Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Monke!
The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox
- Thread starter arianedartagnan
- Start date
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Doesn't the last guy have dibs on eating this one?A tasty monkey?
Doesn't the last guy have dibs on eating this one?
Oh true! I guess he's not someone you want to fight for it either.
2023 Serican New Year Sketch: Day 13
Happy Lunar/Serican New Year Day 13! Since people had so much fun with the character guessing game last year, I decided to bring it back again. This year, a bunch of shrimp tempura critters have decided to dress up as characters from Confessions. Guess which ones!
View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ud-_KwWAymPpcMqj3IQb18FAC73NP_-F/view?usp=share_link
Direct link
For day 13, this shrimp tempura critter picked the Lady of the Photinia Tree, a spirit whose flower pollen can be made into potent knock-out gas grenades.
View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ud-_KwWAymPpcMqj3IQb18FAC73NP_-F/view?usp=share_link
Direct link
For day 13, this shrimp tempura critter picked the Lady of the Photinia Tree, a spirit whose flower pollen can be made into potent knock-out gas grenades.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Huh, didn't get this one either.
The next one's a pirate, though.
The next one's a pirate, though.
Hang on to the thought about divine ladies for tomorrow!
Hmmm, a pirate...?
Why is Aurelia so surprised? She should know full well how competent and committed to a task Piri can get, she was on the receiving end of it when heaven told the fox to end her empire.
I mean if anyone is out of character here it's the humans listening to the turtle, and somehow not fucking everything up.
I mean if anyone is out of character here it's the humans listening to the turtle, and somehow not fucking everything up.
Aurelia has a bit of a blind spot where Piri is concerned. Based on her past, very horrible experiences, she expects the worst from the ex-fox.
Humans can occasionally listen to the right person (turtle) and act competently!
2023 Serican New Year Sketch: Day 14
Happy Lunar/Serican New Year Day 14! Since people had so much fun with the character guessing game last year, I decided to bring it back again. This year, a bunch of shrimp tempura critters have decided to dress up as characters from Confessions. Guess which ones!
View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uClumOTvz0mY3r1dz_ws8yGGgAjZgh77/view?usp=share_link
Direct link
For day 14, this shrimp tempura critter picked the Star of Reflected Glory, the current Overseer in the Bureau of the Sky, and the former Empress Aurelia.
View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uClumOTvz0mY3r1dz_ws8yGGgAjZgh77/view?usp=share_link
Direct link
For day 14, this shrimp tempura critter picked the Star of Reflected Glory, the current Overseer in the Bureau of the Sky, and the former Empress Aurelia.
Half Moon
In the end, there is no end.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's possible I'm making stuff up here, but The Star of Reflected Brightness, as a title, feels a bit insulting. Meanwhile Cassius gets to be the Star of Heavenly Joy, when he completed failed to avoid being manipulated and turned into a monster. Ah, Heaven.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
How could Aurelia turn to piracy?! Don't lie, she's got the square that says "Arr!"
The title is very definitely insulting! Cassius made a jab at Aurelia over it at some point, but she let it wash off her, because she's better than that and she knows it. Ah, Heaven, indeed....
How could Aurelia turn to piracy?! Don't lie, she's got the square that says "Arr!"
Oh no, you found her out! Now she'll have to make you walk the plank!
2023 Serican New Year Sketch: Day 15
Happy Lunar/Serican New Year Day 15! Since people had so much fun with the character guessing game last year, I decided to bring it back again. This year, a bunch of shrimp tempura critters have decided to dress up as characters from Confessions. Guess which ones!
View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QQcOkrUPyyG2JRLxeOBBEDNYdM_mGHoo/view?usp=share_link
Direct link
For the final day of the New Year, this shrimp tempura critter picked
Flicker, the much put-upon star sprite clerk in charge of reincarnating Piri, Stripey, and Marcius (among many, many others).
View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QQcOkrUPyyG2JRLxeOBBEDNYdM_mGHoo/view?usp=share_link
Direct link
For the final day of the New Year, this shrimp tempura critter picked
Flicker, the much put-upon star sprite clerk in charge of reincarnating Piri, Stripey, and Marcius (among many, many others).
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
He has discovered Piri trying to change her species designation to fox, sneaking in with a cardboard box.
That would definitely merit a very large "!"
Chapter 79: Sparrow
Chapter 79: Sparrow
Have you seen a newly hatched sparrow? If not, you cannot possibly comprehend the horror of finding yourself in a nest of them.
My siblings were as bald as miniature chickens plucked and ready for roasting. They had raw, pinkish skin, with splotches of moldy grey on their heads and wings and running in stripes down their spines. The corners of their mouths were as swollen as pus-filled sacks. They were the most revolting creatures I'd ever seen.
And I looked just like them.
I stared at my featherless chest, which looked exactly like a tiny, uncooked chicken breast. I gaped at my featherless wings, which looked exactly like tiny, uncooked chicken wings. It was wrong. It was so wrong. Living birds should never look like this!
I opened my beak to shriek again, and my mother sparrow dropped in a bug. It was still wriggling.
Eeeeek!
But my sparrow body devoured it while my Piri-brain retched. When it was gone, my sparrow-brain opened my beak again and screamed for more. And so, alongside my hideous siblings, I fed.
What other options did I have? I could, of course, have squirmed to the edge of the nest, flung myself off the side, and hoped that Glitter would reincarnate me as a better bird next time. However, if my two-hundred-odd years as many, many catfish were any example, she'd simply order Flicker to stuff me into the next sparrow egg to hatch. All I'd gain would be another forty-nine-day stint inside an archival box.
No, better to wait this out. Sparrows had to develop faster than baby turtles, right? They couldn't possibly look so disgusting for months on end. If they did, humans would have stamped them out for marring the landscape.
All right. I could stick this out. I would stick this out.
