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The first time, Yukong had turned her down.
Feixiao was still young and brash (and she was still arguably somewhat brash, if not quite so young anymore), and had made her move without thinking twice about it.
The newly appointed Helm Master of the Sky-Faring Commission on the Luofu was already well known among the Foxian community across the Xianzhou, not for her work in the Commission, no, but for her name as a starskiff ace pilot.
All it had taken was one look at her, and Fexiao had already made her decision. Madam Yukong was older than her, yes—but not so much older as to be considered too scandalous. Not that she cared much about gossipers and rumor mills. And besides, Feixiao was nothing if not a woman of action, particularly when once her attention had been caught.
After all, Foxian starskiff pilots were something of their own special breed. Dare devils and adrenaline junkies, they were often called, and that was by consideration from fellow Verdant Knights. But there was a reason for it.
It was rare enough to see a starskiff pilot live to old age.
It was unheard of for an ace pilot to willingly retire while able-bodied and hale.
And Madam Yukong, newest of the Six Charioteers, appeared quite able-bodied indeed still.
Though she might be the youngest of the Helm Masters of the Xianzhou Alliance, there was no mistaking Madam Yukong’s past. Feixiao had laid eyes on her and had known immediately. Even in her heels and the refined robes befitting of her station, she was a starskiff pilot through and through.
There was a certain surety to her step, a look in her deep lavender eyes that suggested staying on the ground was a choice for someone like her.
A lightness, as if ready to aim her bow and touch the sky. She was nothing short of quietly and magnetically arresting.
Feixiao had found herself immediately intrigued as the promotional ceremony played out.
She was little more than a captain among the Verdant Knights at that time—a captain “showing signs of great promise”, certainly, but a captain nonetheless. One lucky enough to be selected to attend the Luofu for the naming of the new Helm Master.
Only once the celebratory reception was well underway had Feixiao taken a gamble.
It was well into the night at that point—bellies full with food and drink alike. Late enough that most of the invited crowd had naturally dispersed, leaving the guest of honor quite a bit more breathing room than earlier in the evening.
Feixiao had spotted her opportunity the exact moment it arose. She had ducked away from her fellow knights—earning a good-natured elbow in the side and a few bawdy jokes from her companions as she set off on her own hunt of sorts—following the trail the Helm Master had taken outside to a more private balcony.
Once there, she made her move.
“Madam Yukong,” Feixiao drew out the name with a grin, bowing down to kiss the Helm Master’s knuckles gently in greeting.
The Helm Master’s hand was soft and warm, and she didn’t move to pull her hand back. Not for the first time that evening, Feixiao’s mind teased her at what those long and elegant fingers might be capable of. She wondered at what control those manicured nails might exert over flesh and blood, deprived as they were from starskiff’s interface in the spaces between the stars.
When Feixiao straightened, she found herself being appraised with a sharp, intelligent gaze, one that was shockingly hard to read. But there was a gleam underneath it that Feixiao could recognize. Curiosity. Interest.
Her grin widened…a bit of braggadocio, a dash of suave earnestness as the Helm Master responded to her.
“I admit you have me at a disadvantage here…”
“Feixiao. Captain, first-rank, Verdant Knights, Eight-Point Piercing Spear Division.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Captain Feixiao, and welcome aboard the Luofu. I hope the reception has been to your liking.”
“No need for formalities, Madam Yukong. And your reception has been excellent. Though…if I may, the night remains young. Are you spoken for this evening, Madam? It would be a shame to cease your celebrations once these banquet hall doors close.”
She slowly released her grip on the Helm Master’s hand as she spoke, but let her touch slide slowly and suggestively across the underside of the woman’s palm and her fingers. At the same time, her ears pricked forward, alert and attentive, making her unspoken offer clear.
For her part, Yukong raised a single eyebrow. There was no judgment behind the look. In fact, the brief, surprised twitch of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth made Feixiao’s pulse jump, ready to sweep this beautiful Helm Master off her feet and—
“I’m afraid I’ll have to decline the invitation, Feixiao. But please, don’t be put off on my account. Enjoy your stay while you’re here. Perhaps we will meet again sometime.”
Thus, Feixiao’s hopes for the night ended confusingly short. The Helm Master had dropped formalities, had spoken her name without reserve or disdain, and yet Feixiao had still been turned down.
She received the appropriate amount of ribbing from her knights when she rejoined them to go search out a bar. A few of her squad mates made open suggestions about who else their captain might go home with for the night as they boozed their night away. For once, though, Feixiao didn’t particularly care to go chasing proverbial tail. As she grabbed yet another drink at the bar, she found herself musing over the earlier interaction, her mind firmly elsewhere. Madam Yukong hadn’t sounded or appeared as if she were in an existing relationship, and she certainly had given no indications that she was averse to the company of other women.
