The music played on.
Couples spun around the fire, their shadows stretching and shrinking in the lantern light.
Bai Yue was still dancing, still laughing, still spinning between her three husbands like a woman who had forgotten that the world contained anything but joy.
But at the edge of the clearing, something was changing.
A group had arrived. There were about twenty of them, young males and females, their fur groomed and their clothes clean. They came from the southern tribes, Elder Zhao announced later, here to celebrate the Moon's Embrace and strengthen the bonds between territories.
The young females immediately gravitated toward the jaguars, and the jaguar males, still shy, still uncertain in their new home, did not know what to do with the attention.
Their ears went flat. Their tails tucked. They looked at Yǎ Lì for guidance.
Yǎ Lì laughed and waved them forward.
"Go," she said. "Dance. You have been sad for too long."
They went.
