Fiction - Whent the Time Comes to Flee

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary

When the Time Comes to Flee


"There he goes!" shouted a young humanoid wolf.

Hu ran. He could hear some of the children laughing, but it was an evil form of delight. They were faster than him and had more endurance than he did. In a fair race Hu wouldn’t have stood a chance against the slowest of them, but Hu had the advantage of fear.

A rock smashed to pieces on a boulder just to the left in front of Hu, having narrowly missed striking him in the back of the head. Instinctively, Hu ducked away from the direction of missile’s path, but then a thought occurred to him that the boy who had thrown it would be sure to adjust his aim in that same direction. Hu zigzagged back to the left. He heard another rock strike the ground well to the right. Perhaps his maneuver had saved him, but even if it had it had still cost him precious ground. The children were gaining.

"Half-breed! Half-breed!" taunted one boy.

"Skin baby!" yelled another.

Some thin trees gave Hu at least some temporary protection, but it was becoming clear to him that his only route of escape would be to throw himself over the edge of the embankment. It was a virtual certainty that he would be injured in doing so, since it was far too steep to be descended safely, but Hu hoped that that would deter his attackers from following. The pain, he reasoned, would be no worse that whatever the boys had planned for him, and besides, it was likely that whenever they were done they might throw him over the edge anyway, just to watch him fall.

Hu headed straight for the edge, and as he did so he glanced back towards the pack. They were all smiling, milk-fangs bared as they delighted in their play-hunt. One of them, a humanoid tiger-cub, threw another rock, and Hu leaped over the edge.

The sharp gravel of the hillside rushed towards him. There wasn’t time to brace for the impact, and although his hope was to slide down the hill on his back this plan quickly vanished as his ankle was caught and crushed into a hidden boulder, causing him to flip forward head-first. He landed almost on his face, just managing to get his arms up in time. The jagged rocks tore away at his flesh as he slid down the embankment. He tried twisting to his side, but then he started tumbling. He was out of control, and with each staggering impact the pain grew duller and duller. He could hear himself screaming, but his voice seemed somehow distant. Then, without warning, there was a sharp crack of pain. The world vanished.

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When he opened his eyes the sun blinded him. How long had he been lying here? When the boys had first started taunting him it had been early in the morning, but it was past noon now. Above him loomed the embankment; there were no signs of his pursuers. Perhaps the sight of their prey lying motionless at the bottom of the steep facing had frightened off the boys. They loved to torture the half-breed, but nobody wanted to get into trouble if something more serious should have befallen him.

Hu tried to move. Everything hurt, but by some miracle he’d suffered no broken bones. The back of his head throbbed, and he gingerly felt around a huge bump on the back of his skull. The left side of his head seemed to be a solid mass of dried-out blood and dirt, matted into his fur. His legs and arms were marked with countless cuts, and clumps of his light grey fur had been torn out, exposing his all-too-human-looking skin. There was also a particularly nasty gash in his right thigh where the side of his trousers had been completely torn away, but the bleeding from the wound seemed to have stopped.

He managed to stumble to his feet. Where now? Home appeared to be his only option, but to get there from here meant passing through neighboring fields. A week ago would have been different, but since the death of Hu’s father it was clear that the townsfolk were no longer trying to mask their disgust of him. They were openly hostile to him now, and his narrow escape from the pack of boys was evidence of this. Respect for Hu’s father had meant that, at least publicly, he was part of the village. Thus, whenever an adult would happen to interrupt the other children tormenting Hu, the adult would at least ensure that the abuse remained relatively mild. It was a thin sort of protection, but Hu had relied upon it. This time, however, the tailor who had seen the pack of boys following Hu had simply turned his back on him, giving consent to the other children to do whatever they wished.

Hu began walking slowly, painfully, towards his friend Liu’s property. The route would be longer, but she was his only ally. The two of them had grown up together as friends, although by necessity they always had to keep their relationship secret. Liu’s mother especially wanted her daughter to have nothing to do with Hu. Whenever they had been caught together Liu had paid for her indiscretion courtesy of her mother’s broom, but always Liu and Hu would eventually find themselves in each other’s company again.

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It was during their most recent adventure together that Hu had last seen his father alive.

"Let’s go follow the messengers!" Liu had insisted.

