average man confronted with the untamed beauty of a woman moving with grace and purpose, her limbs too bare for me to ever get used to as she keeps being the Heavenly Hound, the identity we crafted for this mission, this night, this moment.
And so, indulgent, average, entranced…
I remember.
━❖━
Two weeks after gifting me the prurient tome, she fidgeted, nervous enough that her hips noticeably moved side to side, making the pelt she wore whisper of soft fur against smooth skin.
I, patiently, stood behind her and tried not to stare at how much of that skin was once again revealed to me.
It is often that men speak of their… proclivities. Their preferences.
Never before had I considered myself a so-called 'leg-man,' but I was quickly making up my mind about the subject.
"It's… Things should be ready," she said, looking at me over her shoulder.
I nodded.
She wetted her lips, blurred reflections of the oil lamps in the deserted hall caressing the glossy flesh.
I kept nodding. Mostly to distract myself from everything else happening around me and presumably going to happen when the awkward moment passed and the door opened.
The door to her bedroom.
The one place in the clan's capital compound that I had no right to visit.
"It… doesn't have to be today?" I offered with less surety than I had wanted to.
"I… It's… We need to start at some point."
Did we?
Did we really have to engage in experimental cultivation just to enact a harebrained scheme that would bring to light the corruption that everybody in the capital already knew existed? Was this her responsibility? What her duty, lineage, or honor demanded of her?
I was immediately ashamed by the questions that never left my lips.
She was… Xia.
My lady.
If there was anyone in the world that I trusted to do what was right, it was…
The girl fidgeting, looking up at me over her shoulder, and waiting for my answer.
"Whenever you are ready," I said.
Her anxiety turned into a blooming smile, the trust in her green eyes so patent that it hurt to witness, and she nodded decisively before sliding open the door to her chambers.
At once, a cloud of incense assaulted my senses.
"It should help…" she said, covering her nose and looking slightly tearful.
Earthy scents mingled in a chaotic blend that brought to mind a dark forest under a deep summer sky opening up to a lush meadow and…
And it was readily apparent that some of the herbs used to make the incense must have had some kind of hypnotic effect, because I could all but taste the sun-warmed grass.
"Help with what, precisely?" I asked, shielding my own nose with my sleeve far too late for it to be of any use.
"Just… help." She shrugged, the gesture making me immediately fixate on her pale, exposed shoulders peeking out of the skirted vest before she walked into the smoky room.
And I, of course, followed, closing the door after me…
Only to abruptly stop when I saw her bending over to light one of the lamps set on the red wooden floor.
The… the golden pelt rode high. High enough that, when the flame of the candle trapped in a tracery of crystal bloomed, the gap between her thighs was bathed in a warm sheen turned to a mesmerizing shimmer by clouds of drifting incense.
"Just a moment…" she murmured, moving to the next lamp in the sequence.
Eleven lamps, to signify that the dog was the eleventh of the Twelve Earthly Branches. Eleven times that I turned in the center of a growing circle of candlelight to stare at Xia bending down, her toned legs shifting slightly as her fingers navigated the webs of crystal to reach the wicks hidden within.
Eleven times that I realized that I was very much a leg-man.
"That… That should be… enough," she said, standing up, her face red, her freckles barely visible over the deep flush.
Gods. The incense was clearly working.
"Come here," I said, something shifting in my voice that I had never used before.
She nodded, nervous, and lowered her head before timidly walking toward me, to the spot surrounded by uneven lights, beneath the inscrutable pattern of mutable shapes painted in shifting colors that the threads of flickering crystal cast on the wooden ceiling above us.
Then she just… waited.
I had read the full text. Studied it. For days on end. Made sure that the risks would be minimal. That I would perform flawlessly.
For her sake.
But… at that moment…
I wanted so much more than what was good for her.
"Xia."
Her shoulders tightened, and she, slowly, brought her gaze up. Green eyes shone through drifting incense, dancing with borrowed flames.
Looking at me.
It was hard to breathe. The suffocating scent was all but forgotten, the humid atmosphere barely any concern, but, still, every mouthful of air came at great effort as she stood in front of me, waiting for me to speak.
To command her.
