Liu Xiyu flipped through The Monthly Ordinances for the Four Classes, her fingertips sticky with osmanthus honey, the pages glowing amber beneath the candlelight.

Yun Cangyue crouched beside the brazier, watching as the girl folded and unfolded the passage that read, “Gather the three dews at the Winter Solstice to brew the Elixir of Long Life,” until the paper’s edges had frayed into soft fuzz.

This was the first Winter Solstice since they had met; frost traced spiderwebs across the window lattice.

Ever since hearing her father recount the legend of the ninety-nine drops of dew, Liu Xiyu had begun hoarding clues like a squirrel storing grain, tucking scattered fragments into the hidden compartments of her dressing box—yellowed scraps of farming manuals, dew-gathering tips passed on by an apothecary’s clerk, and even a furtively copied Moon Palace Dew-Brewing Formula from a traveling storyteller.

「AYue, look!」

She suddenly spread out a hand-drawn “dew-collecting route map.”
Between bamboo groves and plum orchards traced in gold dust, dense vermilion notes were crammed into every gap.

“Before dawn, tip the dew from bamboo leaves; at first light, gather the beads hanging from plum tips; by mid-morning, collect the pooled moisture on roof tiles—hey, stop chewing the edges!”

Yun Cangyue clamped her teeth onto one corner of the map, then pressed a paw squarely on the characters “before dawn.”

No one knew Liu Xiyu’s mornings better than she did.
The last time she’d sneaked out to the early market, the girl had been wrapped in three layers of sable—and still fallen asleep in front of a rice shop.

“This time it’ll work, I swear!”

She snatched the map back, her hair bun listing like a tower about to topple.

“I had Cui’er prepare five alarm kettles—spouts stuffed with Sichuan peppercorns. When they finish dripping, they’ll shriek loud enough to wake the whole city like startled insects…”

Yun Cangyue rolled her eyes, her tail sweeping a celadon water drop off the desk.

As the droplet spread across the inkstone, she recalled last month’s trial of the so-called “Morning-Dew Awakener”—peppercorns jammed into the spout, scalding water spraying everywhere, nearly cooking a rabbit paw.

Three days before the dew harvest, Liu Xiyu’s boudoir had turned into a decidedly peculiar workshop.

Yun Cangyue crouched atop the highest shelf, watching the girl carve spiral grooves into lengths of Xiangfei bamboo.

“The book says dew that clings to bamboo carries a purer fragrance!”

Wood shavings flew. In the midst of it, Liu Xiyu casually scooped up the silver-gray fluffball to measure her by eye.

“How about I tailor you a little dew-collecting pouch?”

That night, Yun Cangyue was stuffed into an upgraded book bag—
a gold-threaded lining sewn full of thumb-sized glass phial, chiming like wind bells whenever she moved.

Liu Xiyu hugged her and spun in place.

“Perfect! A mobile dew reservoir!”

Two days before the dew harvest, a bitter, burnt smell drifted out of the kitchen.

Following an old recipe, Liu Xiyu was roasting reed stalks to make dew-guiding tubes—only to forget to pull back the firewood.

When Yun Cangyue kicked over the water jar to douse the flames, she caught sight of a charred scrap of paper in the ashes, bearing a single line:

“Dew abhors smoke. Remember this.”

On the eve of the dew harvest, Liu Xiyu tied cotton padding around her embroidered shoes, looking as if she’d slipped a pair of snowy socks over a duck’s feet.

Cradling Yun Cangyue in her arms, she practiced what she called the “snow-treading-without-a-trace step” along the corridor, their ridiculous silhouettes thrown onto the white wall by the moonlight.

“Toes first, then roll down the heel…”

She muttered her self-invented口诀, pausing at every step as if walking on knife edges.

Yun Cangyue was squeezed so tightly she could barely breathe.
Just as her claws tugged at the fabric to loosen it, Liu Xiyu suddenly halted in a furtive stop—

Thunk.

The dull sound of her forehead hitting a beam startled a flock of night crows into flight.

She staggered and fell back onto the ground, and Yun Cangyue was thrown from her grasp, landing three steps away.

