Stories in poetry

White Feathers Return to Dust

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · A Novel of Social Life and the Borderlands in an Ancient Setting · Complete · 40 chapters · 9 reads

On a night of wind and snow, a boy carrying a northern bow collapses outside A-Shuang’s door, half a white-feathered arrow clenched in his palm. The blue-green thread wound around it is the very thread she wrapped herself when sending her husband to war. The matching arrow still gathers dust on a beam inside. The boy cannot speak her language, and an uncle from her clan is already approaching with his blade drawn. The news of a return she has awaited for years now rests in the hands of a boy her clansmen regard as an enemy.

This book is an original work written with AI assistance, expanding on Li Bai’s 《北风行》 (Song of the North Wind) and this website’s original short story White-Feathered Arrows Do Not Strike Those Returning Home. Its characters, place names, and chronology are fictional. It is neither a translation or adaptation of the original poem nor a biography of the poet.