The morning air was crisp and cool, a sign of autumn slowly giving way to winter. Tangyou sat atop the roof of one of the newly constructed houses, taking deep breaths as if she could inhale the dawn itself.
This would be their first winter in Clear Water Mountain. It was incredible how slowly time flowed when toiling like a mortal. In Heaven days flowed by one after another, each an inconsequential passing after another. There was little to do outside of her assigned tasks in the garden; sometimes she wondered if her main purpose was simply to look beautiful among the flowers.
Building a town was a much different experience. Every day had its new challenges: negotiating supplies to be delivered from the nearby town, constructing homes, marking areas to turn into farmland. Delays one day meant extra work the next. It was tiring, the labor foreign to many of them. And yet Tangyou greeted each challenge with a vigor she had never felt before, even if she woke up early each day and went to sleep late each night.
When she was just another bird in Heaven, she used to count the days by when Luming would be free to visit her. Now, she laid her sore body next to his each night, and slept soundly knowing he would wake with her in the morning.
In the beginning there were only four pairs of hands trying to erect a village out of the ground; in truth it was three, as Li Wenrong busied himself with the administrative duties and left much of the heavy lifting to those with ample magic to make the work easier.
It was Ao Luming's idea to conscript the local Tudigong in searching for individuals who may share their ideals.
Their numbers slowly increased, and the strain on each individual lessened. Thanks to the efforts of the local Tudigong, word of their village spread to kindred spirits. Xiongmu, large and intimidating bear demon was the first to arrive, alongside a peasant woman and both a bear cub and a human toddler. From the south, a fox demon named Yuanpo came with a young poet beside her. And a strange looking monkey, who made an even stranger looking man, walked into the village hand in hand with a well-known thief; the two of them laughed constantly, sharing secret jokes between them.
Prince Wenrong insisted on writing down each new member in the registry, even though some of the demons only recently chose a given name, and certainly did not have any surname to claim. Tangyou met these nameless few with sympathy; after all, phoenixes did not have surnames themselves, though they carefully tracked their lineage. She herself was forced to choose a surname to appease the prince, and decided on Qiao. All the important meetings of her life seemed to happen on bridges, after all.
She extended the name to the others without a surname. Together, they were now the Qiao: a clan of mongrel children and misfit lovers, glorious in their iconoclasm.
Tudigong had informed them earlier that a couple was coming from the north with a young daughter in tow. As Tangyou gazed up at the sky, a blend of light pinks and blues in the early dawn, she saw a large bird flying overhead. She made a note to bring it up to the poet, who would take it as an auspicious sign. She herself did not put much stock in ornithological augury; being a bird herself, she knew that sometimes one would simply pass overhead with no portents on their wings.
Tangyou stood up and did one final stretch, before flying down to the ground to greet members of the Qiao clan who were just waking up. Inviting smells wafted from different houses as breakfast was prepared. A rooster crowed, and the morning’s quiet transformed into an endless clattering of people and livestock alike.
Grabbing a pail from the nearby stable, Tangyou set about feeding their herds of swine, sheep, and chickens. The beasts seemed to be calmed by her presence, and some adventurous hens would fly up and rest on her shoulder. She did not mind the chore; her duty in Heaven was to take care of living things, and she much preferred the satisfaction of fattening up pigs and collecting eggs to the thankless cycle of pruning and watering of heavenly flowers. It was also a chore not many of the Qiao members could do; the animals startled at the sight of the demons and were even wary of Luming’s presence, and often the humans were too busy feeding themselves to tend to the animals until much later.
Winter brought along late mornings and days of calm. Most of the crops had been harvested and stored for winter, and it only took two weeks for them to prepare the houses for frost and snow. Tangyou greeted the prospect of cold with excitement; it felt so different compared to the coolness of the atmosphere. Putting on extra layers to ward off the cold and replacing bamboo mats with warm rugs all seemed so mundane, so mortal, that she would have laughed at the prospect of living like this. But having been in this life for the better of a year, she cherished the fleeting moments she would have casually discarded previously.
She spent the afternoon with Luming, reading through travelogues the poet had lent her. The village bell rang, and both of them looked up. “It must be the newcomers from the north,” Luming said. “Shall we go greet them?”
“Yes, let’s,” she answered, marking her place in her book. “Better for us to greet them than for the prince to assail them with paperwork.”
They made their way to the village square where Li Wenrong already stood with papers at the ready, Jin Silang the monkey next to him acting as a scribe. Lady Liuying had begun retiring early in the evenings due to the cold. From the distance she could see the silhouettes of two adults and a child atop a horse, along with a donkey that carried much of their belongings.
As she neared, she realized that when Tudigong mentioned the family was from up north, he meant a north much farther than what she imagined. From how they were dressed, they seemed to be from the steppes, far beyond the Tang dynasty’s borders.
Her surprise was mirrored by the human woman, who leaned into her demon partner and whispered, “Nothing was spoken about a Tang prince among the demons,” in her native tongue. Tangyou glanced around and noted the confused expressions on everyone but Luming. She was able to understand thanks to the gift of language bestowed upon birds, and it seemed as a dragon Luming had enough divinity to understand as well. Even if his divinity also gave him the ability to speak every language, she knew he would not be the one to initiate conversation, so she stepped forward and opened her arms.
“Welcome to Clear Water Mountain,” she said in the woman’s language. “I am glad to receive you, my new brethren.”
