(A collection of short stories, both historical and contemporary)
As she gently stroked the bottle, her warm breath froze the moisture in the bone-chilling wind into frost, settling over its red-and-blue porcelain surface. Hearing the cries that came from its mouth, she gazed into the distance with bleary eyes, powerless. Far away, the bright moonlight suddenly gathered into a beam, forcefully piercing the thin window paper. It dispelled all the darkness in the bedchamber, then finally converged into an old man surrounded by a faint glow. The old man came silently to her side, pulled a pair of scissors from his sleeve, and, his expression tinged with sorrow, snipped a red thread extending from the bottle's mouth. The other end of the thread was tied to her. She let go, and closed her eyes as the bottle shattered. The man who loved her so deeply had been someone she relied on and cared for, yet in the end, she still abandoned him.
