David

Alice continued to play her guqin past sunset, and until the sun rose again. It was the dawn which snapped them out of the trance they had found themselves in - a trance of Songs and silkworms.

An early morning mist had set in and entered the room through the open balcony. For a moment, Alice did look like a fairy in a painting, playing the guqin in the rosy dawn, in a room with a floor that looked like a cloud.

"How long have I been playing?" muttered Alice, suddenly sensing how strange the situation was.

David shrugged his shoulders. "Feels like if there wasn't any natural light, we could have been here forever. Or fifteen minutes."

Alice pushed her guqin off of their laps and onto the bed and then stretched, cracking her joints so loudly that David winced.

"Don't do that," he said. "It's weird."

Alice cracked her neck. "Feels good."

There was a little smile on her lips and a twinkle in her eyes.

"Stop it!"

Alice pouted, then pushed her guqin back into the cloth case with a practiced motion and slung it over her back.

David got off the bed and stretched as well, then yawned as he grabbed his flute off the table. He frowned. "I'm not even tired, I'm just bored," he explained, mostly to himself.

He let Alice take him by the hand to the balcony, where they stared at the docks of Ping'an.

"There's not actually that many people headed to the Inner City," David realized, counting only a handful of men and women in robes on each of the docks.

"And most of them are actually people who are working the event," Alice said. There was a berth between the men and women carrying weapons and everyone else.

Whether they were guests or workers at the Core Formation ceremony, people were piling onto the ships and boats. They were headed to the island that split Sky River.

David and Alice hopped off the balcony and meandered towards the closest dock, hand in hand. It was the dock north of the one where Jing had parked his ship.

This dock was a little larger and better maintained - the planks were less rotted and the piles that anchored it into the river's bedrock looked new. There was a neat line of people waiting in line to board a ferry, which seemed to be unmanned.

A single mustached man with a white bib stood at the end of the dock, directing people onto the ferry.

David and Alice immediately stood in the queue.

"Out of my way," called out a voice behind David and Alice. "Is this the hospitality of the Jiang family, to let servants and workers ride to their ceremony before a member of Clear Skies Sect?"

The man who had spoken looked to be a few years older than David. No one was impeding his casual stroll towards the edge of the pier - in fact, most people scooted over to the edge of the dock as he passed, even though its width could fit five large men abreast. Some of the servants and workers in question bowed at him hurriedly.

The man was decently handsome - as most cultivators were. He had a sword which he carried mid-scabbard in his left hand. His hair was in the style of other cultivators - a bun at the top held together by a piece of green jade. He wore rather ghastly pale yellow robes which would have looked far better on a woman.

He strode past the servants and workers and stood in front of the man with the Jiang family bib, and said nothing, tapping his foot impatiently.

"Hello, Path Friend and Honored Guest," said the man with the bib, looking almost annoyed as the group of four workers who had boarded the boat quickly got off and back onto the dock. "Invitation, please?"

The cultivator from the Clear Skies sect looked at the man as though he was an ant that had dared to crawl onto his food, but still slipped his hand into his robes and withdrew a small slip of deep green jade - as long as his pinky and half as wide. It was the shape of an oval.

"You're telling this daddy, Chan Changshou, to show you his invitation?" the cultivator barked into Mustache's face. David didn't need to look at Alice to know she was rolling her eyes. The man was unironically named Long Life and unironically referred to himself as 'this daddy'. What was wrong with him?

Chan Changshou crushed the jade slip in his fist and then opened it, allowing the dust to fall through the mist.

"Please board, Daoist Chan," said Mustache. The moment Daoist Chan got onto the boat, Mustache waved his hand and David heard the sound of his Song and the boat began moving towards the island.

Mustache turned back to look at the collection of servants and workers when he was out of earshot. "I hate people like that," he said to the four who had exited the boat. Everyone on the dock laughed easily.

"But guests are guests," he said, with a jovial smile. "I'm the person who's the worst off here. At least all of you are getting paid."

The laughter intensified a bit. Mustache seemed to be pretty good at working the crowd. Previously, they'd been eyeing Mustache warily, but now he'd become one of them.

The boat came back to the dock without a passenger and the four workers boarded. Mustache made the same hand motion and it set off in the same way.

After fifteen minutes or so, David and Alice stepped onto the boat without a hitch. Mustache didn't even give them a second glance after he saw Alice's guqin case and David's flute.

When they got onto the boat, they realized the other two passengers were familiar. The boat was only several lengths from the dock when David knew where he’d seen them before.

"Doesn't this feel like fate?" Alice purred at the other two women in the boat. She had recognized them immediately.

It was the waitress who had served them in the jiulu and the girl who’d been playing the guqin.

The waitress squeaked and tried to stand hurriedly, but the morning current was rocking the boat too much, so she nodded her head at them instead of bowing.

