Ji Kang

They called him the Sage of the Bamboo Groves behind his back and Shuye, the third son of the Night, in respect. But if you were to ask anyone who Ji Kang was, they would surely say, "he plays the guqin."

Of above average height and build, Ji Kang was somewhat handsome but no one would ever accuse him of great beauty. If anyone were to pass him in the street, he would escape notice if they did not recognize him. However, many did.

Ji Kang had been born in turbulent times, three years after the Great Han had shattered into three states which claimed the Mandate - the Eastern Wu, the Shu Han and his own home, the Cao Wei. When he was born, the Emperor had been the oldest surviving son of Cao Cao, the Duke of Wei, for which the empire had been named. Today, Ji Kang was thirty nine years of age, and their dynasty was on its fifth emperor.

Ji Kang reasoned that if the Mandate of Heaven had been delivered to the dynasty of Cao Wei, it must have been an order to die for the sake of heaven.

He made that much clear to Zhong Hui, the attendant of the Great and Mighty Sima Zhao - Chancellor, Regent and whatever title Sima Zhao had granted to Sima Zhao recently of Cao Wei. Ji Kang and Zhong Hui had known each other for many years and had found themselves in disagreement with each other more often than not.

Two decades ago, Zhong Hui had believed he'd found a kindred spirit in Ji Kang who he'd debated anonymously on the subject of government and philosophy. Over the course of several months, they'd written essays on scrolls which they tied to the knockers and door handles of well-frequented rooms and banquet halls all over the imperial palace in Luoyang when nobody was looking.

The regent at the time, Sima Yi, had been incredibly impressed by both scholars and made it a habit of reading the essays aloud to the court as entertainment during dinner, in place of music and dancing girls. The natural alignment of mass irritation over the new educational programming at meals and genuine curiosity eventually exposed both writers.

Sima Yi had never forgiven either of them for not being Sima Zhao, but also never acted on the counsel of Sima Zhao to prosecute either of them for the casual disrespect of the Dragon Throne inherent in the essays. After all, Sima Yi could not forgive Sima Zhao for being neither Ji Kang nor Zhong Hui.

While it was the case that both Ji Kang and Zhong Hui had been regarded as promising minds who were sure to rise in the Court even before this incident, the intangible integrity of anonymity had earned a universal sort of respect from scholars as far west as Yanqi, the mouth of the Silk Road and as far east as Jiaodong, by the sea. Ji Kang regarded this growing sentiment in the Court with suspicion. As far as he could tell, the source of these rumours had been Zhong Hui.

They became good friends.

When the celebrated scholar Wang Su published his masterwork, the carefully curated index of essays, notes and poems that Confucius had not included in the primary text of the Analects, they had also become good friends with Wang Yuanji. When Ji Kang had met her, she had been a slip of a girl, at fourteen years of age - four years his junior.

Wang Yuanji had memorized every single word that Confucius had ever written when she'd been a child of eight and had very strong opinions about those words. Ji Kang was sure there was no one better to consult when it came to matters of citation, cross references and proving that Zhong Hui had forgotten most of what he'd studied in the Analects.

Wang Su had waited for the third anniversary of his father's death and the final notes of Wang Yuanji, which had been the subject of incredibly loud arguments late into the night between his daughter and Ji Kang in the garden, to offer his contribution to the public domain.

One argument had led to Ji Kang leaving his estate with blood pouring from his nose, which had acquired a new angle. Ji Kang claimed two charges of assault on his person with a deadly weapon - the floor and the mulberry trees which grew in the garden.

Sima Yi, who'd run into the bleeding Ji Kang by coincidence on his way back to the Court and enjoyed such thought exercises, concluded that if he were to bring such a case to a court, the claim was so ridiculous it was sure to work once before the laws were rewritten to prevent everyone partaking in a bar fight from being shown the way to heaven by the executioners.

There was also a span of two weeks where Ji Kang had appeared with Zhong Hui every single day and neither Ji Kang nor Yuanji would look at one another, and argued with one another by shouting at Zhong Hui while sitting at the same pavilion. After fourteen days of being a captive audience, Zhong Hui had heard enough of their arguments to start providing his own input. Both Ji Kang and Yuanji thought there would be more progress without Zhong Hui, so they put their pride aside and gave up on the charade.

