“Ask it for the secret of the elixir and it will look at you the way the moon looks at everyone: kindly, and from very far away.”
A Moon immortal of The Celestial Court
3 known connections · an open question
Chang'e's only companion on the moon, pounding the elixir of immortality in a jade mortar, hop by hop, century by century. It has been at the same pestle since before your great-grandfather's name was written down. Ask it for the secret of the elixir and it will look at you the way the moon looks at everyone: kindly, and from very far away.
It is pounding the elixir right now — thump, thump, thump — in the quiet of the moon's bright side, while Chang'e watches the earth. The rhythm has not changed in millennia. It will not change tonight.
One pestle-stroke, the rabbit knows, will be the last one — the stroke that finishes the elixir so completely that no more pounding is needed, ever. It has been saving its best hop for that stroke for longer than history. When it lands, the moon will ring like a bell.
“Thump, thump, thump — the elixir pounding, hop by hop, the moon's oldest rhythm. Except the night attendant counted: every night, one stroke in ten thousand lands without a sound. No thump. Just the motion, and the silence where the sound should be. The rabbit keeps pounding. Chang'e, asked about it, looked at the earth for a long time and said nothing.”
One pestle-stroke a night makes no sound.
The Jade Emperor’s court: the Queen Mother of the West, the thunder dukes, the star lords, the weaver and the cowherd. The bureaucracy of the cosmos — every god holds an office, every office holds a ledger, and somebody is always auditing.
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