[ID A digital pencil drawing with deep shadows overlays a bright red with accents of soft pink. Luo Fumeng sits before a mirror, two candles glowing at the bottom right, while Liu Qianqiao stands behind her taking a pin from her hair. Both women smile softly. End ID]
SHL WOMEN WEEK DAY 1 - Candlelight
Art by @cinziq, words by @owlpockets. Liu Qianqiao/Luo Fumeng, G, no content warnings.
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Luo Fumeng found peace in ritual. The repetition of simple tasks soothed her troubled thoughts, made the memories sit less bitter and insistent on her mind. She dismissed the women that helped her undress, then lit the candles near her dressing table on her own. Examining her reflection in the mirror, she waited, as she did every week.
“Master,” Liu Qianqiao greeted at her door with a slight bow. Her elegant face with its intricate knot of scars was endlessly fascinating in the candlelight.
“Qianqiao,” Luo Fumeng responded warmly. With small wave of her hand she indicated she was ready to begin. “How have you been? I missed you last week.”
“Busy, but well,” Qianqiao responded as she began removing her hair ornaments and lining them up on the dressing table, one by one.
“Tell me,” Luo Fumeng suggested, as she did every week, when Liu Qianqiao began to untie her hair.
Liu Qianqiao smiled beautifully behind her in the mirror, as she always did.
hi everyone :) i thought i’d write something up about how english language cnovel fandom interprets and does, or doesn’t, have access to the original authors of the novel.
i want to take a specific instance of a moxiang tongxiu interview answer and look at the different interpretations fandom has had of it, in this case, the infamous “everyone in modao zushi but wangxian is straight” line.
In that moment, he suddenly felt no pain, nor apprehension, instead just an unusual tranquility. As he held the man who was on his last breath, there was only one thought in his mind; if Fu Shen died, he would just go back to the capital, take Changzhi’s dog head off, then use the blade on himself so that he could go with him. Families turned to dust together. No exceptions.
“Master!” The steward walked over with quick steps from the other side of the yard, holding a thin letter. He offered it up to him with both hands. “Master, a military official just now dropped by to pass on this letter. He said this was the Duke’s letter to home, recently brought back from the Southwest.”
Yan Xiaohan’s hand violently jolted. The hydrangea was instantly baldened by the grip, shaking off a field of white petals. His ears were inundated with the sound of his own heartbeat. “Hand it over so I can see,” he said, barely managing to look calm on the surface.
The envelope was very thin, and sealed up tight. Inside it was only one transparent sheet of letter paper. Yan Xiaohan feared using too much hand strength and tearing it while he was pulling it out.
Why was there only one sheet? Those five words of ‘how does mine wife fare’ were still heavily branded onto his heart. What had he written this time, as he was beyond the infinite landscape?
When he opened up the twice-folded paper, his whole body went completely still, maintaining its letter-holding pose.
What was this crap?
There wasn’t a single word on it, just messy ink marks that looked like a lump of indecipherable scribbles. Only after staring at it for half the day did he depend upon his lacking imagination to follow along Fu Shen’s inventive brush strokes.
The back was the black stuff. The belly was the white. The mouth was extending from the front, and the claws were sticking out of the rear. Those several strokes sticking out of the top were… wings?That wasn’t right. What the heck had four wings?
No matter what, Fu Shen had been a Don from a rich family. Even if his art couldn’t be a family heirloom, it ought to be able to allow someone to make out what he had drawn. What was with this giant mass of black that someone could stick somewhere and ward off evil spirits with?!
Yan Xiaohan was completely unaware that his own appearance of being unsure how to react while gritting his teeth in rage was, in the eyes of others, more liable to terrify someone than the picture was. He was like a little kid that had been drawn in by some novelty plaything, focusing all his attention on looking for an answer and not at all considering the possibility that the image was a casually-drawn doodle with no meaning whatsoever.
Fu Shen wouldn’t make sport of him from thousands of li away, of course, but he really had expended all of his effort to be able to draw in this style.
Yan Xiaohan tried to identify it for a long time, looking at it rightside up and upside down, until he finally discovered that the judgments he’d had just now were off. What stuck out the front wasn’t a mouth, but two bird heads, and what came from the rear weren’t claws, either, but tails. The four traces of ink were two pairs of wings. Then, going along with the black back and white belly, the solution was eventually on the verge of coming to him.
Drawn on the paper was… a pair of geese.
The moment he came to understand, the look he had suddenly softened, as if he had been struck in the heart by something. The corners of his mouth slightly raised up, but there seemed to be the shine of water filling his eyes.
The letter had been sent back along with the military report. Because there was a risk of it being stolen and looked at, Fu Shen couldn’t bluntly state what he was thinking, so he used means like this to send him a ‘goose letter’.
What ‘swan gooses’ symbolized was a hidden meaning that only they could implicitly understand.
The goose was a loyal bird, having one partner all its life, and flying across the world with them.