Suddenly, there's a cat. His face is shaped differently than the local ones, and he's an unusual tawny color, if one happens to pay enough attention to cats to notice such things. Of course, the fact that he wasn't there a moment ago may get him a little more scrutiny than usual.

Did that cat just appear out of nowhere, or did Wei Wuxian just fail to notice it earlier?  He is a bit tipsy.  He's had... how much has he had?  Not that much; not enough to be hallucinating cats, surely.

"Hey kitty kitty," he greets.  Wei Wuxian is tapping his fingers against the flute resting on his thigh, but makes no other movements.

The cat tilts his head at him, and then approaches; all at once, as he does, it becomes obvious to Wei Wuxian that he's unnerved and confused, just as if he was a human with human body language indicating that.

He sits, just out of reach, sets his ears attentively.

Wei Wuxian notices how easily he can tell this cat's mood.  Interesting.  Some kind of cat spirit, perhaps?  Or a mundane cat who had eaten mice that had eaten from the lotus from the innermost ponds of Lotus Pier, and received some manner of spiritual power in doing so?  Either way it doesn't seem hostile and he can't sense any resentful energy off of it. 

"I haven't seen you around here before.  Are you one of the Jiang Sect's new recruits?  I'm Wei Wuxian."

Wei Wuxian is not expecting even a magical cat to understand him.  That doesn't mean he isn't going to talk anyway.

"I'm - more lost than that." The sound doesn't come from the cat, who's still watching attentively, but from all around them, a hundred voices speaking a hundred languages and yet somehow it's perfectly comprehensible and not even at an unreasonable volume for a private conversation. "Deviskaryl."

A very magical cat.  Wei Wuxian's fingers stop tapping and he becomes perfectly still for a moment, then resumes.  The other hand reaches up to scratch at his nose in thought.

"How did you get here?"

"I'm not entirely sure. There was a snake monster, eating my followers except not exactly, and I went to try to figure out what it was doing to them, and it ate me, and then I was here. - I don't think they're here, but I'm too small here to be very sure." His tail lashes in frustration. "I have the snake contained now, at least."

"Are your followers also cats?  Wait, how are you smaller here?  Were you a cat before today?"

"I'm lots of cats, at home, and a forest, and I don't have a human avatar but I could. Do you not have gods here?"

"You're a god?"

"We have gods, though none I've heard of take the form of cat colonies.  Forests are a bit more of a thing.  Cultivators don't deal with them much, other than when they're involved in something we've been hired to solve."

"Goddess, but yes. I don't think I've heard of cultivators before."

"Cultivators are people who train in martial and mystic arts.  Then we go out and use the abilities that our training grants us to solve supernatural problems.  Ghosts, walking corpses, monsters, and curses, mostly."

"And you don't usually deal with gods, you said? I must be very far from myself. I could imagine a god having a monstrous avatar or using their power to make corpses walk, but I don't know of anything else that could do it, or any other way for humans to gain supernatural abilities."

"The dead rise on their own if they have enough emotion holding them to the physical world, or if their bodies are buried improperly or disturbed.  Or if a demonic cultivator wakes them up."  Wei Wuxian is smug as he mentions demonic cultivation. 

"I've heard that places far outside of the empire don't know about cultivation and had to come up with other ways of dealing with supernatural dangers.  If gods do it where you're from... but no that wouldn't explain how the undead weren't ever rising.  Unless you always bury everyone perfectly and never have unsolved murders."

"I'm pretty good at making sure people get the funerals they wanted and murderers get caught, but not because I expect the corpses to walk away if I don't. And not all of my neighbors are as attentive, and there is unclaimed land." The cat licks his paw, as a human might chew on their lip while thinking. "It sounds like this might be a different world entirely."

"Cultivators know of the mortal world where we are now, the underworld where souls go between incarnations, and the heavenly realm where immortals and the heavenly court live.  The other two are supposed to be very different, enough that it would have taken less than a second to recognize you're in a different one.  Though that's information at least a thousand years out of date; there's legends of the heavenly officials coming down or people returning from the underworld - with their memories, I mean, not reborn as babies - but no one has done so in ages."  Wei Wuxian wants to now.  He'll add those to his list of impossible tasks to complete.