Wang Su's father had been strongly against his son’s natural right to take credit for his granddaughter's work. Zhong Hui, who was shocked that they'd not chosen to include any of Zhong Hui's great insights - or credit him in the work, told Brother Kang and Sister Yuanji that he considered Wang Su the pinnacle of filial piety. He had nothing but admiration for Wang Su to have been considerate of her grandfather's thoughts even so long after his death.

Yuanji told him, with gritted teeth, that she was happy for the recognition her father would receive for his peerless and tireless academic work. Zhong Hui was glad that she agreed. Ji Kang accidentally smashed three separate tea cups against the floor then apologized to the servants for his clumsiness and insisted on sweeping up the fragments of the pottery, to everyone's horror.

Ji Kang made it known to his companion and the panicked servants while he swept the fragments over the edge of the pavilion into the garden that he wasn't sure if Wang Su's filial piety quite compared to Yuanji, who would light a stick of incense and read every essay she'd penned to her grandfather's altar.

Every year, on the anniversary of his death, she'd kneel with her hands clasped in prayer at his grave until she pitched forward, unconscious, and was carried to her rooms by the servants.

Wang Su, who could pretend this was nothing but idle gossip until he'd heard that it had come from someone who was not part of his family, found this sort of behavior crass and melodramatic. Of course, this reflection of her character made it difficult to take her complaints about the marriage he'd arranged for her to Sima Zhao seriously.

In the final months before the marriage, Yuanji taught her only friend in the world, Ji Kang, how to play the guqin - an instrument she'd learned on a whim because it had been favored by Confucius himself.

Ji Kang had some natural talent for the instrument, but neither of them were ever pleased with his quick progress because of the situation. Even the melodies she chose to teach him grew increasingly melancholic.

Ji Kang, always a shrewd judge of character, told her that if she were to fake the weakness that Wang Su yearned to see in his teenage daughter and cried about not wanting to get married, then he believed that it would be broken off. It had been agreed to somewhat quickly and Sima Yi had confessed to Ji Kang in the Chancellor's office that he was more bewildered than pleased about the arrangement. Sima Yi, always a shrewd judge of character, could not understand why Ji Kang had not asked for her hand.

Yuanji swore to Ji Kang that the last time she remembered crying was when her grandfather died and Ji Kang was being very disrespectful. She then taught him the first piece he had any difficulty with, a song she thought that any respectable guqin player should know.

He had heard the melody before in the Court. It was known as Flowing Water and the story had been about how the composer of the piece wrote and played for a friend who he considered the only person to ever truly understand his music. After his friend passed, the composer broke his instrument and never played a note again.

She had told him this story with the most earnest look she could muster her eyes, never leaving him once as they sat across from one another, balancing their instruments on their laps. Her eyelashes had fluttered.

Ji Kang ran his palm from his chin to his forehead and tried to ignore the wave of secondhand embarrassment coursing through him. He told Yuanji that her heavy handed use of symbolism and utter disregard for subtlety in allegorical storytelling would make a Daoist blush. He gave an experimental chuckle that sounded a little bit more like a wheeze, hoping she'd laugh with him.

Yuanji did not say a word. She stomped through the garden so quickly she walked straight through a lower hanging branch from a mulberry tree and slammed the door to the manor as hard as she could. There were no more guqin lessons.

After the ceremony, Ji Kang had left the city of Luoyang. He left Zhong Hui, whose name was known from the cedar halls of Antioche to the gentle waves of Busan, to be the only aide to the great and mighty Sima Yi. He left Yuanji to her assuredly happy marriage. She'd apologized to almost every guest at her wedding, telling them that she'd been unable to hold back her tears of joy, after all.

Ji Kang decided that all wounds were subject to time as surely as all men were subjects to the emperor. He tried not to think of the emperor's father, who decided if his own kin lived or died based on the quality of their poetry. He refused to think of the emperor's infant son by way of his most beloved consort, who'd been smothered to death quietly in a faraway palace a month ago.

With his absence, Zhong Hui's warm friendship with Ji Kang faded into indifference. Several years later, after Sima Yi's hair had lost all its color and senility had set in completely, Sima Yi came to the realization that he'd never forgiven either Sima Zhao or Zhong Hui for not being Ji Kang. This attack of senility had been set off by an incredibly paranoid fear of corruption after he'd discovered a clerical error on some accounting related documents.

