Sweet Romance11 min read
The Lantern Night I Found My Father and My Future
ButterPicks11 views
The sixth day of the second month was a perfect day.
"It took him eight times to ask the old master for a day like this," Fox said, as if it were a joke he had practiced.
I sat cross-legged on the bed and kept my hands busy with the last stitches of the wedding gown. "Eight times?" I asked, and my needle paused.
"Eight." Fox tapped his finger against the wooden floor. "He counted the day eight times. You should be proud. Not everyone gets an eight-count luck day."
"You mean my groom counted it," I corrected before I caught myself. Then I smiled at the thought. "Rowan counted it."
Fox shoved a paper mask into my hands and shoved it up to my face. "Wear this. You look like a statue when you don't wear it."
"Why would I?" I muffled through the mask. The sewing had kept me company all winter. The house smelled of silk and rice wine and Maureen's nagging.
"My mother says, 'A bride in rain is bad luck.' She has been grumbling since New Year about the clouds." I laid another stitch. "She would like the Dragon King to move his temple."
"Your mother would do anything for control," Fox said. He had his shoulders pulled up, pretending to be mysterious. "Let her worry. Tonight we will walk among the lights before the marriage. Tonight the city belongs to you and Rowan and the lanterns."
"Fox," I said. "You promised Mother you'd be home early."
"I promised a lie," he answered with a grin. "But a small lie on a big night is allowed." He rapped the table. "Besides, what kind of brother would I be if I let you sit at home mending while the whole town lights lanterns for a future bride?"
I couldn't refuse. The stitches waited; the world of paper and fire beckoned.
"We'll go as guests," he said. "We won't meet anyone important."
"You lie very badly," I told him, and he did a little bow. "Then promise me one thing."
"What's that?"
"Don't let anyone speak of marrying me in a loud voice. My mother will hear and cause trouble."
He laughed. "You mean like she didn't already know? Done."
The weather had not listened to my mother's worry. All month rain had kept us close to the house. When the clouds finally parted on the night of the lanterns, it felt like the sky had given us permission to be small and frivolous.
We walked into the street with a paper lantern like a small sun between us. The top of the city was nothing but a river of lamps and laughter.
"Are you cold?" Rowan asked, taking my hand before I could realize he had reached us.
I turned. For a heartbeat the noise shrank to a thin thread and I only heard him: a voice I had stored like spring seeds.
"You're here early," I said. My cheeks went warm. He was wearing a new robe, the color of deep river water. He smiled in a way I knew would always find me.
"One does not arrive on a lantern night without cause," he said, as if that explained everything.
Fox watched us, eyes bright. "They're all saying a bride and her groom should stay apart on the eve," he said loudly. "But here they are, breaking tradition."
Rowan leaned close to Fox as if to whisper. "We had our reasons." He looked at me and his hand tightened by just a fraction.
"You never tell me your reasons," I said, half teasing, half serious. I could hear people nearby, the merchants calling out, the clack of toy drums, the faint sound of a poet reciting.
Rowan laughed quietly. "No need to give away all my secrets."
We walked among the booths. Rowan stopped me in front of a stall piled with carved masks, their faces both comic and solemn. He picked one up and put it on my face without ceremony.
"Now you look fierce," he said.
I squinted at him through the carved wood. "Do I frighten the children?"
"Only the ones who never learned to laugh." He lifted his own mask then, placing it in front of his eyes like a half-moon. "But I think this one suits you."
"You would know." I tapped his elbow.
A voice said, "Who do we have here?" and the world tilted because the voice belonged to Dario Brun.
Dario and Estelle were walking with a pair of paper lanterns, the kind that made the air smell of sugar. Dario bowed in a practiced way and Estelle's smile was soft like firelight.
"Good evening," Rowan said immediately with the ease of someone who could meet any person and make them feel less. "This is my fiancée."
My stomach somersaulted. The words meant heavy things. In the crowd they felt both solemn and absurd.
