Xiao Ning'er sat on the edge of the bed, her hands resting on her knees, her fingertips unconsciously clutching the hem of her clothes. The oil lamp in the wooden cabin was still lit, its dim yellow glow casting their shadows on the wall, one tall and one short, close together.
She had been thinking about exploring the village tomorrow, about the way the deputy clan chief, Tie Xiong, had looked at Shen Fei, and about what exactly the ritual was meant to worship.
She teased out the loose threads in her mind one by one, her thoughts still fairly orderly. But somehow, as she thought, they suddenly took a turn, leading her somewhere she had never noticed before.
Her gaze moved from the bucket in the corner to the tea bowls on the table, then from the bowls to the two chairs set side by side, before finally settling on the wooden bed in the middle of the room.
There was only one bed.
She quickly glanced at the other side of the room.
A narrower bamboo cot stood against the wall, covered with a thin, coarse cloth mattress and a neatly folded quilt. But it had clearly been brought in at the last minute, because a few fresh traces of mud still clung to its edges, as though it had just been carried over from somewhere else.
She had not noticed when she came in. Or rather, she had noticed, but her thoughts had not gone in that direction.
Now that loose thread in her mind suddenly pulled taut, and she finally realized-the guest room the clan chief had arranged for them had only one proper bed and a makeshift bamboo cot. That meant she and Shen Fei would be sleeping in the same room tonight.
The tips