Standing at the apex of their mountain, Kai Fen breathed in the wet morning air. The sky ahead of him melted from black to gentle oranges and pinks, the mountains nothing but green and grey shadows against it. Beside him, Michil shielded his eyes from the rising sun and squinted into it. From behind, the sounds of Illarion’s laboured breathing accompanied by the occasional swear could be heard.
He stumbled up to join them, and after wiping grass from his green-stained knees, he came to join them. He lowered his goggles from his hair to his face and studied the landscape ahead. Kai Fen roamed the shadows of the peaks and outcrops, of the cliffs and streams and lush, newly budded trees. The world was green and fresh and alive.
His lips parted around a shaky gasp. Words died in his throat until he managed out a single, “There.”
Michil tilted his head. “There?”
Kai Fen pointed. Nestled among stone and moss greenery was a temple. It would be easy to glance over if he hadn’t been there before, if he didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. Wood beams carved and painted in spiralling blue, orange, red, green held a roof of golden yellow. Still slick with morning dew, it dripped in honey sunlight.
“Burning Rock Temple,” he breathed.
The place Enshu made her first contact with lowly, unholy humanity. The place where she dipped her fingers and dangled her hair into the soil, let her love and knowledge spread to places that did not deserve it. Kai Fen’s ancestor, a Jin, had been the first man to know her light, her love, the weight of all the great stitched books of her infinite library. They had sat at the edge of a pool of water, Enshu in the form of a woman donned in a cape of owl feathers, and braided their hair together.
It was the holiest place of all of Enyang. Kai Fen had been there once, but was too young and far too spoiled to fully appreciate it. But now the sight of it, the thought of what lay in the mountain’s caverns, drew his breath from his lungs and his heart racing in his chest. His pilgrimage was coming to its end, and if all went well, he would commune with Enshu successfully for the first time in his life by tomorrow evening.
“That’s it,” Illarion breathed. He lifted his chin. “That’s Enyang?”
Kai Fen took a deep, shaking breath. “Yes.” That was Enyang. That was home.
Illarion’s smile bloomed until it was his entire face, his entire body. He shifted his weight from foot to foot with newfound energy and thrust his fists into the air. He let out a shout that ended in a laugh, and his energy contagious, Michil beamed and cupped his hands around his mouth.
“Hello, Enyang!” It seemed right, somehow, that he said it in Vwosi.
The two of them let out a series of excited whoops, but to Kai Fen, their voices were nothing but background noise. Ahead of him stretched nothing but Enyang, nothing but home, nothing but land where setting foot had him not just a fugitive but a traitor. He was a liar setting foot into Enyang once again. He wanted so desperately to step home clean, as nothing but himself, but he’d rather keep his death to the legal and metaphorical variety.
It was lie, or it was death.
The cold, slick unease of understanding slithered up his spine and laid its eel-like body across his neck. His upper lip twitched, and he found the fabric of his sleeves tugged between his hand and thumb.
This wasn’t the same decision his father made, he told himself. It wasn’t.
“We’re in Enyang,” Illarion was saying. “I’m in Enyang! Illarion Gabrikov! I, me, I set foot in Enyang!”
“Don’t get too far ahead of yourself,” Michil teased. “We’ve still got aaaallll that mountain ahead of us.”
“Don’t rob me of this, Diachkovsky.”
Illarion hopped on the balls of his feet and, with a grin and an energy that seemed limitless so long as he was in the mood for it, he took off ahead of them. Michil laughed, went to take off after him, but looked back over his shoulder. His eyes, dark and friendly and sleepy and welcoming and almost always smiling, met his, and Kai Fen wanted them to be the only thing he would ever have to focus on.
But that was something left for the days in between. The days spent looking skyward and naming stars to make sleeping on ground more bearable were behind them now. The days that lay ahead could change everything. Answers to questions that defined his very existence might finally be answered.
He had to breathe.
