A gentle breeze passed through the rice stalks; around her, the field was set to shiver beneath the sun's glow above. The woman in the field drew in a deep breath, her face set to smile, her eyes shutting to turn her head up towards the sky. It was good to be alive, in that moment - it was good to live, to breathe, to work.
Long black hair fell in waves down her back, left to drift as it pleased in response to the rushing wind. Her tan robes, plainly made and pleasantly rough to the touch, hung loosely upon a frame that was wiry, but fit enough for work in the paddy. At the hem, the waters of the paddy had dampened the robes - but this was far from her mind, the thought of lunch too present to be budged.
The woman let her head fall back down from its skyward angle, dropping slowly to embrace the wetness around her ankles. She took a moment to gaze at her own reflection, smile never quite leaving her lips, the warmth of the good weather having taken residence in her heart. Slender features... Bright eyes of subtle brown, like the feathers of a pheasant... Sharp brows, and a nose that was pleasantly button-like...
This was Xiao 'Zongying' Fan. She had been born here, in the village of Er Xin, and here she would live and die. Life had been so good to her... She was married to a beautiful woman, she had her own home and a rice paddy where ducks often came to nest, and she was well-respected by her neighbors. It had taken years, and so much work. Now, though, it all felt as easy and secure to her as breathing or sleeping.
The knife in her hand reflected the sun's rays as it was brought to bear. The practiced motion of harvesting rice was carried through more by muscle memory than active thought, time and time again. Her bushel was overflowing, and soon she would make another trip up to her modest home to drop it off to be hulled. Hulling the rice was time consuming, and she'd start doing that after some food...
"Ah! Fan! Where are you? Fan-nnnn!" The voice of another woman practically sparkled as they traveled through the air, coming alight upon Xiao Fan's ears with all the clarity and beauty of a twinkling bell. Xiao Fan's smile, yet to fade, sprang back with new emotion as she heard her wife calling her name. The knife in the rice farmer's hand was placed back into the belt at her hip, and she turned towards the sound of the other woman's voice.
And there she was. Zhang 'Qingge' Daiyu, just as breathtaking as the first time they had met... Inky locks of the deepest black, which were held back in a gorgeous red ribbon to form a loose ponytail, framed a face that gave her namesake even more credence. Her dress was a similarly striking red, almost as eye-catching as the woman herself. Finally, she wore a necklace with a single bronze pendant in the shape of a bat.
Her face, to Xiao Fan at least, was without compare in all the land. While the rice farmer of the pair may not have been without her charm, when Xiao Fan looked upon her wife, words could scant describe the elegance she possessed. Her face was elegant, with high cheekbones and plump-but-restrained lips, and eyes of striking green that couldn't help but evoke the image of jade adornments on a precious doll. Her skin was pale as the snow that capped distant mountains, and even the simplest of motions she made held the grace of a dancer.
The smile on Xiao Fan's face was all she could do not to let her jaw drop for the ten-thousandth time as she drank in her wife's image. In one hand, Zhang Daiyu held a small cotton bundle, undyed and bearing the dark stains that were left by years of use. Before Xiao Fan could even speak, the scent of hot, fresh food drifted from the bundle, and she felt her mouth begin to water.
Zhang Daiyu sighed when she saw her wife, a smile of her own quickly forming, lips curling up at their edges. She raised the pot of wine in her other hand by its string handle, giving the stone container a gentle slosh to draw Xiao Fan's attention to it. The mirth of mischief spread between them without any words required, and the two women hastened to meet one another - coming together at the edge of the paddy where it began to raise into a hill, Xiao Fan still ankle-deep in the water, Zhang Daiyu above her on the shore. They leaned towards one another to share a kiss.
Lunch time. Xiao Fan's stomach grumbled as she and her partner took a seat beneath the plum tree they kept behind their home; she couldn't help but eye that cloth bundle with a look that wouldn't be amiss in the eyes of a starving animal. Her wife's cooking was the best in the world, Xiao Fan figured. Everything Zhang Daiyu touched turned to gold in her hands, even moreso in her cookpot. The bundle was undone, and delicate hands drew out some steamed buns for the two to share.
