“Momma!”

Ling Qingge caught her daughter as the girl ran up the garden path, hiding the wince from the slight twinge it brought to her shoulder as she lifted the child up.

“Do you like the garden, Biyu?” she asked.

“Uh huh! Its big, I can run,” Biyu chirped.

It was, wasn’t it, Ling Qingge thought. Their situation meant that she had to keep her daughter at home always, in their cramped little room, or have her staying with one of a handful of generous friends. Even when they went out, she always needed her to stay close by, the streets of Tonghou’s outer district were not safe for unattended children.

From her childhood memories, this garden was very plain, neat and orderly but perfunctory. But it was far more beautiful than her memories. She shifted Biyu into the crook of her arm, and reached up, wiping a smudge of dirt from Biyu’s cheek.

“And your sister, what did you think of her?” Ling Qingge asked.

Biyu squirmed under her thumb. “Sis-y pretty.”

“She is,” Ling Qingge said idly, turning from the garden, she ascended the stairs, passing the quiet guard standing unobtrusively on the veranda, and the girl sweeping the path. She still felt like an intruder here. “Are you looking forward to seeing her again?”

“Mhm!”

Ling Qi… she didn’t know what she had expected, but Biyu had gone to her almost without hesitation, despite the way her shadow bent wrongly, despite the glittering lights and the erie music. She was not afraid of her daughter, she did not deserve to be, but she had worried that Biyu might be.

Another worry for naught.

Since they had arrived here, Ling Qingge had felt like she was drifting in a haze. But it did finally feel like she was waking up. This was real. It was not about to disappear.

That came with its own problems. Her thoughts on it felt almost treacherous to look on her daughter's generosity with anything but total gratitude, and yet, she could not control her thoughts.

This did not feel like a home. There were attendants, but she couldn’t bring herself to meet their eyes. Everything about her experience told her that they were still above her, and she was sure her timidity had hardly made a good impression.

It felt no different than the roadhouses they had stopped at during the journey here. A place to catch one's breath, but not hers. More than that, sometimes she felt as if she was going to fidget out of her skin.

There was, frankly, nothing for her to do. There were no tasks to perform, no work to be done. For the first weeks she had tentatively tried to renew her interest in music hoping for something, some spark to be reborn…

Stolen novel; please report.

But little had come of it. She couldn’t find the focus or the inspiration. She had tried to renew her knowledge of courtly etiquette, but it felt pointless. Ling Qi expected nothing of her, perhaps rightly so. It was not as if she would allow a woman like her to be the face of the household.

Which left her with… nothing.

Many fantasized about having no obligations at all, imagined that was what a life of wealth was for…

It was wrong though, save perhaps for the most feckless of young masters and mistresses’. There was always work to be done, even if it was not as dirty and unpleasant as the work of mortal laborers.

And she did not even have that. Even working at the garden, she felt like she was insulting the Sect’s gardeners and inviting their disapproval. She could cook on occasion, but her fare was worse than what the Sect’s cook made.

She hated feeling like a tolerated guest in the place that she lived.

It was worse that she knew she was likely being unfair. Inventing imagined disdain behind polite faces.

It was all she had known for a very long time.

In the quiet inner hall, she met a woman who looked her own age in a servants uniform, waiting as she stepped inside. In many ways only caring for Biyu and the pains of cultivation remained.

“Welcome back madam,” she said politely, bowing. “Shall I take the young miss for her bath now?”

She was the picture of a professional, any clan would be happy to have such a person serving. “Please do. Biyu, please go with her.”

“I don’t wanna,” Biyu pouted.

“Biyu, that was our agreement. If I let you play in the garden you wouldn’t complain about the bath,” Ling Qingge chided gently.

Biyu puffed out her cheeks as Ling Qingge set her down. “...Okay...”

The serving woman bowed once more, taking Biyu’s hand. “Should a bath be prepared for madam as well?”

“...Perhaps later. I am going to the study for now,” Ling Qingge replied, receiving another bow.

Heated baths on demand had seemed like an absurd luxury barely a month ago. The first time she had made use of it, she had felt a sort of bliss. It was like her first days here, where in her dreaming haze, she had felt that everything was truly fine. That this was the finish, the reward for her tribulations.

She’d felt worse after, for that, for the insidious voice that told her she deserved this, rather than being thankful for her daughter’s unearned generosity.

She watched Biyu for a moment. Even Biyu needed her less. She had always somewhere in her heart, harbored the hope that she might one day be saved, and yet…. What now?

She was now merely a burden borne.

The door to the study was open. It was not a very large room, and the shelves lining its walls were only half full at most. Many empty shelves set with plants or vases or other decor to conceal the lacking library. What was here were only very common books, almanacs and geographies, the five classics and three epics. The bare minimum to not seem uncouth. Should she tell Ling Qi that if she wished to entertain guests here, she should vary the collection? Would it be presumptuous of her? She surely knew if she had risen to be a retainer to the Cai family. It would only be a lack of time or resources. Cultivation was awfully expensive, she knew.

Ling Qingge shut the door behind her with a soft click, and slid down into the soft padding of the reading chair set toward the rear of the room. On the table beside her was a book, a collection of poetry that she had been reading in the morning casting about for the inspiration to write something, compose something, do something.

The characters blurred a bit under her eyes as she took it up again, flipping a page listlessly.

She could not keep going like this. There must be something she could do, to repay this fortune of hers.