Bixian did not give her friend an empty promise. She set out at dawn to Dichang Temple, flying along a familiar course. She had been making the same flight across mountains and villages for more than half a decade. Her wings instinctively adjusted to accommodate the shifting winds, traveling along the invisible pathways in the sky.

She arrived at Dichang Temple in the late afternoon. Instead of finding her master at the gate, she landed on the roof of the kitchens and continued onwards in human form, sticking close to the outer wall and the shadow it cast until she reached the back door of the archives.

First she waited, pressing her ear against the door to listen for the presence of someone inside. All she heard was the quiet shuffling of insects and mice crawling through the wood. Slowly, she opened the door and peered into the dusty interior.

The Qilin Sage did not care much for pretense or the false value ascribed to gems or gold. The archives mostly held the artistic and academic achievements of his disciples, though it also acted as storage for the rare relic or treasure entrusted in his care.

The first thing she smelled when she entered the room was dust, with hints of incense and the fragrance of decaying wood. The afternoon’s golden light filtered through the door, heavy on her back despite the mildness of the day.

The crane took a deep breath, causing swirls of dust to dance in the sun’s rays. She removed her shoes to silence her footsteps and walked inside.

The inside of the archives was a mess. Scrolls and woodcuts were piled on tables, the overflow cascading down to the floor in scholarly stalagmites. The Qilin Sage valued nothing more than study and creation, and the collected works of more than three dozen disciples, some ascended and some deceased, over the course of four hundred years were collected inside the building. The fruits of four centuries of labor now collected dust in the archives, waiting for someone like Li Wenrong to sweep through and organize everything.

Qiping had not been the only disciple to leave the Qilin Sage’s tutelage, though she had been the unhappiest. All the other scions whom Bixian brought to the temple seemed happy in their time spent on craft and study. She had never asked any of those who left the temple the reason why they departed. She just assumed that, as humans grew and changed at their alarming pace, it was simply something they did.

Though the room was cluttered and disorganized, the Knife of Sublimation gave off an aura that led Bixian to its resting place within a lacquered wooden box. Inside it rested on velvet cloth without a sheath. She reached out and took the knife without a second thought, shivering as the cool metal of its handle made contact with her skin.

Tentatively, she brought its point to her fingertip and pricked it. Instead of blood, a bead of golden light coalesced where the skin broke. As she rubbed the wound, the golden liquid coagulated, and she found herself pulling a white pinfeather from the cut. One of her feathers, forever ripped from her skin.

She dropped the feather in shock, and quickly brought her finger to her mouth to stop the bleeding. Instead of the ferrous taste of blood, her wound oozed something akin to wine and crisp, cold air. This was what her magic tasted like, she realized.

In lieu of a sheathe, Bixian wrapped the knife in the velvet cloth and replaced the wooden box’s lid. Securing the safe firm inside her sash, she hurried out of the archives and took flight back to Clear Water Mountain.

Warning: the next section describes a painful surgical procedure performed on a child. Skip to the next section if you are triggered by medical procedures, especially those conducted on children.

Little Ruoruo screamed as the knife cut through her tail.

“Hold the halves separate,” Bixian ordered, her voice trembling. Yuanpo, the fox demon, and Tangyou moved to hold the writhing pieces down. Meanwhile, Lady Liuying held her daughter’s head in her lap, digging her nails into her scalp where the mixture of charcoal and oils stained her fingers.

“Hush, Ruoruo,” she soothed, as her daughter’s screams reverberated within the walls and probably escaped to the outside, where Prince Wenrong and Ao Luming waited. The dragon prince had initially insisted on remaining with the women, but swooned at the first cut and had to excuse himself quickly.

“This is for your own good,” she sobbed, her cries mixing with those of her daughter. “We can walk down the streets of Chang’an together. Your father can show you the garden where we met.”

A cool towel was placed against her forehead. She glanced to her side to see Qiping hovering around the grown women, looking desperately from one adult to another waiting for directions. How quickly she has matured, Liuying marveled, thinking back to the distraught young girl who cried over the death of a simple rabbit.