Dario nodded. "Pleased to see the city so bright tonight. You both look... familiar."
Estelle peered at me a moment. "Yes, I thought so. I cannot place it." She touched the edge of my mask with clever fingers.
"Perhaps the city keeps its faces," Rowan said. Fox snorted.
"Are you two woven? You look like you're tied at the center of a kite," Dario said, half teasing, half inattentive.
"On such a night we must be careful not to tangle," Rowan answered. "But fear not. We will not fly away."
Estelle stepped forward with a gentle hand. "Enjoy the lights. May your home be full of laughter."
They moved off, and the lanterns fell back like a tide.
We were small and utterly together in the crowd. I wanted to ask him everything; instead I marveled at the way his hand held mine—calm, safe.
"Do you remember," I said softly, "the time you tried to sell me a singing fish?"
Rowan's eyes twitched. "That fish had much to teach us. Also, it hated me."
Fox whooped. "He tried to give it away to an old scholar."
"That old scholar fed it wine," Rowan said, pretending to sigh. "It had a better night than I did."
I laughed, but my heart tugged in another direction. "Rowan," I said, "what if it rains on our wedding tomorrow?"
He did not blink. "Then I will ride my horse around the city and sing until the heavens laugh instead of cry."
"I don't want you to be soaked," I said quickly. "You'll catch a cold."
He looked at me like a man who had been entrusted with something fragile. "If I catch a cold, you will have to nurse me. I am counting on you."
Fox elbowed him. "He speaks as if he'll be a bedridden husband."
"I shall float like tea steam," Rowan declared.
We went on until a stall with little paper prayer slips caught my eye. A man in a plain robe was handing them out like small seeds.
The robe looked familiar only because it was the same thin blue as the monastery where my father had once stayed. The man's face was thinner now, and his hands held the slips with a slight shake.
"Father?" The word escaped before I could shape it. The world narrowed to the man and to the sound of my own voice.
Rowan stepped back by a little, his hand still in mine but slack. He watched me as if the night had become a stage with a single actor.
The man looked up and his features loosened like a tide. He blinked, then a wetness gathered in the soft skin at the corner of his eyes.
"Jaya," he said, the name stretched and made bright by time.
"Father," I said again, and then I moved without thinking. My fingers found the hem of his sleeve the way they had when I was small. The crowd around us dissolved into a screen of lamps.
Gideon Blankenship was older than the memory I had kept. His temples had a winter color. He smelled of incense and of the smoke of a thousand quiet mornings. There was a peace around him that had the rough edges of a man who had given himself to something larger.
"You look well," he said, and his voice trembled in the way of someone trying not to reveal the whole of his heart.
"We thought you were..." My voice failed me. I had words for being taken, for time lost, for a child left to a house and a man who went to a mountain. But under the lantern light, with Rowan's hand over mine, I let the small, true thing out.
"I thought you'd come."
Gideon looked at Rowan, then at my face. "You will marry tomorrow? I hoped—" He stopped and pressed his fingers to his forehead, a little awkwardly like a man unused to social forms.
Rowan bowed. "Sir, I will not break my promises."
Gideon smiled like a man who had seen storms and could not be frightened by several more. "Then that is enough."
I felt the heat of tears and let them fall. They were small travelers that found the lantern-lit ground and vanished. Fox had disappeared into the crowd as if he were a wind.
"Come," Gideon said, as if he had planned this all along. "Sit. Tell me everything. Do you still stitch?"
I laughed wetly. "Every day, Father. My hands have not forgotten."
He took my hand in both of his with a gentleness that had nothing to do with ceremony and everything to do with recognition. "A good stitch holds when storms come."
Rowan looked at us the way a man looks at a map he already knows by heart. "Will you bless us?" he asked, like a man who believed in small things that made life possible.
Gideon considered him. "If you will honor her, I will stand witness."
"I will." Rowan's voice was quiet and steady. "I will honor her."
Gideon looked at me again in that particular way fathers have—the way that reaches past age and hurt and says, I see you. "Then let us pray," he said, and he raised a small slip of paper, tucking it between his palms.
