Black Butterfly Knot

Chapter 7: Long Night, Many Dreams

She continues watching them dance in the air for a few seconds.

Ying Ru is standing on a long, flat stretch of rock, blanketed by a thick layer of snow. The staggering altitude of this place is obvious from other snow-capped peaks looming in the far corners of her vision. Where she is standing now is easily above them. Also, the sun is that much more unbearable at this height.

There is an octagonal pavilion in the distance. It's muted colors, further muted by the screen of fluttering snowflakes continuously pouring from the sky, doesn't contend against the white snow all around it. Rather, it sits there like a flickering mirage in the desert of endless white. Snow is heaped on it's sloping, ribbed canopy.

There are two figures. 

One is sitting under the roof, shrouded in a flowing white robe. At one glance, Ying Ru would think that this person is merely an illusion, formed of the many swirling snowflakes. She could only make out a murky silhouette, even as she neared. Just the eye-scorching white of this person's robe seems so familiar and arresting. 

It took her a moment to realize what the broken notes permeating in the air were. It was coming from a guqin laid out in front of the white-robed figure, although the melody was impossible to discern because they were muffled and carried echos, no doubt victimized by the strange atmospheric condition. One note is crisp and tart, but the next would most definitely be mutilated in some way. So was how the rest of the song would go.

This person's fingers fluttered over the strings of the zither. Ying Ru cannot see the zither nor how many strings it had either, but she could tell that this person's hand movements were fluid and like water.

All the while, tiny flakes of snow drifts from the sky, carried into the pavilion by gentle winds, landing on the white robe, landing on the zither. 

Even if obscured by the dense air, even if she couldn't see the features on this figure or even as much as tell the gender of this white-robed figure that is playing the guqin, she is captivated by this person's beauty. It is a scene that, once come across, will forever be engraved in the back of one's mind.

Snow continues to fall nonstop, as if it would never stop falling here. Ying Ru continues to stand, unmoving.

Her eyes swim the expanse of the snow-covered plateau, falling on a stretch of rock overhanging the narrow cliff, jutting out into the air. Below it, there is nothing but a steep descent into the valley thousands of miles below. Beyond it, are the peaks of distant mountains. This stretch of rock is similarly blanketed by a layer of snow. The second figure is there. 

It is when her eyes land on this second figure that her heart stops. 

This figure is draped in purple, a rich and brilliant shade of purple. Ying Ru's heart gives a tremble, her fingers gripping the folds of her own dress.

She cannot see the facial features of this individual as well, likewise cannot discern the gender. She cannot even clearly see the movements because of the rippling ghost-currents and the distance barring her from this individual. 

But she realizes what is happening.

She cannot hear the notes the guqin makes, but she can see it. She can see the melody, the rhythm, and inaudible fluctuations of the music in this figure. She was watching a dance, a dance defying all previous meanings of beauty in Ying Ru's mind. In the fluttering of weightless fabric and the powerful flowing movements of this purple figure, the only thing she can find besides beauty would still be beauty, a mind-numbing kind of beauty. 

An immense backdrop of snow-tinted grandeur, mountains or valleys lined up along the sun-pierced horizon, all of them seeming to be bowing, subjugated at a lower elevation.