Alice gave her a conspiratorial smile and leaned in to whisper in the girl’s ear. "Shhh, we're here as musicians," she said, bringing a finger to her lips.

Alice winked.

The waitress blushed and closed her eyes, shivering. David could hear the sound of her Song tempering her. It was a good Song - even in rhythm and complex in timbre. It resembled his own, if with less deliberation.

It must have been the daylight, but there was something more whole about her compared to the girl they'd met at the jiulu who had been able to finish the poem he'd quoted.

The other girl, who wasn't nearly as pretty but for the earnest gleam in her dark eyes, noticed Alice's guqin. "You play as well?"

Alice nodded at her and her smile became something more easy. "I do," she said. "I haven't been playing for a long time, so I'd love to learn from you."

The girl immediately averted her eyes, pushing together the tips of her fingers, which reddened like the tips of her ears.

"Tell me, what are your names?" Alice asked conversationally.

A deep shiver went through the waitress, but she met David's mildly curious gaze with determination. "My friend is Jiang Meihua. I'm Jiang Sanli."

"Sisters?” David asked.

Sanli smiled at him and nodded. “Not in blood, but in life,” she said.

David mulled over her words and was then surprised. “And you two are part of the Jiang family?"

Sanli shook her head this time. "It's customary for orphans in Ping'an to have the last name Jiang, because we were raised by the river.”

She looked around, as if someone were listening. “The Jiang family patriarch was an orphan himself," she said, in an attempt to explain.

"Like how people of the North would use the name Snow," said Alice, not referring to this world, or even her own.

"You've been to the northern continent?" asked Sanli. She gave Alice her full attention. An errant finger found a strand of hair and twirled it as her eyes traced over Alice’s jawline and her unblemished hands.

"Something like that," Alice replied evasively, paying the girl no mind. She was thinking of Stories that weren’t her own.

As the boat made it closer to the island, they fell into a bit of a companionable silence. Sanli was dressed in the same gauzy green silk she'd been wearing two nights ago. She shivered from the cold of the mist.

David stared at her with a bit of pity, wishing that he hadn't left his windbreaker back at the temple of the Falling Leaves. He imagined placing it on the girl's shoulders, which were uncovered, and the way she would smile at him in thanks.

Alice glanced at him - she did not look pleased. David rolled his eyes. Alice played with her nails. David realized with a start that Sanli was really very attractive.

He held in a sigh. Alice was far more upset than she let on.

His hands skimmed the water as he leaned back and looked past them all into the horizon.

He caught a flash of disappointment and then, inexplicably, fear in Sanli's eyes as she looked from David to Alice.

After another minute, they arrived at the island and climbed out of the boat. There was no one on the dock to greet them, but after they'd all disembarked, the boat reversed course at triple speed. Alice looked disappointed that it wasn't travelling that fast when they were in it.

Ping'an's Inner City was an enormous courtyard surrounding a stone pillar that reached into the sky, holding the carving of a mulberry flower proudly on display. A stage had been built on the edge of the courtyard, but a party was congregating around the group of musicians that surrounded the pillar in a semicircle.

There were over ten musicians all told, playing guqins, flutes, lutes and fiddles on little wooden benches. Most of those watching weren't wearing the bibs of the Jiang family.

A steady stream of people continued to arrive from the docks on both sides of the island which flanked the courtyard.

David pulled Alice aside. "Uh, I can't actually play any songs on my flute," he said.

Alice scoffed. "That's why we're going to this as guests," she said. She looked troubled. "But I really, really wanted to play." Alice tapped the guqin slung on her back, staring at the girl, who'd riden along with them in the boat, setting up beside an erhu player with a quiet envy.

"Go play then," said David. "I'll join the crowd and gossip a bit."

He smirked at her. "You'll end up offending everyone if you talk to them anyway."

David then tapped her on the nose and planted a light kiss on her lips to quiet the coming protest. With that, he walked off to join the party.

By David's count, there were thirty guests who had arrived so far and they congregated in four evenly sized groups. As he drew closer, a boy who looked no older than twelve waved at him excitedly.

"Path Friend!" shouted the boy over the din.

David glanced at Alice, who had blended in rather seamlessly with the rest of the musicians, then turned his attention to the boy.

The boy wore light red robes. Tying his bun was a red and white piece of string rather than a jade ornament. He was carrying a spear slung over his back with a vaguely familiar purple ribbon.

David approached his group, which included the man who pushed them out of the way on the docks previously - the yellow robed Chan Changshou wearing a stereotypical sneer.

David gave a cursory bow, barely inclining his head. He chose his words carefully.

"Greetings, Path Friend. I am Daoist Cheng Wen, the inheriting disciple of Eagle Peak of the True Sutra Sect."