Gilded Lament

That was the first time I saw her. She was in high spirits then, radiating brilliance. At the imperial poetry salon, as the "Flying Flower" game commenced and ministers fell into silenced defeat, she alone drew from the classics, her eloquence stunning all present, as graceful as a blooming orchid. Rumor had it she was Luoyang's most celebrated lady of letters, summoned to court by imperial edict. Back then, everyone within these walls speculated on the grand odes she would yet weave. Later, I crossed paths with her several more times. At banquets where laughter flowed like wine, she remained in the seat of honor, yet she grew uncharacteristically hushed, fading into a strange silence. While others spun gilded flatteries, she only tightened her grip on the brush concealed within her sleeve, her expression strained with awkwardness. Word was that at first, the Emperor found her verses novel. But gradually, the air filled with stinging whispers. "His Majesty has received a rare avian tribute and commanded her to compose an ode in its exaltation!" "But her response was so pedantic and sour that it was rejected. His Majesty desires a celebratory ode for the occasion, not some aloof, sanctimonious admonition." "A 'gifted woman'? To me, she is merely a fool blinded by her own arrogance." Thenceforth, her circle withered, and her manuscripts were left to gather dust, unread. The next tidings I had of her were a shock: she had requested to leave her pavilion to dwell in the Forlorn Palace, a place all others shunned. The last time I saw her, it was through a window veiled in cobwebs. She had wasted away to a mere shadow, her features flickering behind the silken traps. Yet her eyes shone with a terrifying brilliance, as if fueled by an inner fire, a look of resolute fulfillment I had never before witnessed. Her gaze soared past the dust-laden beams and the bottomless courtyard well, straight beyond the palace walls toward the east, where the moon ascends. A long age passed thereafter without a glimpse of her. Later, I was tasked with clearing an abandoned chamber, her former dwelling. As I pushed open the door, I found only a void. The ink was parched; a length of white silk, etched with characters, drifted upon the breeze to settle at my feet. "Born in the shadow of a humble gate, unversed in the courtly scripts..." Many of the characters were too obscure for me to grasp, yet as I read, my vision clouded, and tears fell unbidden. I stowed that fragment of white silk within my sleeve. Soon after, a poem took wing through Luoyang, passed from hand to hand in fevered transcription. They said its lines held the despair of imprisonment in the imperial palace, the agony of severed kin, the fury of a pearl cast in dust, and the spirit of a jade that chose to shatter rather than remain whole and sullied. That scrap of white silk finally took flight, scaling the palace walls for her at last.