[April 9] [Yitian Dulong Ji] Burying the Footprints

[lilacfield.livejournal.com]

Title: Burying the Footprints
Day/Theme: April 9 - Silent passage
Series: Yitian Dulong Ji
Character: Zhang Sanfeng
Rating: G
Yitian Dulong Ji © Jin Yong, et al.


He found the mountain and for several long, hard years he was a young man striving to reach the heavens and stay firmly grounded on earth both at the same time. His skills would develop - unfurl was the word that automatically suggested itself - by the season, leaving him continuously weary and content.

(Futility had no place or relevancy here. Everyone would always denounce him as a renegade, but hopefully they would do so less eagerly if he lived to be a hundred, or more. Even grudges ebbed away, like a reluctant tide.)

He kept a journal, certain that soon he might have no further need for it.

One morning two boys knocked at his door, alternately shy and wary, asking if he took in pupils. He welcomed them in and requested them to take a seat, immersed in the imagined echoes of their voices. His days of true trials and tribulations had begun.