“I—I’m fine!”

She covered her reddening nose and laughed foolishly.

“See? This ‘sudden-stop technique’ eliminates residual vibrations from stepping…”

Yun Cangyue’s fur stood on end as she darted back to Liu Xiyu’s side.
When her paw pads touched the girl’s forehead, she could clearly feel a swelling already pulsing beneath the skin.

Liu Xiyu sucked in a sharp breath, the hiss cutting the air like a needle and making Yun Cangyue’s ears twitch.

“It really doesn’t hurt!”

She reached out to pull her close—only to be smacked away by a paw.

A silver-gray blur darted into the inner room, knocking over a low stool, tearing down a hanging drape, and finally reappearing with a jar of bruise ointment clenched in her teeth.

She brought the porcelain jar down hard onto the blue bricks, her claw tips scraping sharply, like a wordless rebuke.

“Oh? Is our AYue angry now?”

Liu Xiyu tilted her head closer, the swelling on her forehead gleaming under the candlelight.

Yun Cangyue turned her back on her, yet her front paws betrayed her honesty, dragging over the small applicator brush.

Rabbit paws were ill-suited for gripping such a thin handle, so she bit the brush crosswise in her mouth instead.
When she dipped it into the ointment, she deliberately jerked her head too hard—sending brown specks splattering Liu Xiyu’s nose like freckles.

“Our AYue is this adorably awkward even when applying medicine!”

Liu Xiyu tilted her face up, stifling laughter,
watching the rabbit’s teeth grip the brush as it poked clumsily at her forehead.

Yun Cangyue’s ear tips twitched as she lifted a paw and smacked away that restless face—

yet when the pads touched skin, the force softened,
gentle as brushing away morning mist.

“All right, all right, I’m foolish, I deserve a scolding…”

Liu Xiyu obediently tilted her face up, letting her apply the ointment.

“But the technique really works! I fell that hard just now—did you hear any dew get shaken loose?”

The paw paused.

From beneath the eaves came the clear drip of melting icicles—
on the overturned orchid pot she had knocked aside, morning dew trembled,
catching the moonlight.

Without warning, Yun Cangyue reached out and pressed a paw over Liu Xiyu’s eyelids,
forcing her to close them—and to rest.

The girl’s lashes brushed lightly against the pads of her paw, a small, coaxing gesture of surrender.

“Just three more practice runs—really!”

Yun Cangyue answered by curling straight into a ball of fur and blocking her mouth and nose.

Laughter was muffled in the fluff, warm breaths tinting the rabbit’s ears red.

“Okay, okay—I get it. I’ll listen to Doctor Rabbit!”

That night, Liu Xiyu murmured dew-counting numbers even in her sleep,
while Yun Cangyue kept watch over the swelling on her forehead the entire night.

Every half quarter-hour, she reached out with a paw,
gently touching it—making sure the heat hadn’t risen.

When dawn mist still clung to the bamboo tips on the morning of dew-gathering, Liu Xiyu had already slipped off her sheer silk socks

She tied her embroidered shoes at her waist and stepped barefoot onto the frost-coated stairs, wobbling like a young crane learning to walk.

“The Dew Canon says: ‘Only when the feet touch the earth may the purest essence be received.’”

She explained through white puffs of breath, toes flushed coral-red from the cold.

Inside the collection pouch, Yun Cangyue ground her teeth—
that tattered book was absolutely something a wandering charlatan had made up.

Thin dew rested on the bamboo leaves, each one like a shallow glass dish.

Liu Xiyu lifted the glass phial as though presenting a holy grail; the moment her fingertips brushed the leaf’s veins, the dew slid neatly into the bottle’s mouth.

“The first drop!”

She cheered and spun around—
only to step squarely onto a frost-slick bamboo root.

Yun Cangyue shot forward like a silver arrow, leaping onto her shoulder the instant she tipped back.

Her upright rabbit ears smacked against Liu Xiyu’s cheek, forcing her off balance and skewing her direction—until she finally plopped down into a thick pile of dry bamboo leaves.

“See? Not a drop spilled!”

She held the glass phial high, grinning foolishly, bits of leaf still tangled in her hair.

