by Avi Silver
Hei rubbed at it, smiling nervously. “Last touch,” Sohmeng said, leaning in to reapply the makeup on a much cleaner canvas. Hei’s skin was soft, their breath warm against her palm as she smoothed the charcoal around their eyes. Their gaze was locked on her, vulnerable and dangerous in a way Sohmeng had come to know well. Regardless of the situation, Hei was an intense person, emotional and passionate and loud. Too big for a hmun. Familiar.
“Done,” she said, more quietly than intended. Recovering herself, she pushed her face back into a smile. “Now that’s what I want my mate to look like.”
Hei flushed at that, seemingly unsure of whether they wanted to puff out their chest or dive headfirst into the river. Sohmeng smirked, pressing cheeks with a face that was no longer covered in grime, and found that Hei returned the press with unexpected force, leaning to meet her. They pulled back just far enough to break the skin contact, just close enough for both of their noses to touch. Sohmeng swore she could hear Hei’s heartbeat thrumming in the air.
“Sohmeng Par,” they said, breathless, and it sounded almost like a question.
“Just—Sohmeng.” For once, she didn’t have it in her to lie. “Call me Sohmeng.”
The kiss was clumsy at first for its eagerness, at once sweet and feral, like biting into ripe fruit, or splashing through the river, or laughing herself breathless. Hei leaned her back against the stone, their solid weight a delightful pressure against the flesh of her belly—she grasped at their back, felt their muscles gone taut with want, a charming contrast to her own boneless glee. When Hei at last broke the kiss, startled and a bit delirious, their hair was back to looking like so much bewildered fern.
Sohmeng covered her mouth, laughing out loud at the sight of them. It was a nervous sound, mostly, but a good one too. She could feel where her own face was smeared with charcoal and oil, but she found she didn’t mind. After a moment, Hei laughed too, looking at Sohmeng as though there were a treasure map hidden somewhere on her face.
Their brow suddenly creased with concern. “Was that—was that alright? Is that, are you, is—”
“Hei, would you do me a favour and take a good look at my face before you fully commit yourself to panicking?” Sohmeng said, stretching out underneath them with a happy hum. “How do I look right now?”
“Beautiful.”
Good of them to notice. “Firstly, it should be a crime to be that sweet. Secondly, you’re full of it, I’m totally covered in your face-gunk.” She gave them a little pat on the cheek, wiggling out from under them.
“Do you mind?” they asked shyly.
“Being covered in your stupid face-gunk?” She pursed her lips, pretending to consider. “I mean, I guess it’s worth it if I get to be close to your stupid face.” She grinned at them, and they returned the look, toothy and unselfconscious. It really was a stupid face, wasn’t it? Stupidly attractive. “Come on, we should head back. I’m hungry and I don’t want to end up eating you by accident.”
“I’ll get some trout from downriver!” Hei said, leaping up eagerly. “We can glaze them with the orange-flower nectar I’ve been saving! Go start a fire, I promise I won’t be too long. I want to, for you, I want—” They gave up on Hmunpa, letting a happy trill say everything for them, and went hopping along the boulders down the river.
Sohmeng watched them go, wondering how she could possibly hold so much fondness for one person. And though she knew the fire should be made sooner rather than later, she took a moment to lie on the boulder and feel the warmth of the sun sigh down through the leaves and sink into her skin.
So that’s what kissing feels like, she thought. Not bad at all.
Up in the hmun, initiating that kind of physical intimacy was strictly the privilege of adults. While Sohmeng had harboured plenty of interest, it had been infuriatingly forbidden to her. Technically, since she had never completed her Tengmunji, she still had no business doing it now.
But did Ateng’s rules apply to someone who was flourishing in Eiji? Who had begun to build a life there?
Because it had to be said: in recent weeks, Sohmeng had begun to think of the colony of sãoni as a hmun. As her hmun. When she watched Green Bites try to impress a violet-throated sãoni by dragging a shouting Hei around by their leg, she responded with laughter instead of fear; when the hatchlings swarmed her for playtime, she often found herself carrying them around. She had even taken to napping with Mama. The mind-boggling concept of life below the mountain had transformed into something pleasantly mundane.
