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The wedding was so big.

There were too many feet, too many voices, too many smells that tangled together until Lánxuě could not tell where one ended and another began. Her father was somewhere among the guests, and her mother, and all the others who seemed terribly tall when one was as small as she was. The little snowflower had spent much of the celebration tucked close to those she knew, content to watch with wide gold eyes while the world moved around her. Every so often someone laughed too loudly and her ears would fold against her head. Then they would rise again. Slowly. Carefully. Curious despite herself.

It was the yellow thing that finally stole her attention.

Lánxuě's tiny head tipped upward as the butterfly bobbed through the air, its wings opening and closing like a flower that had somehow learned how to fly. Her mouth fell open. She had never seen such a thing. Or, perhaps, she had—but one month of life did not leave much room for remembering much of anything. Her gaze followed it until another small, but large body passed through her vision after it. A boy. Lánxuě blinked curiously before her attention shifted between the boy and his fluttering quarry.

Her paws carried her after them before she had entirely decided to go.

She was not quick. Even for a baby, Lánxuě was painfully small, her legs short and delicate beneath her, and every determined little step came with the faint sway of a child who had only recently discovered that paws were meant for more than crawling over siblings. Still, she followed. Step-step-wobble. Step-step. Her nose lowered once to inspect a fallen petal before she seemed to remember there was something far more important happening and hurried after him again, which amounted to a slightly faster, considerably less coordinated toddle.

When Hemlock drew close to the butterfly, Lánxuě stopped several little body-lengths behind him.

She sat.

Or tried to.

Her rump landed with an inelegant little plop, nearly carrying the rest of her backward with it before her forepaws splayed wide enough to save her dignity. Oblivious to what Hemlock intended for his prize, she stared at the butterfly with round-eyed wonder. Then at him. Then back to the butterfly.

F...fower?

The Common word came softly and imperfectly from her mouth, shaped with all the uncertainty of something newly learned. Her nose wrinkled.

Fly... fower?

A tiny tail gave one hopeful thump against the earth.

Clearly, Lánxuě had solved it.

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The yellow flower got away.

Lánxuě's little face tipped farther and farther back as it disappeared into the leaves, until eventually she could stretch her neck no more. Her ears drooped with a faint sort of disappointment. Gone. She had only just found it, too. Worse still, she had only just found the word for it—or what she thought was the word for it. Surui had been teaching her Common in tiny pieces, naming things again and again until sounds began to mean something, but there were still so many things in the world that Lánxuě simply did not have words for yet.

"How you know?"

Her attention fell back to the boy.

Lánxuě stared.

Her golden eyes blinked once. Then again.

Know... what?

The question was much too large for such a little mind. Her brow pinched as she worked terribly hard at it, gaze wandering from Hemlock to the place where the butterfly had vanished and then back again. Eventually one tiny paw lifted and pointed clumsily toward the canopy.

Fower... fly.

There. That was what she knew.

But then he gave her something else.

Hem-lock. His name.

Oh.

Her ears perked immediately.

Hem...lok, she repeated, softer than he had said it and rounded strangely by her little tongue. Her expression brightened with the quiet satisfaction of getting something right. She had not known him at all! But she did now. Hemlock. The little girl committed this newly acquired information to whatever strange place one-month-old children kept important things, alongside Mama, Bàba, milk, Surui, siblings, and apparently flying flowers.

"Who you?"

That one she knew.

Lánxuě's tiny chest puffed.

Lán!

Her own name came considerably easier than all this troublesome Common, spoken with the confidence of a child who had heard it cooed, whispered, fretted over and repeated around her since she had been given it. Her tail began its little thump-thump again before she leaned forward to sniff at him, nearly overbalancing herself in the process. One forepaw shot forward to catch her weight.

She remained like that for a moment—rump high, nose low, staring up at Hemlock from between oversized ears.

Then, because introductions apparently required additional explanation, she added very seriously,

Bàba... weddin'.

One tiny paw gestured vaguely back toward the distant celebration. As though this explained precisely who Lánxuě was.

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