Home is the shadow of a rooster. 

Of course, it's not really a rooster. That's how it's translated but not what it means. What it means is a bird made of fire, feathered like sunlight flowing in a waterfall of gold broken by a prism of rainbow, the mere sight of which promises good fortune and harmony for all the kingdom. This is not a comical farm animal as it is seen in Grand Jelt, it is the peer of dragons and a pillar of the world. 

And 'neath the sheltering wings of the rooster all of life can be found. The feel of fabric filled with metal, letting it shift and roll and trying to guess how much it weighs. Soup so heavy with spice and oil it's as good as boiled, for no evil could survive within it. Riddle-lanterns that flow overhead, teaching the wind how to be lucky. All of these deep, ancient memories wrap themselves up and cast themselves towards her in the form of a bracelet of shaped like a snake - that being the protection a rooster will carry with them as a ward against dogs. 

She touches her rooster bracelet - a ward against the same. And some part of her finally draws a mental association between this subterranean [i]event[/i] and the celebrations of her memory.

<Let me get that for you,> she said, offering her hand with a politeness that never occurred to her before, in the same way that hitting the brute with her wicked magic didn't occur to her now. <Are you all right? Are you here with anyone?> What was that strange note to her voice there?