Then there was Hei. Getting to know them hadn’t been easy. They clearly wanted to connect with her, but they shied away from behaviours they deemed overly-human. On top of that, their moods could make them downright recalcitrant when rubbed the wrong way, and Sohmeng wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of tact. Setting each other off had been a regular, predictable affair early on.
But things had changed. For all the two of them could butt heads, they each made an effort to listen to the other, to try better next time.
Now, as far as mates went, Hei was nothing to shake a yellowbill at. They did what they could to provide Sohmeng with good meals, and tolerated the faces she would pull when trying something new. The first time Sohmeng got hit with her period, Hei wasted no time seeking out a fluffy, absorbent plant for her to wrap in fabric. And though they’d complain when Sohmeng squirmed around in her sleep, nearly knocking them into the fire pit on multiple occasions, they never left her alone for bed. When Green Bites got too energetic about teasing her, Hei would wave him away, snarling a boundary on her behalf. They cared for her, and were patient with her, and did what they could to compromise when challenges arose.
Maybe Sohmeng hadn’t entered the realm of adulthood, but she felt pretty confident that the two of them had earned the right to kiss. And even if the hmun disagreed, she really wanted to try again anyway.
The heat of the sun-warmed stone tingled in her hands, Chehangma’s divine light sinking into her. Was it praise or rebuke? She had always had trouble discerning the two. She sighed loudly, sitting up and stretching. A walk would help clear her head. Leaving behind the river, she pushed her way into the jungle, mindful to steer clear of treacherous tree roots and dangerous, thickly-scented flowers.
It wouldn’t be difficult, Sohmeng thought, to stay with the colony. It would take no effort to give up returning to the hmun, to let her family move on with the assumption that she was lost. But things were complicated by the fact that her camp was currently parked quite literally in the shadow of Sodão Dangde. It loomed over her, a heavy reminder of what she would be turning her back on. And now that she was almost done healing, she was running out of excuses to avoid thinking through her options.
Before the Sky Bridge fell, Sohmeng had spent just under half of her life in Sodão Dangde. She remembered the darker, woodsier smell of the moss, the unmistakable whistle of the wind tunnel in the sunrise side. It held the house her father had preferred, without the slanted roof of the Fochão Dangde house that he constantly whacked his head into. It was the mountain she had been born in. And it was likely full of the corpses of children she had grown up with.
Or maybe it wasn’t.
Every attempt to send members of the hmun to the First Finger to repair the Sky Bridge had ended with their being devoured, unable to retrieve the batengmun left alone long past their Tengmunji’s end. It was unsettling to consider for too long. Jinho’s cousin had been among the batengmun, a promising girl of the Mi phase. Sohmeng remembered overhearing a conversation between him and Viunwei one night, Jinho’s soft voice breaking as he spoke: “Well, if they aren’t dead, we can certainly say the batengmun reached adulthood tenfold, can’t we?”
The only hint that they might have perished was the darkened Lantern. While the superstitious hmun might have read the worst in that sign, Sohmeng wasn’t ready to take it as definitive proof. And here she was, the first from Ateng to walk Eiji since the fall of the Bridge, as good as family to the sãoni that could get
her up there.
What would happen if she discovered the fate of the batengmun once and for all? If she returned from death to help the hmun raise the Sky Bridge? If anything would be enough to change the hmun’s perception of her, that would certainly be it. And while she wanted to say she no longer cared what the hmun had to say about her, while she wanted to free herself of the need to find her place in a social structure that didn’t want her, it wasn’t that easy.
She rubbed at her face. There really was no such thing as a fresh start, was there?
Life in the world below was good. She was happy, and cared for. But before she bound herself fully to Eiji, she had to resolve what loomed in Ateng.
When she shared her thoughts with Hei that evening, they didn’t exactly share the sentiment.
“Absolutely not,” they snapped, storming around the grove with Sohmeng following behind.
