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(✦ A campfire hisses with wet wood. A dark figure sits nearby, booted feet propped on a log. Their face is in shadow. A donkey crunches loudly on the white flesh of a sweet apple. The fireside figure moves, casting something into the coals. There's a brief flare of green sparks. ✦ )
Lan Zhan,
I’m fine. Don’t worry.
Wei Ying
(✦ A gray day sidling towards afternoon. Tree branches trail on the ground on either side of a narrow path down a steep hillside. Leaves shine wetly, slick brown and dull purple and an occasional brief flash of red. Raindrops plop and plash. A muddy smear in each print of four small hooves and two long-striding feet. A pause at a natural alcove formed by one enormous boulder tilting into another. The walker fumbles forth a camping tea-set with a matching miniature brazier from out of a bag too small to hold it. Dry twigs and moss from the rock overhang are stuffed in as fuel, and ignited with a spark out of nowhere. Water gurgles from a gourd into the tiny teakettle. Then a piece of paper from a pocket is carefully scribbled on before being fed to the flames. That green flash again. A weary sigh. The tea-water boils. The tired traveler measures out a bamboo scoop of an herbal blend with flower-buds in it. While waiting for the cup of tea to steep, they lean against the wall of rock and whisper, "Dammit, Lan Zhan." ✦ )
Lan Zhan,
I told you, I’m fine.
Wei Ying
(✦ A pile of trash burns outside a busy household, less than a quarter li from a crossroads. Chickens cluck and children argue. Two women sing a weaving song. A man is up on the roof swearing vociferously, as he tries to make a small mat cover a large hole in the thatch. A passer-by stoops mid-stride, just long enough to shove a crumpled ball of paper into the smoky little fire. In their wake, it briefly turns bright green. The only one looking is a little girl less than six years of age. She tugs at an older girl's sleeve, whispering urgently, and gets a bored sigh for her trouble. Her lower lips trembles, and she whimpers. Two boys with their sleeves tied back walk closer. One is chewing on a straw. He puts a hand on his hip, leaning close to the older girl. The other boy gives the little child a pat on the head and a piece of brown-sugar candy. The teenage girl laughs at something he says, covering her face with her sleeve. The traveler is long gone. ✦)
Hanguang-jun,
This humble traveler begs the honor of your continued absence from his unworthy company.
One surnamed Wei
(✦ A donkey clatters down a potholed track between fields stubbly with the aftermath of harvest. Storm clouds grumble in the distance. The donkey carries a rider perched on her back, knees awkwardly bent up to keep long legs out of the muck. The rider idly spins a broken stick of green bamboo in one hand. Swaying out in front of the donkey, a red ink talisman dangles from a thread, attached to another bamboo pole, which in turn has been wedged into the animal's harness. From the talisman paper wafts the scent of slightly cidery apples. A gust of wind lifts the rider's hair and hair ribbon, and blows the enticing smell in the wrong direction. The donkey stops dead in her tracks, braying. ✦)
Lan Wangji,
You really can leave me alone. I have no reason to do anything stupid. This is better. You’ll see. I’m going to go to Lotus Pier sooner or later but I am not going to tell you when because you’d go there. Then I’ll see where my footsteps take me.
Lan Zhan, I will see you again sometime, I’m sure. We’re like enemies on a narrow road, fated to meet.
I don’t want that collision to harm you any more than it already has.
If you care for me, then have a care for yourself, for my sake.
My poor heart couldn’t take it, if you got hurt again.
Wei Wuxian, your unworthy Wei Ying
(✦ It is a rainy morning outside a little hillside cave, barely bigger than a scrape. The soot-rings of old campfires dot the trampled expanses of grass and gravel between the crevice used as campsite and the nearby road. Yesterday the view from the cave stretched out across an expanse of rolling hills, a gentle green-and-golden slope all the way to the lazy loops of a silvery river in the distance. Today mist has rolled in low, and rain clouds gathered above, obscuring high and low with a chance of a little clarity in the middle. A curtain of gray rain pours down steadily, water running downhill towards the greater streams. Mostly dry inside the open shelter, a traveler rests while completely cocooned in blankets. With their weary head supported on the flank of a snoozing donkey, the sojourner snores. ✦)
Lan Zhan
Please be safe.
Wei Ying
(✦ Intense pounding rain, well after dark. A flash of lightning shows someone soaking wet, struggling forward along a road running with water, hauling desperately at the reins of a donkey. The flash of bared teeth is briefly visible, and then it's wholly dark again. The thunder rolls rumbling in. ✦)
Lan Zhan,
I’m sorry.
(✦ A borrowed duck-boat on a swollen river. Rain falling all around. The traveler presses a talisman to the back of the boat, teeth chattering. The donkey is nowhere nearby. ✦)
Look after A-Yuan.
(✦)
Year before last
We met and expressed
our farewells in the autumn rain
Last autumn during that season
I returned
This year I depart
If I leave I may die
before having another chance
to see you.
Evening rain empty sounds
of a bamboo flute and zither
We arise
You gave me broken branches
from your parasol and paulownia trees
as a gift for the trip of hundreds of miles
You told me
I have to come back healthy
Do not forget
—Selected and rearranged lines and phrases from "Middle of a Rainy Departure of Ziyou to Dongfu' by Su Dongpo, English translation by LAC Poetry