In the hearts of dreamers, lament will always linger. Sadness can bloom into the brightest, lambent shades, like the rain giving way to the phantom of a rainbow, like the promise of hope. But sorrow may also wind down a darker, colder path. Our hear...
She bolted through the forest, the trees a black blur on all sides.
She never dared to look back. Fearing, at the smallest glimpse of her husband, guilt would smite her. Fearing she would turn back. Because she couldn't bear his perception of her being a faithless wife.
But the cold washed fear and doubt from her tongue, from her chest, so that she could breathe easily once again. The wind rippled the dark tresses of her hair, matted and greasy from baking all day.
At last – at last – she could break free.
The narrow road dwindled to a clearing of padded snow and frosted underbrush. A river shone marble blue, a vibrant gash in the white wood's skin.
Chang'e panted, clutched her chest. Her heart was hammering, nearly cracking through her ribcage. Then she slowed down, crumpling to her knees next to a frost-slick rock the size of her head. Resting the side of her face on its cold, glassy surface, Chang'e sighed. Of course, she knew she mustn't stop. Not now, not when she was so close to escaping.
She stood up, rapid breaths slowing in their cage. And then the sky was pulled, dragged by a god's hand, like iridescent silk spinning under a loose palm. It changed and coursed through dark and day, and then dark again. Chang'e saw the sun rotate out of control, across the horizon, before plunging back behind mountain teeth. The moon remained stationary, but throughout the day and night – was it two days already? – it had clenched darkness in the lines of its face.
Just like the sky had seconds ago, Chang'e's heart spun frantically.
Her grandmother had told her tales of moon fairies. Those gleaming people who lived amongst mother-of-pearl spirals and cities inlaid with bright jewels. People on the moon. "There is not only one moon, xiaohua," whispered her grandmother as she combed plastic pearls into the dark strands of Chang'e's hair. Woodfire had burned low and winter rapped against their windows, but they'd nurtured their flowers well in pots of water. "There are more moons than you can count. Scattered across the universe, even in other universes as well. And a faerie would seize control of one, a prince or princess of that moon."
Back then, Chang'e had cherished every word of the stories traced from her grandmother's lips. Yet since Chang'e had gone, wedded off to a farmer, the little tales had been battered out of her. No longer did she believe in such fancies.
Tonight changed it.
What other power could send stars askew and tug on the edge of the sky and send it spinning like a bolt of fabric?
Chang'e only had to believe, only had to stand and find out for herself.
She searched the forest, tearing open barks with chattering nails and shredding through river water ankle-deep. Ricocheting in her head was, why did the moon darken?
Blood thundering in her pulse, her heart full of the want to know, Chang'e went deeper into the wood. Across it – after all, it was merely twenty paces away – and soon, Chang'e stood on the brink of a snow-banked slope. Powder white clumping around her sinking boots. In the distant, bamboo houses trailed smoke. Windows glowed warm orange, the woodfire within throwing amber and honey on snow. Silhouettes of families sharing a pot of rice and stew. A little, simple life she never had.
This was the neighbouring village: Wennuan de Jia. Every woman in Chang'e's village had spoken quite a lot of it; how the women there did not work to the crack of their nails, how the men paid attention to their wives and were pulled to home like a bear to a warm cave in winter would. Envy wove into Chang'e's heart like iron sutures. Instead of tears and a choking mouthful of sobs, bitterness bloomed in her mouth. She would not ask for more from her husband, because she would never return.
Chang'e pried her longing gaze from the honey-glazed village, and twisted painfully to the rocky face of the mountain. Beyond its jagged peak, there would be a new life. Cities aglow with gem-bright lights, sky-scraping towers, and a horizon unbarricaded by stone and snow. She would leave once the sun rose. Crumbs of cheese and sparse bread tucked in heated cloth. A scarf and layers of tattered clothes to sheath her from the cold that would bite as soon as sundown.
The wind blew harder, whistling as if through a chipped crack in the stone. It sank knives into her flesh. Chang'e clutched her scant woollen dress to her chest. It was no time to worry about dirt getting smeared across her chest or the stinging scent of this noon's bad fish on her skin. No time to fret whether her husband would notice the ice and filth caking her body and guess her having gone outside, further than usual.
Chang'e was about to pivot back to her trail of feet in the snow, when something snatched her eye. Two figures, shadow black, shed by moonlight from behind. They were standing close, looking over the village on the slope across her. Chang'e dismissed them, thoughts of young couples and reckless teenagers running through her mind. But when she did turn to the wood, the wind sung and carried snippets of a conversation. Of words she did not understand.
The realisation smote her. Ridiculous vocabulary uttered as nonsense in her old picture books, returned to her. "Fiction," twelve-year-old Chang'e said. She was wrong. Chang'e could picture her grandmother smiling smugly in her grave.
The language was Lunar.
A/N
Hello, guys! Yes, I'm still writing MOONLIGHT ORANGE. It's been a favourite pass-time job for me, especially with the real-life writing of EVERYTHING MADE OF DUST, I need some Fantasy stories to work on in my life. I had so much fun writing this chapter; I hope you guys enjoy it. Thank you for staying tuned to MOONLIGHT ORANGE. More updates will be coming soon, Insha Allah.
All my love to my best reader friends mal_liha and defriended!
Love,
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