novelSusiti Chapter 98 Original Poem "Tired Feathers"
Chapter 98 Original Poem "Tired Feathers"
Chapter 98 Original Poem "Tired Feathers"
Chang Le noticed that when he was making the paper kite, his brows were slightly furrowed, as if he was thinking about something.
She didn't ask, she just stood quietly to the side and watched.
After pasting the paper, Wang Zhi cut the last strip of paper, dipped it in ink, and wrote a few words on the back of the kite.
He covered his eyes with his hand while writing; it wasn't intentional. Sizi wanted to see, but even standing on tiptoe, she couldn't. Of course, even if she had seen it, she wouldn't have understood it.
"What did the handsome guy write?"
"It's nothing. It's just a name."
"Sizi wants to see!"
"Once we put it up there, we'll be able to see it." Wang Zhi hid the kite behind his back and smiled at her. "Let it fly first."
The group arrived at the edge of the field; it was early summer.
The wind wasn't strong; by modern measurements, it was probably around level two or three.
The rice seedlings have already grown to knee height and are almost ready for harvest.
A gust of wind blows, and the green waves roll back and forth. In the distance, the outline of the Qing Shi Ridge gleams with a pale blue light under the sun.
Wang Zhihuan stood on the edge of the field and raised his hand to test the wind direction.
Then he handed her the rhinoceros kite and taught her how to hold the spool.
"Raise your hands high. Yes, like that. When the wind comes, let go and slowly release the line."
Si Zi stood on tiptoe, holding the kite above her head with both hands, her face flushed red.
Every time I visit her boyfriend, she is especially happy because there is always a little surprise.
A gust of wind came by, and Wang Zhi said "Let go." She let go of the kite, which rose crookedly, spun in mid-air, and then fell down.
Ah Huang was lying on the edge of the field when he saw the kite fall. He immediately scurried over, grabbed it, and ran away.
"Ah Huang! Don't bite it! That's a rhinoceros's kite!"
Sizi hurriedly chased after it with his short legs, stepping into the rice paddy and splashing mud all over his leg.
She didn't care anymore and chased Ah Huang around the ridge for most of the way. Finally, Ah Huang let go, and the kite was covered in drool.
Wang Zhi walked over and picked up the kite, wiping it with his sleeve: "Sizi, it's okay, it can still fly."
"Ah Huang is a bad guy, I'm not playing with it anymore," the little ox glared at Ah Huang, who wagged its tail, completely oblivious to the fact that it hadn't done anything wrong.
Wang Zhi helped her launch the bird again. This time, he held it up for her first, and only let go when the wind came, releasing the line as he did so.
The kite rose shakily, but this time it didn't fall. It rose higher and higher until it finally floated steadily in the sky.
Sizi gripped the spool, tilted his head back, and opened his mouth wide.
"It flew! Pretty guy, the kite has flown again!"
Chengyang and Li Zhi also released their kites.
Chengyang learned quickly, and in no time her kite rose higher than a rhinoceros.
Li Zhi launched the kite slowly but steadily, and it never fell down after it went up.
Wang Zhi also picked up the last paper kite.
He put the most care into this one, carefully selecting the bamboo strips and adding two extra weighted strips to the bottom of the kite, which were attached to the inside of the paper and could not be seen from the outside, but made the kite more stable in the wind.
He held the spool in one hand and the kite in the other. After waiting for a gust of wind, he loosened his grip, and the kite glided away with the wind.
It rose steadily and slowly, without haste. He let out the line slowly, and the kite rose higher and higher, becoming smaller and smaller.
"Young Master Wang, this one seems more stable than the others." Chang Le stood behind him, looking up at the black dot in the sky.
"We used a different method. We added two counterweights to the bottom of the kite, and the tail fin was also extended by half an inch. It won't flip over when the wind is strong, and it won't fall off when the wind is weak."
"Where did you learn these methods, sir?"
