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From the way the moonlight shines on the petals of her daisies, Mei can tell that the night is young.
She bends down to smooth her fingertips over a budding petal, smiling to herself when her finger comes away with the feeling of the morning rain. The sound of laughter and animated chatter are too muddled together to make out the person each noise belongs to, yet it’s clear enough that the guests in her castle have no intention to bid each other goodbye anytime soon.
Soon, she knows that she has to come back inside and entertain her guests with a plastered smile and hands to her side. She knows this part of the play well enough to act it with her eyes closed.
Her father had surprised her with yet another party, inviting bachelorettes from all parts of the kingdom to come and mingle with the princess. It’s a tradition he started ever since she’d come of age, stemming from the fatherly worry that Mei wouldn’t find someone to share her life with, especially with her habits of seclusion.
“The first person to make my daughter laugh wins her heart,” the king had (mostly) joked during every party, and, not because of spite or offense and all due to the fact that she simply couldn’t fake half a laugh, not one girl could do just that. At least not in the way that her father was satisfied with.
Mei wasn’t rude, by any means. She laughed politely whenever a woman would come and introduce herself to her, and inclined her head enough to punctuate just the right amount of interest. Most of the people she’d met during these parties were kind and unique in their own ways, but the spark that she read about in her books or heard about from forlorn maids was never there. Not a zap of it.
In truth, Mei had long given up on finding that special someone in her life, a person who could make her belly ache with laughter and entertain her in ways that could make the walls of her castle feel less stuffy. These parties were for the sake of her parents more than anything else, to alleviate some of their worry even for a night.
Sighing and thinking of her poor father who was only trying to do what was best for her, Mei bends down to inhale the scent of a beautiful marigold. She’d always thought that the royal gardens looked more beautiful in the moonlight.
A twig snaps behind her.
Startled and her heart climbing to her throat, Mei whips her head around to look for the offender.
“Sorry, sorry!” a voice called. It sounded quite apologetic. “I didn’t mean to scare you!”
Her heartbeat settling back to a mild pace, Mei inhales deeply to face the shrouded woman. She can’t make out the features of the stranger, only recognizing a cloak and a crooked grin, so Mei squints.
Before she could open her mouth to beckon the stranger forward or to ask for a name, she steps out from the shadows of the trees and into the direct ray of moonlight.
And oh, she’s achingly beautiful.
Charming, too, especially crowned in the glow of the young night. Her eyes hold a mischief that sets Mei on edge in the strangest, kindest of ways. And her smile is so incredibly carefree, wide and genuine and unlike the practiced close-lipped nods of acknowledgment her guests have been giving Mei all night.
Mei recognizes her too. This woman came along with the traveling entertainers that her father had invited to amuse their guests. Her rambunctious presence had intrigued Mei during the party, and it’s a curious thing to realize that their paths hadn’t crossed until that very moment.
“You’re the girl who accidentally set her hair on fire,” Mei blurts out.
She realizes it’s a rude thing to say the moment it leaves her tongue, and she opens her mouth again to correct her mortification.
Instead, the woman raises both of her eyebrows, then laughs loudly.
“It was my jacket,” she muses, tossing her ponytail to her other shoulder to prove a point. She puts her hands back to her sides and whistles, looking around the garden with unrestrained awe. Her eyes shift back to Mei, who watches her with curiosity.
“I just wanted to get some air. Y’know, get away from all that stuffiness for a little while,” she admits. “I saw how pretty the flowers looked from the windows, so I wanted to get a closer look. I didn’t realize I’d find something prettier.”
She’s looking straight at Mei as she says it. Compliments have been thrown at her direction all night, but something in the way the girl looks at her makes Mei look away with a rising blush painting her cheeks.
“Oh! And it’s— it’s Kiana, by the way,” she says again, laughing and rubbing the back of her neck when she realizes how rude she seems for not introducing herself sooner. “At your service, m’lady.”
Kiana’s cheeky behavior makes Mei want to smile back. It’s not so overbearing that Mei can’t stand it, but Kiana’s personality certainly wafted in the air like the smell of the castle hallways when the bakers rose from their sleep.
Mei wants to get to know this stranger. But still, she’s a princess— duty comes first before her curiosity.