He did not speak the long, public prayers I had imagined. He only hummed a soft thing like a reminder of mornings, of meals slid quietly, of promises given under low roofs. Around us people still called and laughed, but there was a small circle of quiet wrapped tight as an embroidered cuff.
"You kept the old ways," Gideon said later, when his hands had warmed again. "You made a good home. I am old; I have been given wrongs I should have not kept. But seeing you with this young man—" He smiled and nodded at Rowan. "I am content."
"Father," I said, and I could not help myself. "Why did you leave?"
Gideon stilled. The lantern light scored his face. For a long moment he measured the air as if the answer was a stone that needed careful setting.
"I thought the mountain would teach me how to hold less," he said finally. "I thought that if I gave up the arguments of the world, I might find a way not to hurt the people I loved by staying. It was not a good plan." He smiled weakly. "I thought I was saving you from my failings by being away. I was selfish."
"You were trying," I said, blunt and soft at once. "You were trying in your own way."
He laughed at that, a little like a man surprised to be forgiven. "We are allowed to try, but sometimes what we need is the touch of those we leave behind."
Rowan squeezed my hand. "You were not gone from my memory," he said. "But your presence here means more than I can say."
"I am glad it's an 'I' now," Gideon said. He turned and looked at the lanterns, the crowd, the paper light. "See how the city holds itself like a bright bowl. I would have missed this for nothing."
"Father," I said, and the name shaped like a bridge. "Please come to the wedding. Sit near Mother. Let her look at you and not only at my hands."
He nodded. "I will come."
Fox returned with two sweet dumplings on a skewer. "I vanquished a tea seller," he declared. "Victory is mine."
Rowan laughed. "Eat quickly. You will make me impatient."
I watched them both: Rowan deliberate like a river and Fox like a sparrow. I thought of the months before when rain had kept us inside, of the nights I stayed awake and stitched to remember things left unsaid. I thought of the small plans a woman keeps when she is given another chance.
"You must let me give my house a small prayer," Gideon said suddenly. "It is not much, but I will come on the morning and speak a few words at your door."
"You will wake Mother," I said, half warning.
"I will bring tea," he promised. "And a braid of air lilies."
"Air lilies?" Fox peered over. "What is that?"
Gideon smiled. "Things have names in the mountain."
"When do you leave the mountain?" Rowan asked.
Gideon shrugged. "Tomorrow, perhaps. Or tomorrow after tomorrow. The mountain does not always obey its people."
"You always do what the mountain says," I teased.
At that, Rowan bowed to my father with a ridiculous amount of ceremony that made me laugh with a sound I had not used in years. The city around us pulled and swelled and then settled. We walked back through the lanes like people returning with a bowl of wine in their hands.
At home, Maureen was waiting in the dim kitchen, her eyes glancing up every few moments like someone who had a clock in her chest.
"You came back early," she said, and her voice had the sleepy triumph of a woman who keeps watch.
"We came because lights made us brave," I said.
"Did you go to the big hall?" she asked in that tone. "Did you stand by the lantern tree?"
"Yes." I kept my voice light. "And I saw Father."
Maureen's face closed like a drawn curtain, then smoothed. "You saw Gideon? He is a good man. He has always been..." She trailed off and paled. "He left long ago."
"He came tonight to give a blessing." I felt the shape of the night's small miracle in my chest. "He asked us to be honest. He will come tomorrow."
Maureen sank into her chair and let out a long breath. "Old things take time to settle," she said, and I understood that in her voice was the memory of the nights she had sat awake keeping accounts and scolding time itself.
I went to my room and looked at the wedding gown. The last stitch gleamed like a small promise. I wrapped the gown around my shoulders and stood in front of the window. Outside the lanterns kept burning, a river of small suns.
