After the joyous chorus reached its crescendo and died down, most of the faeries slumped onto the knee-deep carpet of flowers that now covered the floor. On the contrary, Sayewa's plump form positively bristled with energy as she marched past Xi and his mother. She waved them towards the temple's grand exit. The warm light of the later afternoon spilling through the doors haloed her and Xi barely held back an exclamation of joy that bubbled up in him.

Weynala also stayed on her feet. She bore on Sayewa, cutting through the flowers like a plow driven into the stony soil by a desperate peasant. "You will return to your domicile, Sister, and wait for the Council's summons there."

It was like watching a hungry demon circle a friend. He could not see Sayewa behind Weynala's tall form, but the measured tone of her voice cheered him as much as her singing did a few moments ago.

"Permit me to escort the humans back to their lands, Serene Mother, and I shall submit to the Council."

The darker faery tilted her head to one side. "You might as well assume the responsibilities of an acolyte right away, Sister."

Without another word, Sayewa leaned around Serene Mother to motion for them to follow again and strode off. Once they stepped over the Temple's threshold, Sayewa bowed deeply to the gathering. The acoustics of the temple was incredible, because even from a distance, Xi heard Weynala's venomous hiss, 'take -the-demon-polluted-away -already' as clearly as if he stood right next to the Serene Mother.

Xi splayed his trembling palm on the temple's wall, ignoring everything but its warm rough surface to focus his understanding. Sayewa wrapped a steely arm around his waist, and yanked him away from the building with an unexpected force, shuttering his concentration.

"The Temple of Serene Joy was constructed over five millennia."

"I was not going to collapse the ceiling," he said petulantly. Floating up every single petal and stuffing it down Weynala's throat however---

She loosened her grip on him, and took the lead. "You have a more passionate nature than I'd suspected, Chong Xi."

Goosebumps crawled up his arms when his name and the word 'passion' came up in the same sentence. It was dangerous, but he did not mind it by some reason. Even liked it. He followed her, rubbing his arms discretely and watching a peony bud pop up right above the nape of her neck. It grew to nearly the size of his fist, then the green outside burst opened, releasing the dark-red flower almost as big as a toddler's head. It opened up to the full glory before he counted out one hundred steps. Alas, the flower's stem wilted, as if something stole its vigor. Once it thumped down on the pathway, the fragrant heart hitting the dust, losing half the petals, Xi could not resist picking it up from underfoot. "What will happen to you, Sayewa?"

"That depends on your mother's choice." Sayewa nodded at Tien Lyn who remained subdued during the walk. Xi gave his mother a questioning look, but she did not explain anything either.

He plucked the peony's remaining silk petals one by one with jittery fingers, leaving a trail behind them on the deserted pathway all the way to the courtyard. As if they needed the markers to find their way back...

The miracles of the faery monastery proved to be too much for the human porters. They left nothing behind but the chaotic footprints of the running feet.

"We will walk," Tien Lyn finally spoke. "Five hundred paces is not too long of a distance."

"Walk well, my friend," Sayewa replied. "Five hundred paces is not too long."

Five hundred paces would barely take them to the base of the Hill of the Five Seasons, to the boundary of the faery lands. If the meaning of this exchange eluded Xi, then the glance that passed between the two women drove the hair into his skull like needles.

For him, Sayewa had much less cryptic the parting words than for his mother. "I shall work on restoring the knowledge from memory, Chong Xi. If you wish to help, you should record what you can recall from my dictations."

"Of course," he promised more eagerly than the request warranted. It surprised him how much he looked forward to sifting through his memory and copying if he could show the results to Sayewa. "I can bring it for your inspection, together we should be able to ---"

"I want to work in seclusion," Sayewa interrupted, touching a finger to his wrist to soften her refusal. "I will call for your help as soon as I am able to piece enough information together."

She walked away from him down the pathway he had marked by the petals, their crimson drops looking like blood. Belatedly, he realized that she must have wanted to throw a guise of choice over the punishment that was awaiting her. Ancestors, she was probably ashamed of being seen as an acolyte! He felt a blush creeping up his cheeks. Why didn't I hold my tongue?

He would have stood there, going cold and hot, berating himself, if his mother didn't nudge him along. "We must leave now, Xi."

Without waiting for his answer, she took off in the opposite direction to Sayewa, back to Sutao. Her lips moved as if she was praying, or counting.

Xi caught up to her and offered his arm. "Mother, what choice?"

She gently pushed past him with a muttered 'you will see' before returning to her trance-like walking to the rhythm of the inaudible whispers. It was a slow going, so the dusk started to fall by the time they came to the border marked by rows of speckled boulders.

The Sutao's bustling streets were right in front of them, but the faery land still enveloped them with its silence. Even Tien Lyn's whispering stopped when she took the pistol from her belt.

For one nightmarish moment Xi thought his mother would point the weapon at him. He instinctively shielded himself as he would against a demon. The muzzle lifted above his head, turning the red-hot of the molting metal. It hummed with energy, becoming the blazing gold of the sun, then, finally, the searing white. Xi turned away, his eyes hurting from the glare.

A shot shattered the faery silence.

Xi glanced back: the pistol quivered cooling back to crimson.

Tien Lyn held it aloft, breathing in and out. Tears pooled in her large eyes, but she wiped them away. "Thank you," she said to the pistol. For a moment, he expected her eyes to glow red as well, like a demon's, but they remained black.

"Five hundred paces," Xi whispered.

The assassin - his mother - tacked the vorpal weapon away. "Almost."

Serene Mother Weynala was rude and power-hungry, but she had healed Sayewa. Xi thought that Yu had poured his qi into the pistol to protect her. How naive had he been, how young...

He could not believe that his mother would kill in a cold blood. He could not believe Sayewa had asked for an assassination, but it must have saved the faery from disgrace. He could not believe anyone any more, and everything he had believed in was turning into smoke.This was all wrong, it could not have been, but it was. It was!

He managed one word out through his clenched teeth. "Why?"

Tien Lyn cupped his cheek, and held on when he flinched, forcing him to look into her triumphant eyes. "For twenty years I've dreamed of it, Xi. Now I had done it."

His breath caught as he stared at her, unblinking. There was nothing he wanted to say until he knew why.

"I avenged your father's death."

His mother's eyes, shinier and blacker than anything else in the world, and did not fade like the tool of her vengeance. They probably never would. The savage joy radiating from Tien Lyn threatened to pull him under. He took a staggering step back to escape the whirlpool of satisfied hatred.

There was nothing he could say even after he knew why. After fifteen years of silence between Xi and his mother, this one was the hardest for him to bear, but he would not break it. At least not yet.