The rush was… intoxicating.
Disorienting.
"Begin, Xia."
She nodded once more, the very tip of her tongue running between her lips in something that I both wanted to mirror and steal, and…
She reached behind her, the sound of silk rustling over fur letting me know that she was looking for something secured in her sash.
Something that turned out to be a pair of fake dog ears made out of the same golden fur as her tunic.
Triangular. Sharp like a wolf's.
She gave them to me, the hairband with the two soft additions, and bowed her head until untamed, blond locks spilled over her face and down my chest.
Breathing became even harder.
With surety that only a part of me felt, I raised the band and, slowly, reverently, crowned her with it.
She gasped.
And I…
I patted her between the two fake ears, sinking my fingers in her hair, scratching her scalp, allowing myself to feel her bowed presence.
"Good girl. You are such a good girl, Xia," I said.
And she whined.
"Sit," I commanded.
She slowly lowered herself, her thighs spreading open when she neared the floor, and she arched her back, the sinuous movement spreading across her entire body as she pressed her arms against the sides of her breasts before resting the heels of her palms between her knees, barely shielding the dark gap revealed by the rising skirt as she curled her fingers into paws and looked up at me with expectation. With a need for approval I understood all too well, even if I had never expected to see it on her face.
Even if I had never expected to see it directed at me.
The… the thing inside me, the one that was sure rather than reeling, surged at her wide eyes, whispering to me of dark things that heated a room suffused not only by thick incense, but by the warmth of an early summer night.
The polished floor shone with eleven flames, and a crescent moon filtered through the lacquered tracery of the closed windows. My cotton robes stuck to my sweaty skin. Hot air circulated over the inside of my forearms in my wide sleeves.
And Xia kept looking up at me.
"So obedient. So loyal. Such a good girl," I murmured, lowering myself so that my eyes were just above hers before I tickled the underside of her jaw, lavishing affection on my pet.
"Master…" she said, eyes closing into a dreamy smile as she tilted her head, offering more of herself to me.
I gently patted the side of her neck before gliding up over the soft peach fuzz to catch a sliding drop of sweat trailing down from behind her ear.
A glittering jewel. A dome of light shifting in myriad colors. A mere sample of her fragrance, untainted by perfumes or makeup.
Filled with the closest thing I had ever felt to religious fervor, I contemplated it. That precious, unique, irreplaceable thing that I had never been allowed to capture before.
Then, of course, I turned it into an offering.
I lowered my extended finger to her, right below her nose, and her nostrils flared open as she took in our mingled scents.
Shyly, slowly, her lips parted and closed thrice before… before her tongue came out and she lapped up the drop on the tip of my finger.
The heel of my other hand brushed over her cheek so that I could caress behind her ear with my fingertips, the pads brushing along the line of irregular cartilage, and Xia shuddered at…
At my touch.
It was…
Her lips were wet as her tongue kept moving between them, licking around my proffered fingertip, leaving trails of her saliva behind that she would rush to catch on a second, third, and fourth pass around my skin, the two of us glistening with the light coming at us from the circle lit in the spacious room that I had not bothered to examine, all of my attention captured by the girl now sitting in front of me, tasting me, moaning at me.
It… would have been so easy.
Take away the finger and lean further down. Take her lips with mine.
Steal them from her fiancé.
From the odious man I had only glimpsed from afar and never talked to. The one whose woman was now so devoted to me that she would not refuse anything I asked of her. Commanded her.
The man whose family we planned to ruin.
I… I pushed the finger inside Xia's mouth. Past her lips.
Her eyes widened with surprise, looking for my own in flickering green before I trailed a line of demanding affection through her palate, tickling the back of her teeth like I had once read a kiss between lovers could do.
But we were not lovers, and we weren't kissing.
We were just Hound and Master.
"Don't bite, Xia. Good girl. Good girl."
She tried to nod, only for the finger in her palate to interrupt her movement as abruptly as she had stopped my face from moving with her forceful grasp, and I couldn't hide the slight smirk that came out at her frustrated, childish, distorted pout.
Then I kept moving.
