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She had never enjoyed Qi xi, in fact once she’d almost dreaded it. The whole festival seemed designed to showcase how terrible a daughter Mulan was. The last one to thread a needle. The poorest cook. The girl who could not keep her clothes clean or her hair neatly wound.
And yet-
They do not celebrate Qi xi in Arendelle, although they have a day in midsummer for young couples. They do not even measure months in the same way; Mulan must keep two clocks in her head to make sense of things, balance Heyannir against Shēn.
And here, in her lover’s bed, on the seventh night of the seventh month-
It feels like foolishness: Qi xi is for little girls wishing for impossibly perfect husbands, it is not for women who wear frost coated armour and give their hearts to princesses.
But the night is clear, the stars are bright and Mulan can’t help but remember the story Qi xi is rooted in.
She hadn’t had much time for it as a child. Now she looks out over Arendelle and wonders if somewhere the magpies are gathering to build their magic bridge that reunites lost lovers, even when the stars themselves are between them.
It seems a foolish thing to think: magpies are birds of ill-omen in Arendelle rather than joy-bringers.
And she would have gone without a thought once, over the magpies’ black and white feather bridge to wherever Aurora was, now-
Elsa curls herself small when she sleeps. She seems strangely ordinary as she dreams, there’s nothing to suggest the weight of her power or her kingdom.
Her hair has a will all its own, spreading over pillows and furs like a sheet of silk.
Like a magpie’s breast it is almost white.
Like a magpie’s tail Mulan’s is almost black.
She shakes her head so that her hair falls over Elsa’s, a ladder of black and white strands, their own magpie-bridge between them.
The last Qi xi a girl celebrates is after she is wed.
And perhaps it is foolish but Mulan finds herself whispering thanks to her Ancestors and to the lovers separated by the wide, river-like band of stars.
Foolishness. She never liked Qi xi and it is not meant for women like her and yet looking at Elsa, beautiful and peaceful in the dark-
Mulan whispers her prayers of thanks again.