As the moonlight silently kissed the earth, I walked slowly along the deserted street. To my body, now accustomed to four legs, walking in my true form again brought a sense of unfamiliarity. Every time I took a step, the weight of my actual body felt new to me.
As I moved along the road, a very familiar "ting-ting" sound suddenly echoed in my ears with the night breeze. I stopped. I was drawn toward the source of that sound like someone awakening to an old memory.
I stopped in front of a massive, ancient tree. The hollow amidst its great roots spreading into the ground caught my eye like a secret. I slowly entered that cavern. Though it appeared to be just a tree from the outside, the inside was decorated with pieces of colored glass I had picked up from roadsides as a child, bird feathers, and scraps of cloth discarded by people.
In a dark corner, I saw the shadow of a little girl. She was bunching up a piece of cloth to make a doll. Although that image vanished in the blink of an eye, the doll she was making still remained there. As I picked up that innocent doll—made of bunched-up rags with a face drawn in charcoal—I heard my mother's voice.
"Daughter... hide... go somewhere and hide!"
That final plea from my mother, Fengyi, who fell into the human world with broken wings, still echoes in my heart. "Xueji, I haven't forgotten you either..." Even though those who harassed me have faded from memory, I remember those two who helped me perfectly. After parting from them, this dark tree became my home. I went slowly and lay down on the humble bed made of a pile of old rags where I used to sleep as a child. I stared at the waning moonlight falling through a small hole in the tree trunk.
How quickly I have grown up? A part of my innocent childhood lies buried within this hollow tree. I stood up and took the piece of umbrella fabric from the day Zhonghe rescued me from the rain. I tied it firmly among my old decorations.
My past is now safe within the home of my memories. I turned back. Now, I have a place to go. I stepped back toward that small house where a man who protects me and my sister like his own life awaits.