Yun Cangyue crouched on her knee, fur fluffed and standing straight up like a warning post.

After watching the person in front of her slip for the third time, Yun Cangyue’s ears began to twitch repeatedly—
a habit she’d picked up back in her former life as a human, the unspoken click of a tongue against the teeth.

She caught the hem of Liu Xiyu’s skirt in her teeth and tugged her toward the plum grove,
one paw stubbornly pointing at a patch of sunlit warmth pooling between the stones.

“Just five more leaves…”
Liu Xiyu tried to negotiate, rubbing her knees, already tinged with purple.

Yun Cangyue suddenly hopped onto her chest, pressing her warm, furred belly against the girl’s collarbone.

Soft chest fur wrapped around her neck like a bank of warm clouds,
and the startled cry melted into a sigh.

“So this is where you’re warmest…”

From then on, for every two bamboo leaves gathered, Yun Cangyue rotated warming duties—
front paws cupping her hands, a flank pressed to her waist,
sometimes even squatting fully atop her instep.

Liu Xiyu gradually turns into a snowman festooned with rabbit-fur accessories, her dew-gathering poses growing ever more absurd—

Standing on tiptoe to reach the higher droplets, a ring of rabbit belly fur looped snugly around her neck like a scarf;

Bending low to scoop the pooled sheen below, her lower back pressed against a warm rabbit-back cushion;

After slipping and sitting to rub her ankle, both feet were shoved into a plush fur pouch, warmed through by the rabbit’s paws.

“Our Ayue is smarter than any hot-water bottle!”

She nuzzles into the warm cloud at her collarbone, watching dawn light pierce the glass phial.

“Three drops now—like bottling starlight…”

When the sun climbed past the tips of the plum branches, Liu Xiyu’s fingertips had already gone pale with cold.

For the tenth time, she reached toward a bamboo leaf. Her trembling knuckles had just brushed the edge—

“Ah—choo!”

The thunderous sneeze shook frost blossoms from the branches, and the dew drop that had been about to slip into the bottle fell straight to the ground.

She stared blankly at the empty vial, a bright bead of moisture still clinging to her nose.

“The Moon Palace maiden must think I’m stupid…”

Yun Cangyue had already leapt onto her shoulder the moment the sneeze began to build.

Now her rabbit ears pressed tight against the girl’s neck.
Sensing a pulse racing far too fast, she anxiously nibbled at the hair ribbon while her forepaws repeatedly patted Liu Xiyu’s collarbone—
their agreed-upon signal during account-checking: stop immediately.

“Just one last leaf, I swear!”

Liu Xiyu hunched her shoulders in pleading—only to flinch as an icy rabbit paw suddenly pressed against her cheek.

That paw pointed at her bluish lips, then jabbed toward the embroidered shoes long forgotten beneath the plum tree.

She opened her mouth to argue, but a bundle of rabbit fur was abruptly shoved into her arms—

Yun Cangyue had torn free the thick winter-soft down around her neck, rubbing the shed fur into a compact ball of warmth.

Liu Xiyu tried to pull her hands away, only to have a rabbit paw hook firmly into her sleeve.

Ears slapped her shoulder, a nose nudged her elbow, even the fluffy hindquarters blocked her path.

Under the relentless, all-directions assault, she finally ducked her head in surrender.

“Alright, alright! We’re done—work’s over!”

On the way back, she kept the glass phial tucked close to her body.

Yun Cangyue lay sprawled across her shoulder, warming her chilled earlobe with the tips of her ears.

“Three drops are enough to brew a thumb-sized vial of dew wine,”
she said, breathing gently to melt the frost clinging to her lashes.
“When spring comes, we’ll bury it beneath the plum tree—
and dig it up on the day you take human form, to celebrate…”

Yun Cangyue gave her earlobe a light nip—this time, even her teeth held back.

Laughter shook loose the snow piled on the branches.
They ran through the jade-shattered spray of snow until their figures blurred into motion.

By the time cooking smoke rose from the houses,
Liu Xiyu’s feet were mottled blue and purple from the cold.