A deep breath, another bug to eat, and then my eyes were drooping shut. Being horrified was exhausting. I needed sleep to muster energy for my next round of outrage against Glitter.
Four days after hatching, my siblings and I started to sprout down. After that, we looked much more presentable, and the nest no longer resembled a butcher shop. The view got even better when we grew beige-grey feathers and began to approximate real sparrows. By then, my eyeballs were so traumatized that I didn't consider adult sparrows drab and boring anymore. I even thought that the sight of my siblings as fluffy feather balls verged on cute. Honestly, at this point, I'd have taken anything over sparrow hatchlings!
This phase didn't last long, though. Soon we were learning how to fly, and then, one sunny morning, we all left the nest and flew off in separate directions. My siblings would be searching for food or patches of dirt for dust baths.
As for me, I had a different goal. It was time to figure out how to return to Honeysuckle Croft.
The landscape was different. That was the first thing I noticed. After some pondering and more flying, I concluded that it was because the plants were different. Their leaves were weirdly broad and overall larger than I was used to. And everything was so green. I wasn't used to seeing so much green everywhere. It felt wrong.
Anyway, plants were all well and good, but where were the people? I needed to find a city or a village or, at the very least, a farmstead, so I could eavesdrop on conversations and figure out where I was.
Eventually, I came to an orchard where human and spirit farmers were busy harvesting small, reddish fruits. I zipped over for a better look – and backwinged in shock.
Lychees! They were picking lychees! The precious fruits that nobles in the south had offered to the court! Officially they'd been for Cassius and Aurelia, as the emperor and empress, but I'd claimed my fair share. (Aurelia's, that was.)
This meant I'd been reborn in the south this time! I'd never been in southern Serica before, because no self-respecting Serican crossed the Snowy Mountains going south. It was unbearably hot and humid there, sobbed the nobles who returned from exile. Rife with disease, the den of tigers and vipers and vicious ex-ministers – a place to exist, but never to live. Even when Cassius made official progresses through his domain, he never journeyed south of the Snowy Mountains. His generals refused to guarantee his safety. I was going to have to watch my back.
Oh, wait.
I was no longer Prime Minister of a hated, yearned-for, distant court. I was an unremarkable bird, beneath human or spirit notice. The only things I needed to watch out for were natural predators.
I didn't even know what a sparrow's natural predators were. Oh well.
Keeping the mid-morning sun on my right, I kept flying.
As the sun sank towards the horizon on my left, I saw the glare of a river, lined on both sides with boxy shapes. A proper city at last! Now I could finally figure out where I was! Pumping my tired wings, I headed that way.
At my first sight of the buildings, I nearly fell out of the air.
Those houses had the strangest design I'd ever seen. They teetered on the edge of the river, practically in the river. Wavelets lapped against stone walls that rose about one story before balconies jutted out over the water, supported by wooden stilts. All the houses had multiple stories, and most shared walls instead of being built as individual units. Each had a stone staircase that led straight down to the water, where a little boat bobbed up and down. Women squatted at the foot of the steps, washing vegetables and rice directly in the river.
Curious, I approached the nearest house. Its owner, a pregnant woman with tan skin and black hair in a messy bun, heaved herself to her feet. Holding a pot of rice against one hip, she staggered up the worn, uneven steps. There was no guardrail, so she braced her other hand against the wall to keep from slipping.
She entered the second story of the house through a weather-beaten door, and I landed on the railing to peer through the window. This floor was a combined kitchen and storage area, complete with a stove. It was crude, of course, but the setup was still way more advanced than Honeysuckle Croft with its open hearth.
Technology? Civilization? In the south? What was this madness?!
"Oy! Shoo!"
The woman lumbered over, flapping her hands to prevent me from coming in to steal her rice or something. As if I wanted it!
Offended, I left a souvenir on her windowsill and flew up past a grey-tiled roof. The third floor was a common living space with a large table and benches. The daughter of the house was seated next to the window, mending a tunic by the last light of the sun. Two long plaits ran down her back, an odd choice for someone on the cusp of womanhood. It made her look like an overgrown version of Taila.
Cocking my head to a side, I chirped without realizing it.
The young woman looked around, and her face lit up. "Why, a sparrow! Hast thou come to visit me, little friend? I fear I have no seed for thee." She held out a hand, index finger outstretched.
I studied first it, and then her face. She had decent features, even if that hairstyle did her no favors. Her skin was a similar shade as the Jeks', which made me feel a little nostalgic, but something about her was definitely off….
"Here, little friend," she coaxed. "I promise I will have rice for thee tomorrow."
Her speech! That was what was off! It held echoes of the way we had spoken five centuries earlier. Perhaps the south's isolation had preserved the language! It should have felt like a homecoming, and yet, after so much time around the people of Claymouth, it sounded jarring instead.
I shook my head to clear it. Her vocabulary wasn't the important thing. The important thing was the location of this city. Leaving her a loose feather, I took flight again.
The top floor was the family's bedroom. Three separate rooms, even small ones – this was luxury beyond imagining for all but the wealthiest merchants in Claymouth! And all the houses I saw were built like this one. What could possibly be the source of this city's wealth?
Over the grey-tiled roofs I soared, searching for more people. I found them in a marketplace next to the docks where fishermen were unloading the day's catch. Stalls, not unlike the ones in Claymouth, sold all manner of fruits and vegetables. In fact, there were two entire stalls devoted to different types of lychees. Lychees! I'd only ever seen them arranged in jeweled rosewood caskets, but here people just heaped them in baskets in the open-air market! And no bandits robbed them! (Although I did notice a raggedy urchin snake a hand up the side of one stall, grab a lychee, and run off.) What unfathomably wealthy hidden city had I discovered? Perching on the edge of a roof, I listened to the voices.
A burly human fishmonger was bawling, "Mistress Dai! Good e'en!"
