[b]Han![/b]

The tiger, frozen in an evil-banishing snarl, looms over the two of you as you relax from setting up camp. It’s a simple set-up, familiar to anyone in the Flower Kingdoms: a lean-to with a small fire pit at the open end, just large enough to give off some light and heat the turtle-shaped tea kettle. Comfortably cozy, safe, and comparatively dry. Melody picked this spot because of the tiny shrine grounds: so tiny, in fact, that it’s barely more than a handful of stone lanterns and the statue of the tiger.

One more night together. One more, and then you’ll have gotten her there, and it’s not like she’ll ask you to go any further. You’ve got to get back home, after all. And it’d be weird and pushy if you offered to keep going. So one more night’s all you’ve got, and so many things that you can’t say to her. Things that would be crossing lines or would make her look away and tell you that she can do the last day’s trip on her own or that she never wants to see you again. But you don’t even get that.

You’d think that it’d be out of the way enough that no one would disturb the two of you. You’d really think that! You can’t even see the road from here, it’s behind a bend in the path! But no sooner have you got the water poured and the tea bags steeping in the little turtleshell cups than you hear the crunch of twigs under a boot, and the pilgrim looms out of the darkness.

They don’t approach you at first, not even after Melody brightly and a little too loudly greets them. (You can feel her hand on your thigh, trembling with just a little bit of nervousness.) No, they approach the tiger and kneel beneath it, bowing their head in silent prayer and contemplation. Minutes tick by; Melody sneaks her cup under her veil and then squeaks because it’s still too hot. Finally, the pilgrim palms an offering into the tiger’s mouth and then turns to you.

“Honor to the servants of the Sapphire Mother,” she says, bowing her head in submission. “May I rest here for a time?” And she sounds so polite and tired, and besides, sheltering fellow pilgrims is auspicious. If you told her to go get stuffed, you might as well pack up and go home right now, because what would be the point of Melody finishing her journey?

So you pour her another cup of tea, and she accepts, and she cups it in two gloved hands. Her wide-brimmed hat keeps all but her strong jaw and the very fringe of her dark hair in shadow. You sit together, and the pilgrim lets out a melancholy sigh, and of course Melody asks if everything is all right, and that makes the pilgrim start a little— but then she gives a tight (self-ashamed?) smile and apologizes, and pulls out a flute. To repay you for your hospitality, she says. A shame she only has the flute, because those are unlucky, you know— but not like you give a hoot about priestess superstitions, and Melody doesn’t complain.

So the pilgrim plays her song, and the notes are sweet and warm. Or is that the fire? It licks at the air like a lover at your throat. Not that there’s any of that going on. A strange thought to have. Your body grows warmer and heavier, and Melody shamelessly snuggles up to you and closes her eyes to listen, and she’s warm and heavy too, and soft, how is someone this soft allowed out of her temple? You can feel every one of her breaths, slow and heavy and sleepy. The fire’s just orange on black now, and the flute is a bird calling in the distant mountains. So far away.

So very far away.

***

[i]The sky is a yellow haze. High, behind black clouds, an emerald has been hammered into place to shine. Those aren’t birds. Those aren’t birds.

You are bumped and jostled on all sides. Coarse fur. Slick scales. Lashing tails. You reach deep inside you, but there’s just an empty hollow where your dragon nature should be. Noise. They are laughing and screaming and yelling from the stalls that crowd the streets. Your first taste of a real city, country girl? It reeks. It reeks of sweat and tears and blood. It is hot. So hot. That green sun bakes the black pavement stones and there is no relief, not even if you pulled off your skin and made of it a parasol. It’s in fashion, though. If you want to try it anyway.

Music. Bells that reverberate in your head. Drums that shake your bones. Flutes like knives. Wordless wails from things hanging in cages. Something without fingers will have played something that will have been in the shape of a harp that will have been in the shape of a heart that is not now because it is a thing that cannot exist in the now only in the then, because that was its punishment, it and all its sisters, for what happened in the War, so there is a hollow in the song that you will only remember as something achingly beautiful and lonely.

You shove against the crowd, but it’s no use. They shove back, harder, and bruises blossom on your skin like flowers, and they push you into the empty square, and there is a giant dancing there, and his tattered yellow robes billow as he spins faster and faster and faster. Beneath the layers of rotting bile fabric, his body is beautiful brass. So beautiful. You can’t see more than a flash at a time, but you know in your bones. Beneath his veils, brilliant light throbs where a face should be, might be. His footprints are red. So red. So red. So red.

You shouldn’t be here, he says, pityingly, without stopping. Don’t you know where you are, daughter? Don’t you recognize my body?

And the stones beneath you buckle, because they are skin. And the high spindle-towers buckle, because they are bones. And the sun throbs, because it is a heart. And beneath you, a scream boils upwards through the Broken King’s ruined body, agony and fury and desolation and despair, and when it reaches you? You will throw back your head and it will tear through you and split you apart like an orange as you birth it and you can’t run you can’t even move your feet and the creator of the world spins faster and faster and raises five hands in merciful benediction as the scream rips through your feet—[/i]

***

The gasp jolts you awake. It’s so soft that you barely hear it leave your lips. Your throat throbs, raw and hoarse, with the effort of its passage.

You’re lying on your side. It’s a mist-shrouded morning, and the rain is a gentle thrum on the lean-to. The fire is cold ashes, and the tea cups lie where they fell.

You are alone.

In the tiger’s mouth, a beautiful Snapdragon coin waits for you to find it, turned down on its face so that it would not witness its lady’s deeds.