Esteemed Jiang-zongzhu,

If you’re reading this, I’ve made it to the cottage. I call it a cottage, but it’s a large house; larger than I wanted, in all honesty, but I was attached to the location. There’s an excellent papermaking studio in town and I’ve admired their work for years; how was I to resist?

The journey ran overtime, but just due to minor inconveniences; nothing worth the ink to relay to you. It did solidify my conviction not to go anywhere further than a day-trip for as long as I can avoid. That won’t be such a terrible fate, since I’m not too far from town and the amenities are adequate. I had any dry goods I’m particularly picky about brought in by the crate, so I should be alright for some time. If I get desperate for anything else, I might have to ask you to pull some strings, since I think your contacts in waterborne trade far exceed mine, but hopefully that won’t be necessary.

The previous owners of the property maintained quite an impressive garden, and I feel a little guilty to have taken ownership of it myself, since paying to maintain the whole thing for just my own enjoyment seems a bit much. Maybe if I stay here for a bit longer I’ll get too irritated by the sight of it looking ill-tended, and go looking for a gardener; that, or learn how to do it myself. It’s amazing how much more time I have on my hands at the moment, considering what a committed delegator I was. I’m at a bit of a loss with what to do with it all. Perhaps I’ll start writing awful poems.

Make sure you’re alone now, I want to talk about sex—

Remember what I teased you about, the last time we met in person? I really don’t have it in me to be that mean, I hope you know, but I had to threaten you because I knew you would find the idea interesting in a horrible sort of way, and judging by the look on your face, I was right! Rest assured, I don’t have so little care for your health and happiness to actually tell you not to come for who-knows-how-long until we see each other again, and to be honest I’m more compelled by the thought of you getting yourself off thinking about me than I am by the thought of you going without, at least when I’m not around to witness all the pitiful expressions you might make. However, since the carriage ride was so much longer than I’d planned, I had time to contemplate, and I had a proposition for you: what if I told you that you need to keep a record every time you get yourself off until we meet again, with the date, and where you were, and what you thought about? I wouldn’t make you send them back in the mail, I know that probably crosses a line of just how closely you’re willing to court disaster, but you can keep them on your person until we see one another, and then hand them over to me. What do you think? If you don’t want to, you should tell me so, but if you don’t say anything in your next letter, I’m going to expect you to hand it over the next time I see you.

Anyway, I ought to get back to settling myself in. I hope you are well, and your nephew is well, and your disciples are well, etc. I know you’re very occupied, but make a little time to write me back when you can, please? My ability to stay abreast of news is in your hands. I have to be slow in my replies to anyone else, since they all think I’m busy achieving enlightenment.

Sincerely,

Nie Huaisang

Jiang Wanyin,

Is all well at Lotus Pier? I hope so; I like to imagine this letter reaching you on a sunny day when your patience has only been minimally tried. If I’m wrong and things are less idyllic than that, please tell me about it in as much detail as you like. Though you can’t see it, I look very sympathetic.

As far as my own day-to-day life, there’s really not much to tell. Sometimes I go to the market to do the shopping, if I’m looking for something to do. I’ve made friends with the butcher, who I think believes I am someone’s wealthy housewife, or something like that? In any case, because of my family I have enough knowledge of the industry to talk shop with him, and the last time I went into town he gave me a quail with the rest of my order, gratis. Being a more worldly sort has its benefits; I bet nothing like this happens to the Lans. Well, they probably get offered free quails, but for different reasons, and they can’t even eat them.

The sea is very nice, though. My expectations have been met. The property overlooks the ocean, and on a clear night, you can see the moon on the surface. It would be less novel to you than to me, no doubt, but we can’t all have grown up on the water.

That’s about all I have to report. The truth is, the countryside is very dull with no one to share it with. The housekeeper isn’t very chatty, which is why she was hired (though her cooking is also quite good), but one of these days I’ll just start talking to myself and I won’t be able to stop.

In good spirits, if a little understimulated,

Nie Huaisang

Jiang Cheng,

I used to feel like being at home was suffocating me. Everything at the Unclean Realms reminded me of the people who used to live there but don’t anymore, and it drove me crazy. Now, though, I miss being there. Even that part. It’s freeing, to be untethered, don’t get me wrong, but, ah, there’s something to be said for being somewhere you belong—which is something I don’t know if anyone else would say about myself and the place I come from, but I’ve had a long time to make it suit me, and I don’t think it’s been entirely unsuccessful.