Two buns for each of them, more than plenty, and with the jar of wine, it was quite the picnic. The scent of chrysanthemums in bloom set a floral backdrop to their shared moment, and the two women ate heartily. Few words were shared between them, hoping not to ruin a moment in time treasured by both. Juice from the steamed pork within ran down Xiao Fan's chin, but she didn't care, wiping it away with her sleeve more from instinct than self-consciousness.
The farmer's wife undid the string which held the cloth 'lid' of the wine jar, then raised it to her lips and took a long swig. It wasn't too potent, but it was delicious - the taste of plum, dry and refreshing at first but sweet and mellow as it lingered on the palate, filled her mouth. She passed it to Xiao Fan, giving her a sly wink as she did.
"Hey, hey... Don't drink too much, okay? You've still got work to do, love, and while I'd love to sit around and drink with you, it's still some time before the next batch is ready... Or maybe you want to take a break from the fields and come inside? The house is so lonely without you..." Zhang Daiyu giggled to herself as she passed off the wine jug, eyes transfixed on her lover. Xiao Fan merely rolled her eyes, though she couldn't deny the pang of need that the suggestion brought to bloom in her heart.
"Ahh, no, Daiyu... Of course, I'd love to spend all day admiring you and telling you how lovely you are, but I've really got to get the harvest in. And besides, I get to be the lucky woman who holds you at night anyways; I can wait a bit to give you the love you deserve." It was Xiao Fan's turn to wink, then, and she was rewarded with a blush from Zhang Daiyu that was nearly red enough to match the latter woman's dress.
A long gulp of wine came then, and the pair set down their pork buns momentarily, hands now taking hold of one another. Xiao Fan gave her wife's a squeeze, and Zhang Daiyu responded in kind, squeezing in return before pulling her wife in for a kiss. One of many kisses they had shared, sure, but it still rekindled an old and cherished flame in each woman's heart.
They had been sweethearts since youth, after all. Now, they were sweethearts still - each of them all too thankful for the moments they shared, and the life they together led. Xiao Fan raised the hand with less grease on the palm to brush away offending locks from hers and Zhang Daiyu's faces both, moving it to caress her wife's cheek in a single motion. Her reward was borne in the form of a few extra moments to kiss the other woman.
Not for the first time, Xiao Fan wished she knew any of the poetry they used at the capital - that flowery language meant to praise emperors and bring women to swoon, the art of such words far beyond her artless upbringing. Zhang Daiyu was the only art she truly knew, anyways, and she was quite the devoted connoisseur of that particular artform. A happy breath rolled from her in the form of a contented sigh, her slim chest rising and falling as the air was gathered and released.
But then, her reverie and thoughts of love were interrupted. A strange sound rang out through the air - distantly, and from the direction of the village proper, but one that Xiao Fan was ill familiar with. It sounded like an impact, a clash of hard materials against one another, reminiscent of the village smith striking the blade of a knife or shovel upon his anvil. Then it came again, that sound of metal-on-metal, and with it, a cry of pain.
It set Xiao Fan on edge immediately, and she let go of her wife's hand to push herself to a sit. The village lay on the other side of their house, at the foot of the hill they currently sat upon, but even without seeing the buildings there was something she could see: smoke. More smoke than normal for the middle of the day, more smoke than was normal for Er Xin at all in most times. The clash of metal rang out with further repetition, and cries of fear and pain pierced the air with worrying frequency.
"Daiyu... Get in the house, okay? I'm... There's something going on in town, and I'm gonna go check it out. I've got my knife, I'll be fine, I promise... Just... Keep safe, okay? Maybe some local drunks are fighting..." The unease in Xiao fan's voice did little to put her wife at ease, but Zhang Daiyu nodded anyways, rushing to a stand and then helping Xiao Fan to do the same.
A kiss on the cheek was all the affirmative Zhang Daiyu gave, and it was all that was needed - once it had been returned, she scampered off and into the home they shared. Xiao Fan drew her knife and began to pad cautiously towards the other side of the hill, every shriek of agony and clang of metal connecting making the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. Nothing in her entire life could have prepared her for what she saw once she came to the hill's crest.
