“I always will,” I whispered.
If you ask any Qorin what home is, the answer would vary. Their mother’s ger. This spot by the Rokhon where the sun caught the silver grass just so. On the back of their mare, their cheeks worn red, a good bow in hand.
But my answer has been the same since that moment when we were thirteen.
Home is holding you. Home is the smell of your hair. I would give up the howling gales of the steppe to listen to you breathe. All the stars in the sky, all the fallen Qorin guiding us through the night, could not compare to the brightness of your eyes when you looked at me. Your eyes were wide, so wide, like campfires burning.
There are certain moments that tie themselves into your soul. Like a mother beating felt into the walls of the ger, they hammer themselves into you. So it was, then, with you in my arms and no one around to watch us.
So it was, then, when you flushed the color of cherry blossoms.
So it was, then, when my heart hammered from being so near to you.
The two of us may well have been statues, for neither of us could move. My neck felt hot. My hackles rose, and suddenly my lips were so dry, I just had to lick them, and yours were red, red, red.
Fireworks shot off between my ears. Touching you made me wonder when you were going to leave me in a pile of cinders. I felt in my bones that I had to be nearer to you. That I had to consume you, and let you consume me.
When we parted, I went cold as a Qorin night. We spoke to hide the crackling of our emotions.
We did not speak of what had happened to your parents. I will not repeat the details here. In all the years since their passing, you’ve never mentioned them. You keep a shrine, of course, in your rooms. A piece of your mother’s war mask sits next to a scroll of your father’s poetry. Every morning you kneel, you light incense, you speak prayers in hushed tones. The shrine was there when I arrived that day, and I have no doubt you’ve taken it with you to your current holdings.
Wherever they may be.
No, we did not speak of your parents. You asked me what I’d done out on the steppes, and you chided me for my awful handwriting.
“Four years away from me, and this is what happens?” you said, holding one of my letters. “All my hard work undone.”
Though I laughed to boost your mood, I shifted in my seat. I knew what the letters said; I could recite them from memory. But reading them …
I opened my hand and closed it. Maybe I was just dumb.
You furrowed your brow. “Shefali?” you said. “Is something the matter?”
As if I had anything to worry about. As if your parents had not just died.
I shook my head, but you weren’t having it.
“Shefali,” you said, “I do not have to tell you to be honest with me. I cannot lie to you, and you must be the same. We are the same.”
You reached for a brush, inkblock, bowl, and paper. They were always within arm’s reach of you, as if you might wake in the night with a powerful urge to practice calligraphy.
“I want you to write my name,” you said. “And do not stress too much over it. I want to see something.”
Do not stress over it, you said. The finest calligrapher in Hokkaro wanted to inspect my handwriting, but it was nothing to stress over.
Breathe in. Raise brush. Make the stroke, then breathe out. Except that line didn’t look right. What did that symbol look like? I racked my mind for it. How many times had I seen your name?
I bit my lip. You were staring at me, at the paper.
By then I was trembling. I added another line. That wasn’t right either. With my free hand, I took hold of my braid.
What did your name look like?
You squeezed my shoulder.
“All right,” you said. You reached for a sheet of clean paper and set that out in front of me. “Now, in Qorin, I want you to write everything I say starting … now.”
I inked the brush and waited for you to begin. You stood, got on your tiptoes, and picked up my bow.
“My name is Barsalai Shefali Alsharyya. My favorite hobbies are hunting, shooting things full of arrows, and sitting quietly at dinner parties. My best friend is the illustrious O-Shizuka of Fujino, Imperial Niece, and the finest swordsman to walk the earth since Minami Shiori. Together we are going to slay a god. But first we are conducting a simple test. I like horses. Especially gray ones.”
By the time you finished, you grinned from ear to ear. I was fighting off a smile myself. The whole thing was so silly. There you were in a mourning dress, doing a terrible impression of me, and there I was, taking down everything you said.
Yet when I looked down at the parchment, there was every word. No false starts, no terrible handwriting.
You leaned over and studied it. You knew enough Qorin to make your conclusion. “I think,” you said, “that you cannot write in Hokkaran.”
You did not say this as an accusation. Somehow hearing someone else say it relieved me. I nodded.
“When I write to you, your friend Dorbentei reads it for you,” you said. “And you tell her what you wish to say.”
I made no motion to argue.
You studied me for a moment. I worried you’d say something dismissive.
“Do you think,” you said, “we could write Hokkaran words in the Qorin alphabet? Would that be easier?”
I tilted my head. But the Qorin alphabet was much simpler; it did not have as many letters. That was the whole reason I liked it.
Yet … the more I thought about it, it was possible, if we added one or two more letters.
“Yes,” I said.
“Very well, then,” you said. “I tire of Hokkaran characters, anyway. A change of pace will be welcome.”
I found myself grinning. I spent so long worried what you’d think when you pieced it together.
You smiled a soft, infant smile and sat down next to me.
Long hours gave way to night. It occurred to me I did not have anywhere to stay in the Imperial Palace. Before I brought it up, you called for your servants and commanded them to bring up an additional bed. Not to prepare another room, oh no. You wanted a bed brought into this one.
I pointed out the hallway. Was there not another room we could use—one with two beds?
For your answer, you waved me off. “We stay here,” you said firmly.
Though I thought it unjust—what you were doing to your service staff—I said nothing. There was a certain look about you. Had you left this room since the incident? You must have. This was you. This was O-Shizuka, Flower of the Empire. You wouldn’t lock yourself away to wilt.
Except …
That pile of papers on your desk tall as a helmet. The more I looked at your dress, the more wrinkles I saw. You slept in it. Your hair free of ornaments, your fingers stained with ink …
You hadn’t left your room, in all this time?
“Shizuka?”
Moments before this, you had sat on the painted bench near your bed. Now you bent in on yourself like a branch bearing too much weight.