My parents died when I was seven.

I was the smallest child in the village and was picked on by the bigger kids every time I went out to play. I was weak and lousy. I struggled to defend myself whenever the kids threw rocks and stones at me, calling me names.

My mother said that it was a miracle I survived until my third birthday, which is when the government deems you a person and adds you to their census. She would comfort me whenever I ran to her crying, scooping me up into her soft arms and telling me fantastical stories about mythical beasts and legendary men.

“And the people asked the Dragon King for rain, offering him many banquets full of food, but he declined and said that he would only give the people rain if they offered him three children. The worst children! The bullies and the ones who don’t listen to their parents!”

She ruffled my hair and swung me around in her arms. I giggled. She wore the prettiest dress then. It was solid purple, with rosy dragons embroidered around the sleeves. It was the only dress she owned, but she was proud of it and wore it often.

The next year was a bad year. Swarms of locusts had come and devoured all the crops after months of heavy rainfall. We ran out of food. Everyone did.

My mother and father languished at the table. She scooped up the last bit of rice into a ball and handed it to me, a gentle smile ever present on her face as she starved in front of me.

“Eat up, Yijun!”

Two weeks later they were dead.

I swung my mothers’ arm as she lay collapsed and still on the table, wanting her to pick me up in her soft arms and swing me around as she always had.

“Mom! Mom! Dad…”

“…I’m hungry.”

“…please wake up.”

I walked out of the house, not knowing what to do. I collapsed on the ground and sobbed, my face turning dark with tears. I was alone in the world, hungry and afraid.

I looked up at the clouds as the sun set. They were purple, with an embroidery of red around the edges. I imagined them as the soft fluffy arms of my mother as she comforted me and fell asleep in the grass.

Those purple rosy clouds.

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The next day a man found me walking along the road alone. He was a nice man. He took my arm and led me away. We traveled a few weeks before arriving at Mount Hua, where he was an elder. There was a lot of food there.

I was introduced to four other people who would become my martial brothers and sisters. Yue Mei, Yan Fei, Zhong Li, and Zhang Zhenchang. They were all a little older than me, but they were nice and didn’t make fun of me like the kids from the village.

A few years passed, and I had made little progress with my martial training. I understood the concepts but struggled with the application part of it. My shifu grew more disappointed by the day.

“All of your brothers and sisters have excelled. They are the greatest students within a thousand miles! Do you just not pay attention to anything I teach you? If you do not want to learn martial arts, just tell me and we can be done with it!” He shouted at me while I held back tears.

I did try. I tried harder than everyone else, staying up long into the night to go over the moves shifu taught me and all the Taoist doctrine about internal cultivation. Nothing worked for me.

I ran away and hid on a nearby mountain for a week. I laid out on a cliff and cried and shouted into the wind. The clouds were purple with a rosy hue. I felt my anger and sadness wash away. My parents were watching me from the heavens. I had to do my best to make them proud.

Those purple rosy clouds.

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I returned to the sect and heard a sweet melody dancing through the air. Yue Mei was playing her Guqin, which she did often during the evening. She was good at it. She was very pretty. Her soft melodic voice a treat to the ears.

“Separated by a blue sky, you haunt my memory;

Eyes that once looked down so shyly

Now brim with tears.”

She looked back and noticed me leaning against the door, listening to her play.

“You’re back! We’ve been so worried about you, Yiyi…don’t run off again. Come sit down next to me for a while.”

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She was sweet. Her words were as sweet as honey.

I sat next to her and listened to her play for what seemed like hours. Every chord she played was mesmerizing. I wanted to learn how to play like that. To make music like that.

“Can you teach me how to play?”

She looked at me and smiled. It was the most pleasant smile in the world.

“Of course, Yiyi.”

And so, my music lessons with Mei began. She taught me the wonderful and joyous art of music and poetry. Every night after we finished our lessons with the others, we would retreat into our own quiet place, our own world, and fill the room with beautiful sound.

“You’re getting quite good at this. You might even be better than me sometime soon, Yiyi,” she said, with a pouty and playful look on her face.

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Mei. Nobody can play as well as you.”

As I played each chord, I could feel the vibrations flowing through my body; the quiet between the notes soothed my soul. Something had changed within me as I listened to and learned all the vibrant sounds and melodies. They lit a fire in my soul, and the world was made more colorful.

Soon the music seeped into other aspects of my life. I began to take notice of and hear the sounds and vibrations of the universe. The quiet flapping of a butterfly’s wings, the frightful quiver of a rabbit discovered by a human, the sound of water and the refluent and effluent motions of a river. I had become aware, too, of my growing feelings for Mei.

