Chapter 8

Tan was dreaming that he was being married to an ugly girl with a pig head and spider arms. He frowned, abruptly realizing that he was dreaming and taking control of it. The pig-headed spider girl vanished, and he looked around at the faceless people who had gathered to celebrate the union. Tan looked around, confused. This didn’t seem like one of the usual dreams that he’d come to himself in. Not every dream he had was lucid, but enough were that he was unsurprised to find himself in one.

“Zephyr, are you doing this?” he asked.

“...I was,” the spirit admitted. “Sorry Tan. I just hate her so much.”

“Why, exactly?”

“Because of what she almost did to my friend,” Zephyr explained. “And what she almost did to me. I do not think that I could be bound without my express permission, but if I were to fall victim to the Mother Spider’s Embrace, I would lose centuries of myself, and it would be decades before Kora died and I was released to heal.”

Tan frowned, then shrugged. “Well, it didn’t happen that way, and we helped the fire spirit together.”

“But there are others in the Zang family who use the improper method of binding their spirits. If they keep doing it then … I don’t know. They’ll hurt a lot of spirits like that. Fortunately I doubt any of them will actually manage to reach the divine realm after crippling their spirit, so I don’t think the damage they’re causing is irreversible. But I still wish I could kill everyone who used the Mother Spider’s Embrace,” Zephyr explained.

“Kora didn’t use that formation, Zephyr, it was used on her by her parents,” Tan pointed out. “She didn’t understand—”

“I know, I know. I’ll try to keep that in mind. Just seeing her makes me so angry though,” the wind spirit confessed.

Tan sighed. “Well, whatever. I’m going to go dream about swimming. I can fly anytime, but the dreams about swimming are the best.”

And so he dreamed that he was at the lake, swimming with his friends.

The lake turned into the water gardens in mosanatas, and then they were turning back into the lake when suddenly someone grabbed his foot and pulled him out of the dream.

He awoke to find his father standing over his bed. It was still dark out, but there was a faint glow to the darkness that implied dawn was around the horizon. Tan grumbled, but was used to being woken like this, so he scrambled out of bed to get dressed and do the things that he always did in the morning.

After feeding the chickens and picking their eggs, he helped his mother in the kitchen, chopping green onions to go with the fried eggs that they were having for breakfast, along with some of the leftover rice from the night before. The rice was congealed and starting to dry, but Won fixed that by mixing it with some sauce and frying it with some chopped vegetables.

Safron was surprised when she was given a task that morning; she stumbled out of bed when she heard the others up and about and wandered into the kitchen in her nightgown, only for her mother to promptly instruct her to go to the guesthouse and wake Kora to invite her to join the others at the table. The little girl grinned and dashed off to fulfill the task.

“Don’t be rude about it!” Wensho called after her daughter, but Safron was already out the door. Wensho shook her head, but wasn’t too worried.

Tan shook his head in amusement and continued to help by setting the table, which was the task that Safron usually performed.

Safron didn’t bother to change into her clothes for the day or to even put on shoes, just running outside along the little dirt path that connected the main house to the guest house. She didn’t bother to knock, barging right in. She ran to the room where she knew that the older girl would be sleeping, burst inside and started jumping on the bed.

“Get up get up get up get up get up!” she cried, causing Kora to recoil awake and fall out of bed. The teenager was so startled that for a second she started calling on her power, but oriented herself before there were any unfortunate accidents.

“What?” Kora asked blearily, the alarm fading. “Safron? What’s going on?”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Mommy said to wake you and invite you to breakfast. You don’t have to come eat if you don’t want to. Nobody really wants you there, but we’re being polite. If you want to eat in the guesthouse instead that’s fine, you can eat with the pig,” Safron said merrily.

Kora blinked, forcing herself awake and calming herself down. Her heart was still beating a thousand times a minute. She looked down at the simple bead clothes she’d been given, then at the just as simple work clothes that she had also been given, and then at the carefully folded travel clothes that she’d worn yesterday. She regretted once more that her luggage had been abandoned, but she sighed and pulled herself upright.

“Thank you for the wake-up call, Safron. Please tell Lady Wensho that I will be there as soon as I dress,” Kora said. Safron grinned and ran back to the main house. Her feet were dirty but she didn’t care.

Not until her mother scolded her for it, at least. Then she only cared because she got in trouble and had to go wash the dirt away and get dressed, which she was told she should have done before running her errand.

She shrugged. If she hadn’t rushed, then Kora might have woken on her own, and then she wouldn’t have really been able to follow the instructions to wake her up, could she?

A short time later, the Shen family was gathered at the table, waiting patiently for their guest. While Tremble lived with them and was treated as a friend and guest, the wild boar spirit preferred to break his fast by scavenging in the nearby forest in the mornings in his natural form, so they weren’t waiting for him. Kora, however, seemed to be taking her sweet time.

“Ko, would you be a dear and go check on her?” Wensho asked thirty minutes after Safron had reported the completion of her duty.

“Why me?”

“Because you’re the only other girl and Safron already went, obviously,” Her brother said impatiently. His mouth was watering due to the smell, and he was impatient to get started.

Ko sighed and went to the door. She was putting her shoes on when Kora knocked. Ko answered and looked at her in surprise.

“What are you wearing?” the younger teenager asked.

Kora blinked. “My clothes.”

She was wearing the same thing as last night. If she was going to be eating with the Shens, she thought that she should dress in the best clothes that she had, dirty as they were, but now, as she saw how Ko was dressed, Kora began to have doubts about her wardrobe decision.

“You’re not one of those girls who changes clothes twenty times through the day are you?” Ko asked. “Because we don’t have time for that. There’s too much work to be done.”

Kora flushed. “What I’m wearing is perfectly—”

“You going to clean chicken poop dressed in that?” Tan called from the hallway, a grin on his face. “Seriously, what are you wearing?”

Kora glanced at the boy she was attempting to woo into a political marriage and her heart sank. He looked like …

He looked like a peasant boy, she realized.

“Forgive me. After last night I thought … I’m not sure what I thought.”

“We all bathed and dressed up to formally welcome you, but that was a big thing and now it’s back to normal,” Ko explained gently. “We work on this farm, and there’s no reason to spoil good clothes by working in them.”

“I’ll go change—” Kora said, turning to leave.

“No,” Tan said. “Everyone is waiting on you to eat breakfast. You can change after, and before you clean the chicken coop. Wouldn’t want to spoil the fancy dress with chicken poop would you?”

Kora flushed, but came inside. Breakfast was a more relaxed affair than dinner had been the night before, with less competition for the eggs and fried rice. Safron still speared a mushroom off of Kora’s plate, to the older girls surprise, but nobody else raised an eyebrow. Sighing, the older girl felt out of placed as the best dressed person in the room.

The others spoke briefly about the various things that needed to be done around the farm, with some of the children volunteering for tasks and some of them being assigned other tasks whether they volunteered or not. Tan was assigned to assist Kora in cleaning the coop, which meant showing her how and making sure it was done properly. It was an opportunity to spend some time with him, at least, Kora thought to herself.

Once everyone had eaten their fill, the Shen family filed out of the house to begin the day.

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