It had been just one of their many innocent games of stealth at that point. Liu and Hu each took turns leading the way. Hu would creep forward on all-fours, or even on his stomach, through the tall grasses and dips and gullies of the terrain. When his keen eyesight assured him that the area was clear he would make bird noises to signal to his friend that it was her turn.

Liu’s technique was more akin to the prancing of a faun. She would dart as nimbly as a sprite from cover to cover, tree to tree, hiding in branches and in shadows. Her delicate sense of hearing told her when it was safe to advance, and she would signal to Hu with a flick of her fox tail for him to move forward.

It was Lui’s hearing that found the four messengers first. There was an argument going on, and even Hu could clearly hear what the men were saying as he and Lui watched from beneath a patch of overgrown briars.

"You’re a fool!" said a large lion. Hu recognized the lion as one of the town merchants. The wolf that he was addressing was Hu’s father.

"Perhaps," Hu’s father replied. "But perhaps it takes a fool to stop a war."

Hu’s father was dressed in his most formal attire. His blue and gold-trimmed tunic flowed in the warm breeze, and his freshly groomed light-grey fur seemed to shimmer in the sunlight. He bore no weapons, but rather he was armed only with a book.

"A dead fool can stop a war?" laughed the lion. "If that was true, there must be no more wars then! Because the world is already full of dead fools!"

"We are not fools, Chang," said another wolf. The smaller wolf was a friend of Hu’s father. His name was Ling, and he had always at least been civil towards Hu. "We take a grave risk, yes, but we do so willingly. If our attempt at peaceful negotiation should fail, then at least we have done our part."

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"Peace?" scoffed the fourth messenger. He was a bear that Hu did not recognize. "You think you brought us peace last time, but your peace did not last. Peace that does not last is worth less than war, because I would rather die for my children than have them die for me. You say you want peace? Then how will you purchase it? With more flowery words and spoken promises? Do you think that is the true price of lasting peace?"

"I am not a fool, Xian," replied Hu’s father. "I am fully aware that the price of peace is paid for in blood. That is why I am not afraid to go to them unarmed, because I am prepared to pay that price if I must."

"But you insist," yelled the lion, "that we, too, must take no weapons? So that when the humans do not hear what they want to hear, they can cut out our tongues? No! If you insist on this foolishness, then you go alone! I will go back and inform the elders, if I must, that you have gone off with your fellow fool to your deaths, but I will not go with you!"

"Neither will I," said the bear.

Hu’s father stood quietly. For a long time no one said anything. Then Hu’s father stepped forward and held out his paw to the lion.

"Then we must part ways, my friend," he said. "You are a good man, Chang, and you will be needed here if our mission fails. Pray for us that it does not, and I will pray for you if it should."

The lion hesitated. He glanced over at the bear, then at the other wolf, then finally back to Hu’s father. He then clasped the paw being offered with his own.

"Very well, you must try things your way then," he said. To Hu, the words sounded sincere.

The bear turned his back and began walking away, and soon the lion followed. Hu’s father and his companion also turned, and Hu watched as the two of them began a long journey down the dirt road. The last image Hu had of his father was of his blue tunic blowing in the wind, his book held firmly in one hand, and his loyal companion’s paw in the other. It should have been a sacred image in Hu’s memory, but perhaps fate enjoyed playing the same kinds of cruel little games on Hu that the other boys did, when two days later a box arrived in town containing a blood-soaked tunic, a torn book, and Ling’s severed hand.

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How long had he been walking now? Why was he in such pain? Oh yes, the fall of course, that was it. The memory was still fresh, but the world seemed to be only half-awake. Where was he? He recognized his surroundings, but he still felt lost. He was walking alongside a small brook now, one that would take him right to Liu’s house. That wouldn’t do, of course, since Liu’s mother would not tolerate him on her property if she saw him. Still, he could at least follow the water for a little bit further before trying to signal Liu with bird calls. The sound of the flowing brook was comforting, and he also appreciated that it was cooler near the brook.

Hu heard voices, but they didn’t make any sense to him, so he just kept walking. Where was he? No, wait, he’d already answered that. The brook was his guide. Follow the brook. Such a nice cool shade. The water of the brook fed many trees, and so it was always the most pleasant place to be on hot days like this one. The only problem was the mosquitoes, and Hu could hear their high-pitched squeals getting closer. They were coming up from behind him, these monster mosquitoes. He hurried his pace, but the squeals got louder in response. He figured he better get away from them, so he tried to run.