As you might imagine, trying to play matchmaker from a distance isn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done, but my attempts continue nonetheless. Though I have no immediate family, I have a plethora of cousins; too many, in fact. If there were, say, four, it wouldn’t be so hard to work out the path of succession, but once you start looking into the third cousins, there are probably thirty people out there with some type of claim to the throne of Qinghe Nie, some of whom are not even cultivators. It’s a mess, and I would probably die of frustration if my attempts to make my exit from my position as painless as possible come to naught and the sect crumbles into factional in-fighting, so I’m trying to ascertain which of my female cousins might be willing to marry my head disciple, so I could pass it off to him and be done with it. He’s not a blood relation, but that’s probably for the best, at this point, and best of all he is a very boring person with a small ego and respect for my opinions, which is what I would prefer in a successor, since I will hopefully be still alive when I do the handing-off. All of that is to say that trying to steer this from my current position is a slow and painful process.

I hope you’re not getting tired of hearing from me; I know it’s the third time I’m writing to you this week, and they’re all going to get delivered at once anyway, but I keep thinking of things I forgot to say, and rewriting them sounds tedious.

I shouldn’t downplay the enjoyment it brings me to get your letters—needless to say, I revisit them often. I even like the weather reports, and you should make time to finish a book soon so you can give me another review.

Oh, and I hope you’re eating well enough. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how often you skip lunch. I don’t care how busy you are; one of the prices you paid for wanting to marry someone who has experience as a sect leader is that you can’t claim that I don’t understand the breadth of your responsibilities, so when I say there’s always time for lunch, there’s always time for lunch.

As I’ve said, I’m ready to play hostess any time you like; my schedule is nothing but open. May the revered Sandu Shengshou find a single grain of pity in his stern heart, and deign to relieve this lowly one of her boredom!

I remain your faithful friend, among other things.

Nie Huaisang

My dear,

I suspect you will not receive this until after you’ve returned to Lotus Pier from having come to visit me. As a letter, then, it’s quite useless, since I’ll have the opportunity to tell you anything important to your face before you’ll get to read this. Alas, this doesn’t deter me from wanting to write it!

I think I already told you when we were settling on a date that I recommend you fly to the open field down the road, but I’ll repeat it in case either you or I forgot; it’s just easier. I will walk down the path to meet you there around midday. Tell me if there’s anything you’d like to eat when you get in, and I’ll make sure it’s readily available.

If you arrive on schedule, the housekeeper will be gone for her day off, which presents a few inconveniences but lots of opportunities. The bathtub here is big enough for both of us if we don’t mind being close, so I think I’ll have you draw up lots of hot water, and then I will make sure you’re no longer all sweaty from traveling.

After we’re all done with that, I’ll take you to bed, of course. I feel spoiled for choice when I think about actually getting to fuck you again. It won’t surprise you to know that I’ve put a fair amount of consideration towards this, and I am interested in your thoughts as well, but sometimes I don’t think I’ll get as far as leaving the tub before making a mess of you. Whatever happens, I will clean you up again and kiss you, and then we will share a meal while the sun’s still out. Doesn’t that sound nice?

If by some miracle you get this before you leave, do hurry. I have been waiting very patiently in your absence but am not built for this kind of thing. You wouldn’t jeopardize my health and sanity, would you? Not when I’d go so far as to guess that you’d enjoy the opportunity to see me, too?

Your perpetually dutiful, humble, prudent, and chaste companion,

Nie Huaisang

He could only spare two weeks away from Lotus Pier, though, in truth, this is longer than she expected. Nie Huaisang would never ask him to choose between his sect and herself, because however much he may have come to enjoy her company, she knows better than to think he will choose anything over his duty. As such, she should make the most of all the time she has, but she will pretend to be asleep a little longer. It was a hot night; they slept nearly naked, and his skin is so warm under the sheet.

