Chapter 123: The Art of the Pout

So this is a side arc. Containing the stories of the three husbands before they met Bai Yue! I hope we like it!

There was an art to pouting.

Not everyone understood this. Most people, lesser people, simply stuck out their lower lip and hoped for the best. They let their face do the work without any real commitment, without intention, without the carefully cultivated misery that separated a true pout from a common sulk.

Zhāo Yàn had been perfecting his pout since he was three years old.

He sat on the highest rock he could find, which was the flat grey stone behind the elder’s meeting hut, and arranged himself vwry carefully.

He had obviously thought very carefully about the angle of light and the dramatic potential of his own silhouette.

His three tails wrapped around his feet. His chin rested in his palm. His red eyes stared at the middle distance as though he had been deeply, personally wronged by the universe.

He was six years old.

He was suffering.

“You look like a wet cat,” said a voice from below.

Zhāo Yàn did not move. Moving would ruin the silhouette.

“I am a fox,” he said, with great dignity. “And I am contemplating.”

“You’re sulking.”

“Contemplating.”

“You’ve been up there for an hour.”

“Contemplating.”

A thump. The sound of old bones settling onto a rock. Then, silence.

Zhāo Yàn’s left ear twitched.

He did not look down.

His mother, Gū Gū, iron-wood stick resting across her knees, was looking at him with the expression she reserved for things that were deeply stupid but also, against her better judgment, slightly endearing.

“You stole a fish,” she said.

“I borrowed a fish.”

“From the elder’s dinner table.”

“The elder has many fish. He would not miss one.”

“He minded quite a lot, actually. He called it an affront to tribal hospitality.”

Zhāo Yàn’s three tails flicked. One, two, three, the motion perfectly synchronized, an involuntary display of irritation that he immediately tried to suppress. He hated when his tails gave him away. They had absolutely no respect for his composure.

“The fish was sitting there,” he said stiffly, “unattended and unguarded. That is practically an invitation.”

“It was in the elder’s bowl.”

“An unattended bowl.”

“He was eating from it.”

“Briefly unattended.”

Gū Gū snorted. Her son was very very dramatic.

Zhāo Yàn had catalogued that sound very carefully. He had catalogued all of her sounds. It was, he had decided at the age of four, essential survival information.

He finally turned to look at her.

She was smaller than most people expected. This was always a mistake on their part. Gū Gū was the kind of small that made you feel, obscurely, that you were the one at the disadvantage.

Her silver-streaked hair was pulled back from her face, and her eyes, the same as his own, were watching him patiently

“The elders were talking again. About the Hollow Boar.”

Gū Gū’s expression did not change. That was, Zhāo Yàn had learned, more dangerous than if it had.

The Hollow Boar was a beast that had been terrorizing the Eastern Hills for three months. It was not a normal boar. Normal boars were large and mean and smelled terrible. The Hollow Boar was large and mean and smelled terrible and had taken down two adult beastmen and a particularly unlucky pine tree.

The senior warriors were going after it tomorrow.

Every male cub in the territory between the ages of five and twelve had, at some point in the last three months, declared their intention to help hunt it.

Every single one of them had been immediately and firmly told no.

Zhāo Yàn had been told no twice. The second time with the stick.

“I am not going to discuss the boar,” Gū Gū said.

“I wasn’t asking about the boar.”

“You were thinking about the boar.”

“I was contemplating the boar. From a distance.”

“From the direction of the forest path that leads directly to the Hollow Boar’s last known location.”

Zhāo Yàn’s tails went very still.

“That,” he said carefully, “is a coincidence.”

“Zhāo Yàn.”

“I have three tails.”

“You do.”

“Most foxes my age have one. Some have two.” He straightened, his posture shifting into something that was trying very hard to be dignified. “Bái Hú’s father said I have the strongest cultivation he’s seen in a cub. He said—”

“He said you have potential.”

“Which means I’m ready.”

“Which means,” Gū Gū said, standing, her stick clicking against the stone, “that you have more to lose than most.” She fixed him with a look that went straight through all of the posturing and landed somewhere considerably more uncomfortable. “You are not going after the boar. Not tomorrow. Not this season. Not until you are grown, trained, and have considerably more sense than you currently do.”

“That could take years.”

“Yes,” she agreed pleasantly. “It could.”

She walked back toward their hut. The evening light was going gold around her, catching the silver in her hair.

“Come eat,” she called. “I made noodles.”

“The good ones?”

“If you’re quick.”

Zhāo Yàn sat on his rock for one more moment.

His three tails swished slowly behind him. In the distance, the forest path curved away into shadow, into the deep green dark where the Hollow Boar was last seen moving through the undergrowth like a bad dream wearing tusks.

He was not going to go.

He was absolutely not going to go.

He was going to go eat his mother’s noodles and sleep in his bed and be a perfectly reasonable six-year-old fox cub who understood that some things required patience and preparation and the wisdom to know one’s own limits.

He jumped off the rock.

He ate the noodles.

They were very good.

He went to bed.

He stared at the ceiling for approximately forty-five minutes.

Then, very quietly, very carefully, he picked up his small traveling pack, tightened the straps, and slipped out the window.

~

The forest path was dark. The trees were tall. The moon was thin and unhelpful.

Zhāo Yàn’s three tails bristled with excitement. His paws were silent on the soft earth, each step careful and deliberate. He could do this. He was not like the other cubs. He had three tails. He had cultivation. He had—

He walked into something.

Something large.

Something warm.

Something that smelled like it had not bathed in several months and had opinions about this.

Zhāo Yàn looked up.

Slowly.

Very slowly.

Two small, mean eyes looked back down at him from a face that was mostly tusk and fury.

The Hollow Boar blinked.

Zhāo Yàn blinked.

Ah, he thought, with great clarity. This is a problem.

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