Everyone who spoke to Zhong Hui at the court in Luoyang had been sympathetic to his struggles and expressed regret that even a mind as great as the regent's could not win against old age. After Sima Yi spent two days rewriting documents, breaking incredibly expensive abacuses in anger and cursing Ji Kang for wasting his peerless talent to the high heavens.

When Sima Yi aggressively asked Zhong Hui whether or not presenting the world with a uniquely contemplative advancement in Confuscian philosophy and then retiring at the age of twenty one were the actions of a hypocrite, Zhong Hui came to the realization that he'd always regarded Ji Kang as aloof and sarcastic.

Of course, Ji Kang had considered Zhong Hui cowardly and opportunistic from the moment they'd met and had never changed his mind. He forgot about Zhong Hui easily and hoped the other man would return the favor, even though he doubted it.

Because of this, he knew when he had decided six months ago that he would act as legal defense in the arrest of an old friend at the local magistrate that this strange situation would probably happen. The magistrate had been a fair man who was surprised that someone like Ji Kang, who was known for his excellence and good character from the city of Athens to the islands east of the sea, would show up in his little court.

Ji Kang had prepared roughly eight documents as conclusive proof of innocence but the magistrate had assured him that the case had already been decided in his favor before he could present them. Ji Kang insisted on proper procedure for a few minutes while the magistrate insisted on the defendant's innocence. Ji Kang lost patience and insisted on leaving for dinner, which the magistrate insisted on having with him and so they ate.

He explained during the meal to the magistrate that since leaving the capital he had not continued his work on Confucius but had rather spent the last two decades studying the Dao and related matters.

The magistrate was disappointed, as he knew the Dao was mostly concerned with ethics and morality and none of the insights Ji Kang mentioned to him would be very useful in a court of law.

It came as little surprise when Ji Kang was arrested in his home the following day and brought to the capital on the question of corruption. The documents were delivered by a dozen soldiers with the seal of officials he'd never heard of. The magistrate was nowhere to be seen.

To his surprise, the soldiers were polite and apologetic. They repeatedly assured him that this must have been a misunderstanding and that it would all be clear in a matter of days after he arrived in Luoyang. This led Ji Kang to believe that he was surely due for extensive trouble.

When they arrived at the capital, they handed him the key to a small house. The captain of the squad bowed and said that the decree was worded in such a way that he was forced to inform Ji Kang that he was under arrest, then apologized again and left.

Zhong Hui earned Ji Kang's estimation of his character by waiting a full six months before approaching him. He offered Ji Kang a position in the Court as his own aide, a great generosity and warned him that the great and mighty Sima Zhao did not brook corruption in his government.

Ji Kang told Zhong Hui that he might have considered the offer had he been approached when he'd arrived. This was utterly false, but Ji Kang decided that after two decades he still found Zhong Hui's anger to be funny.

After Zhong Hui accidentally smashed three tea cups on the floor - the only three that Ji Kang had while under house arrest at the capital, he apologized for his clumsiness and told him that he wasn't sure if he could convince Sima Zhao not to execute him. There were no servants, so Ji Kang swept the broken pottery out of the house himself.

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Zhong Hui appeared again in the span of three days, which Ji Kang was sure had been a final attempt to annoy him. In those three days, nearly every person he'd had a passing acquaintance with in the Court of Luoyang who had not passed on had visited him, with the hope of convincing him to accept Zhong Hui's offer in order to save his life.

With each visitation, Ji Kang lowered his opinion of the court. They valued tea too much. He didn’t have any tea because Zhong Hui had smashed his teacups.

Zhong Hui did not look vindictive or smug when he arrived but tired beyond belief. He came without guards. When Ji Kang opened the door, Zhong Hui sighed deeply and pushed past him, sinking into a chair easily.

"I was unable to convince Sima Zhao to stay his hand if you continued to refuse your post."

Ji Kang shrugged. "Wasn't it obvious this would be the end result when you thoughtlessly chose to lean on a boulder at the top of a mountain?"

Zhong Hui let out another explosive sigh. "I've been loyal to Sima Zhao for more than a decade," he said. "I cannot believe he would not even do something as simple as to let you go free."

Ji Kang stared at Zhong Hui. "You've worked for Brother Zhao since his father passed on and you've known him for more than half your life but you're unable to understand the most fundamental aspect of his character," he said.