A calico cat spirit, human shaped except for her ears and tail, screeched back, "Good even, Master Cha! Give me one grass carp! A good one!"
"I only sell good fish, Mistress Dai!"
The fishmonger gutted and cleaned a silver fish, wrapped it in lotus leaves, tied it up in a reed, and tossed it to the cat. She dropped some coppers on his table and trotted off, the bundle swinging from its reed.
Snatches of conversations drifted from a crowd waiting their turn at a produce stand. A wizened old man was selling white cabbages, green onions, and really weird squash that looked like cucumbers with warts.
" – Harvest hath been good. The Lady will be pleased – "
" – Heard army recruiters are coming soon – "
"Again? They were just here at the beginning of spring!"
"Know'st thou not? The Queen's army is fighting up north. And in the west. She desireth to push back the Wilds – "
A young human man snorted – rashly, to judge by the expressions of those around him and the way they all took a half or full step back, as the press of bodies allowed. "The Queen always desireth to push back the Wilds. When hath it worked? When hath it done anything besides get good people killed?"
"Shh!" hissed the young man next to him. "Katu, don't say things like that in public!"
"Oy! Boy!" came a bellow, and the crowd parted for a stout, grey-haired human matron. "Thy mother is waiting for thee! Where is the green onion she sent thee to fetch!"
Everyone within line of sight craned their necks to check the young man's hands, which were distinctly empty.
"But Grandmama," he protested.
"Don't 'But Grandmama' me! She sent thee out half an hour ago to buy a bunch of green onions, and what hast thou been doing? Wasting time! Making trouble in the marketplace! Dost thou want to be put in the stocks again?" She marched up to him, reached up, and pinched his ear.
"Ow, ow! Grandmama! That hurts!"
"Not as much as it will hurt if thou doth not buy those green onions and come home!"
Dragging him along with his body bent sideways, she plowed through the crowd to the front of the stall. The vendor grinned and held out several green onions, tied together with a reed. "Good even, Old Mother Len. Green onions for you today?"
The old woman released her grandson. "Pay him," she commanded, and he rubbed his ear with one hand while fishing out a copper with the other. "We're going home right this moment."
"Yes, Grandmama," he sighed, and followed her down the street.
Well, this had all been very entertaining, but I still wasn't any closer to learning where precisely I was in the kingdom of South Serica. Although – that young man seemed to be obsessed with politics. Sooner or later, he was bound to come back to the marketplace and start ranting again. If I waited here and eavesdropped, perhaps I could glean enough to infer where I was and what the shortest path back to Honeysuckle Croft would be.
Yes, that was what I would do. And it had nothing to do with hoping for some more good, old-fashioned street entertainment.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, TheLunaticCo, yoghogfog, and Anonymous!
Have you seen a newly hatched sparrow? If not, you cannot possibly comprehend the horror of finding yourself in a nest of them.
My siblings were as bald as miniature chickens plucked and ready for roasting. They had raw, pinkish skin, with splotches of moldy grey on their heads and wings and running in stripes down their spines. The corners of their mouths were as swollen as pus-filled sacks. They were the most revolting creatures I'd ever seen.
And I looked just like them.
I stared at my featherless chest, which looked exactly like a tiny, uncooked chicken breast. I gaped at my featherless wings, which looked exactly like tiny, uncooked chicken wings. It was wrong. It was so wrong. Living birds should never look like this!
I opened my beak to shriek again, and my mother sparrow dropped in a bug. It was still wriggling.
Eeeeek!
But my sparrow body devoured it while my Piri-brain retched. When it was gone, my sparrow-brain opened my beak again and screamed for more. And so, alongside my hideous siblings, I fed.
What other options did I have? I could, of course, have squirmed to the edge of the nest, flung myself off the side, and hoped that Glitter would reincarnate me as a better bird next time. However, if my two-hundred-odd years as many, many catfish were any example, she'd simply order Flicker to stuff me into the next sparrow egg to hatch. All I'd gain would be another forty-nine-day stint inside an archival box.
No, better to wait this out. Sparrows had to develop faster than baby turtles, right? They couldn't possibly look so disgusting for months on end. If they did, humans would have stamped them out for marring the landscape.
All right. I could stick this out. I would stick this out.
A deep breath, another bug to eat, and then my eyes were drooping shut. Being horrified was exhausting. I needed sleep to muster energy for my next round of outrage against Glitter.
Four days after hatching, my siblings and I started to sprout down. After that, we looked much more presentable, and the nest no longer resembled a butcher shop. The view got even better when we grew beige-grey feathers and began to approximate real sparrows. By then, my eyeballs were so traumatized that I didn't consider adult sparrows drab and boring anymore. I even thought that the sight of my siblings as fluffy feather balls verged on cute. Honestly, at this point, I'd have taken anything over sparrow hatchlings!
This phase didn't last long, though. Soon we were learning how to fly, and then, one sunny morning, we all left the nest and flew off in separate directions. My siblings would be searching for food or patches of dirt for dust baths.
As for me, I had a different goal. It was time to figure out how to return to Honeysuckle Croft.
The landscape was different. That was the first thing I noticed. After some pondering and more flying, I concluded that it was because the plants were different. Their leaves were weirdly broad and overall larger than I was used to. And everything was so green. I wasn't used to seeing so much green everywhere. It felt wrong.
Anyway, plants were all well and good, but where were the people? I needed to find a city or a village or, at the very least, a farmstead, so I could eavesdrop on conversations and figure out where I was.
Eventually, I came to an orchard where human and spirit farmers were busy harvesting small, reddish fruits. I zipped over for a better look – and backwinged in shock.
Lychees! They were picking lychees! The precious fruits that nobles in the south had offered to the court! Officially they'd been for Cassius and Aurelia, as the emperor and empress, but I'd claimed my fair share. (Aurelia's, that was.)
