The mortals honored her during the annual Mid-Autumn Festival, a celebration of reunion, though this was the day my mother had ascended to the skies. Some prayed to her for good fortune, others for love. Little did they know my mother’s powers were limited, perhaps untrained or a remnant of her humanity—shed when she had consumed the Elixir of Immortality, the one gifted to my father for slaying the sunbirds. When she had flown to the heavens, my parents were parted as irrevocably as though death’s blade had severed them, and indeed it had, for my father’s body now lay entombed in a grave. A sharpness pierced my chest. I had never known my father, cherishing him as an abstract figure in my mind while my mother had mourned him every day of her immortal existence. Perhaps this was why the tedium of her task did not trouble her; relief to a mind splintered with regret, easing a heart clenched with grief.

No, I did not need renown and reverence, just as my parents had not asked for them. Fame was often accompanied by suffering, the thrill of glory came entwined with terror, and blood was not so easily washed from one’s conscience. I had not joined the Celestial Army to chase dreams as fleeting as the dazzle of fireworks, leaving a darkness twice as deep in their wake. I would temper this restlessness, untangle such desires. To be home again with my mother and Ping’er, to have love in my life … these were the things that made me whole. It was what I had dreamed of, what I had fought for, what I had earned.

To many, this place might be humble compared to the opulence of the Jade Palace. Yet there was no place more wondrous to me—the ground shimmering as starlit waves, the osmanthus blossoms hanging from branches like clumps of white snow. Sometimes I woke in my bed of cinnamon wood, taut with uncertainty whether this was just a dream. But the sweetness curling in the air and the soft light of the lanterns were gentle yet unassailable assurances that I was here, in my home, and no one would tear me from it again.

As a breeze wound through the air, something clinked above. The laurel, its clusters of seeds aglitter as ice. In my childhood, I had longed to string them into a bracelet for my mother but could never pull the seeds free. From habit, I wrapped my fingers around one, translucent and cool. I tugged hard, but while the branch dipped and swayed, it held fast as before.