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Batu

Through caves they had traveled, and seemingly through time and space once more. The verdant place where the dynasty came to land was worth the rend, and the group of wolves had taken residence there. The Orchid no longer felt the innate pull towards another place, as she did amongst the streams. Though Shenlei had been the masthead of their voyage east (for Yue could have died a happy woman, amongst the busy wisteria isle) and she was most grateful that he had pushed forth. As always, his vision had been flawless.

The execution of that vision went far better than their arrival to the Rest.

The Empress was ultimately relieved to have a place to winter, as the season was full upon them. Her pelt was full and warm; she felt more rested than she had in any of the recent months. There were so many unknowns here, but the life of an Empress was notably simpler with far fewer tenets and neighbors to manage. Some might say life was emptier – but to Yue, it was not a void, but instead rife with possibility. She dreamed about it at night. She could taste it.

The Empress wore this possibility like a most voluminous robe, and could feel it flowing all about her as she meandered amongst her new lands, conscripting every corner to her memory.

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To the west of the dragon settlement, green ridges jut towards the sky. Between the mountains and the flat grassland are a few barren hills. A small camp trimmed with pelts and meat has been raised on the south-eastern slope of one; the kin traveler reposing against a huangshan hull. His legs are stretched long before him, a hollow bladder mid field-dress held there. Quietude keeps thick fur drawn about his face, but a gleam of eyes can be seen looking over the fells.

“Out in the backcountry,
Altargana with her wings,
Balanced on her elbows;
My blood.”

A ghost is on his hillside. An ethereal likeness. The nomad is sitting still as the pine, but on his tongue is the mongolian song and in his eyes a fair light.

“She grows in the earth,
Altargana with all blessings,
Balanced on her back;
My soul.”

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In truth, Yue was quite entranced with these new lands. Heaven's Mercy was woefully untraveled, for one who shouldered entire worlds. There were only two places she had ever been – her birth clan, and the one she had been married into – which was now made three places, then four, then five.

She had once dreamed of adventure. She managed to find adventure within the confines of her role as Empress quite easily, despite almost never leaving her silken palace. Now somewhat of an expert in all types of terrain, it was now clear why the morass of the west had not suited her – how could she live amongst mud, when firm earth felt so good beneath one’s paws?

Such things, most wolves likely already knew about themselves.

This was not the only thing that was different. Advisors, translators, entertainers, servants, they had all come to her – but now, she came to them. The rules of the dynasty were being rewritten in her every footstep, as much as the Empress wished to maintain the status quo. She was often alone now; something she never been before. Her thoughts, her mind, were no longer her only private space.

She now had much private space, and some to spare. Miles and miles of it.

Even this strange encampment, the smear of tan against a milieu of verdant, emerald green. Yue crept closer, no longer willing to trust the true state of her dynasty to that of a third-party. She must lay witness to it all, this corner of hides, and this man who sat amongst them. Quite uncharacteristically, she noticed him far too late, and her interest in his homestead was far too evident.

He sang, and the tongue was familiar but the lyrics were foreign. The words, and the man who spoke them, did not seem of these lands.

"I regret to disturb you," the orchid lamented. She didn’t know him. It was such a strange thing, to meet someone unfamiliar – and stranger yet, perhaps he did not know her. The Empress’s breath ran smooth in her throat, in long drawn, silken inhales and exhales. She recalled that he had traveled with them from Queen’s Rest, and now she noticed that his scent was mingled with others she knew well. Royal family, he was not.

What a strange thing, indeed.

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So went the han through a mythic cavern refused by the nomad, whose tastes better suited the open sky under which all life is spent. A rutted road had taken him eastward over ranges, skirting deltas, and deviating from the main thoroughfare as the sun pressed its fingers too sharply along his spine. There, Batu had witnessed small settlements and dwellings in abandonment, with not even a prisoner to man their keep. Near the ruin of many dens, limbs had been torn from date palms whose fruit once nourished populations. Wherever he turned, he’d seen destruction— hills of churned earth which might have been mass graves. Empty stretches of dry land and no prey. All wisdom wagered for a foothold in court, bestowed by a man of the earth likely viewed as a menace to orderly life.

Hundreds of li had passed before his eyes, Batu managing to ride from one desolation eastwards, only to find another; a barren obelisk. Water in the land was too precious to waste, and a nomad risked offending the spirits if he washed in running streams.

The man’s stench is that of old flesh and seared blood. Dust embeds deeply so as to monotonize a fulvous pelt.

Death and decay and sepia he’d seen. The stallion atop his high mount now stands to vastness.

From night his wraith begins to emerge more definitely while the man basks in shadow.

“Imperial Highness,” the length of her face is consumed before bowing. Even in a lack of retinue and servants, the kin knows who stands before him. “You disturb nothing. Join me.”

But it gleams too boldly for the horselord to overlook—

She is achingly beautiful.

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What did Yue know of pelts, when her entire life was swathed in silk?

Had she ever truly known destruction, as she passed orders to generals to execute her will? These questions did not swirl around in her mind yet, but perhaps one day soon they would. At this moment she appraised and appreciated the stark differences between them. His culture was sundered from hers but not altogether foreign; after all, she had learned his mongolian tongue from one of her earliest tutors, and she did not study subjects that had no use. Their kingdoms were neighbors in some aspects. Distant cousins, in others.

His eye contact was potent, as she knew to be the way of his kind – but it was also the way of her kind, so lilac held patina, following his downward as respect was paid; attention, diverted. The twist of a smile upon her face portrayed her acceptance of the honors, and a wide sweep of her tail accepted his invitation to join him amongst his hides.

The Empress walked forward, looking around at his disarray, and then towards the ruffian himself. There was something quietly endearing about the way he held himself, a flame that she saw within certain individuals that could not be extinguished. After so much upheaval, it felt frivolous to sit and bask in another’s light, but Yue found it a fortuitous sign for the future: though all was new, even here there was light, and contrast. a duality that made life worth living.

She didn't notice her own silence, as she gazed about. Yet her mind churned, thinking that if war could be autopoietic, then something like sheer survival could be as colorful as a tapestry, or as fine as lacquerware, or as exquisite as calligraphy.

Whatever one wanted to call it, it deserved to be seen as a work of art.

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