Though he marked his age at the start of the new year like everyone else, Luo Xingbei knew he was born deep in the second cold, on the longest night of winter. The tail end of the Dragon Year, holding onto small auspices of a calendar that did not belong to him.

When he was born, Xingbei had his ears pierced with a hot needle. Boys were meant to hold gold in their ears, to keep them keen and sharp. The small studs Xingbei had worn for most of his life were long gone, pawned during the first year at their new farm in order to buy tools and seeds.

Xingbei did not care for gold, though he stared wistfully at a pair of earrings on display. Unlike the other hawkers around him, the traveling goldsmith did little to advertise his wares. He did not need to, for the craftsmanship spoke for itself. The gold glinted in the afternoon light, drawing in curious eyes with their beauty.

It was a pair of wings, barely bigger than his knuckle but with intricate feathers carved in the filigree. They would cost him a month’s harvest. They were not what made his heart ache.

“A discerning eye, sir,” the goldsmith smiled as he caught Xingbei staring. “This is a style popular far west. You can hook a chain on them like so, and connect it to whatever other assortment you are wearing. So the birds don’t fly away, you see. And some women, the ones who veil their hair, would pin the birds to their scarves so the wind doesn’t snatch it.”

Xingbei listened to the man drone on and tried to slowly inch away from the stall. He could not articulate that he did not want the wings for his nonexistent honey. He wanted the wings for himself.

The biting cold was a fitting excuse to stop dawdling around, though as Xingbei left he could not get the image of the wings out of his mind. It was a reminder of what he had lost; not only his father, who died in his arms, but a rite of passage he was now denied.

-

Xingxi and Bixian both visited infrequently, though after five years patterns began to emerge. Xingxi often visited on days important to their family–his or his mother’s birthday, the day when their family arrived at Clear Water mountain–and Bixian visited on holidays. More frequent than a year but less frequent than a season, Xingbei nevertheless used their visits to mark the passage of time.

He would sometimes wonder if they would ever run into each other. He hoped not; the end result would surely be violent, and he had had enough violence for one lifetime.

He wasn’t sure if Xingxi would visit on his birthday this year, but he was glad to see her perched atop the roof, stray pieces of thatch tangled in her hair. Xingbei saw her in the distance as he approached home, and though his mother was nearby in the granary, she did not seem to see her daughter.

Xingbei knew his sister used magic to conceal her presence from their mother and Qiping. While he wanted to tell them of his meetings with his sister, a part of him clung onto this secret. In their current poverty, there were few things that were his own, and his sister’s attention was precious to him. Sitting next to her, he could once again be a boy, basking in his older sister’s attention. Xingxi had brought with her a large halibut freshly caught from the sea. She ripped the head off with her teeth and the two of them ate half of it raw, its white flesh more savory than sweet, containing the salt of the sea. The other half he wrapped in a cloth for later; an early new year’s feast to bring in good fortune for the next year.

Between bites the siblings traded stories, half-told as the other intuited the ending far before it was finished. The point wasn’t information; it was simply to hear each other’s voice, to reestablish a connection frayed by time.

Through nothing words Xingbei gathered his courage, taking pauses too long for Xingxi not to notice. “I was going to ask Qiping to marry me, now that I’ve come of age,” he admitted after some goading from his sister. “But now that you’re coming home for New Year, I don’t know if she’ll say yes.”

Xingxi was struck silent for a moment, an unreadable expression on her face. Xingbei didn’t know if he had hoped for anger or joy. Maybe just any sign that she still cared about Qiping. Once again he was the little boy far too invested in his sister’s relationships, but now he didn’t know what Xingxi thought of her former best friend. She didn’t show herself to their mother because Yildun would have tried to convince her to stay. Xingbei didn’t know why she hid from Qiping as well.

The fall of Qiao Village had taken so much from the both of them. But Xingbei had been a child, holding his father as he died, and Xingxi had been on the cusp of adulthood. Bixian, the woman who had taught him how to fly, had stripped him of his wings with her golden knife, and now he looked at Xingxi’s sharpness, her windswept hair, with a little brother’s envy. But in examining her sharp edges, her hunter’s glare that she could not fully hide at rest, Xingbei wondered if something had been taken from Xingxi as well.

The two of them had grown in ways unknowable to the other.

Xingbei chewed the last piece of fish and sighed. “Sometimes I feel like a dying ox, waiting for the birds to descend. For something to shatter this tenuous peace.” He laughed. “But this isn’t peace, is it? It’s purgatory. Every morning before I open my eyes I hope that this was all a terrible dream, and I’d wake up in Qiao Village again.” He fidgeted with his ear, thinking of the feathered earring he saw at the market.

“I think about where I would be flying if that night didn’t happen. You, me and Baba up there in the sky. I never got to see what it was like up there.” For the first time in years Xingbei’s voice cracked, and he bit the back of his hand in surprise as tears began to fall.

He felt a steady hand on his shoulder, and for a moment he was a child again with his father’s comforting touch on his shoulder. He turned and saw the next best thing: Xingxi with a familiar reassuring look on her face. The anger and hunger had melted away and she was his sister again.

