It was far too beautiful. Beautiful enough to have been stolen from fate itself.
Months later. Early winter morning.
Thin sunlight cut through bamboo shade, scattered broken patterns across the blue brick of Bao'an Hall's rear courtyard.
The scent of medicine still lingered inside; the red candle burned out the night before had left only a small, hardened stub of wax.
Bai Su half-reclined on the bed, a plain white inner robe loose over her shoulders. Her belly had swelled, faint—about the shape a mortal pregnancy takes at five, six months.
In her lap, a pair of unfinished tiger-head shoes.
The stitching hardly fine—one eye sat higher than the other, the crooked character stitched at the brow looked more like a wind-tossed branch than anything else.
For a moment, the little tiger's crooked eyes blurred before her own. Bai Su blinked, and they came back into focus.
Xu Xian looked at it with nothing but delight.
He knelt at the bedside, one palm resting, careful, against her swollen belly, as though cradling the most fragile, most precious thing in the world.
"My lady, do you think—did he just kick?"
Bai Su looked down at him. Inside her, that bud, forced into life with her own original blood, seemed, sensing the warmth of his palm, to give a genuinely faint tremor.
Xu Xian's eyes lit at once, delight nearly childlike in its purity.
He softened even his breathing, bent quick, pressed his ear to her belly, terrified of disturbing the small, not-yet-formed life inside.
"He knows me."
He looked up, smiling, his whole face unguarded and tender. "Must have heard his father's voice. Couldn't help answering."
Something tightened in Bai Su's chest. Still, she curved her lips, asked, deliberately: "How does my husband know it'll be a boy?"
"A girl would be just as fine," he answered without hesitation.
Pressed his cheek back against her belly.
His voice, muffled through fabric, warm and blurred. "If it's a daughter, and she takes after my lady, that'd be best of all. She'll surely grow to be the loveliest, gentlest girl in Lin'an."
Bai Su reached out. Let her fingers slip slow into his loose hair.
Smoothed it back. "And if she doesn't take after me?"
"Then she'll take after me."
"And if she doesn't take after you either?"
He paused, then laughed.
Tilted his face up, looked at her with perfect ease.
"It's our child. What does it matter who it takes after? Even if it's born unlike anyone else in the world, it'd still be, to its mother and father, the very best child there could be."
Bai Su's fingers went still against his hair.
It had been, on the surface, the most ordinary thing a mortal might say. And still, falling into her ears, it struck like a red-hot needle, driven straight into the place she'd never once dared to touch.
"If he... truly is unlike anyone else, though?" She asked it softly. So soft it hardly seemed she was asking about the child at all.
Xu Xian didn't notice. Assumed his lady, newly expecting, was prone to a little extra worry.
Took her cool hand. Pressed it to his own cheek.
Answered, sincere: "Unlike, then unlike. I'm a physician. I've treated frail, sickly children. Seen those born different from everyone else, too. But in this life, who's ever born from exactly the same mold as anyone else?
If he's weak, I'll nurse him strong. If anyone bullies him, I'll protect him. If he's unlike anyone else in this whole world..."
"Then I'll teach him he doesn't have to live his life in whatever shape the world happens to prefer."
Bai Su stared at him, dazed.
For a moment, she could no longer tell whether he was speaking of the child, or of that true form she herself kept hidden beneath a woman's borrowed skin—the one she'd never once dared to reveal.
Something moved in her throat.
The words very nearly slipped free—And if your lady, too, turned out to be entirely unlike what you imagine? If I were not, in truth, the daughter of some noble household— not a mortal woman at all—not even human?
The words, at her lips, dissolved into nothing more than a single, faint breath. She lowered her eyes. Swallowed that truth back down.
Xu Xian didn't see the flash of pain crossing her eyes, gone in an instant.
Too busy, eager, drawing several folded sheets of paper from his robe, spreading them across the bed.
"My lady, look."
Sketches of several longevity locks. Lotus carvings. Auspicious clouds. One with a small Ruyi pattern at the center. Beside each, dense rows of measurements.
"I went to the silversmith south of the city yesterday. Most families have silver locks made—but our child is too precious for that. I want to have one made in solid gold."
He picked one up. Showed her.
"This one's the finest. Full gold, thick, sturdy, with the eight characters 'no calamity, no hardship, peace through all the years' carved on the back. It'll be a little heavy to wear, but children grow fast. In a year or two it won't feel heavy at all."
He spoke brightly, animated, as though he could already see a round-faced child, wearing that very lock, stumbling and laughing through the front hall.
"Once he's older, I'll teach him to recognize herbs, to read. If he wants medicine, he can take over Bao'an Hall someday. If not, that's fine too. Reading, martial arts, trade—whatever he loves."
