Yo you have My Country WIPs? How exciting! I've been meaning to read Messenger for a while, that reminds me.... anyways, can you tell me about and/or post a snippet of trillium??
Thanks for asking! (If you end up reading Messenger, I hope you enjoy it!) 😀
Trillium
(another WIP set in @staidwaters One more lie... -verse. Hwi & Seon-ho on the road.)
What we call the trillium ‘flower’ is no flower at all...trilliums have no above-ground stems or leaves. Instead, the plant is a fragile extension of its underground rhizome, a process that happens, hidden and secretive, for up to seven or more years before a trillium grows from seed to a mature, blooming plant.
They weren’t even two days on the road when they had their first (post-death) argument about, of all things, a horse. Yi Bang-won had, inconceivably, decided not to kill them after they survived the first round of arrows and spears. That had been an odd hesitation that Hwi could not recall having seen before in his eight years of service to the lord, prince, and now King of Joseon. But Bang-won had given them enough supplies for a few weeks -- enough to load down a pack horse, also provided-- and sent them into the wilds.
If they had decided to bicker over the direction, or the degree of trust they had in Bang-won’s word that they would be allowed to flee if they kept their survival quiet, that might have been understandable. Instead, they seemed to fall into an unspoken accord-- if Bang-won was going to change his mind again, there was little to be done about it, and clearly northeast into Gangwon-do and its mountainous landscape dotted with tiny valleys was going to be their best chance at vanishing.
On the morning after they’d left Bang-won’s escort on the road, Seon-ho had rolled out of their blankets and said, calm as anything, “We should stay here awhile before heading out.”
“Why?” asked Hwi, blinking sleepily. He wouldn’t mind the chance to rest, but-- “Bang-won is going to expect us to go further away if we’re meant to disappear, and the longer we linger down here in the foothills, the deeper the mountains will be into winter when we get that high. The leaves are already turning,” he said to Seon-ho, although he would have thought Seon-ho knew all this, already.
“I’ll only need a few hours,” said Seon-ho, and Hwi had shrugged and yawned. Fine by him, then.
...
Seon-ho nodded, but didn’t otherwise comment, and Hwi huffed out a slightly frustrated breath. “Are you actually angry about something, or just brooding?” Hwi asked at last, and Seon-ho’s chin shot up-- he’d been staring at the ground, but now he met Hwi’s gaze.
“If I went ahead, you could probably return to Hanyang,” said Seon-ho levelly. “Whatever this is that Yi Bang-won is doing, it’s for you, not me. He’d take you back into his service if you asked.”
Hwi made a face, feeling the certain instinct he always had about Bang-won’s motives-- Seon-ho might be right, but that would only be enough to save Hwi alone. Bang-won’s own suspicion of the people around Hwi would lead him to act, sooner or later.
“Maybe,” he told Seon-ho, serious. “But I don’t want to return to his service, and especially not without you! That promise he made to leave Hui-jae and Ihwaru’s network and the Northern Forces settlements, Chi-do, Jeong Beom, and Mun-bok alone, to not kill you-- it only lasts as long as we play his games, and this is one of them.” He grinned a bit. “Besides, it doesn’t sound so bad, retiring to the mountains! This is what I always wanted, you know-- freedom and enough space to settle down and live well. It won’t be a noble estate, but…”
“Hwi, it’s fall, and soon it will be winter,” Seon-ho cut in seriously. “I don’t think settling down is going to be a possibility in snowbanks deeper than our heads, and Bang-won isn’t going to allow for us bedding down in a farming village for the winter either, not if we’re meant to be dead.”
“How will he even know?” asked Hwi, and Seon-ho gave him a look.
“He’s had men tailing us since we left his guards on the highway,” said Seon-ho, and Hwi’s mouth twisted, because he couldn’t argue-- that sounded right. “In any case, I’ve sorted out the supplies, and I think I can carry enough of them that you can ride the horse from here on out without laming it,” continued Seon-ho, still level and nearly breezy, as if this were a foregone conclusion and they were just repeating their next steps.
“That’s not necessary, Seon-ho,” said Hwi with a little frown, looking intently at the other man. “If anything, you should ride and I’ll carry the supplies; you were much more seriously wounded at the palace than I was.”
