Copyright "Frenchslot/Hse_Nao" (2006)
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Prospects always change.
1935, as her father said with a resolute wink, is the year of prospects. And Lei-Fang had to admit that prospects were something she particularly enjoyed. China hadn't been the same since the Japanese had invaded - and although this corner of the country was relatively quiet (her father was the town's headman - a resourceful and barrel-chested man of surprising diplomacy - for which most of this quiet could be rested), there was still a sense of grim deprivation.
But prospects might change.
Early morning was the best time to make a move, and so she'd taken it, when the first few rays of dawn were peaking over the tiles and timber roofs, she'd picked her way carefully towards the forested hills outside town. It wasn't hard dodging the Japanese patrols. Lei-Fang had learnt all the secret routes into the woods, and no matter how dangerous it was to go out these days - what with the Japanese and the bandits and communists - she had never had any trouble so far.
But then, on those other days when she went up there to think and practise her reading, she had never worried about... well, that would be telling.
Lei-Fang was eighteen, and at that cusp of sexuality where she noticed the way men looked at her, but didn't necessarily realise that their cocks twitched and hardened underneath their clothing. Short and delicate, with the smooth pale of her skin offset by the crimson qipao - the body-hugging one-piece dress worn by girls - she was wearing, she easily bested the painted-women who plyed the special areas of town where the menfolk went when their wives were being frigid or unaccepting. The fact that she was wearing no make-up, that her face held no imperfections, should say more. Beneath the tight fit of her dress, was the gentle swell of her breasts - the first demonstrations of femininity without the inordinate fecundity that she'd seen in photographs of the strange ghostly white folk that lived in Shanghai.
She was slight, but not weak. She walked with purpose.
And her purpose was to check on the egg.
She had found it a few days before, while walking by the river. It was a blue-green thing, dappled and mottled, twice the size of a normal bird's egg. At first she thought it might have been some sort of eagle's, like the ones she'd heard about from her mother (her mother had been born in the mountains, where eagles were apparently common). But when it had quivered in her hand, and seemed to glow with a weird light, she had realised it was something more.
There was a cabin that she knew of, used by trappers in the colder months, and she had left it there for safe-keeping. Today she was going to get it and bring it back down into town.
The cabin door was stuck when she got there, and it took a couple of tugs to get it open before she slipped inside, closing it behind her. A thin, dusty stream of light filtered in through the windows and ceiling slats. Lei-Fang made her way across the open centre of the room to the grimy old cloths she had hidden the egg under.
It wasn't there.
She pulled all the blankets apart - dislodging a few surprised spiders and a lot of dust. But no egg. Perhaps it had rolled away? She poked around the edges of the room, finding nothing more than the corpses of a few mice and some old knick-knacks left by previous occupants.
When she turned back the dragon was watching her with a sort of bemused expression. It glittered like fire, even in the pale half-fug that kept it nearly hidden it on the other side of the room, and they both stared at each other for a long time.
"Are you..." started the girl.
Thank you. The dragon's mouth didn't seem to form the words, just twitch. You are the one who found my egg and brought me to this sanctuary.
It stepped forward into the centre of the room where Lei-Fang could see it more clearly. Please step forward. Its voice was soft and hissing, like sand rushing through an hourglass. An ageless voice.
Lei-Fang stepped forward, and then lowered herself to her knees, bowing her head. A dragon, she thought.
It too moved forward to meet her, and for the first time in a long time she felt blessed.
Prospects change, indeed.