84 The Dragon buys candied hawthorn

"No you haven't," Shu Luan says, wrapping one arm around Ling Yan's shoulder, and bringing their heads together. "Where have you been, A-Yan?"

Ling Yan twines his fingers with Shu Luan, and shakes his head. "You just didn't pay attention."

Shu Luan realizes there's not much sense in arguing with a dream, so he gives up and decides to just enjoy Ling Yan's company, for as long as he'll have it.

"Where are we, A-Yan?" he asks, looking ahead at the starry sky, the black expanse of it spattered here and there with the colourful nebula dust.

When he was a child, he used to think that a long time ago, someone must have used pots of clay to carry all the stars from one corner of the sky to the other. But they fell and broke, scattering stars in every direction and the clay dust from the broken pots formed all the nebulae.