One day while sparring, my shifu took notice of the great change that had taken place within me. I began to beat my martial brothers and sisters for the first time. I could hear the vibrations of their movement, and the trickling of qi flowing through their bodies. I was perpetually a step ahead of them.

He pulled me aside and spoke to me in private.

“You have not gone off and found another shifu, have you? I must say that I’m quite impressed with your improvement lately. Maybe you are not so hopeless after all,” He said, while laughing heartily.

“I suppose your teachings have finally made sense to me, shifu. I would not dare take lessons from another.”

I did not know why at the time, but I felt that it would be better to keep my music lessons and time with sister Mei to myself. To keep the reasons for my sudden burst of progress hidden.

A few nights later I met with Mei on a remote part of the mountain far away from the sect. It was the first time I felt truly alone with her, far removed from any prying eyes.

“Yiyi, you were quite good today. For the first time I felt completely hopeless while sparring against you.” She sighed sweetly and put her hand on my thigh. “What has changed?”

The sweet smell of plum blossoms filled the air. What had changed? Everything. Within me had been awakened that pure, primal love of another. A love of the world and its ability to enchant and bewilder, to leave breathless and bereft of the senses, lost and happy among its ever-flowing waves of sound and color, of sensory experience. That too had been awakened.

“I can hear things that I couldn’t before. The music…your music, has changed me. For the first time in my life I feel at peace with the universe. I’m happy.” I looked into her deep gorgeous jade-green eyes and smiled.

I had never felt happy before, but I did then. Here was another who I felt that I could be myself with, who saw more within me than I ever knew existed, who spent every night teaching me the sounds and joy of music, of being human, of loving and caring and belonging. I felt that I loved this girl who sat beside me now among a field of vibrant stars and distant worlds.

“I’m happy, too. I like the new you,” she said softly, her breath a hot whisper as she smiled back at me.

I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her close. We sat like that for the rest of the night, with few words being exchanged between us. We merely enjoyed the presence of the other.

A few years passed in what felt like one. Mei and I grew ever closer. I continued to practice playing the Guqin; and as she predicted, I had become better than her. She would spend entire afternoons lazing about listening to me play.

“Yiyi, I think you may just be the finest musician in all of China!” She laughed and left a quick coy kiss on my cheek.

I began learning how to channel my internal energy into the chords I struck, which was not something I previously imagined to be possible. Mei would show me her hand being shook with greater intensity as my notes became stronger.

“One day you’re going to play a chord so strong that the earth sunders beneath my feet and gobbles me up!” She giggled and playfully pushed me away from the instrument.

“Why, I wouldn’t dare do something so evil unless you truly deserved it!” I laughed and shoved her back.

It was around that time that I took notice of brother Fei watching us from afar. Every now and then at night I could feel his eyes burning into my back as Mei and I played music or recited old poems. They followed us even on our excursions to remote parts of the mountain. I never confronted him about it, which has been one of my biggest regrets over the years.

One night I was awoken by the sound of a great many footsteps and angry shouting. Shifu kicked in my bedroom door and walked in with the other elders.

“Yijun, you little devil! For the past few years, I have been wondering how you became so proficient at martial arts. I thought that perhaps my teachings had finally sunk in, but that never felt quite right to me.” He gripped me and shook me hard with the anger of a father who has been betrayed by his favorite son.

“Your moves have become different over the years. Now I finally know why. One of your brothers caught you studying from an infernal, unorthodox martial arts manual.” His eyes were mad with anger.

“Shifu, I would never! I can explain! It all started when I—"

He struck me down with a powerful slap across my face, uninterested in hearing what I had to say.

“Search the room!”

They turned over everything in my room, determined to find something that I knew was not there.

But it was there, and they found it. Elder Sha pulled a manual out from under my bedroll and looked at me with great disappointment and sadness.

“Black Hell Doctrine. An infernal martial art from a heretical sect we wiped out a decade ago. I’ll kill you for this!” Shifu shouted, then aimed a powerful kick at my head.

I dodged his kick and dashed past the other elders, flying through the door. I realize now that they simply did not have the heart to stop me.

I ran down the long hallways of the sect to Mei’s room, but when I got there, I found brother Fei holding her as she sobbed into his arms.

“Mei, we need to leave now!” I shouted.

She turned to look at me and gave me the saddest look in the world, a haunting look of anguish and heartbreak and sorrow. All the love she held for me had been emptied into her tears, staining the dark stone floor around her with the weight of them.

“I thought the music had changed you. I thought I had changed you. You lied to me. Leave and never come back…” Her voice broke with the last few words, as did my heart.

I ran away, unable to bear the one person I trusted losing faith in me. The dark clouds of the night took on a purple rosy hue and comforted me as my face turned dark again with tears.

Those purple rosy clouds.