"That doesn't sound familiar at all. Even the reincarnation." The cat's tail twitches as Deviskaryl thinks. "You seem to be using your wetlands, just here; is there anyplace nearby that you wouldn't mind being drier?"

"It depends what you're looking for, and how much drier it's going to get.  Or - oh, for making a shrine or being a forest?  We have existing forests all over the place, up in the hills.  Exactly where will depend on how close you want to be to inhabited land.  And how safe the area will be for people who wander in by mistake - it's going to be taken really badly if a kid wanders too close while hunting pheasants and gets killed for it, so if that's the sort of thing that's normal for your kind of god to do you'll want somewhere hard to reach by accident."

"For being a forest. The area doesn't have to be a forest already, I can take care of that myself, and it'll be - well, not perfectly safe, but much safer than an uninhabited forest certainly, for anyone who isn't trouble themselves. And more fertile and better for mining and such, too, I'm really more the type of place someone might want to settle than the type of place they might worry about wandering into, by preference.

"I have a place in mind, if that's the case.  It's uphill about 15 li, past the nearby farms, not too long of a walk but not immediately at our doorstep.  The forest keeps going for a good long way, though does eventually get pretty rocky and hilly."

Wei Wuxian stands and stretches.

"I'm not sure I'll be able to keep the hills, fair warning." The cat stretches as well and then rears up, bracing himself on Wei Wuian's leg, pretty clearly expecting to be picked up and carried.

He makes a noise of assent.  The hills over that way are nice enough but not especially outstanding examples of hills.

Wei Wuxian will of course pick up and carry Deviskaryl.  And then they're off! 

He was already near the back edge of Lotus Pier.  It doesn't take long at all before they're passing the low wall out and onto the road leading to their destination.  They cross an old stone bridge, some lotus lakes, some root vegetable fields, some rice fields, a farm growing tea...  Wei Wuxian knows every local farmer and has enough amusing anecdotes of childhood mischief or decade-old gossip to easily fill the time it takes to reach the end of the farms and the beginning of the forest.

Deviskaryl listens attentively, commenting approvingly the attention he pays to his neighbors and sharing a few anecdotes of her own that various stories remind her of; it seems like she's similarly aware of the goings-on in the lives of her followers, though rarely directly involved for more than the time it takes to send a letter or a cat to direct them to some task or resource that's suited to them.

What a good conversation partner.  And a good new neighbor.

The path veering away from the farms turns from a road wide enough to bring a cart down into a narrow dirt trail.  Soon enough after that the trail passes the thick bushes at the edge of the forest.  Wei Wuxian sets Deviskaryl down when they reach the clearer portion beneath the forest's canopy and can see the trunks stretching out for a ways.  It is spring and a number of plants are blooming.  At least as far as can be seen the land is approximately flat.

"All right, let's see." The cat settles comfortably in the center of the path and the surrounding plant life starts changing, beginning near him and spreading out from there. Some of the changes are subtle, leaves taking on a color that's a shade healthier, and some are more obvious, whole bushes coming into fruit or withering away. "I'm not going to invest too heavily here just now - a few dozen square li, I think, until people get to know me. That'll give me a nice little base to work from and I won't miss the investment too much if I need to abandon it for some reason. And - you mentioned shrines, are they typical here? I'm not big on temples, I don't like to set myself above other people like that, but if people will expect a shrine it seems prudent to have one, at least until I'm more inhabited. - you could tell people I like offerings of poetry, especially poems they've written about themselves, if you'd like to do me a favor. And speaking of favors, would you like another blessing, for your help?"

As she's speaking, two more foreign-looking cats appear, from behind a tree and under a bush, and join the first one. One of them has a small green glass vial full of dirt on a ribbon around her neck.

Wei Wuxian watches in amazement as the forest changes. That is such fascinating magic and Wei Wuxian wants to know everything about how she did it.  Did the water and resources from the withered bushes go to the rest of the plants?  Would the fruit from a plant that ripened without getting pollinated have viable seeds?