His legs gave out immediately, and he collapsed into what turned out to be mercifully soft grass. The tall blades wrapped themselves around him, and suddenly Hu didn’t even care that the mosquitoes were nearly upon him. The earth seemed to be welcoming him. It was the most wonderful experience, he thought to himself, to be embraced, even if only by grass. Perhaps he could simply lie here. He would go to sleep in the earth’s embrace, and when he woke up, well, why worry about waking up? Just go to sleep, a very long sleep. There was no reason to be awake anymore, in a world that didn’t want him to be awake anyway. So Hu gave in, and all of his thoughts and feelings vanished into nothingness.

Something made him come back, despite his resolve. When he opened his eyes he found himself lying in an unfamiliar bed, covered by a grey wool blanket. Bandages had been wrapped around his head, and beneath the blanket he could feel tight wrappings around his thigh. He felt both chills of cold and flashes of heat, and his entire body ached. It was unnaturally dark, as though he was seeing the world through only a small keyhole of light. He tried to look around the room, but all he could see was a chair beside the bed that had upon it a large bowl of water that reeked of blood and dirt. He tried to sit up, but the world spun away from him and he quickly fell back into place.

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"Stop trying to move, boy," said a woman’s voice.

Hu recognized the voice immediately. "Mother Ma?" he asked.

"Yes, boy," said the woman, irritated.

"This must be Liu’s house," thought Hu, "and Mother Ma has brought me here."

It was a profound moment of awakening for Hu. A sworn enemy, Liu’s mother, had shown him compassion and cared for him. Where was her broom that she normally ran him off with? It was a kind of moment that he had not yet experienced during his short and lonely life.

When Hu’s father had spoken to Hu about loving one’s enemies Hu had politely listened, but he could not make any sense of it. Enemies did not give Hu the chance to love them, so he avoided them. To him, their hatred was a fact of nature. Just as he could neither love nor hate the clouds and the trees for being what they were, so too he had never learned to either love or hate his enemies either.

Yet here was Mother Ma, taking him into her house. He did not know how to feel about her. It was as though a tree that he had passed by a thousand times had suddenly turned to him and begun to speak.

"It is shameful that my daughter insists on consorting with you," said Mother Ma.

Her dull, shadowy figure emerged suddenly from the fog of darkness that surrounded Hu. Age had not yet diminished Mother Ma’s looks, and the shade of orange fox fur on her tail and ears still matched that of her daughter’s. "I have punished her many times because of it, you know, but she refuses to obey my wishes."

"I’m..." began Hu, intending to apologize, but then Mother Ma causally threw back Hu’s blanket and Hu realized that he was naked. He tried to cover himself again, but Mother Ma brushed away his efforts as she began un-wrapping the bandages around his thigh.

"You nearly bled to death, boy," she said, "so hold still. I need to check the wound. I won’t have you starting to bleed again."

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Hu did as he was told. Mother Ma unwrapped most of the dressings but did not try to remove the inner bandages that were stuck to his fur. Instead, she carefully but firmly pressed the bandages against his wound and held them in place. Hu winced, but he did not cry out. When she took her hand away she waited for a few moments, watching the bandage to see if any new blood spots formed. None appeared.

"Good," she said, "the stitches are holding. You’ve been sewn up well. I’m very proud." Mother Ma began re-wrapping Hu’s wound. "We will change the dressings tomorrow. Tonight, at least, you must sleep here."

"Where is my mother?" asked Hu.

"Liu has gone to fetch her," said Mother Ma. "She will be here soon enough."

Hu did not know what else to say.

Mother Ma stepped back from the bed, her arms crossed, looking at Hu. After awhile she spoke.

"You are a rude boy," she said.

Hu felt hurt, which was strange. Insults normally meant nothing to him. "I’m sorry," he said, averting his eyes.

"No, I shouldn’t be surprised," said Mother Ma. After a few more moments spent staring silently at Hu, she slowly turned and walked out of his vision back into the dark fog. Hu heard her sitting down, somewhere nearby, in the room with him.