I kept touching her striated palate, the spongy texture of her cheeks, the top of her tongue, the inner side of her teeth, the sharp crowns of them. I mapped the inside of my Xia's mouth as accurately as my touch allowed me to, uncaring of her deep gasps or the way her trembling arms shook the breasts trapped between them, shimmering golden fur offering scattered trails of light that crested over the round, rippling flesh hidden beneath.
I was a leg man, yes, but…
I was, most of all, a Xia man.
The flush on her cheeks kept enchanting me, as much as the softness and warmth of the skin beneath my palm and the wet heat surrounding my finger, as well as the small tremors of her forcefully stilled tongue.
Slowly, I dragged it out, rubbing against her lips, my eyes never straying from hers even as her lids fluttered.
"Good girl," I repeated. "Do you want a treat?"
Widened green answered the question unambiguously, and she went from sitting to being on all fours instantly, her hips shaking side-to-side in ways that sent the abbreviated skirt of her pelt flying around, whipping against her shaking flesh, giving me an inkling that I may as well also be an ass man.
My thoughts burned.
"Do you want a treat, Xia?" She raised her paw—her front—her right hand, and moved it up and down in the air, as if trying to catch something offered. "You want a treat, don't you?"
Her excited grin turned into a frustrated pout, and she sat back on her haunches before waving her clumsy, bent hands at me, pawing at the front of my pants with demand when I stood up and chuckled at the adorable display.
She got all the more impatient, climbing up my body, her chin pulling down at the knot of my belt as she kept expecting her reward.
From my pouch, I fished out a bone-shaped mooncake that had taken some… finagling to procure from the kitchens. The traditional Mid-Autumn Festival pastry was one that brought too many childhood memories of a blonde girl stuffing her cheeks full and…
And I waved the treat in front of Xia.
Who jumped up at it.
She almost threw me to the floor when our chests collided, but I managed to keep the treat away from her snapping teeth, and, when she fell back down on her haunches, I tutted at her in playful reproach, wagging my finger in clear denial.
"Not yet, Xia. My, my, you can be such a bad girl."
She whined.
It took me far too long to realize that my erection was… far from unnoticeable.
But Xia kept looking at me with pleading, sad, steepled eyebrows, as if I was being the most unfair man in the world by keeping the bean-paste-filled cookie from her, and so, ignoring my cock straining the front of my pants, I chuckled at her.
"Beg."
She immediately rolled on her back, offering me her belly, her hands more paw-like than ever as the swift motion sent her fake ears slightly askew on top of her wild locks.
Her thighs were open. Spread. Fully touching the floor.
She… She was flexible. I knew that, of course. I had witnessed many a martial feat that left no doubt regarding the subject.
My cock grew harder still, and I felt a drop of moisture stain the leg of my pants.
I still knelt down, over her expectant face, my knees spreading just enough to frame her head between them.
"Good. You are doing so good. Such a good girl. Now, you have to be patient, all right? You can't get your treat until I let you."
She nodded, mutely, her tongue lolling out of the corner of her wide grin.
I tried to remind myself that this was all cultivation. That Xia was, at this very moment, taking on the essence of a loyal hound. That I was supposed to guide her so that she could draw all of the strength of the birthsign.
That dogs were meant for loyalty, justice, honesty, integrity. That all of my dark desires had no place in this circle of candlelight.
But, then again, I was not the hound here, was I?
How… how many human traits did I have to pour into our play to make it believable to the Heavens? Just how much enjoyment should I take from having a subordinate being looking at me with sheer adoration and faith? How much should I yearn to be as pure as the affection I saw in Xia's eyes? How much should I lament that no person would ever love me as deeply and unconditionally as my pet?
I…
I reached down.
I tickled the underside of her jaw once more, making her close her eyes in delighted pleasure, my loyal hound never growing tired of my touch on her skin.
Then…
Then my hand trailed lower.
She whined something barely restrained as I traced the front of her throat, but went immediately silent when I kept moving. When the tip of my finger briefly caught on the collar of her pelt before moving lower still through soft fur bristling its own returning caress on me with every back and forth movement of my hand.
Xia's breasts were… flattened. Spread apart by her posture, by her begging belly-up at me.
So I avoided them.