“The royal gardens aren’t meant for the public,” she reminds Kiana. She keeps the accusation out of her tone. She doubts that it’s in Kiana’s nature to step over a boundary so brashly, even if she had just met her.
“Oh! I didn’t see the sign. Sorry,” Kiana says quickly, eyes wide as she looks behind her to look for the ‘no trespassing’ sign she must have missed. “I’ll skedaddle then. It was nice meeting you!”
But as soon as Kiana moves away, she freezes. She stares Mei down, seemingly searching for something.
Kiana suddenly frowns. “Are you okay?”
Mei hadn’t at all anticipated that kind of question. Her eyebrows jump, but she recovers quickly. “I’m just exhausted from the party,” she excuses, and it’s not at all a lie.
However, Kiana isn’t convinced. She looks at Mei for another drawn moment, the silence calculating, and then jokes, “Party pooped, huh?”
Mei breathes out a short chuckle. “Incredibly so,” she answers, a weight lifting off of her shoulders with the admission.
Kiana grins in response, and she takes a step towards her with a hand outstretched in invitation. Mei finds herself subconsciously mirroring her with a foot coming forward.
“Can I keep you company tonight?” Kiana asks, and Mei is surprised at how shyly she says it. Kiana leans forward then, bending at her waist and beckoning Mei closer as if to share a secret. Mei lends her an ear to listen. “If I’m being honest, everyone at that party is too—” she whispers, then blows a raspberry and points her thumb down.
It makes Mei crack a smile.
The honest joke, along with Kiana’s bright eyes, makes her say a gentle ‘yes’ to Kiana’s request.
They stroll along the garden and the small lake nearby, the light from the full moon letting the lake glitter like diamonds.
It’s a sight that Mei is used to, but she enjoys watching Kiana gape at their surroundings like Mei had shown her a mountain of gold. Kiana’s child-like wonder makes her heart feel free, and it opens her up to listen intently to Kiana’s stream of rambles.
Mei learns that she’s been traveling to different cities and countries with her friends and family for years now, spurred on by her desire to make people laugh and smile. She says that her mentor, Himeko, is probably getting drunk on the royal wine up inside the castle and making jokes and rhymes and singing songs she won’t remember in the morning, but the entire room will.
And goodness, the jokes Kiana makes aren’t like anything she’s heard before.
“What did one wall say to the other wall? Let's meet up in the corner!”
“Why did the tomato blush? Because it saw the salad dressing.”
“Have you heard about the restaurant on the moon? The food is great and all, but there's no atmosphere!”
They were god awful jokes, but they were so awful that Mei couldn’t help but giggle softly. Each noise that came from her just spurred Kiana on to say some more, and Mei couldn’t find it in herself to tell her to stop.
And honestly, did she really want her to stop?
The jokes may be overdone, but Kiana marks every punchline with loud laughter of her own, and a crooked grin that she throws back to the sky with a hand on her abdomen to brace herself from the aches of her own amusement.
Mei thinks Kiana’s smile is pretty just as much as it is dashing. It makes a sincere smile come onto her own lips, an easy one, for the first time in a very long time. It’s small, but it’s a smile of her own for this girl who seems to have a thousand stories to tell.
They manage to round back to where they started.
The castle doors are only a few strolls ahead, and the sounds of laughter and party conversation have yet to let up for the night. As much as she enjoys Kiana’s company, she also knows that her presence will be missed if she stays away for any longer. It sobers her up, and Kiana notices almost immediately.
“Thank you for walking with me,” Mei says genuinely, and Kiana offers her a small smile that makes the corners of her eyes crinkle in its authenticity. Her weight shifts from side to side, and every part of her body begs her to stay with Kiana, to listen to a few more silly jokes that would inevitably make her cringe and crack another smile.
Instead, she doubles down. “My father will be looking for me. Maybe I’ll see you inside?”
Kiana’s smile softens at the edges. “I’ll stay out here for a little longer, if that’s okay,” she says, scratching her cheek with a fingernail, “but if you’re not sick of dancing and going ‘har har’ with everyone by the time I get back, maybe save a dance for me?”
Mei knows she’s joking. She can tell by the curl of Kiana’s lips and the cadence of her tone, but she can see something else in her eyes— a touch of hope.
