The fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the Lantern Festival.
The whole of Dragon Ascending Town had awakened before dawn fully broke.
The first lantern had been hung from a doorway while the sky was still cyan gray. Then came the second, the third, lighting up one after another beneath the eaves on both sides of the main street, as though someone had lit a string of fixed lights along the road through the night. Each patch of light stood about the same distance apart, joining into an unbroken warm-colored line.
The breakfast shop owners were the first to head out. After hanging a red lantern outside his door, one owner turned and nodded to the noodle shop owner across the street. The two called out greetings over half a street, exchanged no further words, and returned inside to prepare ingredients for breakfast.
After that, people from the grain shops and cloth stores began hanging out lanterns as well. Even the shoemaker's shop deep in the alley lit a lamp at its door. The light was uneven, as if it came from an old lantern dug out at the last minute, yet it still stretched along the wall, giving off a faint warmth through the Morning Mist.
The streets were far livelier than usual that morning. Several shops that rarely opened on ordinary days had thrown open their doors, displaying dried fruits and sweet cakes outside to draw in passersby.
There were twice as many street vendors as usual—sellers of candied hawthorns, paper pinwheels, and small bamboo-woven trinkets—each occupying a fixed stretch of street. Their cries rose and fell among the sporadic firecrackers sounding in the distance.
Lanterns filled the eaves on both sides of the main street. Whenever the wind swept in from an alley, the tassels swayed