When a girl is seventeen (page 1)
When a girl is seventeen, she no longer has to listen to her mother. Especially a girl like Tang Lili, whose daggers fly through the air, splitting the wind. Even if her mother taught her that. Especially if her mother taught her that.
She did not labor under her famous mother’s tutelage for decades, almost, to not go out and make a name for herself now.
The rain in Jiangnan comes down like a lover’s breath, soft, everlasting, falling onto the banana leaves and streaming into the creeks, flowing under the oars of the boatsmen plying their dinghies around the water city’s walls and through every turn and gurgle of this white walled, black roofed town.
Tang Lili laughed. Her laugher is like golden tinkling bells, like happiness and youth and beauty, all of which she possessed to abundance just as the soft sweet water raining down from the sky embracing her town did.
“Girl, what are you laughing at?”
She whipped around like a starling, and up she flew into the trees, her sword drawn. She was frightened, because no one had ever surprised her like that, not since she was seven and playing hide and seek. She could feel a cat at midnight on the outermost wall of her family’s compound. She could hear a cicada climbing out of its earthy mound in the summertime. This boy, this young man’s voice took her by surprise, and she vowed she will not be surprised by him again.
In an instant, her sword was at his neck. He hadn’t moved.
Good, he isn’t an idiot.
She wouldn’t really kill him, of course, but she would teach him a lesson.
What that lesson is, she didn’t know exactly, but when your sword is quicker than a xiangsheng performer’s tongue, you don’t have to know exactly and the lesson will still be effective.
Standing high in the trees, she and the boy, in the softness of the rain, her heart softened. Though she’s easy to anger, the storm is easily over.
“On your knees and three kowtows, then I’ll let you go. Because I’m in a good mood today,” she said in the loud, careless way she imagined an adventuress might.
He laughed. His laughter is like the bronze bell on a pagoda, resonant, secure, giving a sense of all is in order, all’s well and will end well.
Well, she would show him.
But her blade couldn’t touch him.
~~~~~~~~~~
【青花瓷】詞:方文山 曲:周杰倫
帘外芭蕉惹骤雨门环惹铜绿
而我路过那江南小镇惹了你
在泼墨山水画里
你从墨色深处被隐去