I just caressed the line in between, up and down, massaging the fur above her breastbone, making her pant louder and louder as her pink tongue came out of her mouth and she showed me lidded eyes and brows drawn together in a hill of mounting supplication.
"So patient. You are doing so well. My beautiful girl. My Xia. You are making me so proud to be your master."
Her whole body shook, her hips rising and falling off the floor until the soft flesh of her thighs slapped on groaning boards.
I… I knelt by her side, still holding the bone-shaped treat over her open mouth as I moved to pet her belly. The well-defined lines of her muscle were obvious even under the fur, the warmth of her body rising higher with every circle I drew around her abdomen before I flattened my hand over her navel and pressed oh so slightly down on toned flesh that immediately yielded to me.
Her breasts moved up and down, shivering with every ragged breath before she strained to reach the dangling treat with her tongue, lapping up at the incense between her mouth and my hand as if she could taste all that I could offer her.
Spread thighs drew my gaze, the tendon and muscle standing against sweat-dewed skin, trembling in their own way, much more subdued than her breasts, but… but taut. Vibrating rather than shaking.
I could scarcely refrain from kneeling between them, pushing the skirt up, and…
And doing something stupid that I was not allowed to do.
Or was I?
I was Xia's master. She was mine. Nothing, nothing in the entire world belonged to me as deeply as her loyalty. Her self. Her body.
Her tongue stilled in mid-air, and she looked away from the taunting treat to stare at me with green eyes clouded by incense and a thousand other things.
She kept panting, kept her body still, other than the shivers and abrupt motions of her breathing.
I… barely pulled myself away.
"Such a good girl…" I murmured with a self-deprecating grin. The smile of an unworthy master faced with pure loyalty.
I straddled her.
Careful not to touch her, the inside of my thighs barely feeling the yielding, soft fur on the other side of the thick cotton of my own vestments.
She looked up, still mute. Still silent in anything other than pleading whines as I bent over her and traced her lips with the mooncake.
"You can eat now, Xia."
She craned her head up, still staring at me, and her teeth cut a third of the pastry off before the apprehension in green irises turned to pure delight at a nostalgic taste that I knew she hadn't indulged in for far too long. Not since her father sent us away and family celebrations such as the Mid-Autumn Festival just… stopped.
Other than the two of us sitting on the patio's veranda, sipping from cups of the grape wine from our province in comfortable, shared silence.
At the moment, though, Xia's munching was anything but silent.
She soon swallowed the first portion of the pastry and went for another bite, careful enough that the front of her teeth only brushed the very tip of my fingers before her lips closed over them and she… went still.
Green eyes sought mine, my fingertips still trapped between her lips, the remnants of the mooncake crumbling between my grasp, the bean paste filling squeezed out when her tongue lapped once again at me, slowly circling thumb, pointer, and middle finger with warmth, softness, and wet caresses.
As she kept looking at me.
At me, straddling her, just below her rising and falling breasts, looking down at her, trying to resist the force that bade me to lean down and take from her much more than I already had.
"Good girl," I said with my parched, rough throat. "You can get it all."
I opened my fingers, and the last portion of mooncake dropped into her mouth.
Her lips remained closed around me.
She… suckled on them, her tongue and the last crumbs of the pastry playing with my flesh, my skin, inciting me to push deeper only to find the rest of her tongue waiting for me, more and more of it entangled around my intruding fingers…
Until she coughed.
I hurried to pull out my hand and move out of the way as she bent up before her body went suddenly still and she instead rolled to her side, climbing to her fours and arching her spine as she tried to dislodge the piece of food out of her throat while I patted her between her shoulders, trying to help her without knowing quite how until the coughing suddenly stopped and she threw her head back with her eyes closed, her throat bobbing up and down as she swallowed.
"It's all right. It's all right, Xia," I said, consoling her as I petted her blonde mane, pausing for just a moment to reposition her headband and scratch her behind one of the fake ears.
She turned toward me, eyes tearful, as if a great injustice had befallen her, and I couldn't help a snort of laughter before she started whining and… and lowered herself to crawl on my lap.
She… She curled herself there, on top of my thighs, looking at me sideways until I patted the side of her head and neck, a slow smile spreading on her lips as her eyes closed and her breathing slowed down into something that I could fool myself into believing was sleep.
