Qiping blinked away tears as dust filled her eyes, sneezing loudly into her sleeve. Prince Wenrong’s archives became messier by the day, even though fewer beings spent time in them. Somehow the moths and the spiders descended the moment they sensed the building’s abandonment, building their homes freely within the nooks and crannies and leaving their corpses scattered in the corners.

Five months. It had been five months since her mother had disappeared, after the horrible operation they had done on Little Ruoruo. Qiping still felt queasy thinking back on the scene, and how gruesome it was to see form peeled from flesh, even though the golden knife her mother wielded left no traces of blood.

Prince Wenrong, Lady Liuying, and Little Ruoruo had left a month after that, hoping to reach the capitol by autumn. Ruoruo had learned to walk a little by then, short stumbling steps that ended with her falling on her butt and laughing her raspy laugh. Qiping wondered how the little girl could stand to look at her mother, after what she had done.

The pipa lessons ended long before Lady Liuying departed.

Qiping missed her mother. She wanted to grab her sleeves and beg her to never use the Knife again—wanted her mother to promise her that she would never cut her own daughter open like that, as if pain was somehow virtuous. Long after the wound had healed on Ruoruo’s legs, the visions of the day still haunted Qiping.

She missed her mother. Deep in her heart she knew Bixian would never take a knife to her like Liuying did to her daughter. Before the crane stepped in and found her a home, Qiping’s life had been treated as an afterthought by everyone around her. An untalented disciple who fell asleep during morning meditation, passed from one master to another. She did not even know how Tianping Temple crumbled, only that she entered the meditation box as a punishment for her misdemeanor and exited it the last living disciple of the Baihu Sage.

Her memories of the man were hazy at best. A large man with a booming laugh, whose anger caused such quiet that in summer even cicadas would even stop their incessant chatter. She could not conjure up a man in her mind, except in reference. It was like taking the Qilin Sage and molding him until he was someone else—taller, broader, older. In her recollections, everyone at Tianping Temple was simply a shade, a vague suggestion of a person.

Qiping’s life truly began the day Bixian took her flying to the ocean, where she bandaged her foot after it had been cut open by whatever lurked within the sand. After a year of waiting, she was truly born when they left the Qilin Sage’s temple for good, flying along the river until fate brought them to Clear Water Mountain.

She knew that Bixian stayed with the Qiao because of her. The Qiao had never been home for Bixian, not like it was for Qiping. But still, Qiping knew that when her mother flew off to conduct her heavenly duties, she would always return.

Surely she would have sent word by now, or given her daughter some notice of her absence. She was not the type of person to disappear without a trace.

The Qiao took care of their own. Qiping was shepherded from one house to another, given ample food and thoughtful gifts from each family. There was a bed ready for her at every house, but she still stayed in her own home, its normally quiet walls now stifling in their silence.

She spent most of her days inside Prince Wenrong’s registry, tending to the scrolls and altars as he once did. He had not been gone long, but like an old dog without its master, the registry was slowly sinking into mess and disrepair despite the Qiao’s best efforts. Tangyou kept her promise to the prince and made sure the place was dusted and organized, but it seemed as if the books and shelves refused to cooperate without their prince. The place felt empty; Prince Wenrong spent most of his time there, reading or tending to records by the heat of the hearth regardless of the season, his distaste for the cold shared by his snake wife.

Lady Liuying often sojourned there as well. Her ornate go board of smooth cedar sat abandoned in the corner, deemed a frivolity not worth taking to Chang’an. She would play with Bixian often, and had even began teaching Qiping how to play, cordoning off a quarter of the board to start.

Perhaps that was why Qiping liked spending time inside the registry. Aside from her empty house, it was the one place in the village that carried her mother’s memory. The small spark of its spirit burned in sympathy to Qiping’s plight; there were no empty platitudes or offers of assistance. The registry knew pang the same way she did.

The building, too, was in mourning. The building, too, hoped for its master’s return.

She heard a door slide, and someone calling for her. She turned to see Xingxi in her hunting garb. Her bow was strapped to her back, and two wild pheasants dangled at her side.

Qiping opened her mouth, but she had not spoken for over two days and the sound that came out of her was nothing more than a high-pitched rasp. She glanced around her, at the mess of records she had made, and felt more like a cornered animal than a human being. She couldn’t talk, and she couldn’t move. Could Xingxi sense her weakness with her eagle instincts?

If she did, she said nothing, moving quickly to take Qiping’s hands in her own. “Are you alright?” she asked, her hands so much warmer, her callouses comforting in their roughness. “Everyone is worried about you.”

Qiping nodded slowly, an affirmation as well as an acquiescence.

Relieved, Xingxi brought Qiping in for a hug. She was taller now, with broad shoulders and a sturdy build like her mother. Qiping, on the other hand, still had the softness of childhood about her, the baby fat not disappeared from her cheeks. Xingxi’s height made it so she rested her cheek within Qiping’s eye socket, feeling the light feather touches of her best friend’s blinks.

Xingxi was strong. She squeezed Qiping with such ferocity she could not escape. Tucked within the crook of her neck, Qiping could smell pine and leather on Xingxi’s winter coat.

She felt safe in Xingxi’s arms.