Zhong Hui could not find any pottery to cause a scene with so he stood up and gave a vicious kick to his chair, knocking it askew. "You would think that with ten years of experience he would conduct himself with more grace than a child," he snarled. He stared at the fallen chair, considering another attack on it.

Zhong Hui turned away from the chair and looked into the ceiling as if he were beseeching the heavens for guidance. "You're really going to die today," he said. "Just take the post and I'll dismiss you quietly in a week or two." He dropped his gaze back down to Ji Kang and forced himself to look the other man in the eye.

"I'm sorry," he said with a whisper. He was a year younger than Ji Kang, at thirty eight, but he looked almost fifty. Lines of worry had been deeply entrenched onto his face and his eyes were shaded with lack of sleep. There were streaks of grey in his beard. "I hoped that with time, Sima Zhao would..."

Ji Kang chuckled. "Would become his father?"

Zhong Hui scowled. "Sima Yi was a difficult man to serve, equally proud and meticulous and prone to fits of rage. Even the Emperor bore his anger quietly and took his advice faithfully."

"How could he not? A man handpicked by the Duke of Wei to claim the Mandate with him, the sworn brother of the Duke’s son, the first emperor of Cao Wei. Which of these soft kings would dare to cross swords with Sima Yi, who held the demons of his ambition back with just the strength of his character?"

"He didn't hold them back. He was responsible for the Dragon Throne's instabil-" Zhong Hui cut himself off, deciding that what he meant was clear enough without blaspheming the Imperial Family casually.

Ji Kang shook his head. "You once wrote that the nature of old men is to live in fear and see ghosts at every turn," he said. Ji Kang paused. "That is, I suppose, the nature of prophecy. It may leave your lips as an invective but it remains a declaration of intent."

"I’d forgotten that you'd become a Daoist," Zhong Hui said. He rolled his eyes. "I suppose it fits your personality, to be irreverent and infuriating."

"When I left Luoyang, I had grown used to not needing to consult any texts in thinking about Confucianism." There was a flash of anger on Ji Kang's face which was gone so quickly Zhong Hui wondered if he'd imagined it. "I'm proud to say my ability to do serious academic work has atrophied in full and cannot be recovered. Thus, I contemplate the Dao, which officially takes a negative stance on academic life."

Zhong Hui rolled his eyes. "Would you not like to live a little longer to contemplate the Dao, then? Surely you haven't solved all of its mysteries or you would have become some kind of lesser spirit, if the words of old women are to be believed."

"It is not so bad to die, Brother Hui."

"Shuye," Zhong Hui said. Ji Kang remembered that Zhong Hui liked to use that official, polite name for him as a shorthand for severe anger but whether or not Zhong Hui would admit it, it was a sort of distancing. "Sima Zhao is waiting at the courtyard with the mulberry trees for us. I suppose we should go before he becomes too impatient."

"Am I to be judged in the garden of the Wang estate?"

Zhong Hui winced. "Lady Wang said she missed the mulberry trees of her home, so Sima Zhao planted them in the courtyard of the Prince's Palace."

"Sima Zhao and his family live in the Northern Palace?" Ji Kang asked.

Zhong Hui didn't say a word. He, too, wasn't very fond of the optics of Sima Zhao choosing to live in the part of the Imperial Palace that was meant to be reserved for the Emperor and his family, at least historically.

Ji Kang expected Zhong Hui to lead him to a stable or for him to whistle loudly to call for servants treated with less care than dogs to ferry them at walking speed so they could be seated, but the man surprised him. Zhong Hui walked towards the palace with the manner of someone who would not stop until they reached their destination. Along the way, he observed the inhabitants of the imperial city closely.

"The structures here seem sturdier than I remember."

Something essential to Zhong Hui seemed to shine through the weary march. "Several years ago, we started rethinking how to build our homes with the intent of surviving the spring floods rather than rebuilding. Some of the buildings which cost no more to build than the temporary hovels put together with mediocre wood and rash promises have survived more than one flood." He pointed at the base of the building as if that were enough to explain why.

It was a problem of public planning that Zhong Hui had taken an interest in many years ago. Ji Kang's interest had never been more than a matter of courtesy but he did realize that maybe he'd judged Zhong Hui somewhat harshly.

