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"Maomao."
"Yes, Master Jinshi?"
She didn't turn to look at him, but there was no need. They were alone, perched up in the crow's nest of the ship carrying them back to the Capital. Her fingers tucked over the lip of their basket-like enclosure, gripping tightly in a way that so adorably contradicted the flat confidence of her typical expressions. Her hair was twisting and flying in multiple directions, deep green ribbons that resembled the waves of the dark sea surrounding them.
Jinshi brushed away a tear that wasn't from the sharpness of the wind. The simple beauty of the image before him—nothing but open sky and the woman he loved—it made his chest squeeze too tightly around his heart. It made him yearn for a life that mirrored this sight: nothing but her, no distractions or barriers, nothing looming beyond a near corner. Just Maomao and the expanse of all the years they had remaining in this life, a life that would one day be too short, and made ever shorter by the waste of all this time not being with her simply as he should—a named man, crude and bare as he was meant to be.
"What do you think of when you look out at the sea?"
She shifted slightly back in his direction, her profile now in view. Her lips were pursed in a hum that he could not hear, but he may have felt it vibrate through him all the same.
"Not much. Not enough to speak of, I suppose." She shrugged and gave a little shiver that made Jinshi instinctively scoot closer, as if he could block the gusts of salted breeze that came around all sides of them. "What do you think of?" she asked, still not turning fully in his direction.
He continued to shift next to her, squatting so his cheek rested on the lip of the nest's low wall. He kept his face directed to hers and let his eyes roll up to gaze at that sea again. "I wonder if it would be lonely to be out there on one's own. Fishermen do it often. They say, by following the nature of the waters, you might actually feel more connected. The sea being fed by the rivers and the tributaries that all flow into it. Something like that."
She smiled as if she had known what he was going to say, or at least that it would be something sentimental. Maybe she did. "You may float upon the sea, perched high upon its' waves, but that does not make you one with it, sir. Unless you plan to die and decompose in it, in which case you won't be feeling much at all. Though you'd certainly be inextricably tied to all the waters from then on."
He smiled, too, allowing it to become a grimace for only a moment. Her point was morbid, but it was honest, and her plain way of speaking felt more fitting for their current location. High up and exposed to the elements, nature felt much greater here than in the man-made labyrinth of the city they called home.
Surprisingly, she continued speaking without him needing to further prod her. In fact, her tone grew slightly urgent.
"I know you wish to be free of the imperial line, but please don't be mistaken about what it means to really be free." She turned to look at him properly now. Her eyes were cold but purposeful. "True freedom, it doesn't exist. We all have to eat. We have to sleep. We age, we get ill and recover or we don't. We make promises and pacts and form expectations. All people are fools and bound by something or another. Only the fortunate of us are bound by that which we truly care for."
He took a moment to consider why she was telling him this. Maomao rarely spoke at length, but she had been through some traumatic events in their final stretch in the Western Capital. He sensed that something had changed in her and it pained him to know he had failed to protect her from such inciting forces once again. He had heard the reports, but he wished he knew what all those events had meant to her. He wished he knew what he meant to her.
"Is that what you'd like? To only be bound by your herbs and experiments and nothing else?"
Her eyes did sparkle at his words but she surprised him further by shaking her head. "Not entirely. Important things would be missing." She cocked her head to the left and smiled as if she were withholding yet another secret, but her eyes still bore into him as if expecting him to know what it was. "And total freedom within too a small pen is actually confinement, you know."
Jinshi lifted his head so he could rub his temples. Those words bore too much meaning. His greatest fears, his inadequacies, he couldn't bear it. Not to mention, he wanted to give this woman everything she wanted in life, but he still hadn't the slightest idea of what that was.
"It all just makes my head hurt."
She grabbed his forearms, stilling his movements. "It's a good thing your apothecary is on board. I hear she can help with that."
He sighed, looking up at her with a pout. "It makes my heart hurt, too."
"Well…" Maomao dipped her head to the other side. "I think… maybe that’s something I’m here to help you with, too."
In the time it took for her to speak that last sentence, Jinshi's breathing had already slowed to the cusp of being ragged. As usual, he was ten steps behind and out of his depth. Maomao's every word had grown heavier on her tongue and landed solidly at his feet, which they were both now crouched over as they had leaned forward into awkward kneeling positions. Neither cared nor seemed to notice the contortions of their lower bodies, fully enraptured by the proximity of their faces, which were growing ever nearer.
She suddenly turned her face up squarely to his. A pointed blink of her heavy lashes solidifies his focus. The world beyond her went fuzzy and his senses were flooded with the scent of herbs that had surely been drifting in the air the whole time she’d been at his side. But now her scent was flooding his airways and her gaze seized his eyes. These senses of her were being permanently written on the walls of his memories, to be played back on repeat until the day he dies. They became gravitational, drawing him forward by a tether hooked some place just below his collarbones. It's like all the layers of flesh and muscle of his chest were but a whisper she brushed aside to leave his spine and heart open for the taking.
With an extra tip of her head, his vision swirled, tipping on axis with the angle, the same angle of her lips at the center of the vortex that was slowly, so slowly pulling him in. He wasn't conscious enough of his movements for it to be clumsy. It was the most natural thing in the world, for the soft pads of his lips to land upon hers. It wasn't the first time they'd kissed, but it was the first time he’d felt his whole body, his whole being—his veritable soul—become fluid, pouring endlessly into this singular point of their meeting. The edges of his lips tensed with a soft second wave of his pouring of himself into her. His complete surrender seamlessly became an insistent press of his offering: take me, every fiber of me, all my body, mind, and spirit, laid with purpose upon the offering table of their lips.
It was the most sensual moment of his life, more intimate and bare than any fantasy of lovemaking he’d played through with his hand and some oil in his lonely bed. How can a kiss, a mere handful of breaths now so ragged that the sound of them was roaring in his ears, feel more solemn than a vow?
He felt the back of his tongue tense, preparing to rise into the parting of Maomao’s lips to seek entry, but suddenly, even to him, Jinshi swung that momentum back into a gentle retreat.
His hands tenderly cupped the edges of her face, sealing the frayed edges of a moment about to become untethered.
As he withdrew and opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was Maomao’s eyelids also rising, revealing pupils pulsing into wide black pools. He could almost see traces of his self that he’d left behind there, in the deep recesses of her perception. Maomao clearly felt it too, a flush burned across her cheeks and up the smooth skin of her slender neck. Her chest pulsed with her stuttering breath. His gaze continued to fall until his forehead met hers, needing a moment to recover from everything he's ever wanted.
What a fool he was, being overwhelmed by his most fervent desires. His heart split with the ache of hesitation. He breathed but he didn't not know how.
Wordlessly, she drew back and sat properly with her back against the short wall. He mirrored her position, leaning back and gazing at her in open wonder. Her feet were at his right hip and his to hers. He wrapped an arm over her shins and placed his hand timidly at her calf. When the edge of her lip quirked up, he relaxed and allowed himself to rub soft, reassuring circles over her skirt.
When their breaths returned to their normal pace, the noise of the wind returned to Jinshi's ears, but they talk over it. How much longer is left of this journey, the antics of their companions, and oh! A brother left behind! These things, too, he wrote into the journal of his heart, to revisit another day.