Chapter Text
“Umma! Good hunting today! Look, look!”
The sound of the door thudding open is quickly overshadowed by the slam of a shoulder bag onto a table that can only softly creak its complaints.
“A pheasant and two rabbits today, I was thinking braised rabbit and then I’ll sell the skins tomorrow- and! I got a good price for your preserves, Uncle Kim’s daughter just fell sick so he was a little desperate and maybe I feel a little guilty but it let me get some good bread this time, the one with the seeds you like and the--”
The loaf of bread, still warm, is waved towards the living room where her mother sits. It’s a different book from yesterday in her lap, something with text too small to read from a distance and a title slashed across the cover in dreary blues. The grin slowly falls from Zoey’s face.
The smile she had been expecting in response --the one with the lone dimple on the right cheek, she should know, she has it too-- doesn’t quite reach her mother’s kind brown eyes. Which she also knows are kind, should be kind, because everyone’s constantly saying that’s what she’s got and that’s where they look alike the most. Eyes, smile, energy. Energy she hasn’t seen mirrored in weeks. Months.
“Still nothing from him?” Zoey tries not to respond to the flinch she sees. Her voice wobbles anyways.
“M-maybe… Maybe it just got lost. In delivery. Or something. You know how he is.” Zoey’s eyes follow slender fingers tracing text on a page, before a snap and then a slide into a corner of the shelf. So unfair. Why couldn’t she have gotten that too? Instead she gets toes that skim the ground when she sits and an inability to even reach that shelf without a stool, if she really wants to snoop. Which, she won’t. Even if she wants to. She won’t, really.
So, so unfair. She just had to get that from him. Something bubbles and burns in the back of Zoey’s throat as she pastes on another grin. “Or maybe he’s just busy. Didn’t the princess, like, just get engaged? I’m sure that means, y’know, politicians gotta work around it or something, and appa’s just busy w-”
“Zoey, stop.” It’s as effective as a slap. Zoey turns towards the table like she had been. “I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just… You said you brought pheasant, right? I can make stew.”
“But I wanted…”
A laugh; a shake of the head. Flyaways from messy buns tickle the nape of Zoey's neck. “Nevermind. Yeah. Lemme just…”
The loaf is settled on the table’s centerpiece before a hand waves haphazardly at the remaining spoils. “Give me some time to clean and dress it. Bread’s still warm if you want some, it was their last batch of the day.”
When the sky deepens to navy and Zoey’s chewing on white meat cooked too long, the loaf is cold and untouched. She can’t help but look; look anywhere but her mother’s wrinkled brow and frown lines, at the door where a letter, letters at this point, remain undelivered. She wants a piece, had wanted a piece. Had wanted to share one, at least. But the stew sits heavy in her gut and there isn’t much of an appetite anymore.
Even later still, when the smoke of a guttered candle drifts lazily across the room, when her mother’s breathing evens out next to her: Zoey looks at the ceiling and makes a promise.
She’ll do anything to see her mother’s real smile again. Anything. Please-- it’s all she has left. It’s them, this cottage, the swing with the frayed rope and the splintered stool by the wild daisies and next to the creek with all the minnows. It’s so little, and it’s everything; please don’t take it away.
Please.
It seems someone was listening to her, when The Solution comes quicker than she could’ve thought. Practically falls into her lap, really.
“Ow!” Or flies into her face. Same difference. Reminder: go to the temple later, maybe, toss a coin. Or two… Three? What’s the minimum she needs to give? Not important, not important when--
“Whomever wins will become the Imperial Champion of Princess Ryu Rumi, and granted one boon of their choosing from the reigning Empress Celine, within reason and the Empress’ capability. Oh my god, auntie, is this real?”
The wizened woman barely looks up from the furs she’s inspecting to point at the litany of identical posters actively being pasted across all walls within view by a courier, royal seal glinting on a messenger bag stuffed to the gills with duplicates. Zoey squints.
“The Imperial Champion's like, a big job, right? With a lot of money?"
Auntie Lim hums something almost committal, attention still largely devoted to scrutinizing the pelts in front of her. Zoey dreams of sealing the thatched hole in the roof that always leaks during monsoons, of food always on the table, maybe a fruit bowl (gods-- imagine, a bowl that just always has fresh fruit), dreams of her mother's smile. And maybe, just maybe, of being free of letters that never came, of packages that never delivered.
"A boon’s a favor, right? Can you wish for anything? Or will they, like, yell at you if it’s embarrassing? Or worse, will they laugh at you and maybe, I dunno, hate you forever?”
“Zoey, my dear, it can most likely be assumed they will work with whomever wins to ensure whatever favor you request is met, within reason.” Okay, rude, “whomever” as if she wasn’t just asking about it. And in the middle of a transaction, a trade, a barter no less! What if she took her business elsewhere, huh? Maybe someone else would want her pelts.
(Who is she kidding. Only Auntie Lim wants her pelts. No one else in the village can sew with them like she can. Zoey sighs.)