Xia. Sleeping on top of me.
I was still hard, her right arm pushing down my erection even as I tried to be gentle and considerate with the one being in the entire world that was my sole responsibility.
My pet.
My Xia.
Mine.
The caresses lengthened, from the top of her head, to her bare shoulder, down her arm. There was a contrast when I trailed over the straps of the golden tunic, but both skins were equally soft and warm, even if in different ways.
The incense helped blind me to the contradiction.
In my mind, they were one and the same. Her bedroom lit by candlelight and a pale moon was a meadow with a nearly silent, burbling spring passing by our side as I took care of my pet after a day of running through the woods, chasing small animals that were ever out of her reach, my playful consolations always bringing a spark of joy to trusting, green eyes that looked at me as if I was her everything.
It was a dangerous delusion. Something that I knew would hurt to pull away from, and that would hurt deeper the more I allowed myself to sink into it.
I dove.
Xia's fake ears twitched when I teased the soft tuft of fur inside of them, and she opened a single, grumpy eye to protest my mistreatment before closing it yet again, shifting on top of my lap to make it harder for me to reach her ears even as she tilted to her side, exposing more of her flank.
Trying to direct my touch.
I, ever the spoiling master, acquiesced.
Her mouth opened with a sharp gasp when I trailed down her ribs, and she stopped breathing upon my upside petting as my fingers brushed the fur along the sides of her breast, the flesh below as soft as the golden strands themselves.
Xia turned around and… exposed more of her. Her full belly, her spread thighs, her front paws once again framing her bust as she half-opened lidded eyes, pretending not to look at me, to still be sleeping, even as she directed me to…
To reward her.
To lavish as much affection on her as I ever had wished to.
Something burned up the sides of my neck as I saw the mind-sun dapple the golden coat of my Xia with light that a passing cloud briefly dimmed.
I petted careful, slow circles around her hidden navel that made her pant happily, her tongue once again lolling out of the side of her mouth, her closed eyes pressed in the tightness of a canine grin.
And…
A meadow. A melody of water on pebbles barely lower than Xia's pleased pants. Light dancing over the dotted waves that the breeze drew on wild grass and the ripples of golden fur.
A meadow that was a world.
One made just for me…
And my pet.
I bent down and laid a single kiss on her brow, her eyes snapping open in a surprise interrupted by my vigorous caresses along both her flanks, my fingers sinking into the light strands to steal the warmth and softness beneath.
"You're such a good girl…"
Her eyes softened at my whisper, her hearing keen enough to hear me despite the words being barely a breath, but…
That wasn't it.
That wasn't all of it.
The scent of grass, moss, and sunkissed earth wafted over her skin, still close enough that green eyes were almost everything I could see. That my lips felt the warm air trapped between the two of us.
"So lovely. It's so easy to love you, Xia. So easy to want you to run happily, without a care in the world…"
Her paws found the front of my robes, messing up my lapels as she stared at me with an intensity that made me believe she could understand every single word I told her.
My Xia. My smart, lovely girl.
I lowered my head once again, the paws on my breast pressing ever so slightly against me, not impeding me at all as I drew closer and closer to her. To my beloved Xia, waiting for me with eyes wide and round, green surrounded by astonished white, by golden fur over black lips and a wet nose whose tip I kissed, grinning at her astonished reaction to—
She was Xia. My pet. My dear, treasured hound. My companion through the years, always ready to bring me excitement, to pull me out of my solitary moods or the latest tome I had gotten my hands on. Always demanding my attention, my time. Always…
Xia.
I…
I hesitated, my hands around the sides of her neck, traveling up to caress behind her ears, but there were two sets of ears, and one was righter than the other, but I didn't know which. I didn't know if Moon or Sun lit the golden strands of hair turning into a blazing corona around her sleek body. I didn't know why she had no tail, or why those black lips of hers were a glossy pink in a corner of my mind.
I didn't know a lot of things, as my mind split between two worlds, struggling to hold onto both, feeling them slip between my fingers, spiraling around one another like tendrils of glittering sand falling beyond where my sight could reach.