This meant I'd been reborn in the south this time! I'd never been in southern Serica before, because no self-respecting Serican crossed the Snowy Mountains going south. It was unbearably hot and humid there, sobbed the nobles who returned from exile. Rife with disease, the den of tigers and vipers and vicious ex-ministers – a place to exist, but never to live. Even when Cassius made official progresses through his domain, he never journeyed south of the Snowy Mountains. His generals refused to guarantee his safety. I was going to have to watch my back.
Oh, wait.
I was no longer Prime Minister of a hated, yearned-for, distant court. I was an unremarkable bird, beneath human or spirit notice. The only things I needed to watch out for were natural predators.
I didn't even know what a sparrow's natural predators were. Oh well.
Keeping the mid-morning sun on my right, I kept flying.
As the sun sank towards the horizon on my left, I saw the glare of a river, lined on both sides with boxy shapes. A proper city at last! Now I could finally figure out where I was! Pumping my tired wings, I headed that way.
At my first sight of the buildings, I nearly fell out of the air.
Those houses had the strangest design I'd ever seen. They teetered on the edge of the river, practically in the river. Wavelets lapped against stone walls that rose about one story before balconies jutted out over the water, supported by wooden stilts. All the houses had multiple stories, and most shared walls instead of being built as individual units. Each had a stone staircase that led straight down to the water, where a little boat bobbed up and down. Women squatted at the foot of the steps, washing vegetables and rice directly in the river.
Curious, I approached the nearest house. Its owner, a pregnant woman with tan skin and black hair in a messy bun, heaved herself to her feet. Holding a pot of rice against one hip, she staggered up the worn, uneven steps. There was no guardrail, so she braced her other hand against the wall to keep from slipping.
She entered the second story of the house through a weather-beaten door, and I landed on the railing to peer through the window. This floor was a combined kitchen and storage area, complete with a stove. It was crude, of course, but the setup was still way more advanced than Honeysuckle Croft with its open hearth.
Technology? Civilization? In the south? What was this madness?!
"Oy! Shoo!"
The woman lumbered over, flapping her hands to prevent me from coming in to steal her rice or something. As if I wanted it!
Offended, I left a souvenir on her windowsill and flew up past a grey-tiled roof. The third floor was a common living space with a large table and benches. The daughter of the house was seated next to the window, mending a tunic by the last light of the sun. Two long plaits ran down her back, an odd choice for someone on the cusp of womanhood. It made her look like an overgrown version of Taila.
Cocking my head to a side, I chirped without realizing it.
The young woman looked around, and her face lit up. "Why, a sparrow! Hast thou come to visit me, little friend? I fear I have no seed for thee." She held out a hand, index finger outstretched.
I studied first it, and then her face. She had decent features, even if that hairstyle did her no favors. Her skin was a similar shade as the Jeks', which made me feel a little nostalgic, but something about her was definitely off….
"Here, little friend," she coaxed. "I promise I will have rice for thee tomorrow."
Her speech! That was what was off! It held echoes of the way we had spoken five centuries earlier. Perhaps the south's isolation had preserved the language! It should have felt like a homecoming, and yet, after so much time around the people of Claymouth, it sounded jarring instead.
I shook my head to clear it. Her vocabulary wasn't the important thing. The important thing was the location of this city. Leaving her a loose feather, I took flight again.
The top floor was the family's bedroom. Three separate rooms, even small ones – this was luxury beyond imagining for all but the wealthiest merchants in Claymouth! And all the houses I saw were built like this one. What could possibly be the source of this city's wealth?
Over the grey-tiled roofs I soared, searching for more people. I found them in a marketplace next to the docks where fishermen were unloading the day's catch. Stalls, not unlike the ones in Claymouth, sold all manner of fruits and vegetables. In fact, there were two entire stalls devoted to different types of lychees. Lychees! I'd only ever seen them arranged in jeweled rosewood caskets, but here people just heaped them in baskets in the open-air market! And no bandits robbed them! (Although I did notice a raggedy urchin snake a hand up the side of one stall, grab a lychee, and run off.) What unfathomably wealthy hidden city had I discovered? Perching on the edge of a roof, I listened to the voices.
A burly human fishmonger was bawling, "Mistress Dai! Good e'en!"
A calico cat spirit, human shaped except for her ears and tail, screeched back, "Good even, Master Cha! Give me one grass carp! A good one!"
"I only sell good fish, Mistress Dai!"
The fishmonger gutted and cleaned a silver fish, wrapped it in lotus leaves, tied it up in a reed, and tossed it to the cat. She dropped some coppers on his table and trotted off, the bundle swinging from its reed.
Snatches of conversations drifted from a crowd waiting their turn at a produce stand. A wizened old man was selling white cabbages, green onions, and really weird squash that looked like cucumbers with warts.
" – Harvest hath been good. The Lady will be pleased – "
" – Heard army recruiters are coming soon – "
"Again? They were just here at the beginning of spring!"
"Know'st thou not? The Queen's army is fighting up north. And in the west. She desireth to push back the Wilds – "
A young human man snorted – rashly, to judge by the expressions of those around him and the way they all took a half or full step back, as the press of bodies allowed. "The Queen always desireth to push back the Wilds. When hath it worked? When hath it done anything besides get good people killed?"
"Shh!" hissed the young man next to him. "Katu, don't say things like that in public!"
"Oy! Boy!" came a bellow, and the crowd parted for a stout, grey-haired human matron. "Thy mother is waiting for thee! Where is the green onion she sent thee to fetch!"
Everyone within line of sight craned their necks to check the young man's hands, which were distinctly empty.
"But Grandmama," he protested.
"Don't 'But Grandmama' me! She sent thee out half an hour ago to buy a bunch of green onions, and what hast thou been doing? Wasting time! Making trouble in the marketplace! Dost thou want to be put in the stocks again?" She marched up to him, reached up, and pinched his ear.