Yun Cangyue crouched beside a copper basin, overseeing her medicinal soak like a prison guard.

Every time the girl tried to sneak her feet out,
a rabbit paw slapped the water, splashing a sharp warning.

“Alright, alright—Doctor Rabbit!”
she laughed, scooping Yun Cangyue up, dripping wet.

“Next time, we’ll gather noon dew instead, okay?”

The answer came in the form of a face full of flung water droplets.

When the three drops of dew were sealed inside the glass phial, frost flowers were blooming into icy ferns along the window lattice.

Sitting cross-legged on the warm kang, she drew out a sheet of peach-blossom stationery dusted with gold from the hidden compartment of her vanity, trimming it into a strip as slender as a willow brow.

“Always stay together.”

The ink was written with deliberate childishness, as if afraid her true feelings might show.

She rolled the strip into a tiny scroll and slipped it into the narrow neck of the vial.
“This is a blessing charm from the Moon Palace. It helps moon rabbits take human form!”

Yun Cangyue crouched at the edge of the kang, grinding her claws, watching as the girl sealed the vial with beeswax, bound it with gold thread, and finally tied it with a honeysuckle-patterned silk cord.

When the glass phial was hung at the rabbit’s neck, the three drops of dew refracted rainbow light as it swayed, making the crescent marking on her chest look almost alive.

“Don’t lose it,”
Liu Xiyu said, tapping her damp nose.

“If you do, you’ll be punished—by eating ten bitter-melon candies!”

At dawn the next day, Yun Cangyue discovered the pendant’s true usefulness.

Liu Xiyu was facing the mirror, combing her hair, when she suddenly noticed splashes of color flickering across the bronze surface.

She turned—only to see a silver-gray ball of fur hopping in the morning light.
With every shake of that little head, the glass phial scattered prismatic rays across the pink plaster walls, weaving a flowing map of stars.

“The talisman’s working!”

Liu Xiyu scooped her up and spun in a circle.

“Ayue, look—thehe Moon Palace maiden is sending us secret signals!”

Yun Cangyue rolled her eyes and let herself be fussed over,
yet her claw tips subtly adjusted the angle, guiding the rainbow light to land precisely on Liu Xiyu’s favorite jade hairpin.

From that day on, “miracles” became a daily occurrence:

Missing earrings were revealed by rainbow light pointing beneath a pillow.
Miscalculated accounts had their errors neatly circled by wandering color spots.
Even a lost kitten could be guided home by a trail of shimmering reflections.

“The maiden says Little Snowball should eat more carrots!”

Liu Xiyu advanced with a plate of vegetables bathed in rainbow glow.

Yun Cangyue’s fur fluffed instantly as she bolted up onto the roof beam—
the glass phial still dutifully casting rainbow shadows into the basket below,

right onto the stash of pine-nut candy she’d secretly buried there.

On New Year’s Eve, Liu Xiyu added freshly gathered dew to the glass phial.

With paper-cut window blossoms reflecting the snowlight, she tied a second honeysuckle ribbon around the bottle and lied with a straight face,
“The maiden says it needs nine ribbons in total before it has enough power!”

Yun Cangyue crouched beside the rice cakes, letting out a silent snort—
while she’d been dozing off, that girl had secretly swapped the note inside for “Always, always stay together,”
and, as if that weren’t enough, had even added a crooked little rabbit head.

“Let’s go gather dew in the plum grove next Winter Solstice!”
She scratched under Yun Cangyue’s chin.

“I bet the dew there is especially round—just like your eyes.”

A paw reached out to snuff the candle, and by moonlight she cast prismatic reflections onto the window lattice.

With painstaking control of head angle and force, she guided the wandering light spots until they loosely formed the character “promise”—
a trick she’d practiced for half a month, nearly wrecking her neck in the process.

“The maiden agreed!”

Liu Xiyu hugged her tight, cheering.

Yun Cangyue buried her face in the girl’s collar, hiding the twitch at the corner of her mouth.

That so-called miracle was nothing more than angles measured thousands of times by rabbit paws.

But if it could be traded for frost-laced mornings spent side by side, year after year—
then what harm was there in playing along a little longer?”