It was something of a privilege, a luxury for you to have survived. The Lord Ravager had come for you, and for the rest of the merchants guild; the Luofu had been attacked, and no one had predicted such a matter. Between Phantylia and the mara-struck Cloud Knights, damages were beyond considerable. The ‘Dozing General’ of the Xianzhou Luofu, Jing Yuan had been involved, Madam Yukong mobilised, and the whole Astral Express had been around to help.

Now that you thought about it, you shouldn’t have survived. She should have. The one major victim of this crisis; Miss Tingyun. You had mourned, alongside Yukong, maybe even Jing Yuan himself. It hurt deeply to mourn her loss, to learn how to accept it, and live beyond it. Perhaps it were the only time you had ever seem Madam Yukong shed a tear in remembrance of that young Foxian girl whom she’d held on her lap when she was but a child aboard the Starskiff.

With time, you had managed to settle in. It wasn’t as painful when you thought about it, but it still stung. — You had taken the habit, the ritual some would say, to visit Tingyun every month. Well, the lone tombstone that had been left for her. It didn’t help that no one had managed to recover poor Tingyun’s body, but it was already a relief to know that she wasn’t forgotten.

One of those days, as it was the day of your monthly visit, you walked over to the tombstone under the tree and the bright light, further away from the bustling city of the Luofu. You carried a bouquet of flowers along with you as usual. — When you arrived, there was a woman standing in front of the memorial, her features shining slightly under the setting sun. She looked familiar, but yet so foreign. Her chestnut hair, tousled in a soft cascade along her shoulders, her soft Foxian ears, the brown gown with golden linings… your mind could only drift to one person;

” … Tingyun ?”

Although… Not quite.