Chapter 37: The Dragon Who Unknotted Things

The cuddle puddle, as it turned out, had a very specific ending sequence.

It began with Hóu Wáng waking up first, stretching his grizzled arms above his head with a yawn that showed every one of his remaining teeth. Then, like a slow-motion avalanche in reverse, the monkeys peeled themselves off the pile one by one, scratching, yawning, and immediately launching into cheerful arguments about what to have for the afternoon meal.

Nobody helped Cāng Jì.

He emerged from the bottom of the heap by degrees, first one hand, then a shoulder, then his face, like a man surfacing from a very furry swamp. His sunset hair, which had arrived in the monkey territory perfectly sleek and celestial-grade, was now a spectacular architectural disaster.

There was a small sprig of dried grass behind his left ear. There was moss on his cheek. There was something, and Bai Yue decided, for the sake of her own wellbeing, that she would never investigate whatr, matted into the back of his robes.

He sat upright on the platform, blinking slowly at the world with the expression of someone who had just been personally wronged by the entire concept of existence.

Bai Yue, extricating herself from the middle of the pile, didn’t look much better. Her wrap had twisted halfway around her body, her hair was a nest, and she was ninety percent certain that she had been using someone’s tail as a pillow for the last hour.

They looked at each other.

Cāng Jì reached up and removed the grass from behind his ear. He looked at it. He set it down with great dignity.

“Not a word,” he said.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Bai Yue said.

“Good.”

“You look very…..natural.”

“I said not a word.”

“That was only four words.”

Cāng Jì closed his eyes like a man counting very slowly to ten in a language that had more than ten numbers. “Star-thief,” he said, very calmly, “I have been crushed under a pile of primates for the better part of an hour. I am running on one mango and the sheer force of my own outrage. I am begging you. Silence.”

Bai Yue pressed her lips together. She managed three full seconds.

“The moss really brings out your eyes, though.”

“…..”

“It does! Very complementary! The green against the gold—”

“I will raise your debt to three stones.”

She shut up.

The afternoon settled into something almost peaceful after that.

The monkeys were busy, the maintenance from earlier had revealed three platforms that needed reweaving, and the older males had taken over the work with the focused energy of people who knew exactly what they were doing. Hóu Xián had vanished somewhere into the upper canopy, his distant cackling suggesting he was either causing mischief or preparing to cause mischief, both equally likely.

Hóu Wáng sat at the far end of the platform, eyes half-closed, his tail swishing lazily. The Lumina-Stone pulsed its slow blue heartbeat from where he had hidden it.

Cāng Jì sat with his back against the ancient Iron-Wood tree, his arms resting on his knees, looking out through the gaps in the canopy at the slice of sky above. The gold light of late afternoon caught in his hair and the scales dusting his cheekbones, making him look, despite the moss, exactly like what he was. Something ancient. Something that had watched the world from very high up for a very long time.

Bai Yue sat nearby, picking a monkey’s shed fur out of her sleeve, and tried not to think about the ten days remaining on her quest counter.

Ruì Xuě is back in the village, she thought. Probably playing with the triplets right now. Probably laughing at something A-Li did. Probably perfectly fine.

Probably not thinking about her at all.

She exhaled through her nose, slow and quiet.

It’s fine. It’s fine. You have ten days. You’ve done harder things than making a cub smile. You fought five Vultures with a stick and your bare hands. You survived Grandma Gū Gū and her iron-wood staff of justice. You can do this.

Tiān-Mìng, if you are listening, a little divine assistance would be greatly appreciated right about now.

Silence from the goddess, as usual. Truly the most unreliable deity in any realm.

~

It was Cāng Jì who noticed the small monkey first.

Bai Yue only became aware of it when she heard the Dragon shift beside her, a small, subtle movement.

She looked up.

At the very edge of the platform, as far from the busy workers as possible, sat a young monkey. Small enough that he was probably still considered a juvenile, his golden fur still had the slightly fluffy, unfinished quality of something not quite grown. He was sitting with his back to them, hunched over his own lap, his shoulders tight with frustration.

He was tangled.

Badly tangled, as it happened. A thick vine, the kind used to repair the safety nets, had somehow wound itself into a spectacular knot around his tail and his left arm, trapping both together against his side. The more he pulled at it, the worse it seemed to get, the vine tightening with every tug like it had a personal vendetta against him.

He was not crying. He was trying to maintain his pride, his jaw set, hands moving faster and faster even as the knot laughed at him.

None of the other monkeys had noticed. They were too busy, too loud, too occupied with the platforms above.

Bai Yue started to get up.

Cāng Jì was already moving.

She stopped, surprised, and watched him cross the platform.

He crouched down beside the small monkey, which put him considerably loer than his usual altitude of maximum dignity, and looked at the knot.

The young monkey froze.

He turned his head very slowly, like a creature that has just realized something enormous is standing next to it and is calculating whether or not it can run. His huge amber eyes went from the knot, to Cāng Jì’s hands, to Cāng Jì’s face, and then all the way back to the knot again.

“…” said the young monkey.

“Hold still,” said Cāng Jì.

And then, without further ceremony, the Dragon Prince of the First Generation began to unknot a vine.

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