#it has been VERY LONG since I last saw XXC okay I'm--

[mythvoiced]

@s4ray | ♥

There's something about the way he talks that always leaves Xiao Xingchen a little lighter than he'd been a moment before.

He doesn't allow heaviness to shroud him, no, a darker world doesn't necessarily have to mean a darker heart. He only allows heaviness to drape itself over his shoulders in the form of responsibility, the pleasant weight of always, always choosing to do the right thing, extend a hand, pick up a beggar from the streets, dress the wound of a stranger, fill his enemy's stomach.

But sometimes, against all odds, against his own discipline, against the path up and down the mountain, and the teachings that make him what he is, the grief he carries around with the careful step he's always possessed, only slightly more cautious with the light gone from his eyesockets, some other kind of weight builds.

He only feels it when it dissipates at his voice, recognizes it via its absence.

At the snide words that barely mean any snide at all. Xingchen imagines to hear it, the real intentions behind the bite. The annoyance always hits Xingchen a little feigned, the demands just shy of aggressive enough that it becomes more than easy to give into them.

Would Xingchen have any stories to tell, if he didn't have such good listeners?

Would he even bother with remembering them, if he couldn't tell them?

Xingchen's head follows the sounds lightly. A blind man only turns as far as he needs to let his ear scout out the target of his interest. He smiles when the voice grows closer to it. Smiles sweetly and a touch too warm when he sways, smiles when he hands his meat over as if he was the one the favour was for.

"I do like snakes," an easy answer, Xingchen likes all kind of life. Misconceptions and bad reputations, isn't there a bit of good in anything and everyone?

"But why don't you tell me a story about yourself instead," soft-spoken like the moon they have associated him too, but never quite as weak as moonlight compared to the sun, because the moon makes the tides turn and Xingchen is handicapped, not dead.

Though he is most certainly a fool enough to warrant his handicap, his death.

"Eat. But do talk. I'd like to have something about you to remember down the line."