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Part I

Chapter 1

Night cloaked the sky in darkness, draping shadows across the earth. While this was the time of rest for the mortals, on the moon, our toils were just beginning. Winter white flames curled from the splint of wood in my hand. Crouching down, I brushed away a stray leaf from the lantern, wrought of translucent stone and twisted strands of silver. As I lowered the splint to the wick, it caught fire with a hiss. I rose, shaking the soil from my robe. Rows of unlit orbs stretched before me as pale as the osmanthus which flowered above—moon lanterns, one thousand in all, that would cast their glow upon the realm below. Through wind and rain, their light would not falter, until they were extinguished at the first breath of dawn.

Each time I lit the lanterns, my mother urged me to be diligent, to perform the task by hand. But I had not her patience. I had grown unused to such quiet work, to peace and calm. Reaching inward, I grasped my energy, the shining magic that flowed from my lifeforce. Flames rippled from my palm, streaking across the lanterns, leaving half ablaze in their wake. My Talent lay in Air, but Fire was useful at times as these. The ground now glittered like stardust, and in the world below, the mortals would be lifting their heads to the curved wedge of light in the sky, its face partially hidden.

Few wrote poems about the half-moon or immortalized it in paintings—devoid of the elegant arch of a crescent or the perfect wholeness of the orb. Clinging to both light and dark, and lost somewhere in between. It resonated with me, a child of mortal and immortal heritage, in the shade of my luminous parents.

Sometimes I would find myself slipping into the past, threaded with a sliver of regret—wondering what if I had remained in the Celestial Kingdom, reaping glory across the years, each accomplishment strung to my name until it shone like a strand of pearls. A legend in my own right, revered as the heroes like my father, Houyi, or beloved and worshipped like my mother, the Moon Goddess.