"Shrines are normal and expected.  I don't think you should have to have one if you hate the idea, though you'll probably have to stop people from building them for you in that case - most gods don't build their own shrines, here.  I can tell the villagers that they can introduce themselves and to bring poetry instead of building materials."

Aww cute cats.  "I would like a blessing."  Wei Wuxian's training as a cultivator would normally advise him to be more cautious about accepting blessings without asking exactly what they are, but Deviskaryl seems on the human-like end of things and unlikely to think he wants to be blessed by getting turned into a tree, and if he says no he will never find out the mystery of what sorts of blessings she gives out.

"I don't mind a small shrine, to start with. Hmm..." A pair of carved stone cats appear on either side of the path, just where the change in terrain left off, and a pair of young flowering trees sprout up to frame a stone table just off the path a ways farther in. "That should do, I think. For blessings, you already have the one for animal body language - it works for all animals, not just cats - and I also offer luck, health, longevity, endurance, and reduced hunger."

Reduced hunger is tempting; Wei Wuxian remembers being hungry.

"Would health keep me from getting sick in the future even though I'm fine now?"

"It would - all of my blessings are permanent, as long as you still want them; if you find you don't like one it'll fade over a few days or weeks."

"Then I'll pick health," he decides.

"Done. And if you'd like, you can bring this vial with you," the cat with the necklace steps forward, "so that we can continue to talk - it doesn't allow me to see, unless you turn the dirt out somewhere for me to make a claim, but I'll be able to hear anything around it."

Wei Wuxian bows, accepting the blessing and the vial.  "This one thanks Deviskaryl," he says with formality.

Then he examines the vial.  Does it seem like it will fit around his neck, or more something to put in his pocket?

The ribbon - a matte black one - is wrapped three times around her neck with a knot at the nape to stop it from tightening; when one of the tails is pulled it opens out into a length suitable for a human to wear as a necklace.

Necklace it is then.  He's quite happy with how well it matches his usual black attire.

"It looks like you've got everything here well in hand."  Paw?  Branch?  "Is there anything I can help out with here, or should I start making the rounds to the nearby farms?"

"I don't think there's anything else here. ...assuming I'm not too close to any of your local gods, at least. Do you happen to know where the nearest one is?"

"The line between what's considered a spirit and what's a god can be fuzzy, and not every type claims places or stays put.  There's a mountain god in the hills north of Lotus Pier.  He doesn't talk - not to humans, anyway, but I certainly won't be the one to tell you not to try.  He would be the closest.  The town about forty li downstream has a guardian spirit they worship.  He sometimes gives useful dreams warning of floods or telling the location of missing people."

Wei Wuxian mimes out drawing a map with his flute, not quite touching the forest floor as he describes the area.  He really should have thought to bring a map.  There's a T-junction between the main river and the tributary they'd crossed just after leaving Lotus Pier.  Both rivers are lined in farms.  The hills are on the other side of the tributary.  "Probably avoid claiming that direction past the farms - that's where he is.  Also, those hills are important to the feng shui of the area.  But going this direction, and this one, are fine for hundreds of li."

"That's all good to know, thank you. That's all, I think."

Wei Wuxian bows again, then backs out of the forest to go tell the adjacent farmers about their new neighbor. 

This doesn't mean he's going to be quiet, though.  When he's just barely out of earshot of the forest he looks down at the vial.  "Deviskaryl?  Just checking to make sure this is working."

"Yes, I hear you."

"This is an amazing necklace," he says, petting it. 

Wei Wuxian is about to start another long conversation, but pauses first.  "Does it cost energy when in use?" 

"Not really. It's a piece of me, and I do have to devote some energy to maintaining myself at whatever size I am, but it's too small a piece to notice. And if it reminds you to think of me it'll more than pay for itself."

He realizes that it likely doesn't mean much, if Deviskaryl is giving one out to the first person she happened to show up near, but his heart warms at the thought of being given a piece of someone to have around his neck. 

