The first axe blow of the day sounded before the sky had fully decided on its color.
Thock.
The sound cut through the thin dawn air in clean, steady intervals, like a heartbeat hammered into wood.
Thock.
Thock.
Li Shen's eyes opened before his mother called him. For a moment he lay still, listening.
Usually, mornings began with the soft scrape of the pot lid, the hiss of kindling catching, the murmur of his parents' low voices. Today, the rhythm was different.
Thock.
He rolled off his mat and padded to the door, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
Outside, behind the house, his father was working.
Li Heng stood beside a short stump that served as a chopping block. A pile of rough logs loomed on one side, a neat stack of split wood grew on the other. The axe rose and fell with calm, efficient strength, blade biting into wood fibers with each swing.
His shirt was already damp at the collar. Breath misted lightly in the cold.
Li Mei leaned against the doorframe a few steps away, arms folded, watching him like someone watching a river they'd known their entire life—familiar, but still worth looking at.
"You're up early," Li Shen said.
"Your father owes the field his back and the stove its fuel," Li Mei replied. "He decided to pay the stove first today."
She nudged him gently with her elbow. "Go tell him you're awake before he tries to impress the entire village with how many logs he can kill by himself."
Li Shen walked closer, careful not to cross into the arc of the axe.
"Father."
The axe finished its swing, split the log cleanly in two. Li Heng let the halves fall aside, then straightened and turned.
"You're late," he said.
"I woke up when the axe did," Li Shen protested.
"Then the axe is faster than you," Li Heng replied. "That's not something to be proud of."
He set another log on the block.
"Bring the split ones to the wall," he said. "Stack them tight. Gaps let the wind steal our work."
Li Shen picked up one of the halved logs. It was heavier than he expected. He shifted his grip, hugged it to his chest, carried it to the side of the house.
His arms burned by the time he made his third trip.
Behind him, the axe kept talking to the wood. Steady, unfussy, relentless.
After a while, his mother came out with three cups of warm water. She handed one to Li Heng first, then to Li Shen, then kept one for herself.
"You're supposed to drink between arguments with the tree," she said.
"The tree started it," Li Heng said.
"Of course it did," she replied. "Everything that resists you started it."
She took a sip from her own cup, then swallowed and smiled.
"This way," she said, "when the taxes come and try to strangle us, at least we won't freeze while they're doing it."
Li Heng's mouth twitched.
He drank, then set the cup down and picked up the axe again without comment.
Li Shen watched him work and felt something like reassurance. It was a simple equation: father plus axe equals wood plus warmth. In a world he barely understood, that math always balanced.
---
Later that morning, after the wood was stacked and the axe wiped and stored, Li Heng left for the fields.
"You're with your mother today," he told Li Shen. "Old Wu's sons will be out. I don't want to hear that you let them talk you into moving stones for them "for fun.""
"I wouldn't," Li Shen said.
"You would, if they wrapped the request in enough noise," Li Heng replied. "Use your ears for listening, not for following."
He left with his hoe over his shoulder and his lunch tied at his belt, his back already carrying the shape of the day ahead.
Inside the house, Li Mei was kneeling by a small chest, sorting through its contents. Bits of cloth, a handful of coins, a precious needle wrapped in oil paper, a folded scrap of blue fabric too fine for daily life.
"What are you doing?" Li Shen asked.
"Arguing with our wealth," she said. "It insists on staying small. I insist on counting it too often."
She closed the chest and pushed it back against the wall.
"Come," she said. "We'll go to the stream. The laundry is trying to grow legs."
He helped her gather the bundle of clothes, balancing it on his shoulder while she tied it with a strip of cloth. The load wasn't light, but he didn't complain. It felt good to carry something that mattered.
They walked through the village, past Wu's yard—where Wu's eldest was leaning on a shovel more than using it—and past Da Niu, who was once again engaged in mortal combat with the same stubborn rock.
"It's winning," Li Mei remarked as they passed.
"I'm letting it tire itself out," Da Niu grunted.
"You'll be old before it is," she replied. "But keep trying. The ground is too proud here anyway."
At the stream, they knelt on the flat stones by the water's edge. The stream muttered its small song, clear and cold, carrying bits of leaves and reflected sky.