“You would also need to be a trained soldier, dear, not simply a hunter.” Okay, RUDE. Ruder, even, if that was possible. What, hunters suddenly can’t hold their own anymore? Can’t be Champions? Who does Auntie Lim even think she is, anyways? “Would five silver suffice?”
“Auntie, this is why you’re the best.” An emphatic shake meets old joints in the outstretched hand as Zoey closes the deal. “And thanks for answering my questions about this!”
Zoey misses the perplexed look on the shopkeep’s face in her haste, gathering up the silver and tripping over her sandals in her haste to leave, skipping down the street towards temple braziers in the distance. Bright eyes pore over the words again; burning every important detail into her mind before the flyer is neatly folded and tucked into a bag seam.
“Three months time… Combat, tactics, synergy… Blah blah… Boon… Will need to bring your own stuff… Blah… Yeah. You got this, Zoey. You can do it. Two birds, one stone. Two problems, one champion in the making.”
Zoey doesn’t mention it to her mother til the day before she has to leave. Even then, it barely comes out; she’d written a note, already, left it underneath the flour jar. Hadn’t known her mother was planning on proofing dough today.
“It’ll take three days to reach the capital, and I need to go early to get a cheaper room before they all get snatched up, so… But I only kept what I’ll need, I think. I put the extra I earned in the chest and I’ll hopefully be eating a lot of just what I brought, which is why I kept asking for smoked stuff, sorry, also the extra firewood’s in the shed if you aren’t tired of it, and I cleaned the path to the creek so it should be easy for you to get there and Auntie agreed to help me watch after you, she'll come by with more ingredients and such and…”
A choked sound. “I’ll- I’ll miss you. But I have to do this. He still hasn’t written back and whatever we’ve got left of what he sent combined with what I can make are only gonna last us til winter at most and this is the only way I can- I can ask about him and get a job that isn’t just selling hunted bits and pieces. What if it’s just that something happened to him, you know? What if I need to chase down some murderer or something? I can't do that just by myself. I just…”
Words die in Zoey’s throat as slender fingers graze across armor she’d bought just last week, leather and chain ill-fitting around slight shoulders.
“My darling bumblebee…” And that’s when the tears come; as the weight of this whirlwind summer, of earlier than early mornings leading into humid afternoons leading into oppressively silent nights just to make enough surplus money, of wants and desires unsaid in the face of grief written in wrinkles, in pages, across spines of books she could not reach, all come crashing down in the form of a nickname she thought she couldn’t hear again. Not until after the tournament. Or not at all.
“It was your birthday last month, wasn’t it?” And oh, she’s crying harder now, both at the remark and how their expressions mirror-- Zoey knows this because they cry the same; big tears and wide eyes and flush-patchy skin. “All grown up, my bumblebee. And- and I missed it. Oh…”
“I-it’s okay, umma, really. I- I get it, really, it’s been a hard year, and appa, he… Umma, please don’t cry, please, we can just celebrate it next year, in the capital, okay? I love you, I’m sorry-”
A hiccup into a cough into a cheek settled onto a slender cradle of fingers and palm. “Oh, Zoey, it should be umma that’s sorry. Sorry that she can’t--”
They swallow things unsaid the same. “That she can’t do anything for you, except cook some meals. That she kept you here when you could be so much more. I don't want you to chase his shadow, okay? That's my burden alone. Oh, my darling Zoey…”
(Zoey nods, because of course she does; even as she turns over in her mind the different scenarios she'll find him in. The different ways she'd react. She had always been a good liar.)
It’s pain, and tears, and confessions, a year in the making and spilling over into the dead of night. When Zoey leaves in the morning, it’s with aching eyes and a heavy pack but a lighter heart; the last of the wild daisies persists still along the path leading into the village. It’s only a moment’s hesitation before Zoey takes a slight detour: routing through the forest for a moment before she sees an all too familiar stool, a fishing rod and net beside.
She spends a few moments casting both out. Umma will come around at some point, she’s sure.
It’s another minute watching the creek burble and the trees rustle and the birds squabble over seeds before she turns towards the road. It’s an hour and then the road widens from a footpath to the overgrown double-tracks of carts, disappearing towards the horizon.
Umma,
When you find this, I’ll probably have left already. They’re holding the Champion’s Tournament in the capital, and I’m going to compete, and win. I’ve been saving up and practicing all summer but really it’s just... I have to. I have to. For you. For us.
You and I both know I can’t really keep us going with just birds and rabbits and whatever here and there, especially when I can’t forage when the snow hits, and appa’s… I dunno. What if he’s just in trouble, you know? What if he’s waiting for one of us to notice and come find him?
They offered a boon along with the job. A job and the truth. We need both, umma. We need to know, we need to do something about him. He promised to write, to help us, and I promise to bring him back to explain why he can’t keep his promises.
But I can, and I promise I’m going to win.
By the way-- I told Auntie Lim about this and she’ll come by to check in. If I write she’ll bring the letters cause she’s closer to the post anyways and I don’t want you to have to walk so far.
I love you. I’ll miss you. I miss you already.
- Your bumblebee