Tiny little coughs as the tiny little puffball lifted her head before she tucked herself right back into a tight little C shape and tried to tuck her nose under her tail. It was so much warmer here, but she was still trying to dry herself off from scrambling out of one of the pools. It had been so hard for her, and Papa had just kept sleeping and sleeping.....

sleep.

sleep, little stardrop, sleep.

She remembered the soft whispered words from her mother, but then Papa was supposed to take her and deliver her to be trained so she'd grow up polished, graceful, poised, a respectable lady rather than the daughter of fishmongers.

Tagging in Batu

---

It was only the second time the Empress had absconded from her kingdom. When she had the time before, it was to the same place – a fairytale land of waterfalls and mists. It sounded beautiful, but she knew the place to hold secrets. Blue, glowing stones that had driven an innocent soul mad.

Yue needed to know more.

She had not explained the reason to Wéi Jùn, though he, too would have seen the dreams. The Empress has only explained, in hushed tones, that they were to travel – with explicit instructions to tell no one.

Lately, there had been much coming and going from the Verdants Grace. It was likely she would be back before those responsible for her whereabouts all took note that, no, the Empress was not busy with someone else, or other business.

And when they did, then beware the hounds!

Even when escorted, Téng Shènlei did not appreciate when his wives or Golden kin left his domain. To do so unannounced would invite questions and critique that many would rather not endure. Under the cover of the growing night, they fluttered to the outer fringes of jungle and then took their southern flight.

Yue, who was normally very sensitive to stimuli, was even more so since she was hunting for something. Since she did not know what it was that she hunted, everything was deserving of her attention.

Everything that revealed itself from the shadows, all that lay in wait. All the leaves that blew in the viscous, slow wind. The moon’s dappled illuminations. Every movement, every mewling noise –

and that was the auditory input that finally caused her to pause. Yue lifted her nose to the wind and sniffed wildly, thinking perhaps it was a newborn deer, or another wild dog from the west, or some sort of primate that had left the northern jungles, just as they had.

What she found, swaddled in a dark nest of dry grasses, was not that.

Oh, sweet and beautiful child! the Empress cried out, in both surprise and awe. Her tail waved wildly, signaling to her dusky guard to make haste and come see!

To whom do you belong?

---

༻❁༺

Tortured all night and for those to come by brooding, seeing something of her reaction. It is not as unbearable as nothing, but that is what he had given her. Once, Saikhanbayar could walk around without fear because the herds were theirs and so were the valleys. Now she slept in a pavilion for keeping inside and everyone else out.

At dusk wéi jùn marches out from these notions, slinging two deels and a waterskin over his shoulders, pulling to get some tension on them. The spectral visions do not haunt Batu as they do his empress, but leagues of earth call always to the nomad. He lopes ahead, setting a tight perimeter. When he circles back to the royal flank he can begin to make out the cervine lineaments that proclaim her majesty, the call mounting his stride.

For a brisk moment guardian holds the fore with empress gathered in his shadow, staring down with readied paws at only a small thing; a wheezing child, barely off the breast.

I am *so* sorry for the wait on this :<

The soft warm breath that tickles the whispy fur along her ears is a little tease, a hint of the warmth from another. Any other. She had been lost for so long it felt, and everything that she knew seemed almost to be far enough away that when she heard the Empress, her sleepy eyes only blinked slowly open and she whined. The first thought that Jinjing had about Yue was that she was beautiful. The second, was that perhaps she would offer the puffball some help. The dialect was different; the lilt of long-standing lines was vastly more polished than the village's dialect where she had been born. It sounded like a song to her unfamiliar ears.

Oh!! The quivering note to her own voice was not as enthusiastic. Her little soggy tail slowly unfurled, wet from the pool she'd suddenly found herself in. I cold! It was whimpered in Mandarin as well. Her eyes shifted briefly to the guardian, but her focus was primarily on the Empress herself. She could not give anything else yet, her energy as dampened as her body. Her eyes closed again before she let her head rest on her paws. She had fallen asleep to the soft little whispers of her mother, stories of the moon, the sea, the land - and her eyes opened and focused on the beautiful woman again. Chang'e? Surely this was the moon before her, come down from the skies to find her in her time of need.

---

There is nothing that could activate a would-be mother into action, than a child in need. Almost immediately, the maternal forces within her took over, and Yue felt that this was the closest to loving something she had ever been before.

Of course, she loved every one of her lost children. They were forever imprinted upon her heart, the feeling of their tiny cold bodies pressed against her, but there was something about this tiny, mewling thing that spoke to her.

– likely that it was brimming with aliveness, and Yue had never held a living child save the nascent Lian and Fen. The Empress had been so new in her position that she had forgotten to memorize what it felt like to hold something so tiny and warm. At the time, she hadn’t been aware how this experience would be stolen from her, time and time again.

However, Yue felt no bitterness as she reached her forelimbs forward and under her chest, folding backwards to lay her belly on the ground and to clasp the tiny girl between her arms. Yes, yes, she crooned, feeling the pull to warm and wash the child with her tongue, but uncertain if that was the right thing to do –

It is I, the moon goddess.

Instinctively, yes, it felt right. But the Empress felt a pang of worry that she might be becoming too attached to something that had a family. It was her responsibility to find the mother and restore the family to wholeness.

Not because it would please Yue greatly to do so, but because that is what she hoped someone would do for her, if the positions were reversed. These were the basic kindnesses that built the fabric of their society, or at least, the society that the Empress wished to build.

So the woman lowered her nose to the girl with the intention to scent her, but she could not help but press her dark-leather nose into the crook of her tiny neck, and she breathed several times very profoundly.

Then, as if that was the normal way to identify a stranger, the Empress lifted her gaze to Batu, who stood so dutifully and curiously, to state She doesn’t smell like…anything. and then she tried again, nose-in-neck, but still failed to place it. The girl was apparently from nowhere.

Nowhere she knew, at least.

---

༻❁༺

A man without eyes could have sensed the way the empress softened; she who is overcome with the child’s cries, a woman without a brood of her own. But not only for those who could serve her, for this one was a motherless girl.

“She will die without interference, your highness.” The nomad’s nose tells him she is alone.

But Wèi Jūn is not here to be a moral judge of character to the royal decree, only to enact, as an extension of her own arm.

skill:

Oh how quickly she was swept into the hold of the Moon Herself. Warm, tender, the little soot stained waif immediately tucked herself to the Empress' breast. Th'moon, She echoed with a tone that could only be described as relieved. The feeling of her nose against bare skin only made the girl shiver, but it wasn't because of the cold as before. She would take some time to warm up, of course, but it was vastly better than the cold water of the pool that she'd woken up in. It had been instinct purely that had made her even drag herself out of the water.

What felt like instinct to nurture, it was instinctive the way her little kisses pressed to the Empress' chin as little placating whines left her lips. There was nothing on her to be smelled, there was nothing to be found that had not been washed away by the world itself and then the waters. She did not have many memories, not ones that were strong enough to stay with her anyways. The faintest hint of fish might have risen from her, but it was gone just as quickly as it had been present.