"Ow, ow! Grandmama! That hurts!"
"Not as much as it will hurt if thou doth not buy those green onions and come home!"
Dragging him along with his body bent sideways, she plowed through the crowd to the front of the stall. The vendor grinned and held out several green onions, tied together with a reed. "Good even, Old Mother Len. Green onions for you today?"
The old woman released her grandson. "Pay him," she commanded, and he rubbed his ear with one hand while fishing out a copper with the other. "We're going home right this moment."
"Yes, Grandmama," he sighed, and followed her down the street.
Well, this had all been very entertaining, but I still wasn't any closer to learning where precisely I was in the kingdom of South Serica. Although – that young man seemed to be obsessed with politics. Sooner or later, he was bound to come back to the marketplace and start ranting again. If I waited here and eavesdropped, perhaps I could glean enough to infer where I was and what the shortest path back to Honeysuckle Croft would be.
Yes, that was what I would do. And it had nothing to do with hoping for some more good, old-fashioned street entertainment.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, TheLunaticCo, yoghogfog, and Anonymous!
- Location
- PA
>Left a souvenir
Piri! But eh, I don't think that's going to be a major inconvenience so eh.
My read is that Lynchees are the source of wealth of this place.
Also they've handled the Cassius downfall better but now are at least a local power.
As for the whole 'Wilds' thing…
I feel like instead of throwing armies at the problem you really need to tak territory so you can HOLD it. Young man might be right on this front. A Sally forth might send demons scattering unless you run into a Silurius- tier threat, but unless you follow up with some harder defenses it's likely said demons might come across a Captain Rook, get inducted into his army, and potentially thrown back at the humans, only now they're organized into a rough 'army' of their own.
Piri! But eh, I don't think that's going to be a major inconvenience so eh.
My read is that Lynchees are the source of wealth of this place.
Also they've handled the Cassius downfall better but now are at least a local power.
As for the whole 'Wilds' thing…
I feel like instead of throwing armies at the problem you really need to tak territory so you can HOLD it. Young man might be right on this front. A Sally forth might send demons scattering unless you run into a Silurius- tier threat, but unless you follow up with some harder defenses it's likely said demons might come across a Captain Rook, get inducted into his army, and potentially thrown back at the humans, only now they're organized into a rough 'army' of their own.
Half Moon
In the end, there is no end.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Possible, but considering their isolation, I think they're more of a staple.
You know, I've never had a lychee. Are they good?
It's been ages, but I liked them when I tried them.
Yep! They grow really well in this area, so Lychee Grove exports them elsewhere in South Serica.
Yeah, exactly. The queen and her advisers are not doing a wise thing in throwing armies at the demons...but it's also not wise to point that out in public.
Lychees are more affordable for the people of Lychee Grove than they are elsewhere, but sadly they're still not cheap enough to be a staple.
I love lychees! Depending on where you live, you might be able to find them in Chinese supermarkets in the summer.
They're among my favorite fruits.
Chapter 80: Lychee Grove
After the excitement of watching an old woman drag her grandson home had died down, I discovered that my tummy was rumbling. I was hungry again. In fact, only now did I realize that I'd forgotten to eat all day, and I was feeling a little wobbly on my claws.
Food. Food food food. Where could I get food? I scanned the marketplace.
Aha! There was a stall selling raw, light-brown rice. Some sort of animal spirit sat in front of them, taking orders and counting coins. His assistant was scooping out measures of rice from big baskets and wrapping them in lotus leaves. Both spirits had thick, brown tails and long faces, and their features were similar enough that they had to be related. The rice merchant wore an embroidered jacket over his tunic and trousers, while his assistant wore only a plain, brown tunic and trousers. The tunics were shorter than those in the Claymouth Barony, but I supposed that was unsurprising given everything else that was different here.
Maybe I could sneak in and grab some rice? It was worth a try, anyway.
I glided down as silently as I could, angling to come in behind the two spirits. I timed my arrival perfectly, landing on the edge of a basket right as the merchant squinted down at a handful of coppers, and the assistant turned his back to wrap up a measure of rice. I gobbled a mouthful, then ducked below the rim of the basket, using my claws to cling to the side. Taking careful side steps, I peeked around the edge to track the spirits' movements.
That was when I got a good look at their tails. They were covered in large, overlapping scales that stuck out like those on pinecones. Pangolins! These were pangolin spirits!
I'd never met a pangolin, awakened or not, before. I'd only ever heard of them from nobles who returned from exile, who described them as bizarre, ant- and termite-eating creatures with pointy heads and club-like tails that curled up into balls when threatened. They were supposed to have poor vision too, which might explain why these two hadn't caught me yet –
The merchant's human-shaped ears twitched. His head whipped around, and his nostrils flared. "Boy! Kill that sparrow!"
Curses. I guess they compensated with their other senses.
"Yessir, Uncle!"
The assistant lunged for me. In a flurry, I took flight, and he just missed, his fingertips brushing my tail. As I shot up into the sky, he lost his balance, waved his tail to try to regain it, knocked over a stack of lotus leaves, and crashed headlong into the basket. His weight overturned it, and rice grains flooded across the packed earth.
"Clumsy knave!" shouted the merchant, leaping to his feet. He beat his nephew's back with his tail, berating him the whole time, while the younger man curled up and used his own tail to cover his head.
Naturally, a crowd of onlookers swarmed the stall, some to cheer the merchant on, some to soothe him, some to help sweep up the spilled rice, some to pocket handfuls. Thank goodness the merchant and his assistant were spirits, or I'd have earned a hefty dose of negative karma on my first day out of the nest!