When she spoke again her tone had softened. "You do not even know when to offer thanks, do you? You are a guest in my house, and I have taken care of you, offered you a place to sleep, and yet you say nothing because you’ve never had anybody do such a thing for you, have you?"

"I am... I am..." began Hu, but the words would not come out.

"No, of course not," said Mother Ma. "Go to sleep, Hu. I will watch over you until your mother arrives."

The words flowed across Hu like a soft breeze, dazing him. Although the world was still unnaturally dark to him he felt as though he were transfigured in the light of a mid-day winter’s sun. She had called him by his name and given him a promise. She had chosen to offer kindness, rather than contempt.

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With this realization, however, came another. He realized that the people in his world could love him after all, but that they had chosen not to. Their contempt was not the mere product of their nature, but rather it was a choice. And he did not understand their choice. Why did they hate him so much? Why was the world so cruel to him? Why was his father dead? Why did he have to suffer so much, alone?

Hu began to cry. Mental sorrow mingled with physical injury, and he trembled as old pains that he had kept bottled up inside broke through the newly-formed narrow fissure of kindness and came rushing out of him. He had to choke back most of it, lest it make him physically sick, but he could not stop himself entirely.

"I am sorry," he sobbed, "I did not mean to cause you such trouble."

"When someone is in need, it is no trouble to help them," said Mother Ma.

"Nobody ever helps me," said Hu.

"I know boy," said Mother Ma softly. "I see that now, and I am sorry."

A few minutes later, Hu was asleep.

There were voices in his head that night.

"Where else would we go?" asked one of the voices. "I will talk to the elders, and they will find out who did this to him. But this is our home, we cannot go."

"You must go," replied another, "He is not safe. He has never been safe, and soon things will get much worse. You should have left years ago, but now the time has come to flee! You must stop your foolishness!"

Hu heard a girl’s voice, Liu’s voice perhaps, but Hu could not hear what she was saying.

"Are you sure?" asked the first voice.

The girl’s voice spoke again. There was a long pause of silence.

"But we have done nothing wrong," said the first voice, quietly. "Why would anyone say such a thing?"

"Open your eyes!" replied the second voice. "Stop looking at the world through your dead husband’s vision!"

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Hu opened his eyes. He was in a field of grey grass that stretched out of sight in all directions. Liu was there, kneeling on the ground beside him, holding a needle and thread in her hands, looking sad. She seemed as though she were in a daze, unable to meet his gaze. Two small animal foxes circled the pair of them, arguing with each other.

Something warm brushed against Hu’s cheek. He looked up and saw snow falling gently from the sky. He held out his arm, allowing another flake to land on it. The snowflake was hot to the touch, and he shook it off. The flake fell to the grass and evaporated in a puff of smoke.

"You think I am timid, don’t you?" said the first fox to the second. "You think I am afraid to take action?"

"No," said the second fox, "but you are blinded by dead love."

"Blind to what?" asked the first. "Blind to the danger that surrounds us? I have always seen it. I am not blind."

Hu sensed something behind him and turned. The townspeople were there. There were bears, wolves, tigers and more. Some of them were merchants, some housewives, others carried the tools of their trade. They were slowly advancing towards Hu and his companions, their movements solemn, their expressions grave. Hu turned back to the two arguing foxes and panic gripped him, for there behind the foxes were the children that had chased him that same morning, also advancing grimly. The townspeople were everywhere now, and Hu and his companions were cut off from escape.

"Then what are you waiting for? Must your child die before you act?" asked the second fox.

A hot wind blew through, and the snow began to fall a bit heavier. Hu kept trying to brush the flakes off as they fell, but despite his efforts his head still burned.

"I did not know they would attack Hu," said the first fox, "I believed they would respect his father."

The second fox sneered, "Yes, we are all too familiar with the respect we owe your husband." The second fox ran off towards the approaching crowd, stopping just before plunging into its ranks, and turning to run across in front of its advance.

"We are very familiar, yes," continued the second fox. "He brought us peace, and for that we were thankful. It was peace at a cost, yes, but at a reasonable cost. But it wasn’t enough for your husband that we paid the price. If he would have let us, we could have forgotten it and swallowed our bitterness. But no, your husband insisted on daily reminders of our compromises."

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The second fox turned and rushed towards Hu, preparing to leap upon him. Hu cried out, but his body did not respond. He was rooted in place.

