Xie Lian watched as you ate the food on the table before you like it was your last.

It made him wonder how you had to live before he’d found you upon returning to the heavenly realm after a successful mission to gain some more merits.

He thinks you’re around 19? 20? And he can’t help but wonder how long you’ve been without anyone, to be this hungry.

He wonders what Hua Cheng will say when he meets you, wonders what Shi Qingxuan or Feng Xin and Mu Qing will think and if the other heaven officials will greet you with kindness or hesitance considering it’s Xie Lian who has brought you here (secretly).

“Slow down.” Xie Lian finally speaks, his tone soft and kind yet firm, knowing you’ll only get an upset stomach and eat too much if you keep eating at the pace you currently are. You remind him of Ban Yue when he first met her, eating everything as if Xie Lian would kick her to the curb at any possible minute. He wonders how similar you will be to others that he’s met, since he sees bits of their personalities in you already..*

Xie Lian still remembers how he’d decided to take you in the moment he offhandedly spotted you near the rubble of a fallen village. One that had seemed to have been burnt and torn down. Abandoned.

It’d been a swift decision, the one he made to take you in, and off you’d gone with him.

And now here you were.