“Kai Fen.” Michil spoke in joyed urgency. “We did it. We made it to Enyang.”
And Kai Fen made himself smile. It didn’t feel right, but he hoped it looked the part. The closest thing he could have to Saoirse being there with him was to mimic him.
“I smile when I don’t know what to say. It makes people happier and friendlier, it’s all win.”
“We did it,” Kai Fen agreed.
And even though the dead eel of trepidation coiled tighter with each step, Kai Fen followed Michil forward and into Enyang.
Taglist (ask to be added or removed): @snowdropwrites @woodhouse-jay @leave-her-a-tome @starrywritingg @theforgottencoolkid @oscarfuckingwilde @purpleshadows1989 @writings-of-a-narwhal @jynecca
Also... I might make the deity of Enyang masculine instead of feminine (deities don’t have genders the same way humans do fight me on this). There are a lot of reasons for this but some of them are:
1. Yang 陽 is the masculine energy and even though the concept of yin and yang and taoism don’t exist the same way they do here, I think it’s a nice nod to it.
2. Making the deity masculine furthers the reason behind Kai Fen trusting women a hundred times faster than he trusts men, even if he isn’t sure why
3. It works better with [spoilers involving Kai Fen’s mom and some of her motivations].
4. I think making part of Kai Fen’s character arc be “stop being a low key misogynist” would be good and that doesn’t work super well when the deity he worships is feminine.
I kind of already know the basis for the castes (ruling class, religious class, scholar class (might combine with religious? we’ll see), labor class, and then people who don’t fit in the system) I just need to name them. Maybe in a few “”languages”” too. Because there are a lot of languages in Enyang, it really is not a homogenous place. Ethnic Enyese people (like Kai Fen, Zhihao, the royal family in general) did a lot of conquering in the past and uhh. There’s quite a few languages
Really just gonna make the Enyese calendar system as complicated and difficult as possible and whenever someone points it out theyre just like “It’s like that”
Most of Enyang: Yeah we use a lunar calendar for most things because it makes sense to use the changes of this thing in the sky as a unit of measurement :)
The people who managed to be in charge: SOLAR CALENDAR ONLY. THE MOON IS A LIAR. THE SUN AND ENSHU ARE ONE IN THE SAME. BLASPHEMERS.
Tagged by @woodhouse-jay and I think @ratracechronicler tagged me not long ago, too?
Every part of the interior made it feel like a little chunk of Enyang had been carved out and then plopped down into the middle of Linast, and just the mere thought of home soothed something in him. The wooden wall decor, the mirrors at the end of each hallway. Even the ceiling had even been decorated in the repeating pattern of lapis lazuli, ruby, jade, and carnelian gemstones.
Even the smells, he realized, were of Enyang.
But just because he felt safe, didn’t mean he was. This was not home, no matter how badly he wanted it to be.
He pressed into a doorway as boots clunked by and prayed they didn’t turn down his hallway. He was relying on the guard’s fear of the Emperor to keep them from sounding any kind of alarm; he couldn’t imagine how shameful it would be to sound that over just one boy.
Tagging @snowdropwrites and @leave-her-a-tome! As well as anyone else who would like to
Foreign stereotypes of Enyese lawyers are that they’re sticklers for the truth and take their job very very seriously. They’ll usually be able to sway the judges to their client’s side even a little bit just by taking the case. A lot of Enyan lawyers go the “you don’t pay unless we win!” route because of this.
However, anyone who LIVES in Enyang and hears about someone moving to another place to practice law knows that they just went elsewhere because Enyang has very high standards and if you’re found to be representing something that isn’t 100% the truth you can be executed.
Ex-pat Enyese lawyers are usually in it for the money, not the truth, but bank on foreigners assuming they’re in it for the truth.
I’ve been wondering why the people in Vwos politics feel so different from those in Enyese and I realized it’s because I haven’t developed ANY of the other members of the former Vwosi court and I should probably do that.