"We could do a lot of good," Zhong Hui said, becoming contemplative. "There's proof, historical proof, that the Mandate has elevated the lives of every man, woman and child."

They continued to walk. As they crested a familiar hill, Ji Kang could see the courtyard in front of the building that the servants had referred to as the Morality Palace.

Sima Yi had remarked once that it was the pinnacle of humor because it was the place you were least likely to find morality. Only Sima Yi and the second emperor had laughed. No one else had dared.

"It's not too late," Zhong Hui said, as they approached the gates which were hurriedly opened for them by the guards who had been expecting them for several hours now.

"It must be," Ji Kang said. "There is a bit of common knowledge amongst the people of the rivers to the south, that you should never need to ride for days on end along the river and lakes because you will always find a boat willing to take you on as a passenger, no matter what you've done or who you are."

"Spoken like the scholar Zhuangzi. You really have become a Daoist," Zhong Hui said, shaking his head.

"But should you pass Suzhou by, you should not expect a ship to stop and allow you on board. If a ship passes Suzhou, they are going out into the open sea. They have made their preparations and allowing more bodies on board will endanger everyone. Similarly, by putting Suzhou behind you, you have also made a choice. You will never board a ship."

As they stepped into the courtyard of the Palace of Morality, Ji Kang realized that the mulberry trees could not be less than centuries old. They had not been newly planted. He supposed the garden in the Wang estate would not be recognizable to him now.

Symmetrically planted trees flanked the path to the pavilion in front of the palace itself and on the pavilion there was a somewhat modest throne but it was, indeed, a throne. On it sat Sima Zhao.

His eyes lingered on the last mulberry tree to his left along the path, with low hanging branches. As he stepped past it, he realized that past the trees, there were hundreds of people kneeling, motionless at the throne. Behind the throne, in the pavilion, there were a dozen faces, all familiar to him in varying degrees. He stopped ten paces from the throne.

"Ji Kang," said the great and mighty regent, Sima Zhao. "Your arrogance is still unmatched under the heavens."

Ji Kang smiled. He hadn't expected some of the faces gathered here today and that thrill of crossing wits at Court overtook him once again. "I don't agree, Brother Zhao. I doubt that my arrogance is unmatched even in this courtyard."

"Is that not a sacrilegious form of address?" Sima Zhao asked in a deadly whisper which carried across the pavilion easily. Zhao had grown a beard and his voice had deepened but his defining trait, the personality of a man who walked around itching to take offense from anything he could, had deepened rather than mellowed over the years.

"I apologize, Senior Brother. We may both have been students of Sima Yi but you learned much from him before I could claim such an honor." There was a relieved exhale from Zhong Hui beside him, glad that he'd not decided to involve him in this mess out of spite.

It appeared that Ji Kang's tendency towards smashing teacups had spread amongst his former acquaintances. Even Sima Zhao had picked the habit up.

He gave Sima Zhao a bemused look. "Are you well, Brother Zhao? Most of your peers who've borne the weight of that seat have overworked themselves for the sake of our people and slept before their time. You might want to watch your health if you cannot hold onto a teacup."

Even those standing an arms length from the throne were muttering unpleasant things about Sima Zhao's outburst now. The regent had been rendered too angry to speak.

"This is simply the baying of dogs before they are put down," he said as he donned a veneer of calm. "How could you be anything but a dog. Three hundred scholars kneel for your life, with the signatures of ten times that many and you arrive late to your trial?" His voice steadily rose in volume until he had ended in a shout.

"There are three thousand learned men who, without a shred of evidence for or against me, who have concluded that I must be innocent? They must be giving me respect on account of my age or out of pity. I would not know where to begin in forming an opinion on a matter such as this."

"Forget it," Zhong Hui said. "He intends to die."

There was a bit of a shift in the pavilion after what Zhong Hui had said. Even Sima Zhao looked concerned.

Ji Kang considered telling him that his perplexed attitude towards dying was a perfect match for the Dragon Throne but he was tired of antagonizing Sima Zhao. The man angered too easily.

"What is your last wish?" Zhong Hui pressed onwards.

"To play a piece of my own composition on the guqin for everyone gathered here today."

And in that moment he chose to look directly into the eyes of Wang Yuanji, who'd been resolutely avoiding his gaze since he had arrived. Even as he'd walked up the path through the courtyard between the mulberry trees, he'd not been able to catch her eye. She had seemed almost detached from the world around her, but now, brilliant brown eyes - lighter than he'd remembered - bored down on him like a bird of prey.