Unfortunately, after all this commotion, I was still hungry and no closer to figuring out where I was. Plus night had fallen, and now I was tired too. I had two choices: find a place in town to sleep, or keep flying north for as long as my wings could support me.
I opted for the former. I still didn't know what predators to avoid, and at least these city-dwellers ignored me unless I was trying to steal their rice. Finding a suitable shrub in someone's garden, I crept into it and perched on a twig.
For the first time in ages, I was all alone.
If I were in the Claymouth Barony, I'd be meeting Bobo at her bamboo stand right about now. Together, we'd head down the dirt path to Caltrop Pond while she babbled about the dances. When we came around the final bend, Stripey would be standing on our meeting rock, waiting for us. (No. He wouldn't be. Not ever again.) We'd dive into the water and swim down past the trailing stems of the caltrop plants. Music and light would be spilling out of Den's water court, and laughter and drunken good cheer. We'd enter the audience chamber and get jostled by the crowd. Den would be dancing on his throne, the one with that silly caltrop-nut-shaped back, and he'd snatch our offerings of alcohol and chug them without a thought before shouting, "This is good stuff!" Then we'd melt into the press of bodies and dance and dance until he yelled for us to go outside, and then we'd dance across the fields and laugh at the farmers until the sun began to glimmer over the horizon, and finally we would get into our sets for the elegant, intricate Dawn Dance and the absolutely ridiculous Chicken Dance.
My beak opened, and a little chirping laugh came out. I was a bird now. My shape was even better suited for the Chicken Dance now. If only I were there.
But on a second thought, Den had been holding fewer parties since his return from the Jade Mountains. The little dragon king had actually grown serious about his duties. So maybe that wasn't what I'd be doing if I were in the Claymouth Barony right now. Although, maybe he just hadn't had the time or energy to host parties when we were fighting against a deadline to kill Lord Silurus.
Now that the demon was dead, had Den reverted to his hard-partying ways? Or was he helping Floridiana run the school and hence too tired to party all night?
And Bobo! Stripey and I had left her alone. How was she doing without her two best friends? Did she still grieve for us? Had she found steady work somewhere, or was she still cobbling together odd jobs? Was she again in danger of getting evicted on the next Settling Day?
I wished I knew. I wished I were there to see for myself. I wished I were there to fix it. Never had Honeysuckle Croft felt so far.
In an unfamiliar shrub in an unknown city, I tucked my head under my wing and fell asleep.
My gloom evaporated with the morning dew. The next morning, I was up with the sun and back on a roof overlooking the marketplace by the time the vendors finished setting up their stalls. Frustratingly, they were all locals who sold to other locals who all knew where they lived and felt no need to state it. I was hopping from tile to tile, getting hungrier and hungrier and angrier and angrier, when a human man in a fancy, embroidered, green-and-gold silk jacket walked down the street. Two women in green-and-gold gowns and two guards in green-and-gold uniforms accompanied him.
Interesting.
"The Lady's Under Steward!" cried the owner of the nearest stall. She hurried out from behind her vats of soy milk to bow deeply. "Some soy milk to start your morning, sir?"
Her greeting and offer of free food were echoed by the other vendors, and this "Under Steward" swaggered through the marketplace, graciously accepting his complimentary breakfast. At last, he arrived at one of the lychee stands I'd seen the day before. The young woman who worked there had already laid out a selection of different types.
He looked down his nose at them. "Good dawning, Miss Acina."
With a bow, she replied, "Good dawning, milord. As requested, here are the samples from my family's farm. We are honored by milady's patronage."
"Yes, yes, very good. What do you have for me today?"
"This is the Fragrant Osmanthus, which has the aroma of osmanthus blossoms."
Using both hands and bowing again, she proffered a small basket containing three pinkish fruits. He didn't take it from her himself, of course. Instead, one of the women with him stepped forward and accepted it, and the other selected a lychee and peeled it for him. Clear juices welled up and dripped off her fingertips. My tummy rumbled.
The Under Steward put the glistening, translucent white fruit in his mouth and chewed slowly with a thoughtful expression. At the end, he delicately spat the glossy brown pit into his hand and dropped it into another small basket that Miss Acina held out.
"Indeed, it has a cool, refreshing sweetness," he pronounced.
She offered him a basket of bright red lychees next. "This is the Sticky-Rice Cake. Its pit is so small that sometimes it's barely there. Its flesh is juicy and as sweet as honey."
The Under Steward and his maids repeated the process with those, and then with a red-and-green variety called the Jade Pocketbook. Finally, with extra reverence, Miss Acina presented him with lychees that were mostly light green, with a rosy area around the stem. Ah, these looked like the lychees I remembered!
"And this is the Enchantress' Smile. It is larger than the rest, with crisp, jade-white flesh that carries a gentle sweetness." She leaned closer, as if to whisper a secret, but her voice still carried around the marketplace. "This is the kind that Lychee Grove sent to the City of Dawn Song to the imperial court. It is said that the emperor's favorite court lady adored them, and he would give them to her just to see her smile."
At the mention of Cassius' capital, I twitched. So these were the lychees that had come north by express riders! I'd never realized they had a name besides "lychees" before. "Enchantress' Smile." I liked it, even if they'd whitewashed the story and transformed me from the Prime Minister into a court ornament.
If I ever took over South Serica, I'd rename these lychees "Piri's Smile." That had a nicer ring to it.
And "Lychee Grove" must be this city. I had a name, at last.
Wiping his hand on a handkerchief that one of the maids offered him, the Under Steward pronounced, "Very good. Send samples of the Enchantress' Smile, Fragrant Osmanthus, and Sticky-Rice Cake to the Lady. She will determine which variety to offer to the Queen. Good day, Miss Acina."
While she bowed low, he turned and led his servants and guards back up the street. I flapped after them. This Lady of Lychee Grove had to discuss politics and geography with her advisers and, with any luck, her scholars would even keep maps.
