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Moonlight tumbles, bright and blinding, through the window, spilling across the little pots lined neatly up on the sill. They’re arranged neatly to catch the morning sun, but now the leaves and stems of her herbs are awash in quicksilver as the full moon steadily spills its light into Maomao’s dorm.
It’s much too late, and the last few weeks have exhausted her, and yet her mind will not still.
This has happened before. Sometimes she simply can’t sleep—when she’s not feeling well, or she’s too wrapped up in her own experimentation. (Sometimes one resulted from the other.)
She usually used the time to test medicines, or bundle up herbs and hang them to dry. In more recent years, she wrote letters. More recently yet, she would steal away to a pavilion at the center of the imperial palace and tend to a very, very foolish prince.
But Maomao’s already done that visit for today, and spent the remainder of her time chasing down whatever knowledge she can learn about the human body. Dissections. Skin grafts. Anything that could help. So she is tired, and yet sleep will not come.
She took some medicine for sleep a few minutes ago, but they won’t take effect for a while yet. So she sits, curled around herself, and rests a cheek on her knee as she stares listlessly at the plants on her windowsill. They’ll kick in sooner or later.
On the windowsill are a few pots of mugwort. Another pot is of chrysanthemum, just barely sprouting—she’ll have to repot it when it gets larger. There’s yet another pot of woodland sorrel. Assorted others. Plants she knows are easy enough to grow indoors, that will be useful. Given her role in the medical offices now, it’s not as if these ingredients are hard to come by. But she grew up raising these plants with her father; it was how they survived.
She tended the gardens of the little hut in the pleasure district since she was a little girl. When she came into service at the palace, she took careful note of which plants sprung up stubbornly in patches of greenery, despite the best efforts of the gardeners. She scattered seeds herself, where and when she could manage, and tended to them in the free moments she could snatch during her work.
It’s instinct, she thinks, to keep a supply of plants constantly growing. Never know when you might need them.
The plants on her windowsill are small yet—the world outside is only now starting to warm into a proper spring. The woodland sorrel is the furthest along. It’s taken root well, and its distinct heart-shaped leaves, bundled into threes, sway absently in the evening wind. A single, cheery yellow flower has bloomed, basking in the moonlight that spills over it and across her bed.
Sorrel, her old man taught her, is as abundant as it is useful. It was one of the first plants he taught her about, exactly because it is so common. Luomen caught sight of it when they were walking together one day. He paused, then stooped to the pavement, movements slow and careful. He plucked it whole from between the paving stones. He showed her the distinctive, heart-shaped leaves, always grouped in threes; he pointed out the telltale tiny yellow flowers that bloom in spring. He taught her its uses, and she absorbed every word—it is effective against diarrhea, fevers, inflammation. It can stave off scurvy; the flowers can make dyes.
And then, he took a leaf and popped it in his mouth, before offering another to her with a smile. The leaf was thin and delicate and minuscule between Maomao’s fingers, even as a child. It was sour on her tongue, and she chewed and listened in rapture as he taught her its other name: “cat’s paw”.
Maomao sighs quietly, staring out her window. Just outside her dorm, she can see another specimen, sprouting stubbornly through the paving stones outside. Its little yellow flowers sway in the breeze. It seems much more robust than the frail little thing sitting in the pot on her windowsill.
Suddenly, she feels a flash of frustration, and scowls at the pot. Why did she even bother cultivating something that grows so robustly anywhere?
It’s no cordyceps, or chrysanthemum, or peony. In her herb patches back home and in the imperial gardens both, it’s a weed to be pulled as much as it is anything useful. She keeps a patch back home, of course—it’s too useful to not. But it would often spread beyond its borders, sucking the nutrients away from more delicate plants. She had to prune it often.
It’s not even used to treat burns. If it was, it might prove a bit more useful.
“What is that?” Jinshi asked her months ago, on one of his visits to the humble little hut in the pleasure district. He was sitting at the low table, a cup of tea in his hand. His fine robes clashed horribly with the simple, shabby surroundings. When she raised her head from her mortar and pestle, he pointed at a basket overflowing with heart-shaped leaves and little yellow flowers.
“Woodland sorrel,” she answered immediately, before turning back to her medicine. “It grows everywhere this time of year.”
“I’ve seen it around in the palace, yes,” Jinshi agreed, leaning with his elbows on the table to crane for a closer look. “Is it useful?”
“Not like bezoars, sir,” she replied. (She still had a few from the stock he’d given her after that disastrous expedition into the mountains. A nudge for more couldn’t hurt, though.) “But it can clear fevers, or treat stomach cramps and nausea.” She took another handful of mugwort and tossed it into the pestle, and ignored the ache in her shoulders—there was medicine to be made. “I usually make it into a salve, but it can be eaten raw.”
“Can it, now?” He asked with genuine interest. He stretched himself across the table inelegantly—he almost lost his balance for how far he had to stretch. The mask he wore in public laid forgotten on the floor beside him as he grabbed a sprig from the basket.
She scoffed. “I don’t know if it would be to your taste, Master Jinshi,” she replied. It was astringent, after all. Sour like citrus, like little needles poking at the tongue. To say nothing of the texture, fibrous as it was. People with nothing else on the table could eat it, and it had some nutritional benefits. That didn’t mean it would be to the taste of a spoiled princeling who’d never had to eat weeds to survive.
Jinshi, of course, ignored her. He plucked a single heart-shaped leaf from the stem, comically small in his hand, and popped it into his mouth.