Wooden homes, the homes of her friends and neighbors, set to the torch - countless residences in various states of immolation. In the streets, death reigned: familiar faces lay cold and dead in the packed dirt of the roadways, the blood of those she had known her entire life sprayed across the ground in ugly crimson waves. Unfamiliar men were parading down the streets, some dragging peasants by the hair, others striding forth with swords drawn and cutting down anyone they came across.
A series of carts sat at the edge of town, and some of these unfamiliar men were tossing things onto them: metal cookwear, fine silks, sacks of grain, and sometimes townsfolk with their hands and ankles bound. The concept of looting was unfamiliar to Xiao Fan, but it was still obvious enough that these people were bandits - something she had always encountered only in stories from traveling guards or imperial soldiers, never in the flesh.
Fear gripped her heart with claws of ice to rival the chill of winter. So many people were already dead, and those that hadn't been slain were being captured - who knew what sort of miseries awaited such captives? And of course, she couldn't just pray that the bandits passed over her own little home, with its roof of straw and bushels of rice... They were razing Er Xin to the ground and taking everything they could. She wasn't possessed of the kind of blind optimism needed to think she and her wife would get lucky enough to be ignored.
Clutching her field-knife in hand, Xiao Fan forced her legs into motion - something had to be done, anything, just so long as it served to strike back at this band of evildoers. A soft prayer to the heavens passed her lips as she marched awkwardly down the hill, her legs as unsteady as those of a new calf, yet the determination in her heart spurred her on. She was nearly to the bottom of the hill when one of the armed men turned and noticed her, a grin coming across his bearded face.
The bandit drew his sword out of a fresh corpse at his feet, the blade passing through its flesh making a sickening sound reminiscent of a butcher processing a pig. He raised it up and leveled it towards Xiao Fan, one bushy brow raising to emphasize his cocksure smirk.
"Oi oi, little lady... Not that we're having a blade measuring contest, but if we were..." He twirled his jian in hand, the blood-slick blade sending droplets of the stuff spattering across himself, the corpse, the road, and Xiao Fan's face and robes. "Well, if we were, mine's bigger. Why not just throw yourself onto it and save me the trouble? It'd be shameful for you to be a disobedient little girl, you know." The wink he gave her then made her skin crawl, and suddenly she wished her robes were at least twice as thick.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
She tried to spit at him, but from her trembling, unsure lips, all she managed to do was dribble some saliva down her chin like a donkey. Her voice trembled audibly as she tried to form a suitable response. "W-Well, uh... Fuck you, idiot! If you want to kill me, you'll need to come kill me yourself! I've done nothing wrong, and you and your friends are murdering people - surely the heavens will smile on me and grant me victory!"
His only response was to laugh, deeply and heartily, crushing Xiao Fan's spirits even further into the dust. She raised her knife in the best semblance of a fighting stance she could manage, crudely aping the depictions of warriors she had seen in the tapestries in the temples in the imperial city what few times she had been there. And like that, the bandit rushed forth - if by rushed, one meant 'strode confidently, like a man going to collect his lottery winnings'.
He stopped a few feet away from her, daring her to make a move, sizing her up with all the intensity of a bored parent inspecting their child's macaroni art. Xiao Fan, meanwhile, was petrified. She wished she could him and pierce his stupid throat with her knife, wished she could open his guts and watch him drop to the ground with the rest of the corpses. She wished she knew how to make such things happen, but cutting rice is much different than cutting another person.
After some lingering moments of trepidation between them, the bandit opened his mouth and threw back his head, calling out boisterously for all who may hear. "Hey! Hey, everyone! Come look! This little serf thinks she can fight me! She thinks she's gonna defend her home like a big, brave hero! Ha ha ha!" That drew the attention of some of his crew, and soon, a circle had formed around the pair of them - close enough to watch, but wide enough to give them space to fight.
The bandit chuckled again, and then leaned towards her, lowering his tone to a stage whisper like he was her co-conspirator. "Hey, you know... If you can kill me? My boys will let you go. They'll leave straight away, and you can live in peace. But if you can't? I'm gonna kill you, your husband, your cattle... And then I'm gonna piss in your rice paddy. So let's see what you can do, little farmer girl..." And with that, he took a step forward, jian still leveled at her.