The second fox stopped, and studied Hu carefully.

"Is he awake?" asked the first fox.

Hu tried to speak, but from his mouth came only silence.

"No," said the second, "it is only the fever."

With his body now paralyzed, Hu could no longer brush the burning snow from his head. As it piled higher upon him the heat became tortuous, but he could not sweep it away.

The second fox turned away from Hu and addressed the first fox again. "Your husband wore shame as though it were pride," said the vixen. "Perhaps a great man can do such things, but he expected too much. We wanted only to be left alone, but your husband would not even allow us to nurture our hatred and resentment in private."

"There is no shame in loving your enemies," replied the first fox.

There was a pause, and then the second fox yelped in laughter.

"No shame?!" she yipped. The second fox pranced around the first fox in delight. "Oh you really are blind! Listen to what you say!"

The first fox snapped back, "I am not ashamed of what my husband believed in!"

At this, the second fox rolled in the grass on her back and began howling in laughter.

"Do you even hear what you are saying?!" she chuckled. "No shame in loving your enemies? Is that really what your husband believed? Well, then, if that’s true, then we’ve been mistaken about your son all this time. We thought your husband was trying to show us all an example of supreme forgiveness, but if it was his idea all along then..."

"Watch your words!" growled the first fox, raising herself on her haunches and baring her fangs. "You know nothing, nobody does!"

The second fox stopped her prancing and respectfully averted her gaze. "No, you are right. I know only rumours, and it is wrong for me to repeat them. I apologize for my rudeness."

The conversation between the two foxes continued, but it was lost to Hu because the heat was unbearable now. Each new flake of snow singed through his fur and seared itself into his flesh. Would the snow burn him alive, or would the townspeople get to him first? He could not say, but he did not care. He begged and pleaded for someone, anyone, who could hear his thoughts to save him.

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Someone behind him placed a paw on his shoulder, swept the snow off of his forehead, and gently turned him around. Standing before Hu was his father. His gold and blue tunic was in tatters, and large, lethal wounds covered his body, but there was no blood.

"Hu?" asked his father, but his lips did not move. "Can you hear me?"

"Yes father", replied Hu, but the words were only in his head.

"Good, good," his father replied, hugging Hu tightly to his bosom and stroking away the snowflakes from the boy’s fur. "Hu, I am very proud of you. You have bourn so much injustice, and yet you have remained pure. You are still an innocent. I am glad. It means there is still hope. There is still a chance war may be averted. You must stop the war, Hu."

"What do you mean, father?" asked Hu.

Hu’s father kneeled in front of him, smiling. "I tried, Hu. I gave the humans my life, but now I realize it wasn’t enough. Peace must always be paid for in the blood of the innocent. I thought perhaps that my life would be sufficient, should it be demanded of me, but I now realize that I could have given more. I should have taken you with me that day. You are a true innocent, Hu. You could have been a sacrifice."

"A sacrifice?" asked Hu. He felt uncertain and frightened. He realized his father’s eyes were staring right through him, as though he wasn’t looking at Hu at all. Hu wanted to reach out to Liu for reassurance, but he still could not move. He glanced down at his friend, but she still would not look at him.

"Yes, Hu!" said his father excitedly. "You have both the blood of men and the blood of beasts in your veins! It must be given, now, to satisfy the hatred and jealousy of others. Perhaps it will be enough to sate their appetite. Perhaps my mission will not fail after all, and we can stop this war together!"

Hu tried to push his father away, but he lacked the strength to resist. The words were terrifying. "But please father! I don’t want to die!"

Hu’s father calmly stood and lifted his son above his head. He turned to show Hu to the advancing crowd.

"Come!" cried Hu’s father. "Hu is my offering to you all! He is an innocent! He will pay for the hatred between his two races!"

"Liu!" screamed Hu, "Liu!"

Liu awakened, and with a jump she was on Hu’s father’s shoulders, holding Hu’s hand. "Hu! Can you hear me? I’m here Hu!" Her eyes still seemed unable to look at him.

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The crowd was turning feral. The front ranks began crouching as they advanced. Soon they were on all fours, and many began abandoning their humanoid forms altogether. Clothes, jewelry and tools were left deserted in the unearthly gray grass as the pressing masses drew ever closer, their hungry eyes fixated entirely upon Hu. There was only one thing they wanted now. They wanted his blood.

