A Cloak

Xuxian stirred and reached out drowsily as Suzhen managed to get him onto the bed. "Susu," he murmured.

Heaving a sigh, she sat down beside him and looked thoughtfully at him, even as she gently arrested his wandering hand and laid it on his chest wrapped in hers. He smiled contentedly. "I'm so sleepy, Susu. I don't know what's wrong with me. Will you stay with me while I sleep?"

"Will I stay with you?" she repeated wistfully, brushing a strand of hair back from his face. "Xuxian, you don't know me…" Her voice died on her lips and she looked away, even though he had already fallen asleep.

It was quiet in their hut, and she watched the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he slept peacefully. Suzhen stroked his flushed cheeks fondly, her fingers cool against the warm skin.

Slowly she unwound her hand from his, careful not to wake him, and covered him with the blanket. She got up and paced restlessly around the hut; she did not want to go to bed. There was a new moodiness hanging on her, and a darkening look in her eyes when she looked away from Xuxian.

"Why should I put up with it?" she said lowly to herself. "Why should she continue to cause trouble for me and distress Xuxian? I will see her now, and settle it once and for all while Xuxian is asleep--the less he knows about, the better."

She got up decisively and cast a last look at Xuxian sleeping, then snatched up a cloak and left the house, walking swiftly.

The plain brown cloak had been patched in several places, but it hid her well in the night as she made her way silently down the path towards Madame Zheng's house. The shadows were thick and inky by the time she approached the dull yellow light coming from the hut's windows.

As she came up the path, walking in a swift, decisive stride as if she was going into battle, Suzhen stopped short as she heard raised voices, and thudding sounds.

She drew closer, suddenly hesitant, and listened warily outside the door.

"I'm sick and tired of seeing your long face every time I come back," snapped a man's voice angrily. "If you can't even smile at me then why should I even bother coming back?"

Suzhen started as she heard Madame Zheng's voice, high and shaking as she had never heard it before. "And why should I smile at you? To thank you for making my life a living hell? To thank you for the hard words you throw at me, and curses when you're drunk? To thank you for working myself to the bone every day and only complaints from you in return?" There was the sound of someone scrambling to their feet, and fumbling with clothes. "To thank you for this?" Her voice, shrill and strained, cracked pathetically.

There was a tense silence. Zheng Haoran shuffled on the hearth. "I was drunk," he said roughly. "And you couldn't shut up with your nagging even then. Why are you surprised?"

There was a clattering sound as his wife stumbled backwards, knocking a pot over. "You dare to say that!" she cried. "You hit me, and you dare to say it's my fault? Are you even a man, Zheng Haoran?"

Her laboured breathing as she tried to keep from crying were the only sound in the hut. Zheng Haoran turned away. "Stop making a scene." he said awkwardly.

Madame Zheng said nothing, but she managed to swallow her sobs--she was too proud to cry in front of him. "Making a scene,' she repeated bitterly. "So when you hit me the other night, that wasn't a scene? When you came back from the brothel, that wasn't a scene?"

He said nothing. Breathing heavily, she stood there looking at him resentfully, and then whirled round and left the hut without pausing to even grab a cloak against the cold night air.

Suzhen sprang back into the shadows as the door was flung open and Madame Zheng rushed out, fighting sobs, the firelight flashing on her tear stained cheeks. The door slammed violently behind her.

She went down the path, almost running, and headed towards the outskirts of the village.

Startled, Suzhen watched her retreat into the distance. Her head was spinning with what she had overheard, and her anger at Madame Zheng was temporarily forgotten.

On a sudden impulse, she started after Madame Zheng, casting a quick glance around to see if anyone was watching. It was dark, and no one was out; Suzhen ran down the path and leaped into the air, using a cloud of spirit energy to carry her forward noiselessly as she left the ground. Hovering over the worn path, she soon caught up with Madame Zheng's figure without making a sound.

In the darkness, the sounds of a few sleepy crickets and the distant booming song of mournful frogs from the lake were the only voices to be heard besides the wind rustling mysteriously in the trees. Madame Zheng's laboured breathing eventually gave way to tight, gasping sobs as she succumbed to the wave of emotions she had bottled up.

She tripped and fell on the path, and remained there sobbing instead of getting up. Suzhen fell back and watched her, troubled. A slow, uncertain compassion was growing within her despite herself. She had come here intending to confront Madame Zheng and threaten her, if need be, to stop her malicious troublemaking. But here was something she had never expected.

Disturbed, Suzhen silently watched Madame Zheng crouch on the ground, weeping passionately into her hands. Slowly she unfastened the cloak from around her neck and went forward. She dropped it softly around Madame Zheng's shoulders and stepped back, rather surprised by her own actions.

She saw Madame Zheng stiffen, and swallow her sobs with a gulp. As Madame Zheng turned around nervously, fear creeping into her reddened eyes, Suzhen instinctively levitated herself upwards out of view. Something in her sensed that Madame Zheng would not take kindly to anyone--let alone her, of all people!--seeing her in this vulnerable state. Like a hurt animal, she hid her pain, clinging fiercely onto her pride, even as it embittered her.

Madame Zheng clutched the cloak uncertainly to herself. She could not help but feel afraid. But the night air was cold, and the cloak--thin and patched as it was--was like a gentle embrace sheltering her from the chilliness. Sniffing tremulously, she huddled under the cloak and hugged her knees to herself, the frenzied sobs that had been wracking her slowly dying away.

Suzhen drew away into the shadows, careful not to betray herself with a single rustle.