The black gunpowder creates a hard contrast against Shen's white feathers, a chiaroscuro plumage; he finally realises that this is what she meant, and he closes his eyes in capitulation.

.

The first thing he is aware of is that he can't hear anything. He runs the possibilities through his mind: he has become deaf, everyone else has become mute, or he's finally all alone. It's clear as to which one of his options he prefers, but knowing his luck so far, it would probably be all three.

There's really no incentive for him to find out if he can move or not – he entertains the thought of just laying there for as long as it takes for something to happen – but he tries shifting his right wing slightly. Shen is pleasantly surprised when he feels it – apparently, he still has the sense of touch – sliding across the floor an inch; the gravel beneath it brushes lightly against his feathers. He experiments with his other wing to similar results. Shen still doesn't open his eyes (he isn't sure if he has eyes anymore, anyway), afraid of what he will see. Slowly, he becomes aware of more things – he is breathing, for one. His ribs push against the floor rhythmically in tandem with his inspiration; he can feel the warmth of each breath as it passes through his nostrils and he counts ten breaths to be sure of his inexplicable existence. He shifts his wing until it rests over his chest, feeling the pulse of life emanating from his moving chest, an invisible rhythm beneath his skin. Heartbeat.

Carefully, his eyelids part to a vertical plane of dirt. So he can see, too. Shen sits up languidly to rub his eyes and starts to assess his surroundings. He's in the middle of a long, empty street. There are a few shophouses in front of him, sundried provisions all lined up neatly by a missing owner for customers who aren't there. Cheery advertisements for vegetable soup flutter in the deserted eatery behind him, bowls and utensils laid out at each table. Along the stretch of road there are a series of paper lanterns hanging overhead. This place seems rather familiar.

As a child, Shen hardly ventured outside of the ancestral palace. Small and etiolated, his parents had explicitly forbidden him from exploring the city alone; even with companions he was only allowed to travel to a few choice districts within a prescribed perimeter of their home. He used to remember those rare trips with great clarity, the only things he had known besides the interior of the Tower of Sacred Flame. If only he can just place it, he thinks that he came down this street once while out exploring with the Soothsayer, his old nanny.

It appears that he is in Gongmen City, from what he has gathered so far. The wrong part of the city, to be more precise. There's no explaining how he wound up in a province which didn't even touch the river, neither can he remember what happened after the battle on his decimated boat. All he can extract from his memory is the groaning of metal under strain and a tall, protruding shadow enlarging around him…

The midday sun hangs in the sky, a glowing orb sitting on the edge of a large cloud. Something's not right. It's too…quiet. There doesn't seem to be a single soul anywhere nearby, nor can he hear what would suggest the activity of civilians elsewhere in the city. The debris of their daily lives litter the street – unmanned wooden rickshaws lined up in order, a lion dancer's costume stranded by the roadside, fruit stands with watermelon halves sweating in the sun – all missing their people. This is what makes him think that maybe he isn't in Gongmen City after all; he knows too well how the city operates around the clock, the bustling of townsfolk in every corner and street.

He isn't sure if he really is the only one in the abandoned city. For all he knows, the panda could be waiting nearby, planning to spring an ambush –

Shen dismisses the thought. It didn't matter; the panda wouldn't want to fight anyway, being the naïve pacifist he has already proven himself to be. Besides, he has his weapons with him – a wing reaching into his robes to grasp the familiar handles of his throwing knives meets air. More surprised than alarmed, Shen realises that he is unarmed. Strangely, it feels unnatural – not having the cold kiss of his steel blades, partially shielded by fabric, perpetually against his skin. He feels naked in some way, but there is little he can do about it now. Perhaps he could find some way to improvise later, create makeshift weapons if necessary.

He gets to his feet and is given another incredible surprise – there's an odd tingling in his feet as he stands up and when he looks down he discovers that his talons are unarmoured. Startled, he falls over, unprepared for this revelation and the soft tickle of grit between his toes. Seated on the ground, he examines them closely in astonishment. Exposed and normal, his feet no longer sport ugly scars sustained from third-degree burns, the product of his carelessness. The feeling of his feet against something other than metal is a sensation he has forgotten; the experience is positively electric. He attempts to flex a joint, to understand how much control he has over his restored pedial faculties. Shen tries standing again, gingerly, carefully testing his weight, acclimatising to the use of his healed talons.

When he is able to successfully stand upright again, he walks down the street to carry out some reconnaissance. Looking around, there isn't much in this part of the city, the absence of other people aside. While he cannot say for sure that the rest of the city isn't the same, Shen decides that it can't hurt to explore this shell of a city on feet that can feel again, just like he used to years ago.

.

The resplendent sun burns its way through the thick bank of clouds fogging the sky, a mid-afternoon brightness truncated only by the shifting pumice clouds. In every corner he looks there's a stirring wind, like those found in the recent passage of someone else, only much lonelier.

"He…hello?" Shen calls. His uncertain voice travels through streets and culverts, echoing ominously. There's still no sign of anyone else; he has walked through six different avenues with no luck whatsoever. Twice he thinks that he sees something scuttling around the avenue furtively and twice he still finds nothing after giving chase. It seems that he really is the solitary inhabitant of the city. This interests him more than anything – he thinks that he should be more concerned, more worried about his current predicament.