There were two worlds, and I belonged in neither. I didn't know what to pursue, what to hold onto, what of them was real or illusion.
And so, I grasped the one thing that remained a constant. The one thing that was true beneath both Sun and Moon.
Xia.
I loved Xia.
I always had.
The me under Moon hesitated, balked at the thought. The me under Sun leaped at it, moss, grass, and fur tugging at my senses, a rope cast into turbulent waters that I could follow back to safety, to…
To memory.
To knowledge.
To a manual that I had studied and memorized and then failed to follow as I indulged.
I was furious at myself. Livid. Ashamed.
But I couldn't be.
Because, at that very moment, I was Xia's Master. Our energy entangled, our minds touching, thoughts and feelings brushing past one another as intimately as my fingertips digging into golden fur or wild tresses.
At that moment, hating myself could hurt Xia in a very real way.
So, I did the one thing that I could do for her. The one act that I could forgive myself for:
I followed the manual.
With a deep breath, I took in more of her scent. Of sun-warmed fur, earthy incense, rich rosewood, skin salted by sweat, and the absence of perfume or makeup that was so quintessentially Xia I barely restrained myself from taking her shoulders and never letting go.
All of that, the lingering aromas of illusion and reality, of the worlds under Sun and Moon, filled my chest, the air roiling inside of my lungs, spreading and opening them like I'd never felt before, like a thick filter between me and everything other had vanished and turned me into a vessel to be filled with all the rushing light and heat pouring off Xia—
No.
It didn't come from Xia. It came from us. From a bond braided out of years of devotion now threaded by a single night of practice, each twinned strand of emotion tightening and growing, rubbing against one another, making my heart sing with melodies plucked out of the taut strings that kept blooming all around us from color that I couldn't focus on, that didn't exist other than in the hue of loyalty spreading across a vibrant road of steadtfastness built to bridge over a pool of deep…
Afection. Care.
Love.
A love that I always shied away from. An impossible, painful love that I couldn't subject my Xia to, but…
But I loved my pet. My hound.
What kind of monster wouldn't?
I bent lower, breathing once again right from the side of her neck, filling myself more and more with everything that existed between us.
For a moment, a mere dreamlike instant, I felt hot breath on my nape, and a long tongue bestowed acceptance on me even as my arms trembled around Xia's shoulders and she whimpered with a close-mouthed keen, trembling under me and over my legs.
"Good boy," a voice made of panting, barking, and howling at a lonely moon told me from inside of me.
My eyes shot open, my lungs burst with silver and gold, and…
My field of elixir. The barren inner space where all the Qi I'd ever breathed drained into without bringing me anything other than the loss of water spilled on a desert. The place two thumbs' breadth under my navel and straight over the joining of the two main vessels guiding my energy around my body that my father had faulted me for not focusing on enough…
It…
It bloomed.
So did I.
My senses roared, mind racing with every single crease of my clothing, now razor-sharp on my skin. The eleven blinding suns around us made me want to both scream and stare in bewitched fascination at the beauty of every flicker of candleflame suddenly turned into a dancing performance, flecks of pure fire crackling like whips right by my eardrums.
The world was more. Far more than I ever dreamed, even if I had endlessly pictured this moment, unable to grasp that which stood beyond the means of those deprived of what I now had.
Of those without a cultivation base.
I pitied them. Blind to all this beauty I hadn't known existed, denied the inebriating experience of being.
Then Xia gently pawed my cheek and forced my stare away from the orchestra of candles and back into green eyes that, mesmerizingly, were as beautiful as they had ever been.
'Ah,' I thought, 'so that's how it works.'
I don't know what. I don't think I quite knew, even while thinking it.
And, if I ever did, Xia's tongue took it away from me.
Energy rose around us, all those strands of emotion and binding unleashed and wrapping around our limbs as I found myself leaning down, Xia straightening her body under me until she rolled away from my lap and suddenly knelt in front of me, pressing hard enough with her paws on my chest that I fell back so she could stand on all fours over me, assaulting me with licking, sniffing, and the exhuberant shaking of a tail-deprived behind.
She licked my cheeks, my protesting hands, the line of my jaw.
