No one spoke, no one moved, as though we had been turned to stone. In all my fantasies of reunion, I had not imagined this stillness. And I had dreamed of this day, dreams so secret and burrowed so deep, I had never dared to speak them aloud. There was none of the violent joy I had anticipated—of tears and gasps and loving embraces. Had too much happened? Fifty years to an immortal was gone in a blink, and yet to a mortal it was over a life half-lived. They had spent more time apart than together; perhaps they needed to learn to be with each other again. And though I could not bear to think of it, there lay too, the unspoken rift between my parents, as vast as the skies that had once divided them. My mother’s theft. My father’s anger. His deception in not revealing himself, letting her weep by his grave. The decades of regret, recrimination, and sorrow, which might not be so easily forgotten.

“Houyi?” At last she spoke, the frail whisper rising from her throat. “Is it really you?” Her shock morphed to disbelief, and then … rapture.

“Chang’e, my wife. I have returned at last,” he said quietly, an unreadable expression on his face.

Her cheeks flushed like camellias, her eyes glistened like dew. But then she froze, bending her head. “I’m sorry, Houyi. I took the elixir, your elixir. I was so scared … I thought I was dying, and our child too. The doctors frightened me, and the pains came too early. I was all alone.” Her words tumbled out in fragments. Her anguish as raw as though it had been yesterday.

He did not speak. Was he still angry despite what he had said? Could he forgive her? Perhaps a spark of his rage had remained unquenched, flaring to life when confronted with her. Perhaps he blamed her still, even without knowing it. And a part of me wondered, how could he not?

“I was furious,” he began in a low voice. “Wretched in my grief. Those were my darkest days, worse than any battle I had fought, any loss I had suffered. Betrayal cuts deepest when it stems from those you love. For then you feel twice a fool, broken and hurt—all at once. For then you do not even have the solace you most crave. I tormented myself, wondering if that might have been your scheme all along, that you desired immortality more than me.” He spoke slowly, as though these words were wrenched from him. “And when years passed without a sign from you, a single message—I almost hated you then.”