She lays like that, breathing evenly, visualizing her whole body as heavy enough to sink through the floor—it’s how she’s learned to approximate the kind of dead weight physicality of unconsciousness—as he stirs into waking beside her. He silently yawns and rubs his eyes with the heel of a hand. She can feel the shifting of his weight on the mattress beside her as he sits up. Turns towards her. Watching her sleep, or watching her pretend to sleep; she wonders which he thinks it is.

Four fingertips on her shoulder, gently testing to see whether she’s awake. You wouldn’t believe how gently he can touch a person. Nie Huaisang makes her decision; she turns her head so he can see her face in profile, and she opens her eyes to meet his gaze—just barely, as the angle is awkward for her. And then he is sliding back her hair to bare the nape of her neck, and when this meets no response but a slow, satisfied roll of her shoulders, he leans in closer, and his mouth brushes the nape of her neck. She rises up into the touch, and he returns with a firmer kiss, and then another, following the notches of her vertebrae down the curve of her spine.

There are things she wants them to do with their limited time, which require them to leave this bed. She wants to walk to town and have lunch together at the tea-house, sitting at a table in the main room, so everyone can see them together. There will be other hours of the day for this, when the daylight has run out and there is nothing better to occupy their time with than touching each other. But they are so close to one another, and she is irresistibly compelled by the thought of his mouth, so she turns herself around and hooks an ankle around the back of one of his thighs. Pulls him over her, and up. They can spare a little of the morning yet.

She and da-ge once argued—well, they argued about everything, but this case is specific—about the way Huaisang dressed. Da-ge’s interest in fashion was completely perfunctory, but he did always put effort into the keeping up of appearances, at least as much as he needed in order to represent the sect appropriately, and it could never have been said that he was a sloppy dresser. Neither is Huaisang! Perish the thought! But she likes to be comfortable, and dressing loosely is comfortable! But they had a row once, as usual, where da-ge demanded to know why Huaisang could spend triple his allowance on jade pendants without being able to wear clothes that fit properly, and after that, Huaisang kept at it out of spite. And then da-ge died, and Huaisang was sect leader, and couldn’t look at his own clothes without thinking about what a spoiled brat he has always been, so she started to dress properly. It felt odd, then, to have to go back to those older clothes, once it began to behoove her to obscure her body. It felt like dressing up as a different version of herself, which was different and more strange than dressing up as a different kind of person, one which she ought to be.

She had to acquire some new clothes as part of her relocation process, naturally; nothing drastically different from the things she’s worn before, but more in common with Nie-zongzhu than Nie-er-gongzi, besides the types of minor styling touches that differentiate otherwise similar men’s and women’s zhiju. She makes Jiang Cheng dress her in the morning, most of the time, because she can tell that he likes it more than he would admit. The domestic ceremony of it is intangibly satisfying for her, too, and she thinks that Jiang Cheng enjoys the opportunity to be thorough and fuss over her. It’s one of many idle daydreams she began generating more frequently than ever after going into temporary exile, since her habits were all disrupted and there was room for fantasies to fill the gaps. He dresses her, though she picks out her own clothes, and then he dresses himself—sometimes she likes to help him with this, but not in the mornings, usually; it’s more fun for her to do when he’s just been fucked or brought to some other kind of tragic state, and she can make affectionate fun of him while she makes him presentable again—while she finishes getting ready for the day by the vanity.

He likes to help her with her hair, whether or not she tells him to. She had to show him how to braid more efficiently, or else they would never get to eat while their breakfast is still hot, but he’s a fine enough hand with it now. Very tractable when he wants to be, in this as in most things, and Nie Huaisang knows that he’s the type who does better showing his affection through actions than words.

Jiang Cheng kneels behind her while Nie Huaisang sits in front of the mirror, briskly powdering her face. He has three fingers of one hand in her hair, separating out different sections, and small pins balanced between finger and thumb of the other. At this proximity, she can smell the fragrance of his usual soaps, which have lingered in his hair. Nie Huaisang wouldn’t have noticed if she wasn’t already familiar with the scent.

In the process of collecting some stray strands of hair, Jiang Cheng runs a finger across her temple, and then over the shell of her ear. His fingertip brushes the simple pearl earring that hangs from her earlobe. He hasn’t asked how she came about them, though she can tell he wants to. There’s not much of a story there. A needle hot from the candle-flame, a mirror, and Nie Huaisang dipping into her well of grim resolve, which, happily, doesn’t see much other use these days.