The trees bend in the wind, leaves scatter in front of him. Something rolls in front of him and he stoops to pick it up. It's a top, crafted from wood and colourfully painted. The string needed to start it spinning, however, is missing…

Almost as soon as he thinks it, he notices the string lying on a nearby barrel. It's almost as if the child's toy is asking him to play with it. A memory forms: He is six, and on his birthday the Soothsayer gives him a top just like this one (the colours even look nearly the same). He tries to spin it – from the confines of his room he has seen other children playing in the streets – and accidentally flings it out the window, just missing her by a hair. They share a moment's silence, and then crack into laughter. He remembers practicing for weeks after that, trying to keep the top spinning as long as possible, to show his parents that he could do something right for once.

Shen loops the string around the base of the top and yanks the cord, sending it spinning onto the dirt road. The colours bleed into each other, forming an iridescent cone of light.

From far away, he hears the clink of china against china. Shen looks up in the direction of the noise, listening intently. This time, there's a soft tintinnabulation, hushed peals whispering on the breeze. He shouldn't expect to find anything else and doesn't expect to, but as of now he has all the time in the world to investigate. Placing the string back where he found it, Shen walks away, leaving the top behind, a gyroscopic whirl of chromaticity.

(The top continues to spin long after the echo of his final footstep dies.)

.

Shen picks up the scent of brewing tea, a hearty aroma of boiling leaves percolating through the dry air; it suffuses his nostrils with such intensity that he realises he hasn't smelled something so potent – he can't remember smelling anything at all, now that he thinks about it – ever since he regained consciousness. As he closes in on the source, Shen sees a tea shop situated on a street corner from a distance away. He recognises it as the shop that he visited every now and then with his parents – his mother had liked the tea that the owners brewed so much that she requested that the shop be relocated closer to the palace so that she could bring him there.

He hates drinking tea – brown sludge with a euphemistic connotation – but he realises that he never told them, amongst many other things.

A figure sits at one of the tables, its back facing him. Squinting, Shen can make out a testudinal back, a yin-yang symbol draped across it…

When he gets close enough, he is about to call out when the figure turns around. The tortoise smiles warmly, welcoming him, as if he knows him. "Ah, good. You've arrived; I've been expecting you." He pats the seat of the chair next to him, motioning to Shen to sit down. Confused but thankful to have finally met someone else, he acquiesces.

His host pours him a generous dose of steaming tea and picks up his own cup. Still slightly stupefied, Shen leaves it untouched; he stares into the dark liquid rippling peacefully within its china container, a herbal aquifer. His bewildered reflection glares back at him, sclera and feathers stained russet brown.

"What's the matter?" The tortoise looks at him pleasantly. "Wrong flavour?"

Shen shakes his head. "I don't drink tea. I don't like tea." He is aware of how rude he sounds, how much he sounds like a petulant child.

The tortoise tilts his head inquisitively in response. "Have you tried it before?" Shen nods warily. His acquaintance gestures at the cup in front of him. "Have you tried my tea before?"

"No…" Shen replies hesitantly; didn't they all taste the same to him anyway?

"Well, if you never try, you'll never know, right?" The tortoise chuckles and returns to his beverage.

There isn't anything to lose, anyway. He may as well accommodate his mysterious companion, just this once. Shen lifts the cup to his beak reluctantly and allows a small quantity of the murky fluid to trickle into his mouth. He swallows. Astonishingly, he doesn't recoil in disgust like the first time he tried drinking tea. The rich flavour washes over his tongue and seems to warm him from the inside – it's the most delicious thing he has ever tasted.

"So," the tortoise says, smiling broadly. "How is it?"

"It's delicious…ambrosial, even." He drains the rest of the tea in one gulp and sets the cup down on the table. Immediately, the tortoise reaches for the teapot and grants him a refill. Shen thanks him politely, but doesn't proceed to drink. "Who are you?" he asks; a simple, reasonable question.

His odd companion looks at him with an ocular expression that is incomprehensible and curious at the same time. Finally, he smiles knowingly, once more. "Have some more tea, Shen," he nudges the cup closer to him, "and then, maybe then we'll talk, just a little."

.

But there are certain things we do not speak of:

– once upon a time, there were people who walked these streets. They spoke and laughed and cried with such vitality it even endured the toll of the monsoon rains, a trial of weather. Back then sunsets referred to the elusive instance between the first minute of witching hour and the breaking dusk. Back then he thought that he could hold the entire world in a grain of sand, experience all of eternity in a second. Wishes on falling stars could come true, occasionally, but more often with a polished square of moonlight tucked snugly between two feathered, alabaster palms pressed together in tacit prayer.

It scares Shen, though – the way he accepts this solitude with a finality matched only in dreams, and in death.

It makes him wonder where the halcyon days have gone.

A/N: The spinning top is an Inception reference, for those who haven't watched the movie. Also, I think I just ran out of synonyms to describe tea.

This is a new original short series that I'm starting up for the fandom, however it will be updated rather sporadically seeing as I've been rather lazy to write these past few weeks. Long stories aren't really my thing, but I decided to give it a try, with much thanks to user onewithnothing for suggesting it. I don't forsee a really long story - it will probably be 3 chapters long - 4 if I can manage - before I run out of ideas. Reviews are very much appreciated.