One of the wolf-children from that morning arrived in animal form at the feet of Hu’s father first, jumping up and biting at Hu. There was suddenly a searing pain in Hu’s thigh, and Hu saw that his father had ripped out the stitches. Blood poured from the wound, and Hu cried out in horror as the wolf-pup greedily lapped up the dripping blood. Soon the other animal children arrived and began biting and tearing at each other, each competing for the gruesome meal.

"No father!" begged Hu.

Liu was clinging to Hu now. She was blindly stitching away at his flesh with her needle and thread, trying to stop the bleeding, but while she did so Hu’s father slashed at Hu’s with his claws, opening new wounds. The crowd was pressing from all sides now, demanding more. Their eager jaws snapped at Hu, drinking the falling drops of his blood in a frenzy of anticipation.

"I am so proud of you, Hu!" shouted his father, aloud. His voice was changed. It was not the voice filled with hope and promise that Hu had known all his life. Instead, it was a voice filled with desperation and mania. "Yes, take him! His innocent blood is an offering of peace! Let it satisfy your blood-lust!"

The second fox was attacking Hu’s father now, biting at his hands and trying desperately to loosen his grip.

"Stop!" yelled his father. "The sacrifice must be paid!"

"It’s Yang Wei’s spirit!" shouted the second fox. "He has come for Hu! You must rebuke him!"

"Please!" begged the first fox. "Husband! Leave me my son!"

"He must be sacrificed!" replied Hu’s father. "His innocent blood will stop this war from happening! He is my son, and he must follow in my footsteps!"

"He is not your son!" shouted the first fox. She leapt upon Hu, digging her claws deep into his flesh. She pulled, and Hu screamed as he felt his soul being ripped in two. He felt something tear, and then the world changed.

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He was in his mother’s grasp, and she was sobbing. The ghost of his father was gone; the phantom crowds had vanished. Liu and Mother Ma were at his bedside, working together to keep him soaked down with cold towels. His stitches had not been torn away, and the fever had broken.

"I saw father," said Hu, weakly. He did not have the strength to return his mother’s embrace.

"No, Hu," said his mother. "Your father loved you. That was only his ghost, an empty shell of regrets and moral weaknesses, not yet ready to leave this world."

"He said I must stop the war..."

Mother Ma grunted her disapproval. "Your father was in many ways a great man, Hu, but in many other ways he was a fool. You are a child, Hu, not a saviour. You cannot stop what is about to happen."

After Hu was put back to bed it was decided that Mother Ma would stay with him as he slept the rest of the night. Hu’s mother would sleep in another room in order to prepare to be ready to leave before sunrise. Liu also asked to stay with Hu , and the two adults consented.

At the first hint of light Hu was awakened and carried to Mother Ma’s wagon cart. Hu’s mother attached her own horse to the cart, and a makeshift bed was constructed for Hu to continue resting upon. Liu made many trips between the house and the cart, loading it with food and supplies for the journey ahead. The supplies, it was agreed, would allow Hu and his mother to flee quickly without having to return home, and Mother Ma and Liu could then later restock their own cupboards using what Hu’s mother had left behind.

"We will not take anything else," promised Mother Ma. "Though I am sure others will certainly help themselves once they realize you have fled."

"I thank you for your kindness, but do not worry about my protecting my belongings. They are nothing to me, now. I need only my son. You must at least take my wagon to replace your own," said Hu’s mother.

"We will have to paint it," said Mother Ma. "Otherwise people will recognize it as yours. But we will need to flee soon too, and we will need it then. This war will become real soon enough, and our home will be in the middle of it."

"Where will you go?"

"We will go to the south. We have relatives there."

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While the two women talked, Liu climbed up onto the wagon and sat herself beside Hu. Hu held out his paw to his friend and she clasped it in her hand, interweaving her delicate fingers between his fury digits.

Off in the distance a bird chirped, but only once. The day was approaching, and the world was getting ready for just another day in the endless expanse of time. The meadow that surrounded the two friends that morning had been there centuries ago, through countless daily life-and-death struggles between the wild animals that had inhabited it throughout the ages. The two lifelong friends, now sharing a final moment of companionship together in the meadow, were just a minor footnote in the meadow’s vast collection of unwritten tales.

