She is faceless. In a palace of nobles, only the underbelly of their bodies.

Day in, day out, searching the low ground mountains. Time moved with her, and yet He was unchanging. With each rise of sun and fall of moon, Lord Fenyang’s doors creaked to a close. But she could feel its shadows covering, sticking to the bottoms of pelt-covered pads. Crude cutouts pasted with sap, protecting the soft and delicate skin of a woman.

It would be often Lady Sekhet to secure those things, and wash the inner ears of the girls. Together, they would clean away one another’s stomachs in nile pools, but she had dreamed one day of bathing with the oiran’s in their warm springs. If only to know what might that warmth had felt like before her second sale.

Why now did she think of it?

Below, the rush of a stream which she approached with bundles of herbs. Above the waters, her paw which was flipped, and there she looked at the peeling of the pad covers.

A man worked ahead. Large like that of a huntsman, she could tell by the legs and thick wintered coat. Built for warm travel.
And so she did not meet his eye with a coyote face. Paw quietly placed down upon pebbles, and teeth moving to grab a potent scented skin.