“Even if my feet start hurting, I’ll have one dance left in me just for you,” Mei tells her, and she’s in awe of how soft she sounds, even to herself. It’s even more surprising to realize how genuine her promise is; her feet are already feeling the burn from walking around so much, especially in shoes that fit so tightly until she can barely walk.
Kiana laughs at that, and her eyes flicker down to the way Mei shifts her weight onto one of her shoes.
“Well, don’t let your shoes run away without you!” she jests, and Mei cracks a polite smile. She shouldn’t be so stunned to see how astute Kiana is.
And then Kiana walks towards her, leaving just enough distance between them. She bends at the waist, holds Mei’s hand up to her lips with curled, gentle fingers, and presses a kiss to Mei’s knuckles.
Kiana’s eyes flick up at her, delight dancing in them like the fireflies in the garden. She lets go of Mei’s hand to stand straight again, and her charming grin flutters her heart.
Clearing her throat, Kiana says, “Have a goodnight. And a good day. For when you wake up. And— good days after that.”
Her awkward charm makes Mei’s lips twitch, and she watches as Kiana chuckles to herself and points finger guns at her, then walks backwards with her eyes still on Mei.
Mei’s face drops when she notices the obstruction. “Kiana, the—!”
Her warning arrives too late. Kiana doesn’t see the tree root in time, her head swiveling to look only after her ankle catches on it. She falls backwards, a loud squeak denoting her surprise, and the leaves on the ground come up to surround her.
Mei rushes over immediately. “Are you okay?” she calls out, her heart beating fast in her chest with the fear that Kiana had broken or sprained something.
Kiana blinks, sitting up on the grass and shaking her head to get the leaves out of her face. She’s stunned at first, but then a slow smile spreads across her face as another leaf settles on the front of her hair.
She ruffles it out with a hand, puffing out a breathless laugh. Mei’s face is still tight in worry, her hands floating out in front of her in case Kiana needed some assistance to get up.
Kiana blinks again, owlishly this time, and she turns to look at Mei with a certain fire in her eyes that makes Mei wonder if she had missed a punchline.
“Well, I guess I really fell for you, huh?” Kiana says. She laughs, moving her hands around. “Get it? You know, ‘cause…?”
The stupid, very cliche and cheesy and overused joke would have made her crack a small, strained smile at most, and a blink of confusion at the least. Instead, she stares at Kiana, long enough for the leaves to settle back on the ground and for Kiana’s smile to drop slowly, and then she bursts into deep, childish laughter that carries across the wind.
It subsides to giggles with Kiana in what feels like hours later. She doesn’t even remember when she ends up sitting on the grass with Kiana, with her hands intertwined with the jester that looks at her like she holds moonlight in her palms in the way she laughs. All she knows is that it makes her chest feel like it's flying, especially as Kiana joins in with her own mirthful laughter.
Kiana clears her throat, but the smile on her face almost makes Mei want to laugh again. “We should get going now,” she says, trying to sound stern but falling short when she snorts out a giggle.
Mei tries her best to sober up. “Yes, of course,” she responds in kind, dusting off her lap and lightly tapping her chest to dispel it of any more laughter. The thought of leaving Kiana here makes her wistful, but she knows now that where laughter lies, Kiana follows.
Kiana helps her rise to her feet. They’re trying not to look at each other to keep from breaking into grins, but they each steal glances at each other.
“Wait,” Kiana calls, and Mei turns to look. “If you see the princess on your way back, you should tell her to get out more often— no one’s seen her in a while! Maybe I could try and make her laugh,” she says, contemplative at the end.
And Mei blinks.
It occurs to her right then that Kiana hadn’t been trying to make her laugh to win her hand, but had only been doing it under the impression that she was a girl who needed cheering up.
It makes her fall for Kiana just a bit more.
Kiana tilts her head. “What’s so funny?” she asks, and the question itself feels like the right punchline to make her laugh.
“Would you like to come back inside with me?” Mei asks instead. She’s smiling so much that her face is starting to ache, because she knows Kiana is just the right person her father would like to meet. “I know you said you wanted to stay out here for longer, but…”
Kiana brightens, and she takes Mei’s outstretched hand in earnest. “Well, when you put it like that,” she boasts, and Mei bites back a bigger smile. “I can’t let down the most beautiful girl in the kingdom, can I?”
On their way, Kiana cracks another joke, and it makes Mei’s laughter echo all the way to the ballroom.