“Hei, listen, I know you don’t like talking about the hmun—” She was cut off by a vicious snarl from Hei, who tossed aside the soapstone they had been carving when she first presented her idea. It thunked off a nearby tree, sending the monkeys in the middling branches scurrying and attracting the attention of the sãoni. Hei didn’t notice, busy as they were pacing and being difficult. “I understand this is a lot to ask, but—”
“Aren’t you happy here?” they blurted, turning to face her with hurt in their eyes.
“What?” Sohmeng frowned. “Hei, of course I’m happy! I make it pretty clear when I’m miserable.”
“Then why do you want this?” Hei gestured to Sodão Dangde in one sharp, angry motion. Sohmeng rubbed her face, trying to grasp what ‘this’ actually meant to Hei. The hmun? The answers? Humanity? She hadn’t expected them to react warmly to a proposal to climb the mountain, but neither had she anticipated the extent of their distress. It had been a while since they had fallen apart this way. “Why do you need this if you’re happy here?”
“I’m greedy, I guess?” Sohmeng cringed. Not a great time to be funny.
“I’m your mate,” Hei said, their face twisted in pain. “We—I thought we were . . . I mean, this morning—I know I, I’m not very . . .” They struggled with their words, their tension building until they shouted with frustration. Mama perked up her head from across the grove, growling at Sohmeng, who responded with a few appeasing clicks. This got Hei’s attention, and they softened slightly, hopefully, before they dropped their gaze. “We’re supposed to stand by each other.”
“That’s not the same as forcing each other into situations we don’t like,” Sohmeng insisted, waving Hei’s words away before they could argue. “No, please listen to me—I’m not saying you have to rejoin the hmun, or even go into the caves at all. I’d like you to come with, obviously, but I wouldn’t demand it of you, because I’m not actually that unreasonable! But I—I do need your help getting up to the entrance. I can’t do that alone.” She swallowed, gritting her teeth through the vulnerability that rose from within her. “This is really important to me, Hei. And if you won’t go with me, I’ll—I’ll just have to figure something out. Find a way to get better at climbing so I don’t fall off a second mountain.”
“Don’t make jokes about that,” Hei mumbled, wiping their eyes. Their hands trembled, but their voice was calmer.
“I’ll joke as much as I please,” Sohmeng teased, gently taking their shoulders in her hands. “You’re my mate, right? This is how you stand by me. Help me out. I’m not—I’m not going to run away from you. I’m not just looking for an excuse to leave.”
For a moment, Hei only stood there, still as one of the trees. They glanced up once, with a face like they had a whole world caught under their tongue, a story they needed out before it poisoned them. And then it was swallowed down, put in the place where they held all of the other things they didn’t know how to say to her.
“We climb the mountain,” they murmured at last, not quite meeting her eye. “But only once you’ve healed completely. I’ll show you what you want to see, but I’m not breaking my back dragging you up to it.”
Sohmeng’s heart nearly stopped right there. She let out a laugh that caught on itself, reaching forward. “Hei, thank you—”
“Don’t—” Their voice was sharp again, but their eyes were as gentle as she had ever seen them. “Please don’t thank me for this.”
Unsure what to say to that, Sohmeng switched to their preferred language: a pressing of cheeks, a bumping of noses. Hei softened, releasing few soft clicks like the skipping of stones, but Sohmeng couldn’t have said what they meant in Hmunpa. She wasn’t sure that they were hers to understand.
Drenched in the plum and tangerine light of late afternoon, the valley really did look like the domain of the gods. Eiji was its own creature, wild and tangled with snarling, sprawling life, but nothing was quite like the view up in Ateng. Now that she wasn’t plummeting to her death, Sohmeng found it a lot easier to appreciate.
However, that was challenged by the fact that she was currently attached to a lizard who was scaling the cliffside as if gravity was more a suggestion than a rule. She clung to the sãoni she called Singing Violet with a white-knuckled grip, teeth chattering with the effort of staying conscious through her terror. Hei had used their replenished supply of sãoni skin to fashion something akin to a saddle with steadying leg straps; theoretically, she was safe. Remembering Jinho’s assurances about the safety of egg collecting, Sohmeng held on a little tighter.
