Her hands instinctively went to where he had affectionately knocked her head with his fist and feigned a dramatic pout, suppressing a smile.
It felt so surreal (though, in all honesty, this whole experience up until this moment felt surreal. If she hadn’t actually experienced it, she would have thought she was dreaming).
Bringing her knees up closer to her chest and wrapping her arms around them, the girl focused again on the surrounding desert. It felt like only yesterday when she had traversed these same sandy dunes; dragging her feet to a land she had only heard about from the idle chatter of the elders in her clan. Her salvation - the solution (or so she had thought).
Instead of the airy, mystical city she had imagined, she had come face-to-face to a place on the brink of war. Only to then be in the middle of said war. Her “solution” did not come as easy as she had first thought and the girl witnessed things nightmares would be afraid of! Still… she had made so many friends, experienced so much, made memories she would forever hold dear and even…
[she looked at the older boy beside her and smiled]
She was going home with a brother - her brother.
The mention of bringing Ling to her clan’s council, however, brought her mood down (along with repressed memories). She did not leave on the “greatest” of terms with the elders (let alone her mother)…
Frowning slightly, the girl replied with a steady and sombre voice:
“That would be my mother… She may not be very [she paused, mulling it over] happy to see us”.
But she would not dare tell him that! At least… not yet.
Her mother did not take kindly to any of the Emperor’s other children - or the Emperor, to be exact - and became quite sour and bitter at anything to do with him and his affairs. Imagine her reaction to her (who again, did not leave the best way now that she thinks about it - but what other choice did she have??) returning home with her brother (the twelfth prince - oh boy) who would soon be Emperor???
She’s going to skin them both!!
Seemingly blind to the girl’s sudden display of distress ( actually he’d just turned his eyes back towards the dying light on the horizon, the hand previously grinding affectionate knuckles against the top of her head moving instead to scratch idle fingers along the underside of his jaw, ) , the twelfth prince hummed, the sound a thoughtful vibration emanating from the back of his throat.
He might have expected such a thing had he thought about it for more than a few seconds; Mei Chang’s clan was nothing short of a poor farming village. To think they’d actually have an appointed council was, he realized in retrospect, a rather foolish assumption for him to have made. This didn’t change much in the grand scheme of.....well, his scheme, but it did affect the manner in which he now had to approach the situation. He was not walking into a room of high-brow, well-bred noblemen and women, but a farming village with a council led by one of the emperor’s fifty wives. One, he could safely assume, who wouldn’t like him for his pedigree alone.
But! Luckily for him, he had the perfect person to aid him in his quest to ally himself with the outer farming regions! Surely the daughter of the woman he needed to impress would know the perfect way to get on her good side!
“I’m afraid I’m not terribly experienced when it comes to talking politics with mothers. You wouldn’t want to make this easy for me and tell me what to say to convince her to join my clan in our future endeavours, would you?”
janainaart
izzy806
yousharknotpass
ellievsbear
dededos
kianamaiart