My lips.
I tasted her.
I… Not only her saliva. Not just the traces of sweet red bean paste and mint leaves that I now knew she had chewed on before our meeting. Not… All of that, yes, and each note of taste that came from her drove me forward a tad more, my hands fallen by my sides as I now pushed up against her, struggling to turn our bodies around and have her under me, looking up with those green eyes that held so much more than I could ever find in others. Eyes that had shown me just a hint of a truth I couldn't put into words.
Eyes that I needed to interrogate. To…
To do anything other than laugh and giggle as Xia just kept licking all over my face, turning any protest into a sputter, any dignity of the moment into sheer joy.
So I tasted her. Her tongue, saliva, and traces of food.
But I also tasted her… her essence. The very same cloudy, warm feeling that I had furtively indulged in whenever she had trained in front of me.
Except now I knew.
How… How tied to her will it was. How impossible it would've been for me, an unlearned fool, to take in anything of her that she hadn't willingly offered. Pushed toward me.
Like she was doing at that very moment.
Flecks of light, bursts of sensation, pulses of emotion, notes of soul traveled from her to me, filling that empty vessel I had finally realized I'd always been, turning me into hers in ways I had always thought I already was and always would, giving me so much that I… that I couldn't help but give back.
To push my own energy, essence, life. To offer my everything to her and find myself insensate with bliss when she greedily took me in and added all that I was to her own glowing, fertile field, an inner expanse that stretched to horizons far wider than those of the restricted world I had walked through until that very moment of pure fulfillment when I finally, finally, offered Xia what I was, what I had been, and what I would be until my last breath left me and I became nothing more than the memory of a man who had once loved a woman.
A single tear spilled down my cheek, and her loving assault faded, green eyes staring transfixed at the trail of wetness that glittered with the light of a Celestial Dog's approval.
My mind was open, unguarded.
She leaped across it.
A blazing blur of gold streaked across feelings and thoughts, barely stopping to examine the piles of me that she bounded over or ran around.
And, with every stride, with every glimmer of fur under Sun and Moon, the thread that bound Hound and Master tangled deeper inside of me.
My Qi surged, magnified by hers. My Jing stirred, my own strength surer than at any time I had trained under my father's teachings. My Shen was clear as a still lake, thoughts rushing as they ever had, but no longer stumbling on one another.
Then she stood still, the Xia Light inside me vibrating in place, pointing at something.
At the imprint left behind by the Eleventh Earthly Branch.
And, when she approached it…
Xia leaned back, her paws on my chest, her hips on my belly, and, her throat quivering, she howled.
It was… Entangled sorrow (at her Master's absence), joy (at his arrival), and being.
(Of herself.)
She thrummed with it, her body a string of a greater instrument, and…
Her ears fell.
A band of golden fur with two triangles rolled over my robes and down to my neck, but I couldn't pay attention to it as Xia kept howling, calling out to the Heavens above and…
And trained muscles went from toned to rippling, every cord of flesh and tendon standing out against skin turned a deeper bronze.
Pink lips became as black as they'd been in the world under Sun.
A swishing tail brushed over my pants.
And her golden mane rippled to allow the passage of new, triangular ears.
She was… anew.
Our little ritual had worked.
And so, as she often did when we were children tiring ourselves in the forests near her clan's homestead… Xia smiled something content and exhausted and dropped down, her face resting on my chest, her soft breathing telling me of peaceful sleep.
I was thankful.
Because… everything was too close to the surface, emotions carefully denied and repressed fighting to push through my skin and embrace the woman who had been a girl. To tilt her chin upward and take her lips without any pretense of pet-like joy.
I wanted to take something that couldn't be given back.
I wanted her.
And so, as an average man, as a scribe faithfully devoted to my clan and lady…
I carefully rolled her away from me, from the danger I embodied, and gathered her in my arms one last time to lay her on her bed.
Under white, translucent cotton sheets that fell over her curves, suggesting more than concealing, calling out to me, whispering of sweet temptation one last time as I wavered, standing over her, watching her smile, wondering if…
If the taste of mint leaves on her tongue could mean…
If…
It… It took me too long to deny the thought. The lie I was so eager to believe.
