A nomad lives nowhere, and he is a stranger everywhere.

He drifts, often on a whim. He is parasitic, dwelling in host territories that are never his own. Using their culture and land to absorb information and stave off appetites. To the world at large the nomad is both immaterial and innocuous.

Panting and dripping, he opens his eyes to a moon tailored from bright mare’s milk. He shrugs the soaked pelt from his shoulders and whips the sea out from his own. The island swims into focus. Many scents flood his lungs. Groves and karsts and the rolling tide comes into view.

For the next length of time, here is home.

Ivory and rouge eyes blink open, and moonlight floods her senses. Lihua squints, turns her head into the nook of her arm, stirring awake.

Flaring nose at new scents, the pale wolf of silver rises to her feet, head bowed as she tries to make sense of it all.

Where is the palace that holds her? Those to guard her? Rustle of trees and hanging wisteria surround her. She steps forward, breath held in her throat as she looks around her. She cannot see past two wolf’s lengths ahead of her, though this is still the same as it had been.

Where she cannot see, however, she can scent, and her tail lifts as the musk of a male is known to her. It is no man she has known and for this, her chest tightens.

He takes his tongue from a groomed shoulder and stands, alerted to a presence further up shore. Night seals the land in shadow, but not her strong eyes. Blush, they are. Potent. The wind carries too many trails to assume she is alone.

“Cайн уу. Salam. 你好. こんにちは .” The nomad grins.

“Hello.”

She flinches, unsure of where the man lays in wait. Then he speaks, and she recognizes her language amongst his words, and the less used tongue of foreigners. Forcing her pelt to smooth, she approaches, squinting, and sees the bulk of a stranger beyond her.

"You speak my tongue," she murmurs, keeping safe distance from this man she does not know. One thing her father has always taught her is caution- for even her empty, pretty head can understand that, she thinks bitterly.

“And you speak mine,” he rejoins in mandarin. Closely she’s watched, renewed of the nomad’s interest. He had heard of great kingdoms in the south and has frequently met their people. They have a tendency to swarm together. They build grand things in gilt and worship their ancestors. “Is this your island?”

The lady poises like a mare about to bolt. He draws a slow step forward. He is large for his own people, and larger still for a southern woman who tends toward delicacy.

The dark does not tell them much of each other.

She breathes easier. There is a comfort in knowing he speaks her languages. As she has been spirited away from her quarters to some outdoor landing, she dares not think of what would happen if she could not speak with any here. Perhaps she is more fortunate that there is another in her midst as she wakes.

"No, it is not," she admits. That she wants to laugh at. Her, own a tract of land? It is nonsensical.

As he presses closer, his steps measured, she holds her position, tail tucking between. When he is near, she can make an image of his face and tall stature. Like a moth with fettered wings, she stays beneath his gaze.

“Then you’ll have no qualms about me staying the night,” his teeth flash to a grin. Another heavy step pools water on the stones beneath them. The nomad has now seen a pleasing contrast of blush against silver. He is a carnivorous thing. But the smell of many wolves reels attention. He deepens his breath.

“Who is the leader of this land?”

His show of ivory alarms her, and whether smile or snarl, it does not make a difference.

”I don’t know,” she says, having only woken up, stolen from her chambers. Here, with him close, she can see him clearly and she is remiss to think he is a handsome ruffian. ”I am concubine of Emperor Téng Shénléi.” Perhaps his claim will withhold the stranger’s gaze from her.

“You've no need to fear me,” there’s a smile in Batu's voice as he leans forward to shake water from his hips. The courtesan invokes her ruler as a warning, yet similar titles had never deterred him before. It seemed to be the convention between wolves of the steppe and their southern counterparts. They deemed his kind undisciplined.

He takes in the sweet scent of her fur and that of the saltwind over their shoulders. The drenched tahki is hefted onto his back.

“Take me to your emperor. I can’t think he’d look favorably on his concubine wandering the dark with a strange man.” The nomad cocks his chin, indicating he would go where she led.

No reason to, of course. Yet fear comes naturally to her, like it does to a doe at the teeth of a tiger. Her eyes stay upon him, darkening for a glimpse before she softens them.

She doesn’t step away though from him. It is not often she is around the company of another that is not of the Emperor’s court. Long has she missed her cousin and her home, and it is sad to admit even this interaction is a freedom she is not often accustomed to.

“If this strange man delivers me untouched, surely he will reward him,” she says in a soft voice, beginning her walk forward, holding her head low and demure. She has little hope of trying to remain on her own.