Xiao Fan thought of her wife. This stupid bastard, assuming she had a husband... But then, she really, truly thought of her wife. Up there in their home on the hill, scared of what was going on, trusting Xiao Fan to save her and make sure everything would be okay... Putting all her faith in the peasant girl she had married all those years ago, that reliable, happy peasant girl.
It would destroy her if Xiao Fan died here. She had to win.
Xiao Fan rushed forwards, slashing at the bandit with an amateurish sort of urgency - and missed completely, the blade in her hand slapped aside without a second thought by her opponent. She stumbled forward during the follow-through of her attempted strike, flailing her arms as her legs carried her far past their intended stopping point. She slammed into one of the bandits forming the circle, and he pushed her back towards the center.
The bandit she was fighting was still smiling, and with every second that passed, his smile felt more and more like salt in her wounds. Xiao Fan tripped over her own stupid feet as she was pushed towards the center of the ring, and fell on her ass; the bandit ringleader gave his eyes a performative roll and kicked her in the ribs. She yelped in pain, having never been in a proper fight before and being so unused to the pain that it made her curl in on herself.
"Alright, girl, come on. Get up. We've got an audience now, and if I gut you like a pig while you cry into your sleeves, it won't be very fun for them. On your feet, damn it." Xiao Fan struggled up to her feet, trying to ignore the swiftly-forming bruise on her ribcage. She raised her knife back up, eyes beginning to grow bleary from the tears of pain forming therein. This time, it was the bandit who made a strike.
Except, it wasn't with his jian. He twirled it in a flashy way, drawing Xiao Fan's eyes - and then raised his left leg up with shocking speed, kicking the wrist of her knife-hand with the hard tip of his boot. Shooting pain coursed down her arm as she felt something fracture somewhere, and she dropped the knife immediately, crying out at the top of her lungs. The bandits surrounding her cheered.
She warbled in surprise and pain as her opponent's jian was dragged swiftly across her back, opening a long, deep wound, blood pouring forth hotly and immediately from the newly-made gash. The pain was searing, debilitating even, and her brain was so addled by the agony of it that she couldn't even think to herself that she was about to die. She was vaguely aware of it somewhere within her mind, but her entire body was screaming at her that she was fucked up real badly.
She felt her long hair taken and wrapped around the bandit's hand, her head drawn up painfully to face her opponent. He narrowed his eyes at her, raising his brows a few times to really drive home how badly she had performed. She coughed at him in response, bile rising in her throat as she regarded his face. Instead of responding, he simply began to drag her along the dirt path.
"Alright, boys... That's her house up on the hill, yeah? Let's torch it, see how she likes seeing everything she owns go up in flames with her shitty little shack. Let this be a lesson to all of you, too - if you act up when we're dividing the loot? It'll be you watching your shack burn like an incense stick." He laughed, and his men followed suit, the whole gathering beginning to shuffle towards Xiao Fan's home.
Oh no. Oh no. Zhang Daiyu. Please, heavens above, all the gods and spirits, blessed ancestors, anyone who might be listening... Please save her. A new sort of panic swept through Xiao Fan's mind in a way that completely stepped over the physical pain she was feeling, replacing it with utter anguish. She would have done anything to keep her wife safe... To keep these animals in the shape of men away from her. And yet, all she could do was watch and whimper as they headed up the hill.
Once they reached the top, the outlaw leader gestured to the door - a few of his men stepped up, one of them kicking it in roughly, and making to enter to ransack the place. However, when the door was splintered in its frame and sent crashing open, there she was. Zhang Daiyu was sitting on her and Xiao Fan's shared bed, face wracked with worry and doubt, the pot of wine from their earlier picnic drained and sitting at her feet.
The brigand commander's face contorted in pleasant surprise, a low sound of greedy wonder coming from his pursed lips. "Oooooooohhhh... Farmer girl has a wife, eh? Well, even better, then... We'll take her back to camp, hmm? She's gorgeous... You're a lucky woman, little rice-girl... She'll make a fine concubine to whoever we sell her off to. Hahaha! We may even need to start an auction!"