When Hei had talked about using the sãoni to get up Sodão Dangde, Sohmeng had, like an idiot, assumed it would be at a more leisurely pace, perhaps around the significantly more forgiving sunrise side. Green Bites screeched in delight, outright vaulting to another part of the cliff despite the very small and human Hei holding onto his back. For all that Hei could try to guide the sãoni, they weren’t the alpha; it was incredibly lucky that Green Bites and Singing Violet were following Hei’s direction at all.
Chunks of the cliff gave way to Singing Violet’s scrabbling claws. Luck, Sohmeng thought as she ducked, is a pretty relative term.
To her left, the Third Finger was visible in the near distance. She couldn’t tell if it felt auspicious or ominous to peer so closely at the lifeline to Sodão Dangde. Eventually, as they rose, she would be able to see the Finger’s portion of the Sky Bridge, left curled and untended after all this time. How many nights had the batengmun spent at the mouth of the cave, staring at the Lantern that burned on Fochão Dangde, waiting for their half of the Bridge to rise? At least as many as Sohmeng had spent simmering in her cot, wishing she had been there by their side.
A loud whistle pulled Sohmeng from her thoughts; Hei had released one hand from Green Bites, pointing at a massive column of mist. Sohmeng sucked in a breath between her teeth—watching Hei fall to their death would be a poor start to their adventure.
“What is that?” she yelled to them, leaning back as far as she dared to get a better look. Thankfully, the two sãoni found their way to a narrow ledge; it was refreshing to be horizontal again.
“Waterfall!” Hei called back, the adventurous look in their eye a welcome break from the unhappy, skittering glances of the past week. “I’ll bring you!”
Her parents had told her about waterfalls before. Other ground-dwelling hmun lived around them, villages who traded the rich fruit of Eiji for the ever-glowing wovenstone of Ateng. It never failed to amaze her, just how much was contained in the rolling hills of Eiji, separated like sacred strata: the clear sharp blue of sky, the milky mists, the verdant canopy, the shout of upper life, the murmur of lower, the sweet dark smell of the soil. All of this without even considering the influence of the spirit-building moons, the life-giving sun.
She stared down at the waterfall, imagining it pouring from the mouth of some great, ancient god. Another layer to unpack. Another world to discover.
Eventually they reached the midpoint of Sodão Dangde, a deep cave pockmarked in the sunset side. As the sun slipped below the horizon, the sã
oni began to lose their heat, and Hei didn’t want to risk them going sluggish when the cliffside cooled down. This wouldn’t have been an issue if they’d left in the morning like Sohmeng suggested, but Hei had been reluctant to leave Mama, who remained in Eiji with the rest of the colony, and Sohmeng hadn’t had the heart to hurry them along.
Far back in the cave, Green Bites and Singing Violet curled around each other. Sohmeng glanced at Hei, who was rolling their shoulders as they took up their own spot near the entrance; feeling her gaze, they looked over their shoulder at her and tentatively patted the ground beside them.
“Missed me?” she teased.
“Yes,” they answered, contemplating the valley before them. Their forehead was creased with gentle, worried lines.
Sohmeng waited a moment, wondering if they were going to say something more. The two of them had already hashed out their conflict as much as possible; they had come to their agreement. It seemed all that was left was to sit in the discomfort of it.
“Things are probably going to keep feeling a little weird until this is done,” she said as she joined them. It felt good to admit this out loud, to stop pretending like things were fine.
“I—” Hei hesitated, then nodded. “Probably.”
“You want to . . . talk about it?” Hei scrunched their nose, and Sohmeng couldn’t help but laugh in relief. Some things were still the same. “You want to kiss some more?”
Hei paused, considering, and then nodded once more with a tender, affirmative click.
Later that night, they lay snuggled together at the mouth of the cave, stargazing. The lunar phase had just shifted into Tang, with Chehang at its brightest while Ama journeyed to darkness. It was different seeing the moons like this, with the whole world open, as opposed to constrained within the sacred skylight above Chehangma’s Gate.