No, though she had kindly rebuffed Feixiao’s advances, the look in her eyes had spoken to something else entirely—a far away and glassy look, hazy with a distant melancholy and unspoken loss.
How curious.
The second time, Feixiao had only just been promoted to General of the Yaoqing.
Yukong still turned her down.
They had known each other for at least a decade by then, and had developed a certain rapport.
Even as Feixiao had risen through the ranks of the Cloud Knights, spending most of her days on the front lines against the borisin and other abominations spawned by the Plague Author, she always made time to visit the good Helm Master whenever her travels took her aboard the Luofu.
Sharing meals and stories alike, swapping weapon techniques and tasting teas and fine liquors…Feixiao had come to the Helm Master much more intimately than she would have ever guessed from that first meeting on the reception balcony. Drawn to her by both their unexpected similarities as much as their intriguing differences.
Madam Yukong was a person who knew the harsh truths of the Lux Arrow just as intimately as the tail-less, Foxian child once called Saran.
But whereas Feixiao had turned her face toward the unrelenting violence, had sought to mold herself into the likeness of a living arrow—even if the Reignbow Arbiter might never even glimpse them—Yukong had turned the other direction.
She had chosen to walk away, not simply from the front lines, but from the skies and starskiffs that called to her blood and her soul alike as they did to all great pilots. She had left to join the Sky-Faring Commission instead, and had never looked back once. (At least, not insofar as she had ever let show to anyone, including Feixiao.)
All this Feixiao knew well, just as she knew, too, how Yukong had gone on to raise a kit, as if the child were her own, and had never again sat in a starskiff’s pilot seat, turning her back on her prior life.
Now, instead, she stood still under the yoke of gravity, charting the course for the Luofu with her feet on the ground rather than with her hands in the heavens.
And now, Feixiao was the General of the Yaoqing, the foremost warrior of all the Foxians, and a peer amongst even the long-lived Xianzhou.
It was customary for all of the Xianzhou ships and their Generals to invite and celebrate a newly named officer among their rank; the Luofu had not been the Yaoqing delegation’s first stop, but it had been the one that Feixiao was personally most looking forward to.
Of course, most of the reception banquet was filled with the usual sort of politicking first. Introductions here, simpering and favoring currying there, and a whole host of important people (or people who overestimated their own importance) looking to evaluate the Marshal’s newest appointed General. Only by the time they were well into the night and the reception was winding down did Feixiao even manage to find the person she had been looking forward to seeing the most.
Or rather, Yukong found her first, in a turnabout of their very first meeting.
“My congratulations on your new appointment, General Feixiao. You’ll have to forgive me for the late greetings…you seemed quite busied as the guest of honor tonight.” Yukong offered a perfunctory bow, which Feixiao immediately waved aside.
“Have a celebratory drink with me then! It’s been too long. And you know I don’t need any of the fancy titles, Madam Helm Master.”
Yukong smiled then, lips pressed together and ear tips briefly flicking in a special expression Feixiao felt like was always reserved for her.
“Just for a little bit, Feixiao. Some of us have early work in the morning…and less propensity for heavy drinking.”
“Of course, of course!”
She even ordered the finest baijiu she could get a hold of, grabbing a bottle before stealing away the Luofu’s Helm Master to a private area in one of the floating gardens. A table just for the two of them, one away from politicking and celebrations and war, if just for a night. Feixiao might be an experienced drinker herself, but she matched Yukong’s pace for the evening, savoring her glass in sips rather than immediately drinking and refilling it as they settled into their seats across from one another.
It had been a few years since they had last spent time together, and Feixiao regaled Yukong with tales both from the frontier of space and battles, as well as stories from the halls of the Yaoqing and the Marshal herself. Yukong patiently listened all the while, chin pillowed in one hand as they drank and chatted, and a smile tugging at her carmine lips.
She was quietly beautiful under the artificial moonlight of Luofu.
“Do you ever stop moving, Feixiao?”
The question was asked with a tinge of well-intentioned and teasing amusement. They had known each other long enough for Yukong to know full well how Feixiao was—always going, always relentless, never stopping. It had earned her a reputation long before the recent title of “General” had been bestowed upon her.
Normally, Feixiao would have laughed; with someone else, she would have stood, dared them to a race or a shooting contest…just to prove the point exactly.
But instead, she paused. The alcohol made her voice a lower rasp than usual. Not that she needed the alcohol for courage. She had “recklessness” in spades, if the gossip about her meant anything, and she played it now.
