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Qala sat alone in the window seat of her room. She looked out the square outlet and tried to enjoy the green of the hill that descended towards the village. The pillows packed underneath her drew some of the tension from her back, and though midmorning was still hours away, the throbbing in her ankles was rivalled only by the thunderstorm pushing against her temples. In all truth, she could have used a cup of buna.

That thought brought her back to her surroundings. The room was built into the furthest end of her manse's east wing. Beyond it, the lush knolls of the Sunland Valley rolled all the way to the bloated Solari River, where morning mist drifted over the water, screening a yellow sunrise. Two of her patrolling war canoes ghosted through the mist.

Someone threw the door open. No knock, just the slam of wood against the wall. Only one person in the entire manse never knocked.

[color=Gold]"Upset?"[/color] Qala asked, not yet ready to look away from her favourite view.

Her mother muttered either a greeting or a curse, her cane tapping over the scuffle of her calloused feet. "We had to slaughter three heifers just to feed the Inner Plainers tonight." She settled into a groaning chair and clicked her tongue. "We're breaking our wrists kneading dough for potbread, but it's the easiest way to feed them all."

[color=Gold]"Potbread? Ade will love that."[/color] 

Ma grunted, which generally meant approval. "He's getting fat and strong, your boy, but never mind him. Why aren't you helping in the kitchens?"

[color=Gold]"I was attending to the Plainer Prince."[/color] 

"That lazy hothead? Sello's girl keeps serving his uncles our best stock, you know?"

[color=Gold]"By my instruction."[/color] 

"By your-- Qala! Liffa spilt half an urn of my winter ale."

[color=Gold]"Ma, please."[/color] 

"In any case, you should have let Dayo entertain the boy," her mother said. "He would have taken the Prince on a grounds tour that would have left him mushy-footed and humble." By the sounds of her rummaging, Ma was digging around for the bitter melon she kept in her apron. "What did the Prince have to say anyway?"

[color=Gold]"He wants war."[/color] 

Ma snorted. "Then he'll get it; to seek is to find. Wait now, war over what?"

To seek is to find. A Sunland parable Qala had known for double the Prince’s years, and her mother triple.

[color=Gold]"He proposed on the doorstep."[/color] 

The rummaging stopped. "Qala." A deep laugh. "He proposed to you? That skinny thing! Can't he see the lines on your face or that silver wire creeping into your hair?"

Qala turned to face her mother. [color=Gold]"I refused."[/color] 

"Naturally."

[color=Gold]"And his response will be to side with Ndlovu and help him cross the Solari."[/color] 

The deep lines in Ma's face softened. Sunlight poured in from the giant window, setting the yellowed whites of her eyes aglow as she smoothed the ochre paint on her face. Her gold bangles jingled as she pushed a finger under her headscarf to give her scalp a scratch.

"That bodes ill for Ndlovu," Ma said.

[color=Gold]"War bodes ill for all of us. When two leons fight in the field, the grass suffers."[/color] 

"Of course it does. One leon has an army a thousand strong, the other inherited the yolk of Qaram."

[color=Gold]"It's not a joking matter, Ma."[/color] 

"Who's joking?" Ma slipped a ball of bitter melon into her mouth. "Qala, you are descended from the first Sunspear, the Void-Whisperer of Wassa. Why would you ever fear Ndlovu?"

Qala rubbed her face. [color=Gold]"I don't. I mean I do but... Ma, I've spent twenty years cultivating peace here. I've made this land rich with the finest crops and orchids and groves the Yellow Sea has ever seen. Our neighbours love us because we feed them and pay well in trade. A war, even one we can win, is the end of my life's work."[/color] 

"You're a child of the Sunlands, not the Hundred Hills." Ma absently crushed a fly on the armrest and went back to looking for more bitter melon. "War is your life."

[color=Gold]"Even in peace?"[/color] 

"Ha! What's that?"

Qala rarely coveted things, but she envied her mother's conviction then. [color=Gold]"So what do we do about the Prince?"[/color] 

"Get his uncles to smack him around a little. They're already drunk. Soft-footed brat, why didn't he ask to marry Funke instead?"

[color=Gold]"That would have made more sense, they're of an age. I still would have refused."[/color] 

"No doubt, but– ahhh." Ma sunk back into her chair and balanced a ball of bittermelon on her swollen knuckle. "Sly bastard."

[color=Gold]"Out with it."[/color] 

"It seems, mmm--" Ma licked a crumb of bittermelon off her knuckle "--that our young Prince has no interest in marriage."

[color=Gold]"Because asking after my hand and not my daughter's would more likely garner a rejection?"[/color] 

"Exactly. What does that tell you?"

[color=Gold]"That he's hotheaded and an imbecile."[/color] 

"Just about."

[color=Gold]"You're saying he's trying to provoke me to conflict?"[/color] 

"The princling? No. He's too young to want anything as tedious as war. Young men can't even wrap their minds around what dangles between their legs."

[color=Gold]"He was sent to start it, then, but someone else stands to gain."[/color] 

"Naturally."

Qala sighed. [color=Gold]"The question is who, then. Who would want war with us?"[/color] 

"My child, you said it yourself -- this land is rich, and you're a widowed pacifist." Ma flicked the dead fly off her chair. "The answer is everyone."

[hider=Summary]
Qala is Queen of the Sunlands, a territory nestled in the bosom of three hills in between the Boreal Highlands and Prairie of Sol. During the night a delegation of Inner Plainers (kingdom deeper in Sol) arrived, and their prince asked for Qala’s hand in marriage. She refuses and after talking with her mother they surmise that the Inner Plainers are seeming to conquer the ancient lands. Qala plots her next move. 
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