I was expecting a castle like Baron Claymouth's, but instead I followed the Under Steward to a massive garden surrounded by a white wall. He entered through a side door, but I flew straight over the main gate. It bore a sign that said: "Lychee Grove Earth Court."
An earth court. That meant the Lady was a land-dwelling spirit, a powerful and wealthy one, to judge by the size of this garden. Its layout reminded me of the ones in the City of Dawn Song, with lakes and arched bridges and covered galleries and full-moon doors set in white walls. It was the middle of summer, so pink lotuses bloomed in profusion while willow trees trailed their branches into the jade-green water. The garden extended for as far as I could see, with no hint of a roof in sight.
The Under Steward turned into a plain pavilion, where he reported to an older man who was wearing an even fancier embroidered jacket. I spied through a window that had a white ceramic latticework pattern of stylized leaves and sprays of lychee fruit. The people of Lychee Grove really did love their lychees.
More servants in green and gold arranged the fruit samples on a lacquered tray, and the Steward carried it still deeper into the garden. Ah, here were people knew the proper, formal way of doing things!
But what kind of spirit ruled here?
I got my answer soon enough, when we came to an ancient lychee tree at the heart of the garden. A graceful pavilion with windows that overlooked the lotus ponds nestled up against it and inside, in a carved rosewood chair, reclined a tall, slender woman. Pale-green silk robes tinted pink towards the edges, and filmy golden scarves, fluttered about her in a constant breeze.
I knew what she was even before the Steward knelt, bowed his head, and raised the tray with both hands.
"My Lady of the Lychee Tree, these are fruits you wished to see."
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, TheLunaticCo, yoghogfog, and Anonymous!
Food. Food food food. Where could I get food? I scanned the marketplace.
Aha! There was a stall selling raw, light-brown rice. Some sort of animal spirit sat in front of them, taking orders and counting coins. His assistant was scooping out measures of rice from big baskets and wrapping them in lotus leaves. Both spirits had thick, brown tails and long faces, and their features were similar enough that they had to be related. The rice merchant wore an embroidered jacket over his tunic and trousers, while his assistant wore only a plain, brown tunic and trousers. The tunics were shorter than those in the Claymouth Barony, but I supposed that was unsurprising given everything else that was different here.
Maybe I could sneak in and grab some rice? It was worth a try, anyway.
I glided down as silently as I could, angling to come in behind the two spirits. I timed my arrival perfectly, landing on the edge of a basket right as the merchant squinted down at a handful of coppers, and the assistant turned his back to wrap up a measure of rice. I gobbled a mouthful, then ducked below the rim of the basket, using my claws to cling to the side. Taking careful side steps, I peeked around the edge to track the spirits' movements.
That was when I got a good look at their tails. They were covered in large, overlapping scales that stuck out like those on pinecones. Pangolins! These were pangolin spirits!
I'd never met a pangolin, awakened or not, before. I'd only ever heard of them from nobles who returned from exile, who described them as bizarre, ant- and termite-eating creatures with pointy heads and club-like tails that curled up into balls when threatened. They were supposed to have poor vision too, which might explain why these two hadn't caught me yet –
The merchant's human-shaped ears twitched. His head whipped around, and his nostrils flared. "Boy! Kill that sparrow!"
Curses. I guess they compensated with their other senses.
"Yessir, Uncle!"
The assistant lunged for me. In a flurry, I took flight, and he just missed, his fingertips brushing my tail. As I shot up into the sky, he lost his balance, waved his tail to try to regain it, knocked over a stack of lotus leaves, and crashed headlong into the basket. His weight overturned it, and rice grains flooded across the packed earth.
"Clumsy knave!" shouted the merchant, leaping to his feet. He beat his nephew's back with his tail, berating him the whole time, while the younger man curled up and used his own tail to cover his head.
Naturally, a crowd of onlookers swarmed the stall, some to cheer the merchant on, some to soothe him, some to help sweep up the spilled rice, some to pocket handfuls. Thank goodness the merchant and his assistant were spirits, or I'd have earned a hefty dose of negative karma on my first day out of the nest!
Unfortunately, after all this commotion, I was still hungry and no closer to figuring out where I was. Plus night had fallen, and now I was tired too. I had two choices: find a place in town to sleep, or keep flying north for as long as my wings could support me.
I opted for the former. I still didn't know what predators to avoid, and at least these city-dwellers ignored me unless I was trying to steal their rice. Finding a suitable shrub in someone's garden, I crept into it and perched on a twig.
For the first time in ages, I was all alone.
If I were in the Claymouth Barony, I'd be meeting Bobo at her bamboo stand right about now. Together, we'd head down the dirt path to Caltrop Pond while she babbled about the dances. When we came around the final bend, Stripey would be standing on our meeting rock, waiting for us. (No. He wouldn't be. Not ever again.) We'd dive into the water and swim down past the trailing stems of the caltrop plants. Music and light would be spilling out of Den's water court, and laughter and drunken good cheer. We'd enter the audience chamber and get jostled by the crowd. Den would be dancing on his throne, the one with that silly caltrop-nut-shaped back, and he'd snatch our offerings of alcohol and chug them without a thought before shouting, "This is good stuff!" Then we'd melt into the press of bodies and dance and dance until he yelled for us to go outside, and then we'd dance across the fields and laugh at the farmers until the sun began to glimmer over the horizon, and finally we would get into our sets for the elegant, intricate Dawn Dance and the absolutely ridiculous Chicken Dance.
My beak opened, and a little chirping laugh came out. I was a bird now. My shape was even better suited for the Chicken Dance now. If only I were there.
But on a second thought, Den had been holding fewer parties since his return from the Jade Mountains. The little dragon king had actually grown serious about his duties. So maybe that wasn't what I'd be doing if I were in the Claymouth Barony right now. Although, maybe he just hadn't had the time or energy to host parties when we were fighting against a deadline to kill Lord Silurus.