"It’s sad, Hu," said Liu quietly.

"I know," he whispered. He didn’t want to think about leaving Liu. "We’ll see each other again," he promised. He did not know when that day would be.

Liu smiled. She lifted his paw to her cheek and rubbed it against her skin.

"Why must there be war?" she asked.

"I don’t know," said Hu. "I guess because humans and beasts hate each other."

"But there’s so little difference," she sighed. "I have seen humans, and they look just like women, except they have no tails and only small ears. It’s only our men that look different than theirs."

"People hate differences," said Hu. "Even small ones."

"Liu!" called Mother Ma. "You must say your goodbyes now! It is time for our guests to leave!"

Silent tears immediately began to flow from both Hu and Liu. Their hands were still locked together, and an unspoken promise passed between the both of them that each would always be a part of the other, and that neither would ever be alone.

Liu then leaned over and kissed Hu. It was an inappropriate, shameful kiss for such young children, in full view of both parents, yet neither Mother Ma nor Hu’s mother objected. In normal times, yes, decency and appropriateness would have been maintained, lest others should gossip and one’s fitness as a mother should be questioned. But these were not normal times. War was coming. The kiss was something pure, honest, and entirely innocent. It was likely that such things would not be seen again for a long time.

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When the town elders received word that Yang Wei’s widow had fled, taking her **** son with her, they convicted her of treason in her absence. Yang Wei was to be remembered as a hero, as all agreed, even though he had been perhaps too trusting and naive. He had stopped a war for them in the past, and he had laid down his life in a failed attempt to do so again. His sacrifice would be avenged with the blood of a thousand humans.

As for his wife, her guilt was now a certainty. Why else would she have left in the middle of the night without a word to anyone? Yang Wei had never discussed the circumstances that had left him with a half-breed child that was not his own, proclaiming only that he loved both his wife and his son. No doubt she had convinced him of her innocence with some sweet-tongued tale, but love can blind good men to even the most obvious of truths. She was a human-lover, that much the rumours were certain of, and it was generally agreed that she had knowingly sent her husband off to his death as part of some human plot.

There was, however, at least some sympathy towards the half-breed, now that he was finally gone. The love between Yang Wei and his wife's mongrel offspring had, some admitted, at least seemed to be sincere, but the child had always been doomed. Yang Wei had seen the child as a promise of a world where human and beast could live together as one, but the townspeople were thankful that they would no longer have to endure the sight of such an offensive union in their presence. It was good that the boy was gone, though nearly everyone agreed that it was a pity that the poor child had not simply been drowned at birth in the first place. It would have been the right thing to do, they said, since it is only by maintaining proper separation between the races, and respecting that some differences are part of the unchangeable divine order, that peace, harmony and happiness can ever survive.

On a distant road, far far away from the speeches of the elders and preparations of the townspeople, Hu lay back in his wagon, looking up at the evening sky. They had traveled all day, along back roads and long forgotten byways, and now they had stopped. Hu's mother had gone on ahead on foot, leaving the wagon hidden off of the road behind an embankment.

"I don't think I've ever been so sad," thought Hu, spying the faint flow of the evening's first star, "but part of me is happy." He had suffered so much and left so much behind, but he felt loved.

There was the rustle of approaching footsteps, and Hu's mother appeared. Behind her walked a man. A human man.

Hu sat up and stared at him. The man looked to be no more than 30, dressed in green robes and carrying a large, ornately carved wooden staff. When their eyes met the man stopped, then seemed to falter. He fell to one knee, and as he did so he dropped his staff. His mouth was agape, and he held his hand to his chest.

The man glanced for a moment to Hu's mother. "Shu Shen," he said. Then he looked back to Hu, "our son..."

"Yes," said Hu's mother.

"He is beautiful," said the man.

device

AMAZING work.

I want more
MOREEEEEEEEEEE.

Delmarte - Lost City

Well I'm impressed. b:victory

Darkpinksoul - Heavens Tear

this is really good! keep up the good workb:victory

adasam

You should really continue with this. This is the best fanfic i've read yet.

Esnemyl - Dreamweaver

wow,thsi is good stuff!
im trying to write a fanfic too, about my char discovering the tideborn before anyoen else XD