Work Text:
Xiao Feng walks and walks in the desert. It is on these desert dunes, where she will meet her destiny. Her footsteps sink into the sand and the sand smudges away her future. It is all so, so silent. The sun glares at her and Xiao Feng holds a hand above her eyes, lost in a desert she knows well.
She sees him because he’s wearing white, a color so bright in this gold, gold desert. The white shows all his wounds. Xiao Feng helps him, because she’s a good person. She’s always been helpful, kind, trusting. She will always be, although the boy does not know this yet. The boy is not like Xiao Feng. I saved you, she says, and he fights. She should have known somehow, there should have been signs.
我救你
我会救你
Li Cheng Yin knows red. He knows palace walls and sword footnotes. Xiao Feng's scarf is a red that fills up the sky. That scarf, years and years on, he sees it when he closes his eyes. I saved you, says this girl, she wears jewels on her forehead and her eyes worry. He doesn't understand why she would save a random stranger. He doesn't know if he ever understands Xiao Feng, someone who cares naught for logic and power, and so he should not care for her.
She can't even read. How can she not read? Her lack of literacy saves him and for some peculiar reason, watching this girl try to read is somehow the most endearing experience he has had since he set out on this miserable journey, away from his beloved home city.
Xiao Feng has tried reading Li Cheng Yin and he is as confusing as the letters. There are three words she remembers, 三日见。
She should never have met him. Three days or any day. If she hadn't, they would all be alive and so she feels responsible for the end of the Danchi.
Li Cheng Yin is going to betray this princess. He does not know her and he does not want to know her. She is against his people and so she deserves to be hurt by him.
This princess, who he hates so vehemently, is really very beautiful although he tells himself she can't be because she's from these unsophisticated grasslands. She sings some old song and braids her hair with silver trinkets and laughs like she's never been told it's a sin.
Someone will hurt you, Xiao Feng, if you laugh like that. He wants to warn her, to tell her to run. He laughs with her rather and he knows he shouldn't. People are watching them, strangely and suddenly, he does not like it.
There is a lake, the first lake, not the second one. The water is cold and Xiao Feng cannot breathe. If it was someone else, he would have left them to drown. He had saved her, and she had shown no appreciation. He did not like how it irked him. Princesses from far away kingdoms did not get to have a say in his masterful plans.
You cannot read, and you cannot swim, thinks Li Cheng Yin. She’s coughing and coughing. He does not know why he cares. She’s so brave, is all. True and honest, and she should not be anywhere near him.
‘I found it,’ says Xiao Feng, holding the jade pendant in her hands.
I found you, thinks Li Cheng Yin, closing his hand over hers.
‘You could have died,’ he says, unwillingly upset about it. He does not want to worry about this stranger, who is not a stranger any longer, ‘do not do that again.’
‘Save me then,’ she replies.
Forever and ever, says Xiao Feng.
Forever and ever, agrees Li Cheng Yin, watching her as she speaks. She’s very pretty, he thinks randomly, she’s so free, like the wind and the sky. She wears clothes in rebellious colors and sometimes a scarf over her braided hair. Now, she’s opened up the braids to dry her hair and he does not want to look away.
Xiao Feng is meant to live in these grasslands forever and taking her away would be break her wings.
Li Cheng Yin is ambitious. He would never do something so cowardly and humiliating. He could never love someone so much, that he would drown himself. He would not fall anywhere for anyone.
He fell in love with Xiao Feng.
她是我的妻子, he snaps, angry.
How dare anyone take her away? How dare they even think of it?
She isn’t though, is she. She’s never truly his.
And how he wishes she was.
离开
It was too late for Xiao Feng's heart.
离开
And then it was too late for Xiao Feng's clan
In the palace, Xiao Feng does not laugh. And Li Cheng Yin does not laugh either.
You cannot swim, thinks Li Cheng Yin, whilst he saves Xiao Feng in a palace lake. He's miffed about it. He had told her before to be careful. How can you not remember? How can you not remember me? How can I not remember you?
你醒了, says Xiao Feng, and wonders if she knew someone like him, someone in her heart, if not in her memory.
There's this girl in his nightmares. She wears a red scarf that covers the sun and he cannot see her face. Show me, he pleads, save me.
Sometimes, Li Cheng Yin looks at her, confused. How can she be so oblivious? She does not know that the East Palace is deceptive and dangerous, does not know that a humble tea seller cannot kill a wolf and mostly, does not know that he loves her. Surely, Xiao Feng, surely.
Gu Xiao Wu has appeared, as though by magic. Xiao Feng is desperate to not be married to some ruffian. He seems better than all the others, all of whom want to marry her for her land, lock away her spirit, betray her family and take her far away from her home. He’s really very handsome, thinks Xiao Feng, and promises tomorrow.
我的心在你手心里
She hates herself for trusting liars.
Li Cheng Yin takes her far away, steals her land, crushes her soul, kills her family and she does not know how it happened. They took her horse, her wolf chain and even her clothes. She has to wear pastel skirts now and her hair is tightly twisted up on her head. She once had this red scarf, woven with gold. She left it back in Danshi, with Gu Xiao Wu.
Xiao Feng cannot understand how Li Cheng Yin absolves himself from the massacre of her family. They were her people. She had a cousin, same as him. She had a grandfather, the way he has a grandmother. She had uncles, aunties and good friends. She had sisters and brothers, a mother and a father. Xiao Feng had a whole world, before Li Cheng Yin destroyed it.
Li Cheng Yin has a family too, and yet, for some absurd reason, his family has more worth than hers. His family deserves to live in warm palaces whilst hers were homeless and cold. Her family were deemed unworthy by Li Cheng Yin, as though Li Cheng Yin was worthy himself. Grandmother, he says, after he had slayed her grandfather.
The audacity to demand that she should forget.
Xiao Feng is a princess of the Danchi. The East Palace, with its gardens rather than grass, has not made her forget that.
‘Your home is very small,’ Xiao Feng tells him critically.
‘My home is the largest palace in the world,’ he scoffs at her.
‘My home was the world,’ says Xiao Feng, and looks up at the sky.
Sometimes he does not want her to miss her home so desperately. Sometimes, when he remembers the sun and the rivers, the endlessness of the hills, he cannot fault her for it.
Stay, stay with me.
Why should she ever?
我要永远忘记你
一起忘
The water is always cold.