The Eight Wilds Bestiary: The Borrowed Coat
A masterless old coat at a northern way-station walks by night, settling on travelers to finish the homeward road its dead master never walked.
In the northern wilds stands an old way-station, and by its road lies a coat, worn yet clean, with no master. At night it walks the road of itself, and when it meets a lone traveler, it settles quietly upon his shoulders. The wearer knows nothing, his steps no longer his own, and he walks instead the unfinished journey of the coat's former master — homeward, or to a long-broken tryst — until he reaches that end, where the coat slips off and is gone.
There was once a border soldier named Old Zhao, who served thirty years at the frontier and never came home; his coat was left at the station. A merchant named Little Yi passed by at night, and the coat settled on him. Yi walked as in a dream for three hundred leagues, and came to the door of Zhao's old home, where he stood stiff. The household found the stranger fallen at their gate, revived him, and asked — he knew nothing. Within days the frontier report came: Zhao had fallen in battle. Men whispered that the coat had walked his master home one last time, fulfilling a life's wish.
The village elder said: "The coat walks not to bewitch the guest, but to finish for its master what he left undone. When a man holds a wish his body cannot reach, the thing walks it for him — this is the mercy of the wild."