Wan Wuyou doesn't like her name at all. It sounded like it belonged to a young lady behind embroidered screens…
Wan Wuyou doesn't like her name at all.
It sounded like it belonged to a young lady behind embroidered screens in Kaifeng, or a wandering Daoist girl drifting beyond the mountains, anyone but her. Certainly not a dust-streaked girl who'd grown up in the shadowy folds of Mirkvale.
Wuyou, means "no worries" in Chinese... At twenty, she lay flat on a rooftop, cracking pine nuts between her teeth and chewing over those two words in her head. What did "no worries" even feel like? Even when she skipped work to steal a bit of peace, her heart stayed busy, worrying whether her parents would sigh again when she got home, worrying whether she'd end up like her father, hammer in hand, stuck in the same trade for life.
When the moon slid behind the western hills, Wuyou brushed off the dust and climbed down. The night breeze was cool, carrying with it a thread of unfamiliar scent.
It smelled like sparks leaping from her father's forge. Like summer nights when her mother hummed softly while weaving grass fans. The scent tugged at her until worries slipped loose, time blurred... The distant mountains seemed impossibly tall, and she was a ladybug resting among flowers. She felt herself becoming enormous, certain that if she reached out, she could lift the moon back into the sky.
Di Juan and Di Fu came running with lanterns, thinking thieves had broken into the storeroom. What they found instead was...
A girl sprawled on the floor, head pillowed on a jar of Mountain Pine Wine, clutching an empty cask marked Millennium Drunk, another jug pinned under her legs, sleeping like the dead.
"We haven't even opened yet. How did someone already get drunk?"
"Hush—Look at her. She must be having a dream with no worries at all..."