"You could do a lot with these here.  Cultivators can send messages to each other over long distances, but its expensive in terms of spiritual energy.  Also there are issues aiming - we need to know the person we're sending a message to very well.  As well as siblings or cultivation partners.  Or there's a couple types that can be sent to an exact spot."

"I could do some of that - with a bigger holy object I can see, too, if that would be useful. What do you expect cultivators would do with the time and energy it saved you?"

"There's not many long-range message spells getting sent with our current state-of-the-art.  Probably most of them are new wives reassuring their parents that they're doing fine in their distant new sect, or family trying to contact relatives late to coming back from night hunts.  They aren't a great emergency signal from the ones on night hunts since if they have the energy to send one they'd usually want to keep it for fighting or flying, which is why we normally use mundane flares.  Group hunts, conferences, and other gatherings are planned far enough in advance that the attendees find out in the previous one or the invitation is sent physically the next time someone happens to be flying in that direction.  Messengers flying on swords are way more reliable, and usually carry whole bags of letters each time."

"If I could talk across all of China without difficulty, I'd want to keep in touch with everyone I went to the lectures at Cloud Recesses with.  Or, I guess not all of them.  But a couple of them like Nie Huaisang probably don't hate me."  He does his best to keep up the cheer but the mask slips on the last sentence.

"I can pass letters and report emergency signals much more easily than I can pass spoken messages, and more confidentially, too, for the letters; I'll think about it. Did something happen with your schoolmates? You seem perfectly charming to me."

"Oh, I am charming," he preens. "Really, it's just Lan Zhan who is immune to my charms.  And Jin Zixuan, who totally asked to be punched in the face for insulting my shijie."

"Lan Zhan - he's from the Lan Sect of Gusu.  That's another cultivation clan to the east, and they are famous for being complete sticks in the mud.  Cloud Recesses is their sect's stronghold and it has over 3000 rules, and Lan Zhan is the most rule-abiding and stuffy one of them all.  The very first night I arrived he already hated me, just because I forgot the invitation and snuck in after dark with some alcohol.  I even offered to share some with him if he'd let me go, but he picked a fight then reported me."

Uh-huh.

"I'd like to meet him sometime."

"I suppose I can send him a letter though I doubt he'll respond.  Or he will but he'll come by just to tell me to go to Gusu with him for punishment for using unconventional techniques that are forbidden in his clan.  Hopefully he won't throw a fit about you not being a conventional god or whatever.  Not that he can do anything to either of us; we're in Yunmeng and well away from Gusu, and neither of us is a member of the Lan sect.  Who does he even think he is?"

Somebody's got it bad, huh.

"If you aren't needed here we could go and see about establishing a bit of my forest there; I'll need it if I'm going to be passing letters around."

"That will need to happen, won't it?  Yeah, I'm not being very useful around here.  I can take some time to go look for some nice empty forests close to Cloud Recesses."

Perhaps someone else would be worried about him getting dragged off to Cloud Recesses if he got too close, but Wei Wuxian doesn't even consider it.  He's more than a match for an army.

"How long of a trip is it?"

"Quite a distance, but cultivators travel quickly.  I can get there in a couple days easily enough."

"I suggest leaving in the morning, then."

"Yeah."

For now, Wei Wuxian has just reached the first of the farms.  He has farmers to inform, reassure, and tell to create poetry about themselves if they want to.  This one has a daughter, five years old, and she's so big now!  Wei Wuxian pouts dramatically as she hides behind her father's legs because she doesn't recognize him, because he was off at war for two years.

"Does the goddess Deviskaryl have a thing she's a goddess of?" the farmer wants to know.

Wei Wuxian looks down at the vial.  "I don't know.  Deviskaryl, do you have a thing you're a goddess of?  Other than forests.  Also, can you talk to people I'm talking to or should I be relaying things for you?"

"I can talk to anyone I'd like; hello, it's good to meet you all. I'm the goddess of self-actualization, as well."

The farmers are impressed! 

Admittedly, some of them are still suspecting that this is Wei Wuxian playing some kind of odd prank.  It wouldn't be the first time.  They don't call him out on it; if it is a prank it's unlikely to be a mean-spirited or harmful one and they'd rather see where it leads.