"Shirts first," Li Mei said. "Socks after. Last time you did it the other way and everything ended up smelling like Da Niu's feet."
"My fault?" Li Shen said. "He was three houses away."
"Feet have long arms," she said. "Don't argue with them."
She plunged a shirt into the water, then rubbed it briskly against itself, the fabric squeaking faintly.
Li Shen mimicked her, arms straining.
They worked in companionable silence for a while.
At some point, she paused and sat back on her heels.
He glanced over.
"You tired?" he asked.
"It's nothing," she said lightly. "The wood and the buckets and your father's jokes ganged up on me this morning."
She rolled her shoulders once, as if shaking off a weight, then leaned forward again and resumed scrubbing.
The pause had been brief. So brief he almost could have missed it.
He filed it away without knowing why.
---
After the laundry, there was the market strip—three stalls and a bench—that people insisted on calling "the street" when they felt grand.
Li Mei spread a cloth on a flat rock and set out a small stack of dried vegetables and a jar of pickles. She didn't have enough to be a proper stall, but enough to trade.
"Sit," she told Li Shen. "Watch that no one accidentally forgets to pay."
"Accidentally," he repeated.
She smiled thinly. "Some people's memory fails when their hands are full."
People came and went: a woman trading a handful of beans for a spoon of pickles, a man trying to haggle three times harder than the amount was worth, a girl from the edge of the village who looked at the jar like it was a festival.
Between customers, Li Mei talked—softly, matter-of-factly.
"Look at his shoes," she murmured when a lean man with a smooth voice approached. "See the new soles? He pretends to be poor. Don't let him talk you into pity."
"Her hands," she pointed out with a tilt of her chin toward another woman. "Callouses like mine. She works hard. If she comes up short, you let me know. We don't crush our own for fun."
Li Shen watched and listened, feeling like he was being handed a different map of the village—one that showed things no one drew on the ground: debts, grudges, quiet respect.
Old Wu appeared at some point, his expression sour just from being alive.
"Li girl," he said to Li Mei. "My wife says your pickles are stronger than mine."
"Your wife is a wise woman," Li Mei said smoothly.
Wu scowled. "Don't get proud. I can make my own sacks turn sour if I want to."
"Of course you can," she said. "But if hers wants mine, it means she plans to live longer. That's worth something, don't you think?"
He snorted, then tossed a small handful of beans onto the cloth.
"That's too much," Li Shen said automatically, counting them with his eyes.
Wu's gaze snapped to him.
"Too much?" he said. "You complaining, boy?"
"We sell that amount for less," Li Shen said, cheeks warming. "If you give us this, you lose."
Wu squinted, then barked out a short, unwilling laugh.
"Honest to a fault. Just like your father," il gronda. "Fine. Take it. Call it payment for you not growing up stupid."
He grabbed the jar, took more pickles than he technically deserved, and trudged off.
Li Mei exhaled slowly after he was out of earshot.
"You didn't have to correct him," she said quietly.
"You always say we shouldn't cheat," Li Shen replied.
"That's true," she said. "But some people see honesty as weakness."
"Is it?" he asked.
She looked at him for a long moment.
"No," she said finally. "Not here. Not between us. Outside… we'll see."
She went to say more, then paused.
For a heartbeat, her hand went to her chest, fingers pressing lightly just below the collarbone. Her breath caught—a tiny hitch—and then smoothed out again.
It was quick. Almost nothing.
"Cold wind," she said, as if she'd heard his unspoken question. "Go stand in the sun a bit. You're turning into a mushroom."
He obeyed, stepping into the light. The warmth soaked into his skin. He watched her from the corner of his eye as she resumed talking to a neighbor, her hands moving in their usual precise way.
If her smile was a little thinner than usual, he told himself he'd imagined it.
---
In the afternoon, the children dragged him into another invented war.
This time, the enemy was "bandits from the next next village" who had somehow offended everyone's sense of justice by existing.
"You're the leader," Zhou Liang said, shoving a stick into his hands.
"I don't want to be the leader," Li Shen said.
"That's why you're good at it," Qian Mei replied.
They played until their throats were dry and their legs wobbled.