“...I’m not moving now, am I?”
Her hand inched across the table until her pinky was touching Yukong’s. The barest of contacts atop the table, but one that tinged her senses with a pleasant, buzzing warmth.
And for a moment, the world really did seem to go still. Everything seemed to hold itself in anticipation, surely even Qlipoth’s great hammer pausing at the apex before its strike.
Yukong’s finger pressed briefly back into hers, but it was only as shifted her weight and stood, pulling away. Feixiao missed the touch, fleeting though it had been, immediately.
Though the Helm Master had kept pace with Feixiao’s drinking, the only sign of inebriation was the faintest red flush upon her cheeks. Yukong tilted her cup up until the bottom faced the sky, finishing her drink in one go. Before she set it back down on the table, she gave it an elegant and expert flick, sending the last droplets of liquor spiraling off to the side and into the bushes.
Feixiao recognized the technique—an old Foxian bereavement ritual, used at funerals and grief anniversaries, where the last drops of a memorial drink were cast off in remembrance and offering to the departed soul.
The ceramic cup was set back onto the lacquered wood table with a distinct tap of finality.
“Thank you for the drinks and the company tonight, General Feixiao. It’s been a while since I’ve had the pleasure.” Yukong’s voice was soft and low. Her eyes were as kind, but as melancholic as the first time she had rejected Feixiao. Perhaps even more so now. “But you deserve better, General. Go chase after someone who can offer you her whole heart.”
There was no good reason to ask a third time.
Really, anyone else would have taken the hint. Would have gotten the message that had been given twice-over.
Feixiao, however, was nothing if not a painfully obstinate woman. Honestly, she considered it one of her more endearing qualities.
They had remained friends still in the years since the last rejection (Feixiao would hardly let something as trivial as a briefly bruised pride come between them), though the nature of Feixiao’s rank and responsibilities made her visits to the Luofu all the more vanishingly intermittent.
Which was perhaps why she always tried to steal as much of Yukong’s time as she could when the rare opportunity arrived. Like today.
They had carved out time in the morning to test their skills at the archery fields (where Yukong still maintained unerring mastery over bow and arrow), had gone to Aurum Alley to slurp up local hand-pulled noodles with spicy minced meat for lunch. And now—in only a slight dereliction of duty (Feixiao knew that General Jingyuan would probably be quietly grateful for having his fellow General’s absence as a reason to not have their afternoon meeting with the Divination Committee and to take a nap instead)—they spent the waning afternoon strolling throughout the Luofu and catching up over the last few years of absence between them.
Of everything they had done thus far for the day, it was this casual walk—watching the starskiffs take off overhead and launch through the hypergate—that made Feixiao particularly self-aware. She felt very much like a suitor, on best and finest behavior as she gently and carefully courted the object of her affections. Which wasn’t wholly a lie.
Decades had done nothing to dull her interest in Yukong. Every time they reunited, Feixiao only felt her resolve grow stronger, no matter how many years or refusals she faced, no matter how many other women tried to catch the eye of the General of the Yaoqing. Her heart was only that much more certain. Now if she could only convince a particular someone else of that, too.
Almost as if sensing the pensive change in Feixiao’s thoughts, Yukong stopped, looking up at her.
“Is something on your mind, General? You’ve grown unusually quiet.”
Feixiao didn’t immediately speak. Instead, she took the Helm Master’s hand in her own, silently pleased when the gesture was allowed. Her thumb caressed over Yukong’s knuckles, warmth and life just beneath her fingertips. She wanted to bring those knuckles to her lips, to kiss them as she had when they were first introduced. But also to kiss them in a way absolutely nothing like how when they were first introduced, to part her lips and dare a taste of what she had never before been allowed.
As she was mulling just that, Yukong spoke first.
“Feixiao…” she began, and her voice held a too-familiar reluctance that heralded in the impending rejection.
“I know.”
Feixiao interrupted, as politely and earnestly as she could manage, but she needed to say this.
“I know. Or, well…I won’t say I know exactly .” She could admit that much, giving a sheepish grin before turning serious again. “I haven’t walked your path. I can’t say I’ve been through everything you’ve been through, Yukong. But you haven’t walked on my path either. You’ve experienced loss, but so have I. You’re not the only one with scars. I’m not asking for you to give anything more than what you’re capable of. I’m just asking for you to relax for a little. To indulge yourself for a bit…and trust me. Trust that I know myself, too. Trust that whatever you can offer…it’s enough.”