They arrive to the market square in mid-morning, early enough that some of the quality produce is still available but not so early as to force them out of bed too soon. The cottage isn’t too close to the town—it’s perfectly walkable, and the roads are in good condition, but it requires prior planning. The sun is out, though, and she wants to people-watch, and besides, Jiang Cheng loves haggling. By the same token, shopkeepers look at him and see a well-to-do cultivator, even if he’s somewhat dressed-down, as he is now—dressed down by his usual standards is still dressed up by the average person’s—and they pick up on his sense of himself as someone who brooks no nonsense and sees through petty tricks of the merchant’s trade. As a result, they adjust their tactics to cater to his ego-driven desire to feel as though he has earned whatever concessions they may appear to make. The result is a battle of wits where each party sees themselves as seeing through the other’s machinations, and Jiang Cheng is game to partake in it for much longer than she would herself.

As planned, they go for tea after they finish shopping, and they arrive back at the cottage around mid-afternoon. They eat, and then Jiang Cheng goes outside to work on sword forms now that the sun has cast some shade, and Nie Huaisang settles down on the settee in the room that functions as a makeshift study, sitting on a cushion with a stack of letters in her lap, to familiarize herself with the latest dispatches from home.

They are made up of a lot of words in which not much is relayed, besides that progress on the projects of interest to her—scouting out marriage possibilities in the interest of preserving the family name, on the one hand; the first of what will undoubtedly be many marginally-productive closed-door councils on the future of the sect’s cultivation style, on the other—has been slow. She expected no better, but still. It chafes her to only hear what has happened secondhand, and no doubt at a significant delay. She spent a lot of effort, once, making sure she was the first point to which important information would flow, rather than the last. Nonetheless, she suppresses the irritation. The way she used to tackle problems, the terrible ruthless clarity of mind—that part of her will be present no matter what she does, she thinks, but she has the freedom now to indulge in indecision.

He comes back inside before she’s much further than halfway through. When he joins her on the couch, she shifts, without looking up, to sit with her body slightly inclined towards Jiang Cheng and her legs folded between them, her toes tucked beneath his thighs. Her left arm is outstretched, and his thumbs work over her palm while the slightly callused undersides of his fingers skim over the thin, veined skin of the back of her hand. Before long, it begins to feel good enough to drive her to distraction, even if she tries to let the sensory observations flow in and out of her consciousness without overrunning it.

Making him wait on her leisure would no doubt bore him, if it was all he ever did, but she realized some time ago that he enjoys her selfishness, when it’s directed at taking advantage of his diligence and desire to exceed expectations.

“Jiang Cheng,” she says, not looking up from the paper.

“What?”

“I think you should take off your clothes. You can use them to kneel on, so it’s easier on your legs.”

His thumbs stop on her palm; she gives him a few moments before looking up at him out of the corner of her eye, hardly turning her head. “Yes?” He can’t be surprised; it’s not as if they haven’t been getting up to this kind of thing at a ludicrous rate since Jiang Cheng stepped through the front door.

Indeed, Jiang Cheng doesn’t look surprised, but his eyes already have that slightly glazed look she’s come to expect from him when they do things like this. That’s flattering. They’ve hardly even started yet.

She has him push her skirts up past her knees, and he begins to work his way down Nie Huaisang’s calf, massaging any stiffness away. She does her best to stay focused on the last piece of mail she has to read, and not let him see the effect his touch has on her, but by the time he makes it to her ankle, she’s at the bottom of the letter, and her eyes keep sliding over the characters in a futile attempt to maintain her own focus.

Whenever she glances down at him, he looks so focused and quiet she can’t stand it. She wants to eat him. When his thumb slides over the softer part of Nie Huaisang’s insole, her whole leg jerks. Jiang Cheng holds tighter, probably instinctively, before seemingly thinking better of it and letting go. Nie Huaisang laughs, and puts her foot back where it was in his grasp. “Watch out. I’m ticklish.” He’s more careful after that, but at one point he places pressure with his thumb on a certain place on the arch of her foot that makes her nearly wince, but not from the bad type of pain; just working a previously undiscovered knot out of muscle.

