The soil inside the shoebox had been pushed up by the roots, and a few tender shoots sprouted from the cracks, as tender as the water of Qinghai Lake in early spring. Ayu squatted down and found that on the bottom layer of the newspaper, Zhong Hua's route map was now more clearly outlined by the roots—the wavy lines of Qinghai Lake wrapped around the snow-capped mountains of Daocheng, the palm leaves of Xishuangbanna supported the sand dunes of Dunhuang, and all the lines pointed to the small circle of Namtso Lake, just like the simple map they had made with pebbles under the starry sky.
When the wind picked up at night, the sound of the pothos leaves rubbing against the security bars was very similar to the sound of sandstorms in the Gobi Desert near Dunhuang. Zhong Hua got up to close the window and saw moonlight filtering through the leaves, casting flowing shadows on the floor. He didn't turn on the light, but groped his way to the shoebox in the dark. His fingertips touched the water droplets hanging on the vines—not dew, but water sprinkled by A Yu when she watered them that afternoon. The droplets clung to the tips of the leaves, reflecting the streetlights, much like the ice cracks on the surface of Lake Namtso, illuminated by starlight.
Later, the shoebox broke, so Ayu replaced it with a larger ceramic pot, lined with pebbles from Qinghai Lake. The pothos climbed up the security bars to the second floor. One day, the grandmother next door knocked on the door, saying there was a leaf with pencil marks stuck to her quilt. Ayu took the leaf; on the back was Zhong Hua's drawing of "Crescent Moon Spring," and embedded in the arc of the sand dunes was half a dried jujube—sand they had collected in mineral water bottles at the Singing Sand Dunes in Dunhuang, which they had later scattered in the pothos's soil.
One autumn weekend, Zhong Hua brought a ladder to trim the vines. Standing on the top step, he suddenly noticed a withered leaf entwined at the top of the wire mesh, its shape strikingly similar to the icicles of the sacred waterfall in Yubeng Village. He reached out to pick it, and a crumpled piece of paper fell out from behind the leaf. Unfolding it, he saw A Yu's handwriting: "Next stop, Weizhou Island." Faint water stains seeped between the strokes, just like the dew marks that condensed on the camera lens when they were photographing star trails at Namtso Lake.
At that moment, Ayu was cooking noodles in the kitchen. The light from the induction cooker illuminated the silver bracelet on her wrist—made from melted scrap silver at a tie-dye workshop in Dali, with a small "Qinghai Lake" engraved on the inside. Outside the window, the leaves of the pothos rustled, a few blown by the wind onto the glass, their veins casting swaying shadows that resembled the slowly rotating star trails in Zhong Hua's time-lapse photography of Namtso Lake.
When the noodles were cooked, Zhong Hua carried the cut vines into the house. A small contraption made of thin wire hung from one of the branches, swaying like a miniature compass. "I found it in the gaps between the leaves," he said, placing it on the dining table. The tip of the wire pointed precisely at the spot outside the security bars, where the setting sun was casting its glow. "Doesn't it look like the steering wheel of that beat-up car we rented in Daocheng?"
Ayu picked up a mouthful of noodles, the steam blurring her glasses. She remembered the day they watched the sunrise at Qinghai Lake. Zhong Hua had filled a mineral water bottle with lake water, saying he would take it back to water his plants. Later, half the water spilled, and the rest was stored in the refrigerator. It wasn't until the pothos sprouted its first new leaf that she poured that little bit of lake water into a shoebox. The fine sand that had settled at the bottom of the bottle was probably now embedded in the veins of one of the leaves, gradually turning into the color of chlorophyll through photosynthesis.
The pothos on the balcony is still growing. This winter has been particularly cold, so Zhonghua wrapped them in an old blanket. Tiny ice crystals clung to the exposed edges of the vines. One morning, Ayu opened the window to let in some fresh air and saw the ice crystals melting in the sunlight. Water droplets trickled down the pencil marks on the back of the leaves, making the wavy lines of "Qinghai Lake" shine. On the snow-capped peak of "Daocheng," a drop of water hung about to fall, just like the ice bead they had seen hanging on the prayer flag at the mountain pass.
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