But this was not a moment of death. If anything, it was a rebirth of her daughter from the fat snake she once was as a baby to this half-human state.

Liuying had been so proud when she first morphed her snake tail into a pair of human legs, stumbling through the woods awkwardly as she learned a new form of locomotion. The day she achieved her fully human form was the day she discovered true freedom. Instead of sitting by herself gazing upon some tranquil lake, she could walk among humans and explore their villages, taste their food and other pleasures on her lips.

It had taken many, many more years of careful meditation to master a human form. Her daughter did not have such time; already news of the new emperor’s coronation was being spread throughout the countryside, and the window of opportunity for maneuvering close to his political circle was closing. They needed to be in Chang’an by winter, and as selfish as it was, Liuying wanted her daughter to be there with them.

How different it would be to grow up within the walls of the imperial palace. How beautiful. How rare.

Her daughter was being pulled from childhood into adolescence. The agony was a prelude to uncountable joys. As she leaned down and pressed her forehead between her daughter’s shoulder blades, Liuying wished she would understand.

“Hush, Ruoruo, your mother is here.”

The royal family departed at the start of summer, to avoid the heavy rains of the later months. The Qiao village sent them off with banners and fireworks, with Liuying and little Ruoruo waving from inside the carriage, the little girl’s legs wrapped tightly so they would not fuse again.

Bixian had not returned from returning the Knife of Sublimation, but the journey could not be delayed any longer. The coronation of the new emperor was in autumn and they could not miss this event if they hoped to begin making political alliances.

As Chen Di led the prince and his family’s caravan down Clear Water Mountain, he caught sight of Shuangtou once more.

In the course of five years, the path from Clear Water Mountain to the villages below had become well trod. The two mares pulling the carriage were confident of the journey from Qiao Village to Chang’an. Chen Di wondered if they knew this would be their final one.

They were also used to the sight of a deer at the side of the road, watching them unflinchingly. Chen Di paused as he caught sight of the deer, whose antlers, tangled with leaves and flowers, he had mistaken initially for the branches of a sapling.

“I’m giving the horses some rest, my lord,” he called inside the carriage, before patting each mare and running ahead towards Shuangtou.

As he neared, the deer stood up on their hind legs and their upper body transformed into their human form. As always, Chen Di was confronted by the demon’s large plaintive eyes.

“You are carrying more down the mountain than usual,” they remark.

Chen Di glanced back at the carriage, where the two mares were grazing on the wild grass growing at the edge of the road. “Yes. My prince is returning to the capitol.”

“As he does when winter ends.” Shuangtou raised their head and sniffed the air. “Though the frost has not yet come. He is leaving early this time.”

“My prince is returning to the capitol for good, Shuangtou.” Chen Di took a breath. “As am I.”

Shuangtou blinked. “For good?”

“I go where my prince goes.”

“Has he grown tired of these mountains? Is he not prince enough in these woods?”

“I go where my prince goes,” Chen Di repeated. “Where he may choose to go I will follow without question or complaint. That is the vow I made.”

Shuangtou studied his face, their large brown eyes flicking from corner to corner. “Do you feel happy in your service?

Chen Di laughed and bared his arm to them, the brand blanched now after years in the sun. “I should have died when I was five. Every breath I take is a blessing, that I was spared by the kindness of my liege’s late father. Happiness is a far ask for the likes of me.”

He turned and walked back to his horses, waiting patiently as he spoke with Shuangtou as he often did on his journeys up and down Clear Water Mountain. For all the talk of community, he still felt alienated from the arcadia his prince had dreamed. Half of Chen Di’s time was spent on the road, to neighboring towns or all the way back to Chang’an.

The face he looked forward to seeing on his return, he realized, was always Shuangtou. Standing on the periphery, waiting for him on his last leg of the journey. Eating pastries he bought from town, smacking their lips at the unfamiliar tastes. Watching from the outside, as he did.

Out of self preservation, he had never thought of his prince as a brother, though Consort Si raised them both. Now, he realized, they shared one more thing in common.

“Shuangtou–” he turned, but the deer demon was already gone.

tender pain