Deviskaryl isn't exactly chatty, when there's more than one person around, but she'll answer questions, and eventually notices their subtle skepticism and offers to show off some of what she can do: if Wei Wuxian pours the dirt from the vial out onto a table, she can produce two shallow reed bowls on it, and then she can manifest fruit in the bowls, or grain, including a couple varieties of rice they haven't seen before, or gems, or little stone statuettes of cats, and if they put something in one of the bowls she can move it to the other, no matter where they take them.

Sure, he'll pour out the vial for some tests.  Wei Wuxian wants to see the cool magic too!  Magic isn't something he will ever get tired of.

"Did you create these just now, or were they somewhere in your territory already and transported here?"

Living so close to Lotus Pier, these farmers know a good amount about what cultivation can and can't do.  This does not look like what they're used to seeing nor does it look like the rumored demonic cultivation that they heard Wei Wuxian used in the war.

The farmers offer effusive but genuine praise, and also more questions:  Will she want them to grow these crops for her?  Do they have mystical properties?  Are the farmers where she came from much different?

"I made the bowls and food just now, and the gems are extras from a batch I made a little while ago. The statuettes I had on hand; my artisans often make ones like that for practice, when they don't have another inspiration in mind." She produces another little cat, at that, this one made of glazed ceramic; it's of significantly worse quality than the others but charming in its own way.

"These crops might be better than the ones you have now, and you're entirely welcome to grow them and to ask me for more seed for them until they're established here, but they don't have any mystical properties and it doesn't matter to me which crops you grow, only that you're doing the best thing for yourselves. Farmers in my territory have an easier time, and more leisure - I can improve the soil and control the weather, so the harvests are always good - and I encourage them to spend the extra time on whatever calls to them the most. That's often artistry, but I'm not a goddess of art, I'm a goddess of being the best you can be according to your own feeling of what's best for you to be."

Aww, adorable practice cat figurine.  Wei Wuxian is going to coo at it.

The farmers thank her.  A few seem a bit wary of anything new, but most are intrigued and excited at the idea of more variety.  There are many farms in the nearby area.  Perhaps they can each try a small field of a different seed.

In turn, would it help if they made offerings of samples of the seeds and fruits they're familiar with so that she can copy them for the distant farmers of her homeland?  They aren't sure how her seed-generation ability works.  It's so different from what they're used to seeing.

That prompts one woman to begin praising one of the local recipes that use familiar crops.  It may be normal enough to all of them here, but Innkeeper Lin serves it to people who come from all over, even travelers from outside of Yunmeng, and they're always impressed.

She'd appreciate offerings of crops, for now; she can only make seeds of plants she's familiar with, and her farmers and her god friends always like having new things to try. In the longer run she'd prefer offerings that are meaningful to the person offering them, and that represent something they're proud of accomplishing or a way they're improving or that they'd like to improve; that certainly could be crops, but it's more often other things - like recipes, yes, a recipe someone is proud of developing is absolutely the kind of offering she likes. Poetry is another good example; poems are her favorite kind of offering.

(She whispers in Wei Wuxian's ear that he can keep the ceramic cat if he'd like to.)

They are indeed quite proud of their lotuses.  One man mentions how many things are named after them here, including their local cultivation sect's residence.  While Lotus Pier has - had - is getting more - gardeners for the lotus plants inside its walls, the wide series of lakes that the cultivators fly over and praise are their farms and lakes.  (The tone this is said with is one of happiness.  It's clear that these people have a good relationship with the local sect.)

There are a number of arts the locals are good at: folk songs, weaving, kite-painting.  None of this batch of farmers is good at poetry, though they will give it a try for her.  Each of their families has at least one person who knows a few hundred characters and there are plenty in town who can write more obscure words. 

Wei Wuxian would like to keep the ceramic cat if it looks like no one else wants it more.  No one looks particularly taken with it, so he whispers back a thanks and picks the statuette up.

