FILL: the melting point of borders [2/8?]
anonymous
June 4 2012, 09:16:53 UTC
Her cheeks flushed, plum-dark under her eyes, and she was swallowing convulsively by the time he finished. He guessed well: she believed in honor, in veneration of good, and somehow he was the first to shatter this notion that the Huns beat out of their children at eight or before. Clearly she had never had a husband to slap her after she overdid the tea, or whatever other prissy art the Chinese were now displaying as an example of cultural superiority.
(Every one of his aunts had killed a man before she turned eighteen. They'd fought well when he finally had to end their lives, their hair in the steppe dirt as desolate as summer-dried asters, and he had let them be buried with their own swords.)
"Your Li Shang. Maybe you saved his life, but he won't come for you. If he doesn't want a reprimand and demotion, he won't even claim to remember you. He'll say you died by his hand for daring to be a woman with a blade."
"So you want to run, self-righteous girl? Or you think I want to fuck you?" he asked. God, he could cover her flat breasts with one hand.
He left before she could string together anything articulate, to give her time to stop shouting and move her goalposts for evil out of Mongolia.
+
"I want to fight you," Mulan said.
It was sometime after snowmelt. Shan Yu had ordered his men to keep themselves away from her entirely until her chest had knitted itself together like meadows in spring, then to keep themselves away from her unless they planned to train her in real fighting, the kind of pragmatic fighting that would use the latent cunning of a woman who could trigger an avalanche in ten seconds of battle, and even though he hadn't quite obeyed his own edict the sight of her lodged in his throat as much as it did when he first saw her and choked. She had been passing her trial with the Huns with flying colors: pink in her cheeks, wrapped in the brown wool of favored trainees, her green gauntlets returned to her. It had been two months and a week since she last tried to run.
Her voice had taken on a lower timber, hoarse with exertion, one sign of her assimilation of camp habits. She wore nothing over her waist and her limbs bore the grease of a shared kill over a spit, shiny on her wrists and thighs, and she was fierce as a horse but if he touched her, she would go the way of his most beautiful aunt.
He took her outstretched hand. Only warm skin for her today, old callused over new. Before his control fell apart like campfires in a storm. "You presume," he said.
She bit her lip and went to find Archer.
+
His men brought him a shivering convict, her back striped with the bright pink aftermath of a whip. "Show Mulan. Tell our lady the border regiment did it," he said. "For, hmm. Stealing grain for her starving mother. That sounds good, hmm?"
"We found her digging through our rubbish heap."
"Well," he said, and when he stroked his chin the lead scout's mouth curved up with his, for he was the pupil of Shan Yu and he understood, "we weren't responsible."
(Every one of his aunts had killed a man before she turned eighteen. They'd fought well when he finally had to end their lives, their hair in the steppe dirt as desolate as summer-dried asters, and he had let them be buried with their own swords.)
"Your Li Shang. Maybe you saved his life, but he won't come for you. If he doesn't want a reprimand and demotion, he won't even claim to remember you. He'll say you died by his hand for daring to be a woman with a blade."
"So you want to run, self-righteous girl? Or you think I want to fuck you?" he asked. God, he could cover her flat breasts with one hand.
He left before she could string together anything articulate, to give her time to stop shouting and move her goalposts for evil out of Mongolia.
+
"I want to fight you," Mulan said.
It was sometime after snowmelt. Shan Yu had ordered his men to keep themselves away from her entirely until her chest had knitted itself together like meadows in spring, then to keep themselves away from her unless they planned to train her in real fighting, the kind of pragmatic fighting that would use the latent cunning of a woman who could trigger an avalanche in ten seconds of battle, and even though he hadn't quite obeyed his own edict the sight of her lodged in his throat as much as it did when he first saw her and choked. She had been passing her trial with the Huns with flying colors: pink in her cheeks, wrapped in the brown wool of favored trainees, her green gauntlets returned to her. It had been two months and a week since she last tried to run.
Her voice had taken on a lower timber, hoarse with exertion, one sign of her assimilation of camp habits. She wore nothing over her waist and her limbs bore the grease of a shared kill over a spit, shiny on her wrists and thighs, and she was fierce as a horse but if he touched her, she would go the way of his most beautiful aunt.
He took her outstretched hand. Only warm skin for her today, old callused over new. Before his control fell apart like campfires in a storm. "You presume," he said.
She bit her lip and went to find Archer.
+
His men brought him a shivering convict, her back striped with the bright pink aftermath of a whip. "Show Mulan. Tell our lady the border regiment did it," he said. "For, hmm. Stealing grain for her starving mother. That sounds good, hmm?"
"We found her digging through our rubbish heap."
"Well," he said, and when he stroked his chin the lead scout's mouth curved up with his, for he was the pupil of Shan Yu and he understood, "we weren't responsible."
Reply
Leave a comment