Feixiao smiled, white canines showing as she grinned. Not so much as to be considered insincere, but just enough to still flash a hint of herself—after all, if Yukong didn’t enjoy her company, why had she put up with Feixiao for all of these years?
Yukong looked up from where their hands were still joined and into Feixiao’s eyes. Her gaze was just as inscrutable as the first time they had met. And just like the first time, there was still something there. A spark. Brighter than before.
This time, Yukong didn’t pull away.
Both of them had aged over the years, time exacting its steady toll on them.
Feixiao’s body had only become further honed into a living weapon. Hard planes of muscle were interrupted by new and old scars alike, ones that even the likes of Jaioqiu’s expert healing couldn’t fully erase. Feixiao regretted none of it.
Yukong, by contrast, had grown softer. Soft and generous curves over what was once a hard and lean pilot’s build. Her ear tufts had turned first gray and then white, now complemented by graying wings of hair along her temples that only grew more prominent with every visit Feixiao made to the Luofu. A silver fox, truly.
Some things, though, remained unchanged by time.
Like the expert touch of a pilot’s knowing and skilled fingers.
It was early morning. Early enough that most of the Luofu was still asleep. Early enough that Feixiao could still linger in bed, naked limbs intertwined with the Helm Master.
Yukong was stroking one of Feixiao’s ears absentmindedly. Even that had her slowly melting into the sheets and pillows; no matter how many decades (centuries, practically) it had been since she had last touched a starskiff’s interface, her fingers still had a pilot’s precision and control, drawing out patterns that made Feixiao practically dissolve into a happy puddle.
Drawing out the sort of ideas that made the Lacking General start to think about what morning meetings maybe she could put off or skip, something she would normally never consider.
She was a creature of motion. Yet somehow, when she was with Yukong like this, these brief moments of respite always had a way of making her reconsider. Had a way of making her want to do nothing but just lay there for a bit, to enjoy the stillness in the quiet space before inertia pushed her into movement yet again.
Not that the Helm Master would dare let herself be persuaded into a lazy morning in bed at the cost of her work responsibilities. In that regard, they were much alike. The thought made her grin as she nuzzled into Yukong’s neck.
Yukong, who—senses as sharp as ever—immediately took note.
“What are you smiling about at this hour in the morning, General?”
Her morning voice was a pleasant hum, a fraction lower and yet somehow even more melodious than usual.
“You’re getting more affectionate with age, jiejie.”
Feixiao leaned into Yukong’s hand a fraction more, hoping that she would take note rather than withdrawing her touch from the impertinent teasing. At the same time, she couldn’t help herself. She pressed a lazy, open-mouthed kiss to the beating pulse of Yukong’s neck, immediately wanting more.
Yukong gave a sigh, half reproachful, but half a quiet and unspoken invitation to continue.
“Nowhere visible,” she reminded Feixiao at the first prick of her teeth. Her hand slid down from Feixiao’s ear, nails scraping pleasantly along her scalp in silent encouragement.
Funny, still, how intent on propriety the Madam Helm Master was. Feixiao could feel her own back protest gamely as she stretched, informing her of the bright stripes that Yukong’s nails had left across her backside from before they had finally turned in for the night. Feixiao would never consider hiding the marks; indeed, she would be delighted for anyone to see the scratches left behind on her skin whenever she decided to doff her coat later in the day.
But Yukong had always been keen to keep any evidence of their trysts firmly in private, never mind if their relationship was an open secret across the whole of the Luofu and Yaoqing alike.
It was just one of the many things about Yukong that never stopped being charming to Feixiao.
Perhaps eager to demonstrate that she was more than capable of following directions, Feixaio dipped her head. She pressed kisses across the plane of Yukong’s collar and sternum until she reached the swell of her breast, below where the Helm Master’s normal attire would provide adequate cover.
Here she bit down a bit harder, sucking and nibbling by turns until she had drawn enough blood below the skin to redden it. Until Yukong was just barely shifting against her, a nearly imperceptible gasp of breath the only praise offered to her ministrations. Feixiao finished by lathing her tongue over the newly formed bruise.
A new one to match the existing hickies left over from the night before.
Feixiao turned her head then, resting atop Yukong while the Helm Master carded her fingers through the General’s wild mess of untamed white hair. She flicked one ear to Yukong’s chest to listen to the heart beat that drummed there, only just heightened in pace and intensity.
Steady. Solid. Never mind if Feixiao couldn’t have all of it.
She didn’t need to have all of Yukong’s heart all to herself. Feixiao was an arrow, after all, already cast and shooting across the sky; what respite she had carved out in between her and Yukong was enough for her.
It was enough for them.