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To begin with, Zhou Fei is not a morning person.
At least, not in the way her Niang is, not in the way Li Sheng is where they rise with the sun. Zhou Fei likes the warmth of her blankets wrapped around her like a cocoon; she likes the way the sun is already there to greet her when she rises from her bed, and she likes the light already filling the space in her rooms when she opens her eyes. The morning mountain air after the sun rises is so fresh in the 48 Strongholds that Zhou Fei thinks that might be the thing she misses the most when away from home (that is, aside from her parents and the Ximo River), and she ensures she gets as much fresh air as she can with all the open spaces in her rooms.
Jiang hu xiong xian, she reminds herself, the world is perilous. If there is one thing she has learned from her travels, it is to rest when possible, to eat when possible. Mu Xiaoqiao had been right, up on that snowy mountain so long ago. Even years after his death, when she thinks back on the first true martial arts master she met after leaving the 48 Strongholds for the first time, she knows he would be amused if he knew she is still learning and re-learning lessons from her encounters with him. Piaoliang yatou, he would say to her, still missing me?
So, even after returning to the 48 Strongholds when it was all over—when the DiSha are no more, when Shen Tianshu is dead by her blade, when she has gone fishing in Dong Ting Lake, has watched the Eastern Sea ebb and flow on the shores of Penglai, has spent her time in the sun in Nanjiang, all with Xie Yun and his ridiculously beautiful smile—Zhou Fei continues to savor her mornings, treasuring the days where she doesn’t have to be up at dawn to teach students or to run errands. She will let her blankets warm her as she comes back to consciousness, will wait for the morning light filtering in through her windows and open tea area to slowly make its way across her floors before she rolls out of bed to stretch and get ready for the day.
Things are different now, of course.
Now, her bed is different, bigger; she has more blankets to cocoon in, and there is always an arm wrapped around her that is slightly cooler than the warmth surrounding her. Zhou Fei has never been a heavy sleeper, so when she’s awake early enough, she can tell when Xie Yun’s breathing changes from the deep, even breaths of sleep to the shallower breaths he takes when awake, and though he may not be aware of it, the way his arm tightens just a fraction around her when he opens his eyes.
Like her, her husband has always been a light sleeper. Unlike her, her husband usually wakes with the dawn as well. Some days, he gets up early, sliding out of bed as he presses a kiss to her forehead knowing she can fall back asleep right afterwards. Some days, he lies awake, fingers idly playing with her hair as he watches the sun rise from the window across from their bed.
She loves those moments, the days where she wakes up and blearily rolls over to face him, snuggling closer and feeling his chuckle vibrate in his chest when she presses her cheek against him, feeling his arms tighten around her as he strokes her hair. She knows that when she looks up to see him, Xie Yun will already be wide awake, the early morning light splayed on his face. Tian xia tai ping, Zhou Fei thinks. This is what peace looks like.
“Good morning, niangzi,” he murmurs into the quiet dawn. Her dao, Xiwei, may have been broken, but the meaning of the blade has never left them.
Something stirs Zhou Fei awake.
There are days—like this one—where she wakes up alone in bed and a cold dread will set in. Her pulse kicks into overdrive, her tunnel vision zeroing in on the immediate need to find him as her body remembers the morning she woke up alone after Xie Yun had drugged her and taken one of the bowls of medicine for his touguqing, unsure which one would cure him and which one would kill him. She remembers the heart-stopping moments when she made sure he was still breathing, the desperation that tore through her chest when she tried to save his life, and the feeling of falling, the ground giving way underneath her when he had fallen over onto his side, unconscious, even after she tried everything she could, and then the single tear that had dripped down his cheek, the last one she thought she would ever see from him, before her body gave out on her as well—all before her mind can pull her back into the present, can register that Xie Yun has promised until death parts us and every day I am alive is a day I won’t leave you.
There will never be a day where Zhou Fei takes those words for granted, not when she has seen him die in front of her twice now, but at the moment where she’s between asleep and awake and alone—she runs out of their rooms and down the path to his favorite tree to perch in, and she finds him there, she always finds him there, sitting on a branch and leaning against the tree trunk, his eyes closed and face turned toward the warmth of the sun. Something settles in her chest, just under her ribcage and close to her heart, when she sees him then, alive in the morning light.
She stands there for a moment, letting her breaths even out, letting herself breathe. She lets herself sink into the quiet morning, her panic giving way slowly, inch by inch as she takes in the early morning rays, the birdsongs, the mountain breeze, the far-off sound of the Ximo River, one after the other.
Xie Yun cracks an eye open then, a smile on his lips when he sees her. Sometimes, he’ll hop down from the branch to approach her. Sometimes, she will use the qinggong he taught her to leap her way up, settling on his lap and leaning on his chest as his arms come up around her.
Today, it’s the latter.
“Awake, shui cao jing?” he asks softly, brushing a kiss against her temple. Zhou Fei hums in answer, lacing their fingers together as she takes deep lungfuls of the morning mountain air. She nestles into the strange cool warmth of her husband’s hold, and thinks the day can wait a little longer to begin.