Eastern Sun

Chapter 7 | Banishment

維天有漢，

監亦有光。

In Heavens there is the Milky Way,

It looks down and is bright;

Fragment of Classic of Poetry, Lesser Court Hymns, Poem 203

*** 

There had been no warning, no court to determine her guilt.

Xīwángmǔ had rounded up on her, a finger pointed at her as Xīwángmǔ yelled in rage.

'It was her fault, she had seen the way Xiān Chí looked at the Crown Prince, she had set the palace on fire to kill him. Everyone was accounted for, everyone had an alibi or was unable to do it.'

'It had to be Xiān Chí, someone had to have done it.'

Xiān Chí remembered the figures in the dark, the way they had gone, remembered how she had thought the guards would handle them. Forgetting she had been a guard too.

There had been no one left to stand in front of her, to protect her from the accusations.

Jīn Sù had been the only one to ever do so. Jīn Sù who was laying still in the grass with a maid that was not Xiān Chí caressing her face. Providing for her to be carried to a safer place where they could check her for medical emergencies.

No one dared to stand in the way of Xīwángmǔ, no one was able to to begin with, and would not dare try for Xiān Chí's sake.

No one protected her or spoke up when Xīwángmǔ extended her hands to the celestial body above.

The Heavenly River rose from where she had been hidden within the cosmos. Rose as a bridge was formed, locked, connected the worlds too far apart to cross in any other way.

A faded footstep the only consolation the bridge could be crossed within falling through the window of heaven.

The guards that Xiān Chí would have liked to call her friends till four minutes ago, pushed her towards the beginning of the road by the Palace gates. Pushed her to walk among the singing stars and follow the soft curve of the moon who joined her sisters in a melody.

The moment the guards pushing hands on her back disappeared, Xiān Chí turned around to try, attempt, to run back. To see if Jīn Sù was alive, would survive, to plead for her innocence to be recognised.

The Imperial Palace had disappeared among the many stars of the galaxy.

The Heavens she had lived in her entire life were only a small dot on the horizon.

There was nothing to return to, only a single path forward.

***

Xiān Chí arrived in an empty field, which after a second glance wasn't a field at all, but a very large courtyard. The walls, she had been looking at since the moment she had arrived in the Imperial Palace, surrounded the green grass from all sides.

For a moment she dared to hope that everything had been a dream. That she would wake up in Jīn Sù's arms, or even better in their old home far away from the Crown Prince and royal life.

That moment was long enough for her to be caught off guard and worked against the ground by a palace guard finding an intruder within the walls.

"Help, there is an intruder!"