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Some of them found their wives there amidst the dust and dirt of the Xuanxu Realm. They took the spears from their lovers’ hands so they could kiss them, and the ragged white flowers from their hair because only a widow could wear them.
Others found their sworn brothers, men they’d drank with just the night before, a night thirty-thousand years gone by. The event was too sombre for cheering, but not for promises of good wine.
Still more found sons that had grown in their absence but could be recognised by their father’s eyes and their mother’s smile, and they held them as though they were still little boys.
And then, one by one, the soldiers left the site of the miracle and returned to the Cangyan Sea, sparing not a thought for the soldiers of Shuiyuntian.
Home they went, to houses and markets that might be in ruins now but could be rebuilt, fields that had lain fallow too long, the old fisheries and mines where they had worked.
Some walked through the woods they used to know, under the cool shade of trees that still felt like home. The smell of leaves and fresh rain and flowers heavy with dew.
Here there were tents made of tanned hides and the woodsmoke drifted from fires tended to by the women who had been too sick, too young, too old to fight, who didn’t know of the miracle yet.
The first of the young men to reach the clearing walked past the tree bound with red cloth, discarding the sharp geode-like armour as he went. He knelt in front of an old woman with long white hair, strings of carved bones and shells around her neck.
She was older than he could have ever imagined her being when he was still so young. But he knew his grandmother, and she knew him.
After thirty thousand years Granny Tie pulled her grandson in her arms and buried her face in his shoulder.