After a beat, Xingxi relaxed her hold and rested her arms on Qiping’s shoulders, against a layer of white rabbit fur. “Come eat dinner with us,” she offered. “Then we can play games and maybe…maybe you can sleep over tonight. You don’t have to be alone.”

Speech was slowly returning to Qiping. “Wallowing,” she mumbled.

“Well, don’t wallow alone.”

Qiping followed her friend home, helped pluck the pheasants and ate rich hearty stew with Xingxi’s family. There was just enough room for her at the family table, squeezed into a corner between the eagle children. Luo Feiyi, Xingxi’s father, ate quickly—perhaps a remnant of his base instincts, the need to eat a catch quickly before scavengers appeared.

It was something his family was used to, and while they slowly finished their meals, Luo Feiyi spun wild tales from nothing, bits of gossip and observations made while flying along the mountain peaks. Yildun finished her meal second, and soon the two of them were quipping back and forth, exaggerating and overreacting each other’s statements. Xingxi and Xingbei laughed with their mouths open, and their parents didn’t reprimand them. They were loved.

As the guest, Qiping was given extra attention; it seemed to be Feiyi’s personal goal to make her smile, and despite her hesitance, the pressures of human interaction weighing on her shoulders lifted and she found herself laughing softly alongside her friends. Words were still difficult to formulate, but even so the entire Luo family beamed as Qiping smiled for the first time in weeks.

After dinner, chores, and a few idle games of chess on an old wooden board, the children were put to sleep. A sequence of trades occurred to secure the sleeping arrangement: Xingxi cajoled her brother into giving Qiping his bedroll, until Yildun insisted Xingxi take responsibility as the older sibling. Eventually, it was settled that Xingxi and Qiping would share one of the parent’s bedrolls, and Xingbei fell asleep victorious under his own blankets.

Qiping rested under the thick wool blankets, her body warm next to her best friend. A part of her felt guilty for feeling this content, for monopolizing this family’s joy. She did not deserve it.

Next to her, Xingxi turned until she faced her, noses almost touching.

“I can hear you thinking,” she complained.

Maybe it was because she was lying down, or because the air was warmer with the shared breath of five people, but Qiping’s throat began to loosen and words were much easier to form. “Sorry,” she said.

“You didn’t do anything.”

“Sorry for sorry, then.”

Xingxi kicked her under the blankets. “No more sorry for tonight. As your host, I forbid it.”

Qiping bit her tongue to stop the next apology from exiting her mouth. Different words rolled around her tongue, until she settled for the safest rejoinder.

“Thank you.”

Xingxi kicked her again. “Why are you thanking me, I’m just doing what you’re supposed to do with a best friend.”

“What is that?”

“Take care of them.”

Qiping smiled, and all the emotions of the evening—love, gratitude, and perhaps envy—welled up in her chest and ascended her throat, meeting a lump there, before exiting as streams of tears. She wondered if Xingxi could see her in the darkness; the full moon was shining on a clear winter night, its silver rays a simulacrum of the golden rays of dawn.

Xingxi shifted a bit, raising her head and resting it against a bent arm. “Two rules as host,” she said, holding out the fingers of her free hand. “One, no saying sorry. Two, no crying.”

In a whirlwind of emotions, all Qiping could do was giggle. “Already crying,” she pointed out.

“Then you have to pay off the debt with laughter. You need to laugh twice as much as you cry, or else.”

“Or else?”

Xingxi brought her free hand to rest on Qiping’s shoulder. “I’ll come after you.”

Qiping laughed once more, paying off just a bit of the debt she owed.

The two of them chatted some more, their conversation starting and stopping as the two of them neared sleep. During one lull, Qiping thought of something she read while inside the registry.

“I have the same name as your mom.”

“I guess,” Xingxi replied. They had been friends for so long, she knew how to fill in the gaps to Qiping’s speech. “I never really thought about it, but your full name is technically Qiao Qiping, right?”

“On the census. Auntie is Qiao Ye-Er-Dun.”

“Oh yeah,” Xingxi said. “That’s the closest Uncle Wenrong got to writing Ma’s name down. When she came to Clear Water Mountain she didn’t have a Han surname, so Auntie Tangyou gave Ma hers.”

“Why Qiao?”

Xingxi rolled her eyes. “You know why. Auntie Tangyou must have recited the story hundreds of times.”

“I want you to tell it. Tell me why we’re family.”

Xingxi cocked her head to listen to the soft sounds of Xingbei snoring next to them, checking if the coast was clear for her to talk while everyone else was sleeping. The house was silent. Xingxi smiled at her brother related by blood and turned back to the girl who might as well be her sister, just as the Qiao were all her family. The night air hung heavily around them, and as she spoke she could see white puffs of her breath in the darkness.

“Up in heaven,” she began, “A phoenix and a dragon met atop a garden bridge and fell in love…”

To specify about Yildun's name, it is Turkish as is common for many nomadic peoples in inner asian/mondern day Mongolia. I am purposefully keeping her tribal ethnicity vague, as applying modern ethnicity to her would be inauthentic (and I don't want to get anything wrong, seeing as I am Han Chinese), and loss of ethnic identity is a big part of her story.