I Got Tangled Up with My Sweet-on-the-Outside, Dark-on-the-Inside Stepson

A short Wu Zetian and Li Zhi pairing, estimated at 50,000 words, with a little angst and a happy ending

(1)

The east wind misleads, and the kite falls.

A severed string ties together half a lifetime of fate.

He is the young Prince of Jin, bereft of his mother and father, curled up in the depths of a rock garden, secretly crying.

She is a young concubine, in the full bloom of youth, who wanders by chance into his dim world.

"Flowers bloom and fall in their own time." Wu Zhao's voice drifts on the spring breeze. "If you keep your head bowed in tears, won't you waste the lovely days before you?"

She offers him a handkerchief embroidered with orchids and plants an orchid in his heart as well.

(2)

Candlelight flickers in the Hall of Two Principles. She is the concubine mother tending to the sick, and he is the crown prince of the Eastern Palace. Their fingertips brush lightly, like a spring dream that leaves no trace.

He gives her a jade hairpin, and vows that they will shine together, like the sun and moon. She avoids him. "Your Highness, this is improper."

But he presses closer and closer, his eyes filled with a love unchanged for seven years. "You may have forgotten that kite and that handkerchief... but I have never forgotten you."

A deep kiss, and a promise to remember.

(3)

The ancient temple is cold and lonely, its Buddhist bells ringing again and again.

She shaves her head to become a nun, waiting for a distant promise. He has three thousand beauties in his palace. Has his old love turned to ashes?

Until one day, a kite shaped like a butterfly and inscribed with a love poem drifts down before the emperor...

He storms through the temple gate and embraces the figure in monastic robes. "Meiniang, I've come."

Theme: Love one another.