She squeezed his shoulder and stood, beckoning him to follow. “Come on,” she said, doing a handstand that led to her transformation into a large golden eagle, each wing taller than he was. “It’s about time you touched the clouds.”

With trepidation, Xingbei climbed onto his sister’s back. With a few beats of her wings, she took off into the sky.

His stomach lurched as he left solid ground, his knuckles white from clinging to his sister’s feathers. He was flying higher than he ever had before. The greens and browns of the earth, the town’s thatched roofs and the scaled shingles all disappeared beneath a mist of clouds. There was no longer the safety of roofs or treetops to break his fall.

“When I was your age Baba flew me high up like this,” Xingxi said. Xingbei felt her voice vibrating through her back; the wind snatched the rest of her voice away. “And then he told me he trusted me to fly but would catch me if I couldn’t. And then he let me fall.” Without warning Xingxi dipped and swung Xingbei off her back.

“Jiejie!” Xingbei yelled, gravity pushing the air out of his lungs. “I can’t fly!” In muscle memory he flailed his arms, desperately looking for a way to slow down his fall. As if he could ride on clouds in his mortal state. The ground was still far away but approaching fast. His ears popped from the sudden change in altitude, and the cruel wind divested his eyes of its remaining tears.

Then suddenly he felt eerily calm. He closed his eyes and held his arms wide apart, dreaming of the wings taken from him.

When he opened his eyes, he was on his sister’s back again. The beat of the wings and the rush of the wind against his hair were gentle now, compared to the rush of his freefall. In this relative calm he could evaluate what had been taken away from him without anger or despair. The sky was no longer his and would never be again. His cheeks and ears were red from the cold; his body was not meant for heights like these. The world his sister was showing him was only temporary; soon, he would be back on solid ground, a human cursed with the memory of flight.

Still, the sky was beautiful, the clouds softer than silk parting delicately as he ran his hands through them. Half of Luo Xingbei’s childhood had been one of love and comfort, in the safety of humans and demons who loved him for what he was. The other half held loss and hardship, but love was still here. For the first time he could think of Clear Water Mountain without a sharp pain of grief in his chest. There was still sadness there, and longing as this flight ended, but less like a stab wound and more a quiet kind of sadness, like savoring the last bite of a delicious pastry.

Tangyou and Ao Luming’s spirits stirred happily within the sword at Luo Xingxi’s side, knowing that their last wish endured: the children of the Qiao remembered that they were loved.

Xingxi broke through the clouds back down to the ground. The blocks of colors that made up the fields and forests slowly came into focus, browns and yellows with occasional bits of stubborn green. As the two neared his village, they dipped into the orchard of a wealthy estate, and Xingbei reached out and plucked a persimmon from the tree. He bit into it and recoiled at the grittiness of the flesh. Disappointed, he tossed the unripe fruit to the ground, perhaps to sprout a wild tree in a few winters’ time.

She let him onto the ground slowly, supporting his first few steps before letting go. Still Xingbei stumbled, a sudden sense of vertigo overtaking his body as he was on solid ground once more.

In his exaltation, Xingbei collapsed onto his sister as she transformed into her human form. To his surprise he did not have to jump up to reach her shoulders; he was only slightly shorter than her now. The siblings shared similar wiry builds, but Xingxi was still able to pick up her little brother and spin him around in the air.

“Stay until the new year,” he pleaded once she put him down. “I don’t want Bixian to join our table before you do.”

Xingxi let him go. “The crane has visited you?”

Xingbei recoiled at the hunger in her voice, but the secret was out. His desire to please his sister won out over his desire to keep the peace. “These five years, the two of you have been circling this house like vultures. She’ll probably come by in the new year.” “Why?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps she feels guilty. She always asks about Qiping.”

“I don’t believe she’s capable of feeling anything.” Xingxi stared at the uneven thatching of the roof, shielding her eyes from the setting sun. “I had planned to scorch the earth searching for the crane,” Xingxi said quietly. Despite the years apart, Xingbei still knew his sister well enough to understand the meaning behind her words.

“You’ll stay?”

She pulled him into a final hug that lent him no warmth. Xingbei stepped out her tight grip as soon as he could. He didn’t know what animal told him to flee—the remnants of the eagle taken away from him, or the base animal of his human form—but in that moment he felt like prey under her gaze.

Why did her smile scare him so?

There was rustling inside the hut, and Qiping walked out. “Xingbei, dinner—” she froze as she caught sight of Xingxi.

Xingbei smiled and gestured at his sister. “Qiping, look, it’s Xingxi! She’s come back.”

The two women stared at each other. Neither dared to move, for fear of breaking the magic of the moment. As if the other were an apparition that would disappear with the slightest wind. In the past five years Qiping hardly laughed, smiled, or cried, but now her face contorted with pent up emotion. The undefinable expression of love. For the first time in years she moved quickly, rushing towards Xingxi with arms open.

Xingxi moved in kind, holding Qiping close as she drew the Phoenix-Feather Sword up to her throat.

I did not expect Xingbei to suddenly have gender feelings at the start but here we are.