On the day winter arrived in Serene Water Snake Valley, Xiao Fan was cooking sugar in the courtyard.
He used the smallest possible flame in the medicine furnace.
There was no pill lightning, no elders watching the ceremony, only a low stool and two empty dishes beside the furnace.
Jinyao lay coiled on the eaves, watching the sky with utmost seriousness.
After watching for a while, Jinyao lowered its head and asked, "No ninth-grade pills today either?"
"No."
"What about tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow, I'm fixing the roof."
Jinyao looked at the gash it had been unable to resist slashing into the roof with lightning a few days earlier, then quietly retreated into the corner.
Xiao Fan ladled the syrup out of the furnace.
He added honey to the first dish.
To the second, he added a little extra medicinal fruit juice.
He remembered a tiny voice once saying that she wanted two portions.
When Zi Yan returned, a thin dusting of snow rested on her shoulders.
She had just returned from East Dragon Island, the imperial seal tucked in her sleeve, but none of those heavy crown ornaments adorned her hair. As the courtyard gate opened, she smelled the sweet scent first, then saw the two dishes on the table.
Her steps stopped.
Xiao Fan looked up.
"While they're warm."
Zi Yan walked over, picked up the first piece of candy, bit off half, then pulled the second dish toward herself.
"They're all mine?"
"They're all yours."
Her lashes trembled faintly.
Her soul's light had long since returned whole, and Xiao Xiao Yan no longer sat alone within Xiao Fan's Heart Seal. But those voices, those memories, and that tiny, stubborn insistence on always having two portions had never been erased.
They had returned to her.
When she remembered, she would