Seeing him on his knees reminds her of how he’d looked the first time they made love after he arrived—well, technically not the first, but the first disregarding the time they barely made it to the bed. She’d done many things to him, but she most deeply remembers telling him to take off all of his clothes and crawl to her, and the way everything inside of her lurched sweetly to watch him do so without protest. Because he looked gloriously abject, of course, but also because, at least in that moment, he didn’t bother pretending he didn’t want to.

A shudder runs through her, and as if he read her thoughts, Jiang Cheng mutters, “I still don't know why you like to see this.”

“Really? Come on, Jiang Cheng, I hate false modesty.”

“I know you like to see me naked,” he says, crossly, as though his cheeks haven’t gone pink. “I mean having me act… weak.”

Nie Huaisang kindly doesn’t bring up the fact that, even if she got nothing out of it herself, he clearly does, which alone would have piqued her interest. “I don’t think you’re weak. A lot of men aren’t strong enough to let anyone see them like this. But you’re so good at it.” She pauses for a moment, sets aside the papers, and considers how to articulate the thing she has next to tell him. “I just like it when it doesn’t matter what you want.”

Jiang Cheng’s eyes flutter closed, though his hands don’t let go of her ankle. Her right foot, the one not in his grasp, slides slowly up his inner thigh.

“I think you want some time when you’re not responsible for anything except doing what I tell you. Does that sound about right? Thinking about everything all the time is so hard.” She prods at his cock with her toes. “So it makes sense that you like it when you don’t have to make decisions, and if you do, they’re just tiny little decisions. Nothing that matters.”

She understands what it is to desire an enclosure around your self and the things of which it’s capable.

A few days ago, Nie Huaisang was delighted to learn that Jiang Cheng had, in fact, followed her instructions and made a deceptively neat, albeit borderline-illegibly tiny, ledger of every time he jerked off for the past five months. His “explanations” of his fantasies are for the most part so euphemistic she honestly isn’t sure what they mean, but she hadn’t actually expected him to follow through with it to start with, and apart from the few that she made him define for her—the rest she responded to with raised eyebrows and muttered Oh, wow’s while he knelt in front of her in sweaty anguish—she decided to leave Jiang Cheng with a few mysteries. The most consistent and clear of them, however, was use of the word “talking”, usually without elaboration. This afternoon, she is bullying him, not punishing him; the distinction may appear arbitrary, but is not.

“Out of curiosity, what do you want right now? I’m not saying I’ll give it to you, but I want to know.”

Nie Huaisang presses his cock up against his belly, where it leaves a shiny little smear of precome. As predicted, Jiang Cheng is getting harder by the word. The sight and feeling of it skitters along her pulse points. It’s not a surprise, but it pleases her nonetheless.

Being away from Qinghe has been very nice in many ways, don’t get her wrong. She hasn’t regretted it, but she does miss home, and there have been an awful number of cold nights where she’s wondered whether she had too high of an opinion of herself to think she could manage to get by anywhere except the place she’s spent her entire life. It’s caused her to worry, in particularly maudlin moods; she still hasn’t given Jiang Cheng an official answer, technically, and she’s not going to transplant herself yet again if she’s not certain she could sink down new roots wherever she ends up.

It’s so pedestrian, to realize that she was just lonely.

The way he touches her makes her feel more herself, not less, and the more she gets used to having it on demand, the unlikelier it seems that she’ll be able to settle for anything else. There’s a great deal of work ahead of her, but if she needs to take more drastic measures upon her return to Qinghe in order for the process of casting off her duty to be sped along, she’s willing to do it. She’s only got so long to live.

She drags it out a while longer, but eventually she stops messing around and lets him put his mouth on her, which is what she knew that he wanted ever since he got on his knees; and then it’s an embarrassingly short length of time before Nie Huaisang is nodding frantically and gasping, “Yes, yes, yes,” until she hears a gust of breath, and Jiang Cheng leans back just enough to demand “Yes what?”, sounding more indignant and confused than any man in his position ought to sound, and Nie Huaisang laughs a little. Isn’t it clear? Yes, Jiang Cheng, yes. Yes.