The eagle demon bowed, and after a moment of hesitation his human partner followed suit. Tangyou realized then that the woman was heavily pregnant. Her partner opened his mouth and spoke in the common demon tongue: “Pleased to meet you, Lady Phoenix. My name is Luo Feiyi, and my wife Yildun and I are humbled by your presence.” He glanced over to Luming. “And to the dragon prince as well, I offer gratitude for your hospitality.”
“To the Tang prince as well,” Yildun mumbled in a northern Han dialect. Prince Wenrong started and gave a quick nod of acknowledgement towards her.
Tangyou was about to return the sentiments when a shrill voice piped up from the horse: “Mama, they’re dressed so funny!”
Yildun glanced at Feiyi, a look of terror on her face. With much chagrin he quickly walked over to the horse and gathered the child in his arms. “Apologies for my daughter Xingxi here,” he said.
“She has not met many people,” Yildun added.
Tangyou threw her head back and laughed. “No worries, friends,” she said, walking towards Feiyi and extending her hand towards the child. “All are welcome here; there’s no need for formalities.”
Xingxi was shy for an instant, and then eagerly grabbed onto the edge of Tangyou’s robe. “You’re pretty,” she giggled, playing with the soft silk fabric before reaching for one of the ornaments in Tangyou’s hair. The phoenix leaned forward and allowed the child to dislodge a flower pin.
Yildun quickly grabbed her daughter’s wrist and wrestled the flower pin from her hand. “I am so sorry, Lady Phoenix,” she stammered, switching to her native tongue. “My daughter is not well versed in manners.”
“Do not apologize for your child’s curiosity,” soothed Tangyou, reaching up to pat the girl’s cheek. “I find her charming. We do not yet have children her age.”
“She is a wonder,” said Feiyi. “We came here so she could grow up with more of her kind.”
“Are there other birds here?” Xingxi asked excitedly, nearly leaning out of her father’s arms in an attempt to take the confiscated hairpin back from her mother.
“None other than myself, but there are other children here born of similar circumstances such as yourself.”
Xingxi looked at Tangyou with wide eyes. “You’re a bird too, Pretty Lady?”
“Xingxi,” Yildun hissed, “mind your manners. You call this woman Lady Phoenix. Everyone here is a Lady or a Lord, understand?” With shaking hands she held the hairpin to Tangyou. “I apologize again for my daughter’s conduct.”
Tangyou was about to refuse the gesture, but Luming laid a hand on her shoulder and whispered, “The woman’s afraid of us. She fears our wrath.”
True to his observation, as Tangyou observed Yildun she could see that the human woman held great loss on her shoulders. Something was take from her; the clothes she wore were not only old, Tangyou realized, but made in a pattern she had not seen in many decades. When she had directed her gaze to the north while she was in Heaven, she remembered watching the endless advances and retreats of Tang soldiers against the northern Khaganate. In the midst of these battles, oasis kingdoms fell like mice trampled underfoot, either ransacked or assimilated.
“We did not expect to see a Tang prince among your lot,” Feiyi admitted, maintaining a language he guessed the prince in question could not understand. “My wife is usually a very proud woman, but it is easy to fear retaliation from both Heaven above and the state below.”
The phoenix laid a hand on Yildun and pushed the hairpin back towards the child, who eagerly grabbed it once it was in her reach. “This is not a place of fear,” she said, glancing over to Prince Wenrong. The poor man had been left out of the conversation for a good while, and was fidgeting with the tassel on his belt. After years of friendship, he was just a bookish administrator who loved keeping records and micromanaging projects, but to outsiders he was still someone of royal blood. What a shock it must have been, walking to a purported haven and seeing the son of the region’s most powerful man among them. How did mortals see herself, a minor bird who once tended Heaven’s garden? Did she represent Heaven’s sovereignty in Yildun’s eyes?
“Here, let me see my hairpin,” Tangyou said softly to Xingxi, who in a moment of shyness handed it back to her slowly. The phoenix brushed back some stray strands of the girl’s hair and stuck the pin behind her ear. “There,” she smiled. “You call me Auntie Tangyou, alright?” She reached behind her and beckoned Luming beside her. “And this is Uncle Luming.” She pointed to Wenrong and Jinsilang. “These are your new uncles as well. You are family now.”
The next day, Liuying came to her in a huff. “I just heard a mongrel brat call my husband ‘Uncle Princeling.’”
“As she should,” Tangyou said, fighting back a smirk. For all Liuying’s posturing at being calm and mysterious, she could be easily riled given the right topics. “All the children will treat us as aunties and uncles.”
“Need I remind you who my husband is?”
“Need I remind you who I used to be?” Tangyou countered. Liuying withdrew a bit at that remark, and while Tangyou did not like bringing up her past position, she was adamant about matters of station.
After all, when Yildun remarked awkwardly that she did not have a family name to put in Prince Wenrong’s registry; not one that can be written by the current script, Tangyou gave the mortal woman the same offer she had extended to demons before her:
“Take my name, then, if you wish. My kind similarly do not carry family names. I gave the prince Qiao as my own surname, because all of this started with two of us meeting on a bridge. Don’t be hesitant. We are building a new clan, after all; this villages larder and riches are for all of us to share, so long as we too share the burdens and strife. We are the Qiao, and you are now a part of it. You are family.”
Wenrong's love language is taking a census.