Zhuge Liang

Strange though it is to reflect upon, the little foal which Zhuge helped to birth before the battle at Red Cliff is all of a year old. The milestone is one that Zhuge takes deeply to heart, having made a promise months ago never to break her in and turn her into a war horse of any kind; by this age, the horses which they made use of in the army would surely have undergone heavy training, each largely sequestered in its own hall. By contrast, Meng Meng has been given free rein practically since her arrival, allowed to take the lead in wandering the island, and always at least given the expanse of the livestock field to trot around as she pleased. As a result, she has quite the attitude for a horse of her age, Zhuge finds, and isn't even half as disciplined as she was in those first few weeks with Xiao Qiao.

Zhuge loves it. He's pretty sure it gives her character.

The two of them spend this afternoon with the birds, Zhuge trying to encourage some good behavior out of the horse, enough so he can direct her from a distance, should the island give him reason to. She protests at the halter carefully affixed to her head, pawing occasionally at the ground and whining piteously, but it doesn't take ten minutes before she does a full round by the fence as instructed, before coming to Zhuge for her lump of sugar.

"Duo hao na," he murmurs as he pets her muzzle. "Very good girl."

With three and a half days left in the month, I'm curious to see if the island still plans on giving me a present. Either way, I don't feel overly invested. It could be that I haven't been on the island enough to be graced with a present. It could be that the island can't think of anything to give me. Perhaps most importantly, I wonder if the various shops in London could have been considered a gift given to me, relatively comfortable clothing made from familiar fabrics, teas that weren't the most well-cared for, but that still tasted of home. I'm not a man who's difficult to please; there's a gift in simply living on the island at all and getting to see far beyond my reach in the Three Kingdoms.

However, I find myself pleasantly surprised this afternoon as I stumble across a new plant— a mulberry bush— in my yard, and a few wooden boxes resting by its side. Letting the birds fly off where they may, Meng Meng wanders by and noses the leaves curiously as I seat myself by the boxes, carefully opening each one.

Silkworms.

The movement is enough to scare the colt away to where she grazes some distance away, but my immediate goal has become somehow getting them situated on the leaves of mulberry, hoping that I have what it takes to help them survive. Maybe even thrive.

[ continued from here ]


I thought for a moment, trying to explain the situation a little better. "By feeling too much of other people's pain, by taking too much of their own needs on alongside your own, I mean. Or by letting bad people too close to you until they can manipulate you. Does that make any sense?"


"Yes," I replied, although I still found my brow furrowed slightly at the thought. Perhaps it made me cold, or perhaps it simply made me a remarkable fit for my job, but I wasn't sure that I'd ever done as Remy described. I could feel pain on behalf of others and the hurdles that they faced, that went without question. But whether or not it had ever been debilitating was another matter entirely.

"I hope that I avoid this," I added, expression softening into one more matter-of-fact.

I was okay, perhaps, with the idea of being cold and calculating, so long as it benefited more people in the long run.

When Zhuge was a young child, years before he had been carted away to court for higher schooling, he'd often spent his afternoons searching through zhe trees for the small, fat worms which ate away at their leaves, collecting them in boxes to bring back to the house. Zhe trees were common in the northern and eastern parts of the land, if less so the closer one drew to shore, and so silk production was a widely known skill in Yanzhou, albeit one often saved for the upper-middle class, a job which didn't require as many hours tilling the earth as his own family's crops of wheat and maize had needed. His elder sisters, both beautiful and highly sought after as potential brides, often served as a helping hand with such work, feeding thousands of silkworms a day and helping to twist the strands they produced into thread. Curious as he'd always been, Zhuge requested guidance once on how to get such threads started, and his second sister had brought back an intricate carved box in which the worms could be held in and breathe.

As of yet, he's been unsuccessful in finding any silkworms on the island, or trees similar to the zhe he often climbed around in those years, but Zhuge finds himself wondering, regardless, if silken threads from certain types of garments, undyed and untreated, might be able to serve as strings for a guzheng. Sitting just outside the bakery, a hollowed out guzheng body rests by his side, painstakingly crafted over the course of months, and a small, contained fire keeps a pot of glue melted by its side. His brow furrows as he dips the first thread into the glue, not minding its heat as he twists it tight and uses the tip of his finger to brush excess off, a couple of drops landing on the rest of the partially deconstructed robe. Chances are, it won't work, and he'll have to ask for access to the scrapyard in hopes of finding thin metal wiring, but Zhuge has never been one to let odds overwhelm him.

Less so when he looks up to find a familiar face standing just a few paces away.

There is nothing worse than a wasted opportunity. This is, in effect, the reason why Zhuge wrote down the name of each and every woman who participated in his half of speed-dating, every one having a personality worth getting to know, each offering the chance of a friendship the likes of which he had never enjoyed back home. Nothing worse than a wasted opportunity, and Zhuge knows that he doesn't have the right to be particular about which doors open for him, so he waits patiently to hear back, hoping that at least one person has decided to give him a second chance— but he doesn't count on it. Doesn't expect it.

Seeing a few names on the card strikes him as a pleasant surprise. Only after he's spent a fair amount of time twirling the card stock in his figners does he realize that he's not sure how he's supposed to get touch with each again. After an afternoon spent searching through pages of various books he's pulled from the shelf, with Meng Meng nuzzling his sleeve as he sits in a heavily canopied part of the jungle, he decides to pick himself up at last.

With a fresh bouquet of daisies in hand, he makes his way over to Eden's residence in the early afternoon, hoping to catch her during a spare hour. His pigeons flutter nearby, curiously watching Zhuge as he makes his way through the jungle with more purpose than he usually would, with a direction rather than simple wandering.

He knocks softly on her door, then steps back, nodding lightly to himself. While not precisely nervous— her disposition was too kind, too gentle for him to doubt her like that— Zhuge's desire to get this right leaves him slightly tense, shoulders pulled back.