I thought of the mountain and the monk and the way he had pressed my hand. I thought of Fox's lies that were born out of care. I thought of Rowan's laugh and the certain tone in his voice when he promised to honor me. I had kept a small ledger in my chest of things I wished I had said in other lives. Rebirth had given me a second chance, and tonight I had used it to speak to a man who had wanted to be both shield and exile.
There is a quiet joy that does not shout. It sits in the corner and mends a torn hem. It wraps itself around a cup of tea and warms you even on cold days.
"Jaya?" Rowan's voice, near the door.
"Yes," I said.
He opened the door and stood in the frame, a silhouette softened by the hallway light. "Do you want me to stay until you sleep?"
"No," I said, and my answer surprised me with its honesty. "Stay. I would like you to stay."
He sat on the edge of the bed and traced a small line on my hand. "I have never been good at waiting," he admitted.
"You are good at arriving," I replied.
He smiled. "I will practice waiting."
He did not try to speak of the wedding arrangements that still waited for us. He did not try to fill the room with words. He sat like a promise made into flesh, steady and simple.
"I used to think," I said after a while, "that rebirth would be fireworks. I thought the world would change like thunder."
"Is that disappointing?" he asked.
"No. It is more like a good stitch. It pulls frayed edges together. It makes a place for new things." I looked at him. "I wanted to see Father. I wanted to say I forgave him and that I was glad."
"You forgive easily," he said.
"I had time to learn," I said. "Time to remember the small things: the way he taught me to hold a needle, the way he hummed in the early light. I forgave because I wanted to put the world in order again. For myself."
He gave my hand a small squeeze. "Then tomorrow I shall ride around the city and make it rain confetti if the sky refuses to cry. I will clatter and be ridiculous."
"You will ruin your robe," I said immediately.
"I will buy a new robe," he said with mock seriousness. "For a man who declares love, there should be a new robe."
We laughed together, and the room became an island for our small conspiracies. Outside, the lights kept burning like patient stars.
When he finally left, he kissed my forehead as one kisses a sleeping child, wary and full of tenderness.
"Good night," he said.
"Good night." I held the echo of his voice long after the door closed.
I slept like a woman who knows the morning will be busy. I dreamed of lanterns and of a small monk smiling as he wove prayers into the air.
On the morning of the sixth, the town was already awake. Maureen moved with a slow authority. Fox fussed like a comet that could not decide its course. Rowan arrived with a small pouch of coins and a steady face.
Gideon came just before the sun reached the rooflines, carrying a braid of strange white flowers. He placed his hands at our doorway and said a few words that smelled of incense and of bread. He did not speak at length. He did not need to.
Maureen watched him with a softness I had not expected. There was a small unraveling of old sharpness in her eyes. "He kept his promise," she said finally, and the words were almost a blessing.
"Just a few words," Gideon said, looking at me like a man who had finally learned the value of small things.
At the ceremony later, I walked with a calm I had not practiced. The city sang and the guests leaned forward like a single wave. Rowan took my hands and did not let go. The priest spoke of vows and of making space for one another.
When the vows were finished and people clapped, I looked over at Gideon. He was sitting near Maureen, both of them like two people who had returned from wandering to the same table. His face held that steady, simple joy of someone who had learned a better way to be near.
That night, after the guests had danced and the lanterns were gone, I laid the carved mask—my傩婆 mask—on a shelf. It was still slightly warm from the night's laughter.
I sat by the window and thought of the first time I had hemmed a dress for my mother. I thought of the monk whose hands had steadied my own. I thought of the way Rowan made me small jokes when he was nervous. I thought of Fox's ridiculous bravery and Maureen's fierce small rules.
Rebirth, I learned, was not fireworks. It was a table you set again for people who had been away. It was a clean patch sewn over a frayed corner. It was making space for a father to stand and say the words he would once have been too afraid to say.
Outside, a single lantern hovered like a lone firefly and then drifted away into the night. I tightened the last knot on my sash and smiled.
"Good," I whispered to the mask on the shelf, to the stitched gown, to the city that had let me walk through and find the heart of my life. "Good."
The End
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