11/13/2025, 5:47 PM
<3
the air tastes of portent. lady kaede has held that flavoring too many times over a bitter tongue not to know its zing.
it is not long too wait before she is approached. as with the girl and her maidservant, this stranger carries the gilding of nobility. perhaps of more. lady ichmonji knows her own breeding to be impeccable, but she has never touched the hem of royalty even at her power's peak.
now she is hardly more than a matron, a mother with fatherless children whose existence speaks her fall. yet she has chosen to lie; he is a dead man.
and the strength of the lie gives kaede more relief than she cares to ever admit.
diamond-shining, graceful as a tigress, this vision speaks a language which kaede thinks she has heard before.
dynasty.
tianlong.
familiar, and yet not.
those glowing eyes bid the former noble speak.
she makes an attempt, slipping into japanese for a moment;
if there is familiarity, let it be known.
kaede waits.
it is not long too wait before she is approached. as with the girl and her maidservant, this stranger carries the gilding of nobility. perhaps of more. lady ichmonji knows her own breeding to be impeccable, but she has never touched the hem of royalty even at her power's peak.
now she is hardly more than a matron, a mother with fatherless children whose existence speaks her fall. yet she has chosen to lie; he is a dead man.
and the strength of the lie gives kaede more relief than she cares to ever admit.
diamond-shining, graceful as a tigress, this vision speaks a language which kaede thinks she has heard before.
dynasty.
tianlong.
familiar, and yet not.
i greet tianlong dynasty,says the lady with a small bow. saltwind catches their ornamentation, surrounds both she and the other with the scent of those purpled flowers.
those glowing eyes bid the former noble speak.
she makes an attempt, slipping into japanese for a moment;
i am lady kaede of clan ichimonji.
if there is familiarity, let it be known.
kaede waits.