Now that the demon was dead, had Den reverted to his hard-partying ways? Or was he helping Floridiana run the school and hence too tired to party all night?
And Bobo! Stripey and I had left her alone. How was she doing without her two best friends? Did she still grieve for us? Had she found steady work somewhere, or was she still cobbling together odd jobs? Was she again in danger of getting evicted on the next Settling Day?
I wished I knew. I wished I were there to see for myself. I wished I were there to fix it. Never had Honeysuckle Croft felt so far.
In an unfamiliar shrub in an unknown city, I tucked my head under my wing and fell asleep.
My gloom evaporated with the morning dew. The next morning, I was up with the sun and back on a roof overlooking the marketplace by the time the vendors finished setting up their stalls. Frustratingly, they were all locals who sold to other locals who all knew where they lived and felt no need to state it. I was hopping from tile to tile, getting hungrier and hungrier and angrier and angrier, when a human man in a fancy, embroidered, green-and-gold silk jacket walked down the street. Two women in green-and-gold gowns and two guards in green-and-gold uniforms accompanied him.
Interesting.
"The Lady's Under Steward!" cried the owner of the nearest stall. She hurried out from behind her vats of soy milk to bow deeply. "Some soy milk to start your morning, sir?"
Her greeting and offer of free food were echoed by the other vendors, and this "Under Steward" swaggered through the marketplace, graciously accepting his complimentary breakfast. At last, he arrived at one of the lychee stands I'd seen the day before. The young woman who worked there had already laid out a selection of different types.
He looked down his nose at them. "Good dawning, Miss Acina."
With a bow, she replied, "Good dawning, milord. As requested, here are the samples from my family's farm. We are honored by milady's patronage."
"Yes, yes, very good. What do you have for me today?"
"This is the Fragrant Osmanthus, which has the aroma of osmanthus blossoms."
Using both hands and bowing again, she proffered a small basket containing three pinkish fruits. He didn't take it from her himself, of course. Instead, one of the women with him stepped forward and accepted it, and the other selected a lychee and peeled it for him. Clear juices welled up and dripped off her fingertips. My tummy rumbled.
The Under Steward put the glistening, translucent white fruit in his mouth and chewed slowly with a thoughtful expression. At the end, he delicately spat the glossy brown pit into his hand and dropped it into another small basket that Miss Acina held out.
"Indeed, it has a cool, refreshing sweetness," he pronounced.
She offered him a basket of bright red lychees next. "This is the Sticky-Rice Cake. Its pit is so small that sometimes it's barely there. Its flesh is juicy and as sweet as honey."
The Under Steward and his maids repeated the process with those, and then with a red-and-green variety called the Jade Pocketbook. Finally, with extra reverence, Miss Acina presented him with lychees that were mostly light green, with a rosy area around the stem. Ah, these looked like the lychees I remembered!
"And this is the Enchantress' Smile. It is larger than the rest, with crisp, jade-white flesh that carries a gentle sweetness." She leaned closer, as if to whisper a secret, but her voice still carried around the marketplace. "This is the kind that Lychee Grove sent to the City of Dawn Song to the imperial court. It is said that the emperor's favorite court lady adored them, and he would give them to her just to see her smile."
At the mention of Cassius' capital, I twitched. So these were the lychees that had come north by express riders! I'd never realized they had a name besides "lychees" before. "Enchantress' Smile." I liked it, even if they'd whitewashed the story and transformed me from the Prime Minister into a court ornament.
If I ever took over South Serica, I'd rename these lychees "Piri's Smile." That had a nicer ring to it.
And "Lychee Grove" must be this city. I had a name, at last.
Wiping his hand on a handkerchief that one of the maids offered him, the Under Steward pronounced, "Very good. Send samples of the Enchantress' Smile, Fragrant Osmanthus, and Sticky-Rice Cake to the Lady. She will determine which variety to offer to the Queen. Good day, Miss Acina."
While she bowed low, he turned and led his servants and guards back up the street. I flapped after them. This Lady of Lychee Grove had to discuss politics and geography with her advisers and, with any luck, her scholars would even keep maps.
I was expecting a castle like Baron Claymouth's, but instead I followed the Under Steward to a massive garden surrounded by a white wall. He entered through a side door, but I flew straight over the main gate. It bore a sign that said: "Lychee Grove Earth Court."
An earth court. That meant the Lady was a land-dwelling spirit, a powerful and wealthy one, to judge by the size of this garden. Its layout reminded me of the ones in the City of Dawn Song, with lakes and arched bridges and covered galleries and full-moon doors set in white walls. It was the middle of summer, so pink lotuses bloomed in profusion while willow trees trailed their branches into the jade-green water. The garden extended for as far as I could see, with no hint of a roof in sight.
The Under Steward turned into a plain pavilion, where he reported to an older man who was wearing an even fancier embroidered jacket. I spied through a window that had a white ceramic latticework pattern of stylized leaves and sprays of lychee fruit. The people of Lychee Grove really did love their lychees.
More servants in green and gold arranged the fruit samples on a lacquered tray, and the Steward carried it still deeper into the garden. Ah, here were people knew the proper, formal way of doing things!
But what kind of spirit ruled here?
I got my answer soon enough, when we came to an ancient lychee tree at the heart of the garden. A graceful pavilion with windows that overlooked the lotus ponds nestled up against it and inside, in a carved rosewood chair, reclined a tall, slender woman. Pale-green silk robes tinted pink towards the edges, and filmy golden scarves, fluttered about her in a constant breeze.
I knew what she was even before the Steward knelt, bowed his head, and raised the tray with both hands.
"My Lady of the Lychee Tree, these are fruits you wished to see."
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, TheLunaticCo, yoghogfog, and Anonymous!