"And by then, the three of us..." He paused, suddenly, a tenderness in his smile so full it seemed ready to spill from his eyes.
"...will finally be able to stay together, for the whole of our lives."
The whole of our lives.
Bai Su watched him in silence, something tightening gently around her heart.
To a spirit, a mortal's whole life is no more than the blink of an eye.
And still, without her quite knowing when, she'd begun to covet these short few decades. Had even, truly, begun to believe she might spend them here, in this small, herb-scented courtyard, growing old beside the man before her.
She reached out. Chose the plainest lock. "Let's have this one made."
"This one?" He looked mildly surprised.
"Not something with a few more pearls?"
She shook her head. "No need. Peace is enough."
He smiled, nodded, folded the sketch carefully, tucked it against his chest.
His gaze fell to the tiger-head shoe in her lap, and he couldn't resist—reached out a finger, touched the mismatched eyes. "It's only that... my lady, your shoes..."
She lifted her eyes, cool. "What of them?"
"Very good. Very good indeed." He fought back laughter. She saw through him at once.
"Laugh, if you must."
"I wouldn't dare." Even as he said it, the corner of his mouth had already given him away.
He picked up the crooked tiger shoe, studied it a long moment with exaggerated seriousness.
"Other households' tigers only ward off evil. My lady's tiger, though, is different."
"How so?"
"One eye watches the heavens, the other the earth. Surely it can keep watch over every demon and ghost in creation, above and below alike. With power like that, an ordinary gold lock could hardly compare." Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
"Silver-tongued flatterer." Her ears warmed, faint. She reached to snatch it back. He caught her hand instead.
Her fingertips were cold. Her palm, too, paler than usual. Looking closer, several tiny needle-marks scattered across the pad of her fingers.
The smile faded from his face. "My lady, why are your hands so cold?"
"Didn't sleep well last night."
"You're with child now. Nothing's worse for you than overtaxing yourself."
His brow drew tight; he set the unfinished shoes back into the sewing basket. "Leave this to the seamstress. There's no need for you to trouble yourself."
She withdrew her hand, gentle. Voice light. "What others make is never quite the same."
He looked at her, eyes softening, slow.
After a long moment, he leaned forward, drew her, quilt and all, into his arms, palm avoiding her belly, resting instead carefully at the small of her back.
"My lady."
"Mm?"
"Thank you. For everything."
Only four words. Enough to bring a sudden sting to the tip of her nose.
Xu Xian didn't know this child was no gift from heaven and earth. It was a dream, an illusion forced into existence by three hundred years of her own cultivation, her own blood, and a love that had tipped over into something close to obsession.
He knew even less that every so-called flutter of movement was quietly devouring the immortal bones and the very life of the one he held.
Bai Su closed her eyes. Rested her forehead against his shoulder.
The mortal heartbeat in his chest sounded on, steady and warm. A sudden, greedy reluctance rose in her.
She didn't want to let go. "Husband—could you stay home today? Instead of going to the silversmith?"
He paused, faintly surprised. Bai Su'd always been composed, restrained; rarely pleaded with him in anything close to this childish, cutesy tone.
His heart softened entirely. He nearly agreed on the spot.
But felt the sketches against his chest. Coaxed her gently instead. "I promised to deliver these today. I mustn't break my word. I'll be back soon."
He bent. Pressed a light kiss against the crimson mark on her brow.
"Rest well at home. When I come back, I'll bring you those sour plum cakes you like, from the shop on the east side of the city. Would that be all right?"
She looked at that face, close to her own, and felt whatever nameless unease had risen quietly pressed back down by that single kiss.
She nodded. "All right. I'll wait for you to come home."
He smiled, tucked the blanket around her, offered several more anxious reminders, tucked the sketches safely away, and headed out the door, full of eager cheer.
Bai Su sat by the window. Watched that familiar figure in the plain grey robe pass through the dappled bamboo shade, step by step, until he disappeared beyond the courtyard gate.
She watched a long while.
Long enough it felt like she meant to carve that departing figure, together with the last warmth still lingering in the room, permanently into the depths of her own spirit.
For a moment, her vision blurred. She blinked, feeling a faint wetness in her eyes.
This whole room, so full of tenderness, of joy—it was, in truth, far too beautiful.
Beautiful enough to have been stolen from fate itself—a fleeting glimpse of afternoon sunshine that destiny had never meant to grant them.
They say glass is easily broken, and clouds easily scattered. Much like spring snow beneath the sun—never able to linger. What's most beautiful is always, in the mortal world, the first thing to be gone.