At one point, Da Niu tripped over the same cursed rock and went down hard, skinning his knee. Blood welled up, bright against the dust.
He stared at it, eyes wide.
"It's not bad," Li Shen said. "You've bled more from your nose when your father sneezes too hard."
That earned a shaky laugh.
"Go to Old He," Qian Mei advised. "She'll yell at you and then fix it."
"I don't like her yelling," Da Niu muttered.
"That means she likes you enough to save her kind words," Qian Mei said.
"Is that how it works?" he asked.
"Yes," she said, with the authority of someone who had decided it was so.
Da Niu limped off toward Old He's hut.
Li Shen watched him go, then glanced back toward his own house.
From this angle, he could just see the corner of the roof and the line where smoke would rise when the stove was lit. There was no smoke yet. Too early for dinner.
He pictured his mother inside, moving through the small space, laying out bowls, muttering to herself about the price of beans or the foolishness of men.
The image settled something inside him.
The game resumed. Bandits died noisy deaths. The Pale Wind kept blowing, unimpressed.
---
Evening came, as it always did.
Li Heng returned from the fields with dirt on his boots and new aches in his shoulders. His steps were a fraction heavier than usual, but his face was the same closed, steady thing it had always been.
"How was the field?" Li Mei asked as he set his hoe down.
"It's still there," he said. "And still thinks it can outlast me."
"Old Wu bought pickles," she said, as if that were part of the same conversation.
"Then the world is ending," he answered.
Li Shen sat at the table as she ladled porridge into three bowls. The steam carried a hint of something extra tonight—a sliver of dried meat she'd saved and chopped fine.
"A feast," she announced. "For no reason at all."
"Suspicious," Li Heng said. "What are you hiding?"
"Nothing," she replied. "Maybe I just like seeing my men chew on something that reminds them life can be soft sometimes."
Li Shen ate, warmth spreading from his mouth down into his chest.
They talked about small things: a neighbor's stubborn goat, a broken bucket, a rumor that taxes might rise again next year. Nothing of grand importance. Everything that mattered.
Halfway through the meal, Li Mei's hand slipped.
Her chopsticks missed the bowl's rim and clinked against the table. Just once. Just slightly off.
She froze for a fraction of a second, then picked them up again and continued as if nothing had happened.
Li Heng's eyes flicked to her face, then away.
Li Shen saw both.
"Are you tired?" he asked, before he could stop himself.
"I live with you and your father," she said lightly. "Of course I'm tired."
He smiled, but something in his chest felt tight.
After the meal, she moved a little slower as she cleared the bowls. Not enough that an outsider would notice. Enough that the boy who had watched her every day of his life felt the difference.
When she bent to pick up a dropped spoon, she stayed crouched a heartbeat longer than necessary before straightening.
Old He would have read a list of things into that. Li Shen read only one.
Something is off.
He opened his mouth.
"Mother—"
"I'm fine," she said, without looking at him.
The words came too quickly.
She caught herself, breathed out, then turned and gave him a smile that almost reached her eyes.
"Don't start turning into Old He before your time," she said. "Your back will curve and your tongue will rot."
He shut his mouth.
He wasn't Old He. He was her son.
If she said she was fine, then for tonight, he decided she was.
---
That night, lying on his mat, he listened.
His father's breathing: deep, steady, like always.
His mother's: softer, with a tiny catch here and there, as if each inhale had to step around something.
He told himself he was imagining it.
The ceiling stared back at him in the dark.
He rolled onto his side, facing the wall between their mats. His hand lifted halfway… then dropped back to his chest.
He didn't press his palm against the earth this time.
He didn't tap for reassurance.
Instead, he counted his mother's breaths, silently.
One. Two. Three. A small hitch. Four. Five.
The Pale Wind slid over the roof in its thin, indifferent way.
Inside the little house, nothing broke that night.
Not yet.
From the outside, if someone had walked by in the dark, they would have seen the same thing they'd seen every night for years: a faint glow of dying embers, a roofline that didn't sag too badly, a family asleep.
Inside, under skin and bone and habit, something had taken its first quiet step in the wrong direction.
Li Shen didn't have the words for it.
He only knew that for the first time, the world felt not just big and harsh and distant—
—but slightly, almost imperceptibly, tilted.