“I’ve recovered enough, and I’m not the one who was reckless enough to offer myself up to a rabid tiger in search of a crown,” said Seon-ho.
Hwi bristled at the implication in the statement. “There wasn’t another way to halt the bloodshed,” he told Seon-ho shortly. “Besides, who attacked us first? Yi Seong-gye. Bang-won had nothing to do with that!” He stood up and grabbed the cookpot off the coals with a hand wrapped in the folds of his shirt, and began forming the remaining rice into balls, briskly. “You want to prove something by hauling part of the horse’s packs uphill yourself, go ahead. I can tie you on to the horse’s back when your goat-stubborness leads you to pass out from the strain.”
Seon-ho huffed out a breath through his nose and smirked at him, as if Hwi were the one being ridiculous. “Hwi, your skin has been the same shade as campfire ash ever since we left the highway. It’s not me collapsing we need to worry about. This isn’t something you can wish your way out of.”
“I’m not!” exclaimed Hwi, then sighed at himself. He should be happy that Seon-ho cared, right? He should, and he was. This wasn’t Seon-ho trying to slash at him, verbally or otherwise, Hwi reminded himself. Maybe they could be the same as they had been, before Liaodong-- he’d like to get back to that, if it was even possible. That meant Hwi needed to try. He took a deep breath and smoothed his expression, even managed to laugh at himself, a little.
“Sorry. I guess with everything, and worrying about Hui-jae and the others, I’m a little too on-edge. I really am fine. I’ve just been sore these past few days; I’m dealing with it, I promise,” he told Seon-ho earnestly.
“It doesn’t seem like just your arrow-wounds,” said Seon-ho, still looking at him seriously.
“Seon-ho, I know you mean well, and I appreciate that,” Hwi said, finishing shaping the last of the rice balls and setting it on the pot lid with the others. “But you don’t know me, now. We haven’t done much more than yell at each other from the opposite sides of a battle for years. I am fine, except I don’t like arguing with you about this,” he finished, meaning to bring the discussion to an end.
“Fine,” said Seon-ho flatly after a moment. “We’ll load it all back on the horse, then,” and they did, although Hwi noticed that Seon-ho kept some of the supplies split out into the smaller bag, as if he were preparing to carry them later. Hwi really didn’t want to fight, though, and left the organization of the horse’s packs unremarked upon.
It was a warm autumn day, for all they had been discussing snow and ice earlier, and they made decent time. Hwi was beginning to sweat more seriously as midday wore into afternoon, and he could feel the odd twinge and stab from his poisoned wound and stomach. Their supplies of medicine were limited, though-- they would have to find someplace to settle and work out how to contact an apothecary or doctor for more without alerting Bang-won’s men, and that would all take weeks, if not months. So Hwi resolved to save what supplies he could now, pushed on without the usual second dose he’d take at this point, with all the activity they’d been up to, and convinced himself that it really was fine. The pain wasn’t much different from his arrow-wounds, and those were healing.
When Seon-ho paused at a fork in the road, Hwi realized it wasn’t just the pain-- he felt...light, almost. As if he could take a step forward and just float away. But rather than try it, he came to a swaying halt and looked at Seon-ho.
“Right is more direct, but left might take us closer to a town,” said Seon-ho. “More wheel tracks. What do you think?”
Of the two of them, Hwi had always been the more talkative, but this was getting ridiculous, he thought. Seon-ho was going to be down to single-word sentences soon. “Why are you so...tense?” Hwi asked, meaning to grin. His lips just twitched instead. “Did the Jurchen have something...against words?”
Seon-ho turned to stare at him, brow wrinkling as his eyebrows drew together, and Hwi took a shallow breath so as to not pull at his aching chest, then sighed.
“Go right,” he told Seon-ho. Better to arrive wherever they were meant to be going sooner, wasn’t it?
As Seon-ho continued to frown at him, Hwi took a step forward down the right-hand road, meaning to show the other man how it was done, and his foot lost contact with the ground as his stomach spasmed. A bright flash of grey-white pain shot across his vision. He had a moment to be confused, and then was briefly, intensely irritated with himself before he hit the dirt and whited out entirely.