Redemption

Chapter 1

Hey hey! I had an idea in my head that I just needed to write down because it wouldn't leave me alone so here we are xD
Don't worry though, I'm still writing months in advance for The King's Mate so this won't interfere with that :D

I still have several ideas for the direction I want this story to go, so more tags will be added once I decided ^-^;
Also, this will most likely not be a very long story. Right now I'm guessing there will probably be between 10 - 20 chapters but don't hold me to that lol

With all of that being said, enjoy the first chapter :D

________________________________________________________________________

Xie Lian wished he could sigh. That way, he would at least have something to do.

He would be able to explore all sorts of sighs, and possibly invent new ways to sigh as well. He could create a whole performance out of long and melancholy sighs, short and angry sighs, annoyed sighs, bored sighs, tired sighs, sad sighs, lonely sighs... he would be able to do it all if he hadn't been turned into a statue. He would be such a proficient sigher that he would even be able to make money out of it by adding it to his busking routine, he was sure of it.

But alas, all he could really do was to stand in the small courtyard of this dilapidated, little shrine that was located just behind him. To be fair, the little shrine's condition had probably worsened a lot since the last time he'd seen it. After all, he wasn't able to turn around in order to take a look at it, and it had already been in need of restoration since before Xie Lian was cursed to stand here for all eternity. It wouldn't surprise him if the little shrine had collapsed in on itself by now.

It was a thought that made Xie Lian much sadder than he probably should be over a structure made out of wood. But since the little shrine had been just as abandoned as Xie Lian himself, he couldn't help but feel a sort of kinship with it. And anyway, he himself was nothing more than a stature as well now, an inanimate object to anyone who would see him. Nobody would ever think a human consciousness was trapped in here.

Not that anybody ever saw him; he was standing guard for the most obscure shrine in existence, somewhere so deep into the forest that even sunlight barely filtered through the leaves. There wasn't even a path leading to the little shrine. Maybe there had been a path at some point in the past, but if there was, it had been overgrown and erased by nature, just like the courtyard Xie Lian was standing in.

Granted, he could only see a small part of these grounds, but the thicket had grown almost as tall as the fence that surrounded the little shrine. It hadn't been that bad when Xie Lian had first been put here; in fact he was pretty sure he had been able to see the ground of this courtyard in the very beginning.

That must have been centuries ago at this point though, Xie Lian figured. It was rather difficult to keep track of time in a situation like his, but he knew that at least several decades must have passed since he'd been dropped off here.

The truth was, there had been a few, rare instances when humans had found this little shrine, as obscure as it was.

Though, the last incident had been so many years ago that Xie Lian only had very hazy memories of it. He remembered that the clothes that human had been wearing were very foreign to him; very dissimilar to the robes Xie Lian had been used to for the centuries he had been around before this curse had hit him.

It had very obviously been a homeless person, Xie Lian remembered that much, and he had always thought that this was also the reason why that man had dressed so strangely. It had only dawned on him a long time after the man had left again that maybe Xie Lian had been standing around as a statue for so long that the modern clothes had become all but unrecognisable to him.