Jiangnan embroiderer Shen Zhiyi saved the wounded general Xie Linyuan.
After seven days together, he gave her a jade pendant and promised, “Wait for me to come marry you.”
She believed him and waited year after year.
Instead, she heard that he was to marry a princess.
She traveled a thousand miles to find him. He was stationed at the border, and she was in the military camp. They were close enough to touch, yet worlds apart, and neither dared acknowledge the other.
War, court politics, their status, misunderstandings: they had no enemies and there were no villains. It was simply a world that could not make room for two people in love.
He died on the battlefield, leaving no remains. She finished embroidering a picture of two birds resting together, then kept watch over his grave, marked only by his clothes and belongings, and closed her eyes on a snowy night.
The gravestone bore no words. Her embroidery could never show the two of them together.
She loved only one person in her life, and even in death, she never got to see him again.