To walk away.
But I did.
I did, and then spent a sleepless night, too frantic with new sensations running through my nerves and mind and what felt like an entirely other sense that mimicked touch but floated right over my skin.
Too busy trying not to think. Not to believe. Not to hope.
The crack of dawn greeted me cruelly, just in time for me to remember that I had forgotten to secure my lady's quarters and, if her transformation hadn't receded, then all that we had done and prepared for would be revealed to the maid tasked with waking her up.
So, with eyes crusted over, robes that should've been sent to the laundry quarters, and the unsteady sensation of my new sense leaving me as something emptied in my very being, I raced through sleeping hallways, barely slowing down to greet any of the servants that I unwittingly stumbled upon, none of them failing to eye me with suspicion as I didn't stop or detour and just rushed to my lady's side, to my Xia, my Hound, my pet, my loving—
A thrum of lightning went from my forehead to my nape.
And there she stood.
Dignified as she ever was when she deigned to be or was forced to, walking down the corridor that I had been about to turn into, the green pants of her training garments fluttering around slender ankles.
There Lady Zhinu stood.
Without triangular ears. Without a swishing, golden tail halfway between that of a wolf's and a fox's.
With pink lips.
Human. All too human.
And, so, no longer mine.
Relief and defeat mingled, and I demurred, bowing half a polite nod's depth to her.
She grabbed my shoulder, dragged me behind her without slowing down in the slightest, and didn't stop until we reached the training hall.
Then…
Then I learned things that my father had given up on ever teaching me. I learned why my senses were no longer overwhelmed by the beauty of the order of the world, why I felt so empty after a single sleepless night, and how long it would take me to regain the glimpse of unreached heights I had tasted the night before.
I learned that I, as well, was still all too human, and would be for decades to come. That cultivation isn't a flash. That the illumination found in a lightning bolt still demands hard work to flourish.
Or, as the more prosaic among the Buddhist faith put it: After illumination, the laundry.
My mother would be pleased with that teaching.
"So?" Xia asked as I was finally allowed to lean against the wall and slowly drop down to the wooden floor while fighting off inopportunely returning sleep.
"So?" I asked back, perhaps a tad more impertinent than usual due to being exhausted, hungry, disoriented, and far more confused than a few pithy sayings should warrant.
Green eyes looked down at me, her flat eyebrows conveying just how unimpressed she was with my manners, as well as maybe other things that had little to do with my usually noble bearing.
Then… The left corner of her lips quirked up, a delightful dimple blooming on her cheek and…
And two ears sprouted through the tightly combed tresses of her updo as the impish little hint of mirth turned into a full smile.
As Xia became Hound.
The moment would've been all that much more impactful if it hadn't been immediately followed by her tail emerging over the waistband of her training pants, tearing the silken knot open, and thoroughly compromising my lady's modesty down to her toned calves.
And so, my first true lesson in cultivation ended with the one piece of wisdom I had indelibly gained:
That I was now a leg man.
As well as a Xia man.
━❖━
She's magnificent.
She's always been.
Even as I gather my concentration and strain my mind to the utmost, I still can't fully comprehend the beauty of her motion framed by the hollow tube of my periscope. The elegance and harmony imbued in her every gesture by years of careful training, instruction, and sheer talent.
The criminals she's beating down on are, maybe, not as appreciative of her as I am. Which, in my regard, only adds to their long list of iniquities.
So I watch. I count down. I listen for any signs that the plan, such as it is, has gone awry.
I lick my lips.
And, finally, I compose myself.
Because the stage is finally set.
The Heavenly Hound is fighting off the villains who have infested the Jade Hive.
And it's time for her Master to join her.
━❖━⧫━❖━
And so…
Wu has finally gone where no man has gone before. Mainly because Xia is very good with her sword.
Now, let's see where the next stretch of the journey takes them—ah, right, I know that one! To the Master's debut that shall follow in the next chapter! (https://www.patreon.com/collection/2019062?view=expanded)
… Wait, maybe I shouldn't have said that. Let's pretend I didn't, all right?
As always, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true): aj0413, Crimson Grave, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Vergil1989 Crossover King, and Xanah. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!