9: Tinder
"You're late."
"Late? Whatever do you mean?"
"You said you'd come at the turn of the fall, you dolt. It's wintertime."
"Well, then, I'm sorry for that." He accepts the cup of warmed wine from her with a charming smile. "I see winter up here is as dismal as ever."
"This place changes little in spite of everything that happens elsewhere. Even the gloom refuses to leave us." She shrugs her shoulders with a little regret, as if to apologize for the wine and the smoldering fire and the quiet that probably seems to him so empty, even terrible. "I'm only sorry that I have little for myself this time around, and even less to offer you."
"You forget that Chang Shan is my home, too."
"It's because you're different."
It's all she knows how to say. There are many, many things she has to learn to take in. She isn't used to the fact that she has to tilt her head back, now, to be able to look at him. She isn't used to the fact that her voice does not belong to her when she speaks, but to another entity that bids her to regard him as a stranger, as a guest.
Chill green eyes meet gentle brown and turn themselves away. For a moment she thinks she saw a flicker of the boy in the man, a frail trace of starlight that vanished with a blink.
How bright he is. How alive. How is it that his eyes have not yet lost him his soul? And can I not even look at him anymore, for fear of losing mine?
"Am I really?" His words strain under the light veneer. It seems that he labors to even form her name. "Am I really, Xiang?"
He's never tried to press her before; he knows he shouldn't. The words run out of their own accord, contorting themselves to the will of a man that is only dimly himself, a man who lets instinct ensnare judgment.
Thick clouds skate across the sky outside, gray and heavy with snow that still refuses to fall. She rises to her feet, moving to the window, quietly pleading with someone she cannot see but is sure she must know. Maybe they, whoever they happen to be, can give her words that won't feed the fire. Maybe they know that suddenly, she finds herself able only to bend for fear of breaking.
Command me.
"I don't know. Perhaps it's not you who is different, Zilong," she says at last, "but I."