There are many kinds of encounters between people. One kind is like dewdrops on a blade of grass. When the s…
There are many kinds of encounters between people. One kind is like dewdrops on a blade of grass.
When the sun sets, tiny droplets condense on the grass blades and roll together, this is their meeting.
The inn at night was merry. Songs, dancing girls, wine and dishes flowing like water consoled the travelers' stomachs and loneliness. The silent Kucha itinerant trader did not speak. He merely sat in the corner, head bowed, staring at his unusually large feet.
"Cough cough... Would you like to dance, guest... Only one string of coins... I dance the best..."
This was the first sentence she spoke to him.
She was a woman like a dewdrop. Fragile, translucent, bending over with trembling coughs as if about to evaporate under sunlight. But two stubborn ghost fires burned in her eyes, she struggled desperately to live, for survival held the hope of returning home. He, however, was the complete opposite, tall yet placid, accepting everything in life with passive resignation, except for refusing to return home. He thought perhaps Heaven had made a mistake. Perhaps he was the dewdrop that would vanish silently with the rising sun.
But in truth, Heaven plays cruel jokes. She was not defeated by harsh sandstorms, thousand-mile treks, or lingering illness. She died in the war in the sixth month of the 15th year of Tianbao.
So, in the end, she died earlier.
The Kucha trader surnamed Bai, now a musician, carried her belongings back, returning to the place he originally never wanted to revisit in his lifetime. Only, her home was too distant; he searched for a long time but never found the tribe she spoke of, the one that would dance in spring. And he finally began to feel the sun's restless pulse stirring beneath the horizon.
Before the sun rose, he brought her belongings back to that inn. The next morning, when the first rays of sunlight touched the blades of grass, two dried dewdrops merged and evaporated together.
Dew on the garlic leaves, how easily you dry! Dew dries today but falls again tomorrow at dawn, but once a person dies, when will they ever return?