Xiao Fan would have puked if her body had the strength to do so, but all she could do is let out a pathetic, wretched sob that spoke of her quickly-breaking heart. Zhang Daiyu stood up as the bandits went to arrest her; she wasn't made for fighting, and even if she fought back, it was doubtful they would simply kill her. She cast a glance down at her beloved that could only be described as apologetic - apologetic that she couldn't ease her beloved's pain.
Once she was out, a burning torch was thrown into the thatch roof of the home, and within moments, it was ablaze. The main outlaw force escorted Zhang Daiyu away, off towards the rest of their spoils; as the building began to crumble in on itself from the flames, only the leader and Xiao Fan remained. He pulled hard on her hair, forcing her to a partially-upright position, placing his sword against her throat.
"Well, little girl... This is where we part ways. You've got to go see your ancestors... Hopefully they didn't see the pitiful way you died, right? The pathetic sounds you made... The disgusting tears on your cheeks... All the blood ruining your shitty farm-girl clothes..." He cackled then, giving her neck a small nick with the edge of his blade. Not deep enough to be lethal, but certainly enough to hurt.
"Ahahahaha! We can only hope that the shame of it all won't come with you into heaven! If they even let you in, that is! Frankly, you'd be better off getting reincarnated as a pig... At least then, when you eat shit and roll in the dirt, people will praise you for it. Die now, filth, and when you get to the afterlife? Tell them it was Tang Shun who sent you." And with that, he ceased his teasing.
Xiao Fan couldn't have made a response if she tried, because all that came was a sudden outpouring of blood and gurgling breath as her neck was cut. Tang Shun dropped her then, letting her fall to the ground like a sack of trash, giving her one last kick for good measure before starting to walk away. All she could do was die, then.
Blood gushed from the wound, and she felt her spirit lightening in her chest, beginning to rise up out of her body. Grief had stricken her into near-catatonia, and here, in her final, dying moments, all she could think of was Zhang Daiyu. If only she had been strong enough to protect the only thing that mattered to her... If only things had been different. It was too late to dwell on such thoughts, but even still, the ability to think at all was quickly fleeing her. She felt her soul draw up and out of her body, closing her eyes for the final time...
...and then she lingered there, in darkness. Everywhere she looked, if it even was looking, was darkness. She could still feel her arms, her legs, her eyes, her mouth... But now, it was different. There was a numbness to it, as if she was being told about the sensation of having a body, not actually experiencing it. A sort of 'drifting' came over her soul, like being caught and carried along by the current of a lazy river.
The darkness lasted for seconds which became minutes, and minutes which became hours. Was this the afterlife? Endless darkness and that flowing feeling? She regretted not going to the city temple more often; maybe she hadn't been good enough for heaven, but not bad enough for hell. Reincarnation then, surely, but... It wasn't coming. She couldn't feel it at all, or anything that could have even been interpreted as reincarnation.
And then, the darkness began to fade, becoming a lesser darkness - a nocturnal sort of darkness, instead of the inky blackness of the abyss between realms. She still felt things in that numb sort of way, but now, she felt more real somehow - there were robes on her body, her face was in the dirt, and her hair was in disarray. What was going on?
Pushing herself up from whatever she had been laying on, her gaze fell upon an unfamiliar but recognizable sight: her own house, or the remains of it, all ash now. She turned her head to gaze behind her, and saw the remnants of the village, too - only a small handful of buildings remained, and Er Xin was probably never going to truly recover. But who cared about that? Who cared about any of that?
She looked down at herself, and saw she was wearing something new: no longer the tanned field-dress she had been clad in when she died, but someone had dressed her in strange white garb, the likes of which she had only ever seen in the imperial city. A tangzhuang with embroidered black branches and pink plum blossoms covered her torso, with baggy white pants that were tied with black cloth strips at each ankle. She had no shoes, but she could barely feel her feet as it was, so that wasn't bothersome.
A thousand questions filled her mind, and she had no answers for any of them. Above them all, however, stood a single thought like a shining star to guide her: if she was alive, or whatever she was, she had to find that man. She had to find Tang Shun.
And when she found him, she had to kill him.