She had aged the least amongst the thirty or forty old enemies and close acquaintances who had come to visit him in the past 3 days or gathered here on this pavilion. If he hadn't known who she was with a glance, he would have guessed she was not a day older than twenty three.

Ji Kang supposed he'd not met anyone as angry as she'd been before he came to Luoyang or after he'd left. She had only grown more angry over the years, it seemed, but the anger did not burn hot anymore. Perhaps that was the secret to eternal life - to live an existence with so much self inflicted misery that you would live forever and thus could not reincarnate into a more punishing form.

She could tell he was laughing at her from the way he held himself steady suddenly and schooled his expression. Yuanji looked away pointedly to prove that she was better than him, a sure sign of self doubt. Perhaps she was better than him, he decided. She had held her hand out to him many times and he had never done anything but ignore her, pity her or even mock her.

"It is granted," Zhong Hui said. "Afterwards, you may fall upon a sword or have your death decided by the regent."

He had not understood that her father would have no use for her after the completion of her work and had seen her attempts to delay her departure as childish tantrums. In one of her few vulnerable moments where she had no experience in, he had rejected her heartfelt confession where she could only tread with the analogy of the guqin, which she had painstakingly taught to him so he could even begin to grasp what she wanted.

And in the final moments, she had even broken that unspoken mantra and cried for him before the entirety of the Court and the Imperial family with the hope that he would have a single spark of decency.

Even now, he had idle thoughts which wondered why the most pious daughter of these ideologies they had believed in so wholeheartedly was the least happy of them all. Ji Kang decided he really did deserve to die.

He had spent twenty years hiding from the world without an apology to offer, studying natural phenomena in place of human structures with the hope that something would tell him that he was blameless. He had become the Sage of the Bamboo Groves - someone with nothing to offer to society.

He'd never had the strength of will to stop playing the guqin like the composer of Flowing Water had. When the guilt built up for too many years, he wrote a widely distributed essay with the title "On the Absence of Sentiment in Music". He supposed that was the nature of the Dao. You could lie easily and often to many people but you could never really fool yourself. He didn't think he'd fooled Yuanji either. Otherwise, she wouldn't be looking at him with such disappointment now.

Ji Kang sat down carefully between the mulberry trees and faced the pavilion. A servant had handed him a guqin. He recognized it as something produced locally based on the woodworking. The guqin had been well used. He assumed it belonged to one of the servants who doubled as entertainers in the Court.

There was the faint scent of mulberries from the wood. He could only assume that it had been played in this spot very often.

Ji Kang took a deep breath. "This song is a story not commonly heard, one from our not so distant past, set during the sickness of the Eastern Han. It is the story of a boy not even ten years of age, who was handed the heavenly sword even as the saber descended on the Dragon Throne. This is the story of the later Han’s Emperor Zhi."

He tested two of the strings with the opening notes and looked upwards and outwards, as if he were asking the heavens for permission to play. He turned back to Wang Yuanji and did not look away from her from that point onwards.

"I can only give you this for all the lessons you've taught me and all that I could not bear to learn. The name of this song is Guangling San."

It crashed into the consciousness of the world. There was the sound of distant thunder. Wang Yuanji looked into the sky and thought that perhaps even the spirits had come to listen to Ji Kang, who they called the Sage of the Bamboo Groves, play his last song.

But an instinctive knowledge, born off of something she wasn't sure she could identify within her, knew that the song had been dedicated to her and whatever it brought, whether it would be blue skies or the storm, would be hers.

Ji Kang had played for twenty two minutes straight, the length of three guqin pieces. There were some whispers of pity, about how he should have played longer to stave off his inevitable death.

Wang Yuanji knew better. In the final moments of Guangling San, she had the strangest feeling, that something she didn't know had been broken within her had healed - or perhaps snapped off.

Ji Kang made no noises when he passed. He had driven the proffered sword through his heart without any ceremony and had died easily. At thirty nine years of age, Ji Kang looked tired in death.

Wang Yuanji drifted to her guqin, which he'd gently left on a pile of mulberry leaves, as rain began to fall and the thunder grew bolder.

Her heart beat slowed and filled her eardrums.

The Storm carried on up high.