The music played on.

Couples spun around the fire, their shadows stretching and shrinking in the lantern light.

Bai Yue was still dancing, still laughing, still spinning between her three husbands like a woman who had forgotten that the world contained anything but joy.

But at the edge of the clearing, something was changing.

A group had arrived. There were about twenty of them, young males and females, their fur groomed and their clothes clean. They came from the southern tribes, Elder Zhao announced later, here to celebrate the Moon’s Embrace and strengthen the bonds between territories.

The young females immediately gravitated toward the jaguars, and the jaguar males, still shy, still uncertain in their new home, did not know what to do with the attention.

Their ears went flat. Their tails tucked. They looked at Yǎ Lì for guidance.

Yǎ Lì laughed and waved them forward.

"Go," she said. "Dance. You have been sad for too long."

They went.

And among the new arrivals, weaving through the crowd like water through stones, was a girl.

She was small, smaller than most of the other visitors, with dark hair that fell past her shoulders and pale green scales dusting her cheekbones and the backs of her hands.

Her eyes were the color of jade, bright and curious. She found the snake twins first.

"Shé Yì! Shé Èr!"

The twins turned. Their faces lit up.

"Lì Jìng!" they said in unison, and they embraced her, three snake beastmen tangled together in a mess of arms and tails and happy hissing.

"You came!" Shé Yì said, pulling back to look at her face.

"I said I would," Lì Jìng replied. Her voice was light, nothing like the sharp hiss of her cousins. "Mother said I needed to see the world. She said I could not spend my whole life in the marshes."

"Your mother is wise," Shé Èr said.

"Your mother is terrifying," Shé Yì corrected.

"Same thing," Shé Èr said with a shrug.

Lì Jìng laughed and looked around the clearing. Her jade eyes swept over the dancers, the fire, the piles of sleeping cubs. They landed on a boy standing alone near the edge of the crowd.

He was tall for his age, with hair that fell across his face and distinctive white markings on his ears. His red panda tail was tucked close to his legs, pressed flat as if he was trying to make himself smaller.

His arms were crossed over his chest. He was watching the dancers with an expression that said he would rather be anywhere else on the entire continent.

"Who is that?" Lì Jìng asked, her chin lifting slightly in his direction.

The snake twins followed her gaze. Shé Yì groaned. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"That is Hóng Yè," he said, his voice bearing a suspicious tone.

"He is the cursed female’s son," Shé Èr added, lowering his voice even though there was no one nearby to hear.

"He is weird," Shé Yì said.

"Very weird," Shé Èr agreed.

"He does not talk to anyone."

"He just glares."

"All the time."

"Even when he is eating."

"Especially when he is eating."

Lì Jìng tilted her head, studying the boy from across the clearing. She watched the way his eyes moved, tracking the dancers but never landing on anyone for too long. She watched the way his tail stayed pressed against his legs, as if he was afraid it might betray him.

"He looks lonely," she said.

"He looks like he wants to be left alone," Shé Yì said.

Lì Jìng considered this. Her mother had raised her in the quiet of the marshes, where the days were long and the nights were longer and the only voices were the whisper of the reeds and the croak of the frogs.

She had learned, that loneliness looked different on different people. Some wore it like a heavy coat, obvious and overwhelming.

Others wore it like a second skin, so close and so constant that they forgot it was there at all.

She thought Hóng Yè might be the second kind.

"Same thing," she said, and before the twins could stop her, she was already walking.

~

Hóng Yè saw her coming.

He had noticed her when she arrived. He had noticed the pale green scales on her cheekbones, catching the firelight like tiny mirrors. He had noticed the way she laughed when she embraced the snake twins, her whole body tilting forward, unguarded and free.

He had looked away immediately.

He was not interested. He was never interested. People were exhausting and conversations were exhausting and everything about being around other people made his skin feel too tight.

He had spent years perfecting the art of being left alone, and he was very good at it.

But she kept walking.

She stopped in front of him, close enough that he could smell the marsh on her skin, damp earth and water lilies and something green growing in the sun.

"Hello," she said.

Hóng Yè said nothing.

"I am Lì Jìng," she said. She did not seem bothered by his silence. "I am Shé Yì and Shé Èr’s cousin. From the southern marshes."

He still said nothing.

She tilted her head, and a strand of dark hair slipped loose from behind her ear.

"The twins told me about you," she said.

Hóng Yè’s jaw tightened. "What did they say?"

"That you were weird."

He blinked. He had expected something worse, gossip, rumors, the kind of stories that followed the children of the cursed female wherever they went. But weird?

"That is all?" he asked.

"They said you do not talk to anyone."

"That is true."

"They said you just glare."

"That is also true."

"They said you glare even when you are eating."

Hóng Yè’s ears went warm. "I do not glare when I am eating."

"You are glaring right now."

"I am not glaring. This is just my face."

Lì Jìng studied his face. His jaw. His eyes. The furrow between his brows that had been there for so long he had forgotten what his forehead looked like without it.

"Your face is very serious," she said.

"It is a serious face."

"Does it ever smile?"

"Sometimes," he said.

"What does it look like when it smiles?"