He chewed for a moment; she could practically hear the gears turning in his head. Then he cocked his head, pursed his lips. “Not bad,” he said, and plucked a second leaf.
In the present, Maomao scoffs. Clearly, there are more than a few screws loose in his head. The last few months have established that well.
She’s curled in dwindling shadow at the head of her bed, and the rising moon’s light creeps closer to her. It sets the simple white linens of her sheets alight in pearled silver. A stray moonbeam lands on her ankle when she shifts, and she pulls her leg back out of the moon’s gaze.
It is incomprehensible, she thinks.
She simply can't make sense of it. For Jinshi, someone of such a privileged position, to seek to descend from it—to press fire to his skin to achieve such a thing. He’d even stated his goal when he did it. Loud and clear, with the embodiment of heaven itself there to witness his mistake.
Because that’s what it was, she knows. A mistake. Misguidance. He was an idiot, a bullheaded prince, a damned masochist. And now she has to pick up the pieces.
He was in good spirits, at least, when she visited him today. She asked again, scolding, if he regretted it. Again, he told her no, with an infuriating smile on his face.
She tries her best to put some logic to it–Maomao learned many peculiarities of the human body from her father, and there must be something to explain this. Now, with her body exhausted and mind ceaselessly running on fumes, she remembers one point in particular: that the human body cannot distinguish between extreme heat, and extreme chill.
Not at first, at least. A few seconds after grabbing a scorching-hot pan from the hearth, or sticking one’s hand in the snow, the mind will catch up to the body. It will register it as pain, first, then as heat or chill a moment or two later. The instinct to retreat will come next, and the brain will snatch the hand away.
But for a few moments, the brain will not know if the body is warmed or chilled.
All it will know is that it burns.
Maybe that’s where the wires got crossed in Jinshi’s head, she wonders. Felt a chill and mistook it for something else.
(She wonders when his instinct to retreat will finally kick in.)
And look where it’s gotten them both. Ordered across the country at the emperor’s behest. At least three months away from home, at minimum. And as much as she’d love to stay home, she can’t—only she can treat him and his bullheaded mistake. She’ll have to come along, too.
Nothing but inconvenience, and nuisance, and more work for the both of them.
…so why, when she thinks of his brand, of his tears once they were alone, of his teeth on her shoulder to dull his screams, is there an ache in her chest?
Grimacing, she presses a hand to it, feels the beat under her palm. Slow, steady, calm. It’s not warm beneath her fingertips. It doesn’t race.
But next to that pulse is a twinge. A hurt. Barely the size of a sorrel’s seed, smaller than a grain of rice. In its unfamiliarity, it feels enormous. In a fit of annoyance, her fingers twitch. She itches to dig into her chest like loamy soil, rip it out. Pluck it like a weed.
The wiser part of Maomao reminds herself that she’d be better off taking medicine for some heartburn—that’s all it is.
Outside, the breeze whistles in the trees, and her curtains flutter. The wind pushes gently into her room, brushes past her plants on the sill. They rustle. Heart-shaped leaves sway, beckoning her into the moon’s light. She curls further into her little corner of shadow. Her eyelids feel heavy.
Maomao hears the rustle of papers on her desk. When she looks, she remembers what they are—the newest letter, which arrived today. Several pages long, written in casual, intimate strokes. It told her about preparations for their journey, nuisances in the court. It wished her well, as always, with a warmth that her unsent reply sitting beside it cannot reflect.
Jinshi always sends her letters. They’ve taken many forms over the years—official summons, mostly, when he was disguised as a eunuch. They turned more casual when she’d left the palace. They became businesslike again after their first journey to the western capital and the disaster that followed. And now, slowly, they’re becoming intimate again. He still sends them, even though she’s coming to his rooms more days than not to check the progress of his burn. She still writes replies back.
In the wind, the papers lift, but do not scatter. The breeze catches their essence anyway—the smell of parchment and ink, and beneath it, the subtle hint of sandalwood.
On top of the letters sits a gleam in the moonbeams—a poppy, wrought from pure silver, ornamenting the hair stick she used to pin the papers down. She keeps the stick in her room or on her person, out of prying eyes. Always.
Can’t go losing it. It makes a good paperweight, after all.
The moonbeams have spread further across her bed, now, trespassing even into the last remnants of shadow she has curled herself into. The light catches on her fingertips.
In a sudden burst of frustration, Maomao scolds herself for giving so much thought to all of this. The sleeping pills must be leading her mind astray. She still has work in the morning, and preparations to make for their journey, and an idiot prince to treat. A full schedule that requires a full night’s rest.
With a huff, she throws herself under the blankets and pulls them up over her head, leaving the sorrel to enjoy the moonlight. Back to her desk, face to her wall, so the ivory light of the moon won’t scorch her eyes so badly when she closes them.
She wonders if En’en can take care of the plants while she’s gone, and goes to sleep.
The Moon Prince winds through an imperial garden on his way to yet another audience, yet another step of preparation for his prescribed journey west. It is mid-spring, and the garden is awash in ivory and peach and crimson, colors vivid in the bright, midday sun. The heavy scents of peony, rose, and wisteria cloy at his nose and throat, each loudly vying for his attention. He pays them no mind.
His pace is brisk, but as he walks, he sees a little yellow flower peeking stubbornly through cracks in the paving stone. Its little heart-shaped leaves sway gently in the breeze.
Jinshi slows his pace as he remembers the taste of them on his tongue—sour, light, refreshing as citrus.
He remembers the plant’s name, touches his lips, and smiles to himself.