She's not very familiar with lotuses, but if they can recommend a couple good varieties she'll get started on figuring out how to keep them healthy and happy. She's enthusiastic about singing and weaving but particularly delighted to hear about the kite-painting: in her territory in the other world they count the start of the year from when the butterflies show up on their yearly migration, and they fly kites as part of the festival for it, so she's sure there'll be some interest in sharing design ideas. And she likes spoken poetry just as much as written, and can transcribe it for them if they'd like their own copies, too.

She does, eventually, start seeming a little less enthusiastic about continuing the conversation, and shortly thereafter whispers to Wei Wuxian that she's ready to go and could he please bring the baskets to wherever the mail station should be, and also put his vial into one of them for a moment so she can refill it for him.

"That festival sounds like fun.  Cultivators usually use our kites for target practice games.  We all need to learn to use the bow, but shooting at a stationary target is so boring.  It's also not very realistic.  Ghosts and monsters pretty much never sit still and let us shoot at them!"  Wei Wuxian then gets distracted talking about and describing his own kite, which had been painted by his Shijie, Jiang Yanli - an extra-large kite like a brightly colored monster with lots of trailing tails. 

He supposes he ought to let the farmers get back to work, then.  Wei Wuxian follows the directions and gets his vial refilled, then starts heading back towards Lotus Pier.

Huh, she hadn't thought of using kites for target practice before - most places in her domain that are open enough to fly kites have too many people around to be safe for shooting, but there are a couple places along the river where it might work.

She stays quiet for most of the walk back, offering just enough acknowledgement of his chatter to make it clear that she's still listening, but as they get close she asks if it'd be a good time for a tour of the Pier.

"Sure!  The public parts, at least, and the town too.  I think I remember you mentioning you can't see through the vial.  Should I keep carrying the baskets until the end of the tour, if you can see through those?"

"Either way, really; I have a cat here, too." 

"Ah, probably best if you joined me as a cat.  I wouldn't wander off without you on purpose, but if I set you down when you're a cat and something happens you'll be able to come after me instead of having to yell at me until I can circle back around.  Lotus Pier can be a chaotic place at times."

"I'm not in a hurry." But a lanky tabby emerges from a nearby stand of flowers and stretches before coming over to rub against his shin.

Wei Wuxian doesn't know if she just appeared or had been following for a while, but either way is impressed.  He goes to pick her up.

Instead of taking the same route, he veers closer to the river for variety.  There are plenty of interesting trees and rock outcroppings along the way for him to warm up his tour guide voice on.  Soon enough they reach the first stop. 

"These are Lotus Pier's back docks.  More boring than the ones by the main entrance.  I'd take you over there first, for a proper entrance, but these ones are in the way unless we went all the way around.  And I suppose you've already seen where the normal sect members lived - those were the burned buildings you appeared near.  Anyway, these are the docks where bulk shipments of food and supplies get brought in.  They're also the docks where we keep our own boats for traveling or fishing on the river."

She allows him to pick her up, and spends a few seconds trying to find a position in his arms that will let her see without needing to claim both his hands before giving up and climbing up to his shoulder.

"Do you get many supplies in by boat?"

"Yeah.  There aren't enough people in the town to feed and clothe a whole sect of cultivators.  We buy things from all across Yunmeng then they bring them on the river.  That's the easiest way, at least for bulky things.  Valuable stuff like silk or dyes can be brought back in qiankun pouches but there are limitations to using them for things we'd use barges for.  Well, that, and most cultivators can be self important and would throw a fit if asked to exhaust themselves to haul around potatoes in their magic items."

"Cultivators are rare, then? Is there more to that than the training?"

"Maybe one in a thousand people are cultivators.  Most of that's that the training takes years and requires an experienced teacher, and it's dangerous.  There's no inborn trait that only a few people have, if that's what you're asking."

"I had acolytes in mind, actually - like how I blessed you, there's a thing we can do to give humans a stronger power than that. Different gods handle it differently; I don't have any acolytes at all, right now. I like customizing the power to the person which makes it a little more difficult for me. But one in a thousand sounds about right on average, or maybe a little high, for how many people are acolytes at home."