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“What happens when a comet gets too close to a moon?”
Even though it’s been a decade, Baiheng still knows how to pilot a starskiff just as beautifully as she did before she left the Luofu to join the Nameless.
It’s been a decade since Jingliu has last seen the Foxian woman. The High Cloud Quintet split just over a decade ago, each of the five going their separate ways. For Baiheng, that was the Express, the stars, and the distant reaches of the universe.
As for Jingliu, she stayed upon the Luofu waiting for the date Baiheng would return, often finding her gaze drifting skywards to the stars.
They kept up correspondence over that time, sure. Baiheng always had stories from her travels to share, and Jingliu stories and gossip from home. But as long-life species, time would escape them, and the gaps between messages grew further as time went on. A day missed became two, three, then it was weeks and months since they last exchanged a word.
After those first few times Jingliu would find herself sitting alone on the beaches of Scalegorge Waterscape. At her side there would be empty bottles of rice as she held an old phone in her hand, wondering if it was appropriate to message each other after months of silence. Water would lap at her toes as the moonlight and stars danced across the waves as Jingliu tried and failed to work up the courage to send a message.
Conversation would start again, but it would always be from Baiheng. Until the day Jingliu finally messaged her, with a request for her to return home.
This time, Baiheng answered. And a part of Jingliu wishes she never reached out again in the first place.
The Denizens of Abundance had returned. Shuhu had returned. And it was her duty to the Xianzhou Alliance to pick up her sword and fight alongside her people to abolish Yaoshi’s followers.
And as the founder of the High Cloud Quintet, it was her duty to reach back out to her friend again, and ask them to return to war.
All of them had come.
They’re preparing to fight now. Jing Yuan was with his own legion of soldiers, prepared to lead at the front. He is no longer the young boy that Jingliu once knew. He’s grown, broadened out, and established a name for himself separate from just being Jingliu’s apprentice. She’s proud.
Dan Feng was somewhere in the fray, holding back until he was called for. Jingliu hadn’t heard much from him about his plans, just that he wasn’t going to hold back the destructive art of his Cloudhymn magic if the situation called for it. She had last seen Yingxing with Dan Feng before she left, the short-life craftsman looking much older than she had last seen him. He was to assist the other engineers on the battlefield, but last she saw, Yingxing had taken Dan Feng by the hand to get one last private moment.
Despite how they tried to keep secrets, Jingliu had always been able to see through them. The matching bracers and earrings gave plenty away. As well as the love, longing, and sorrow in their eyes.
War showed lovers no exceptions. Neither did the natural path of their lifetimes, a fleeting or as long as they were.
Like them, Jingliu also escapes, hoping to catch one last moment with a certain someone before she picks up her sword and follows her people to war.
Baiheng’s lavender hair and fox fur ears stand out in the crowd of other pilots running to their starskiffs. She barks out orders, commanding pilots to their ships. The wind of departing ships makes her hair fly into her face, no matter how she tries to brush it out of her face. Her ears flick anxiously, perked tall and flicking at the slightest of sounds. Her tail is still, only moving as she turns, curling inwards towards her legs as she tucks it away so as to not be trampled upon.
She’s walking away, towards a starskiff of her own, the same she had left behind as she went to join the Nameless in their travels. In the throng of people moving out to war, Jingliu feels the distance between them grow wider.
This would be her last chance to talk to Baiheng, their last chance to exchange well wishes and whispered words before battle. The thought of being unable to say anything makes her ache with a strange sort of pain she hadn’t experienced before.
Jingliu pushes through. She closes the gap. One moment she’s shoving people out of her way, the next she’s reaching out and wrapping her hand around Baiheng’s wrist, catching her before she goes.
For a moment, Jingliu swears she can feel the world freeze when Baiheng turns to face her.
“Jingliu?”
“Baiheng.”
She says her name with an odd sort of desperation unbefitting of her nature. She finds the emotion strange and confusing, not understanding why she feels this way.
Yet when Baiheng stares back into her eyes, she finds that maybe it does make sense, watching the way Baiheng’s face softens as they stare at each other.
Jingliu still doesn’t really understand why she chose Baiheng for the High Cloud Quintet. She was a revered pilot, despite her reputation of crashing and her name as the “Starskiff Killer.” She was respected amongst her peers as much as she was feared, too many were scared of her “future visions” that somehow came true.