"I just figured it out myself." He paused, "I used to set them off back in my hometown when I was a kid. After setting them off a lot, I figured out how to make them stick the most securely."
Chang Le did not ask any further questions.
She was a smart woman and could tell that although Wang Zhihuan had been playing with the children all day, there was a faint shadow between his brows.
It wasn't irritability or anger, but more like the quietude of someone sitting under a jujube tree, gazing at the distant mountains in a daze.
"Is something on your mind today, my lord? If it's convenient, you can tell me about it," Chang Le couldn't help but ask.
Wang Zhihuan turned his head and glanced at her.
She stood beside him, her moon-white skirt fluttering gently in the wind, and she still clutched the handkerchief in her hand.
She didn't look at him when she asked this question, but looked up at the kite in the sky, as if she were asking the kite, not him.
He was silent for a while.
"Someone came to my house yesterday. They said a few things. Nothing particularly good, nothing particularly bad. It just left me a little—"
stuffy."
Chang Le did not ask who came or what they said.
She simply nodded slightly: "No wonder you made so many kites this morning."
"Making kites is simpler than thinking about things. There are rules for how to bend the bamboo strips, how to cut the paper, and where to make the cuts—just follow the rules. But some things don't have rules, and you don't know how to think about them."
Chang Le looked down at the handkerchief in her hand, her fingertips gently stroking the corner of the handkerchief.
"Sometimes I don't know what to think. My family has many more rules than yours, but the more rules there are, the less I know where to go."
She spoke very softly, as if talking to herself. But Wang Zhi heard her.
He didn't reply. Gazing at the distant Qing Shi Ridge, the rice seedlings in the fields rippled in the wind, and four kites flew in a row in the sky, their heights and positions seemingly commas painted on the blue sky with an ink brush.
He held the spool and felt a slight vibration coming from the other end of the cotton thread.
The kite floated steadily in the sky, seemingly more at ease than any living creature on the ground, even though it was tethered by a string.
He stared at those black dots for a while, then his gaze fell on a few weary birds flapping their wings and slowly flying past the kite above the Qing Shi Ridge in the distance.
The wingtips were gilded with a pale gold by the sunset. It flew slowly and steadily, as if it had been flying all day and was no longer in a hurry.
A thought suddenly struck him.
He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but the scene before him—the weary birds, the kites, the blue sky, the evening breeze—seemed to have shaped the inexplicable unease in his heart.
"Weary feathers follow the clouds up and down."
He blurted out those words without even knowing why.
Chang Le turned her head slightly to the side.
Wang Zhihai gazed at the birds, paused, and then added the next line: "A solitary figure, unmoved by the world's ups and downs."
He was stunned for a moment after saying that.
These two sentences came out so naturally, as if they were thoughts that had been uttered on their own.
No wonder people always say that a good article is a gift from heaven, and a masterpiece is a rare find.
Without further hesitation, he simply continued reading, the words flowing naturally from the lines, as if guided by divine intervention.
"This body is meant to be a guest of Penglai Island, half in the azure sky and half in the heart."
After reciting the four lines, the sound fell into the wind, like a leaf falling on the water, rippling twice before disappearing.
Chang Le stood beside him and heard every single word he said.
She mentally went over those four sentences several times.
Weary feathers, clouds rising and falling, solitary footprints, the ups and downs of the world—this refers to himself.
Penglai and Yingzhou are fairy mountains at sea, and he said he should have been a person living outside the world.
But the last line, "Half in the sky, half in the heart," means the kite is in the sky, but the heart is still elsewhere.
Weary birds return to the mountains and forests, not to Penglai Island.
This person said they didn't know what to think, but they clearly knew in their heart.
Perhaps it is precisely because he knows this that he feels even more depressed.
He simply assumed that he had recited the poem casually while flying a kite, without even giving it a title.
But Chang Le secretly gave it a name in her heart—"Weary Feather".