Butting heads

In the course of disobeying his uncle’s instructions on a night hunt, Jin Ling had managed to get himself cursed with a pair of horns, which was embarrassing enough for both of them. However, even more mortifyingly, they were very obviously the horns of a young beast.

(“It’s not a curse,” explained Wei Wuxian, “It’s actually very fascinating. I think he might have encountered–” Whatever, Jiang Cheng didn’t care. If it were a curse Wei Wuxian would take it on himself, probably, so it was just as well.)

It had just been a little too adolescent to look good on Jin Zongzhu, though, and without admitting why, everyone had agreed that Jin Ling should go visit the Lan for treatment.

The Lan doctors (and Wei Wuxian) had all agreed that it would fade by Qixi, which was luckily only forty days away, but Jin Ling was reverting to his most adolescent self under the burden of his horns.

“I think they look nice,” his little Lan friend had said, perhaps trying to be kind, and then Jiang Cheng had had to chase Jin Ling down before he attempted to go find and kill whatever celestial being had given him the horns in the first place.

“Do you want a second set of horns? This is how you get a second set of horns!” Jiang Cheng had fumed.

He wasn’t sure where they would go, but if anyone could manage it, it would be his nephew.

In any case, and perhaps as an apology, the Lan disciple had coaxed Jin Ling out of his sulk with the promise of a night hunt, except somehow before the hunt, Jiang Cheng had discovered that the ghost general was tagging along, so Jiang Cheng had invited himself, too.

He wasn’t leaving his nephew to the tender mercies of the Ghost General.

Except maybe Wei Wuxian felt the same way, because when they set off, he was coming too, and Jin Ling had returned to sulking at the implication that he couldn’t hunt without a his uncles following after.

Jiang Cheng was hanging back a little, hoping to placate Jin Ling, and somehow, so was the Ghost General. He wasn’t sure why they were in the rearguard, but if it kept a distance between him and his nephew, he didn’t mind.

“Do you think they’re a sheep or a goat-kid’s?” had asked the Ghost General, at the start. “I think they’d curl, if they were a bit longer.”

But Jiang Cheng had looked at him so incredulously that he hadn’t tried to make conversation after that.

Until, as the light was fading, they had both heard a sudden alarmed yip, unmistakeably Wei Wuxian’s, and not Jin Ling’s. “I’m fine!” he had yelled, only a second later.

Jiang Cheng had caught the Ghost General’s gaze, and, unwillingly, recognized the exact emotion in it. The alarm and exasperation was so familiar that he almost clapped his shoulder in commiseration.

“I bet he’s fallen in a ravine and twisted his ankle,” said Jiang Cheng, with his friendliest eye-roll. He let his shoulder brush against the other man’s, as they went to check.