That never frightened Jingliu, if anything, it intrigued her.
But Jingliu remembers meeting her for the first time over a century ago. She had watched the then-young pilot who was barely out of her youth crawl out of the wreckage of her own starskiff with a grin, body unmarred and spirit unbroken. She remembers the way she met Baiheng’s bright blue eyes with flecks of gold as the pilot introduced herself in the same breath as she refused the aid of the Cloud Knights that had come to her rescue.
Something about her was different. A type of different Jingliu couldn’t help but want to chase after. A type of different that was unique and bright and so unlike anything Jingliu had seen before.
She’s scared to put words to these thoughts, these emotions. She’s scared of the way she wants to chase after them, to find answers and confirms the fears resting in her gut. Because deep down, she fears she already knows the answers.
But now as they stand face to face, staring into each other’s eyes as war rages, Jingliu recognizes the stupid, strange, frightening, and beautiful emotions for what they are.
Love.
“Jingliu, what are you doing here?” Baiheng breaks Jingliu’s train of thought. “Are you not supposed to be with your soldiers as I am with my fleet?”
“I needed to wish you good luck,” Jingliu says, making up an excuse on the spot. It was the partial truth anyway. Baiheng smiles.
“You know I don’t need it.”
“Do your visions predict your safety?”
Baiheng doesn’t answer. Jingliu’s grip around her wrist tightens, and she can’t stop herself from bringing the smaller woman into a hug. She can feel the way Baiheng gasps in surprise, but still, the Foxian woman is quick to hug her back.
“I will be fine,” Baiheng murmurs into the skin of her cold neck where she tucks her head. “You needn’t worry. If anything, please take care of yourself Jingliu.”
Jingliu says nothing. In her mind she can’t help but think I fear for you. I fear for myself. I fear for the battle ahead and our unknown outcome.
She can’t voice any of this aloud, however. She is Jingliu. She is the cold and mysterious Sword Champion of the Luofu, the frozen sword of the Cloud Knights, the leaders of the High Cloud Quintet.
But she is still but a woman who must eventually pull herself away from the arms of someone she dares to love.
For just a moment, she allows herself to ignore war, and hold Baiheng. She squeezes her tighter and mouths the words “I think I love you” into Baiheng’s hair. She allows herself to fall into her delusions of love as she holds the woman close. She wasn’t built for love, for warmth, for promises.
Yet Baiheng is everything that Jingliu isn’t, and her arms around her had never felt so comforting. Jingliu wishes she would never have to let go.
“Does the comet fall into the moon’s orbit?”
Baiheng’s starskiff crashes. Jingliu has never felt colder.
She is too far, much too far away, to run to her. Still, she can make out the wreckage on the battlefield. The starskiff stands out amongst the other carnage. After all, the crash was no accident.
Jingliu saw the way the starskiff broke from its formation, its sail adorned with the old symbol of the High Cloud Quintet, its colors belonging only to one. Jingliu had watched how it soared through the air with a perfect sort of accuracy that could only belong to a single pilot. Jingliu had watched how the starskiff charged through the enemy defenses and into the heart of their numbers.
And now Jingliu watches, her breath caught in her throat, ice freezing her veins as it forms around her heart. For once in her long-life, she doesn’t know what to do, frozen in place as she waits. Waiting for Baiheng to make a move, to give a sign that she is alive.
In the distance, a figure pulls herself out of the crash of her own making. Her lavendar-white hair is noticeably stained with blood and ash even from this distance, and her body looks smaller than Jingliu has ever seen. For once in her long-life, Baiheng looked horribly and terribly mortal.
And it terrifies Jingliu.
Baiheng holds no weapons, her recurve bow abandoned. She wears no armor, the delicate protection discarded in favor of a simpler flight suit. She is vulnerable and in the heart of the enemy’s lines.
But in her hands, standing in the wreckage of her starskiff, she cradles a light that looks like the power of the sun.
For the briefest moment, much like on the day they first met, Jingliu felt her eyes be drawn to Baiheng’s. This time they could barely make out each other’s faces, only their figures across this great distance, but Jingliu still swears she could see the gold glittering in Baiheng’s eyes.
Then, after a flash of the hand-held sun and a blink of the eyes, Baiheng was gone.
And Jingliu’s cold heart shattered.
“No. The comet succumbs to destiny’s will. It crashes, and it is gone.”