While her brothers are learning in Cloud Recesses, Jiang YanLi visits a fortune teller to learn about her future marriage. Instead she learns of an unsettling future.
One where her parents and sect are murdered. The other sects are decimated. Her h...
Summer Hanson thought of herself as a stereotypical American college student: wavy, shoulder length dirty blond hair, green eyes, slightly taller than average. She studied hard during the week and played hard on the weekends. She had learned how to not grimace when drinking beer at parties even though she hadn't yet learned how to like the drink. Where she differed, perhaps, from that stereotype was that she had been introduced to Thai BLs by her freshman year roommate, and she had immediately become hooked.
It was natural to progress through the overtly sexual Thai shows to the more restrained Korean and Japanese BLs to the Chinese 'best male friends, soul-mates even, but definitely do not kiss and are never going to be intimate.... ever.' shows.
And then she discovered that some of the shows were originally books, and she became even more addicted to the genre. She read fan translations, machine translations, official translations. And discovered that there was a whole lot of 'we're not just BFFs' going on in the books that didn't make it into the Chinese drama or donghua adaptations.
As a stereotypical college student, she and a group of friends would escape to someplace warm for spring break. In her junior year, she was with them, waiting for a huge train to pass when the cars in front of her started rocking.
Then the car she was in started rocking.
The cars in front tipped, and fell into a hole that hadn't been there a moment ago. Her own car followed.
She vaguely remembered screaming. Pain. Something wet that smelled metallic. Lights strobing, hurting her eyes. Eye. Something was wrong. Why couldn't she see out of the other eye? People talking fast, calmly, rushed, blurred. And then, clearly, "She's coding."
When she awoke, it was to a strange room, strange clothing, a strange body. A new name: Xia KeXin, which made her giggle hysterically seeing as how close it sounded to the Word of Honor/Faraway Wanderers' Wen KeXing.
Thankfully, she had the previous soul's memories to rely on, as Summer had no idea how to live in this new world, new life, she suddenly found herself in. Cooking? Going to the bathroom? Dressing herself? Making a living? Knowing how much something should cost? Without her host's memories, she would be completely lost instead of mostly. Unlike Cucumber Bro, she didn't have a System to help her out, either. Which could be a good thing? No weird quests to go on? No points added or subtracted for doing something well or poorly?
It didn't take too long to discover that she was living in the town outside Lotus Pier in the days before the Sunshot Campaign. Her job as a fortune teller, didn't earn a significant income, but it was steady and sufficient to live on.
Not quite comfortably to live on, though. Her 'bed' was a mat and a couple of quilts that she folded away every morning. There was no padding. Her 'pillow' was nothing that resembled a twenty-first century pillow.
Once she was sort of used to this new life, she talked to the local blacksmith and asked him to make her a set of crochet hooks. She found someone who sold yarn and bought enough to hopefully make herself a heavier blanket to keep her aching bones (who knew being only in her late forties would be this painful?) warmer at night.
And then Jiang YanLi came in for a consultation. Given the opportunity to change Wei Ying's fate? To stop the jianghe from treating this wonderful man as a pariah? What kind of fujoshi would she be to stand by and let Lan WangJi mourn his love for thirteen years? What kind of person would she be to sit back and allow Jiang YanLi and Wen Qing die for nothing?
Jiang Yanli knelt at the table before Xia KeXin and arranged her skirts into a pleasing configuration. The older woman rolled her eyes, but said nothing until the younger stopped figiting. "I assume you're here to discuss your love life and marriage."
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Dear readers.
Happy first day of fall/spring (a day early). My home city newspaper published an article today about the fall colors already creeping in and the best places to go leaf peeping. I love my new city for the most part. But there are pieces of home.... I miss the trees changing colors. The brilliant scarlets and browning yellows and burnt oranges. I had two Japanese maples in my yard: one I loved and one I admired. The one I loved was bright red leaves all year long, but in autumn, they turned a deeper, almost coal-fire red. So beautiful. Here I'm surrounded by pines and more pines and the very occasional oak tree. It's not the same.
I also miss orchard fresh pressed apple cider. There's just something about that dark brown, gritty bits left on the tongue cup of tangy sunshine that you can't get from grocery store cider. (Honeycrisp cider is NOT real cider. It's apple juice. And bad apple juice at that. Cider should be deep brown and must be shaken thoroughly before pouring to get the bits and pieces of apple up off the bottom of the jug. Yes, I'm a snob about cider. No, I won't apologize for it. I grew up on the grocery store stuff, then moved to apple country and discovered what it's supposed to taste like.)
