Eastern Wind

The wind that came with spring was not kind.

It was wet and sharp, scented with thawing moss and cold sap, carrying with it the restlessness of things beginning to wake. Branches creaked above the stone walls of the outpost, new growth barely visible beneath the frost-withered remnants of winter.

Yunhua sat beneath one of the garden's skeletal trees, the sleeves of her tunic tucked beneath a patched shawl, her eyes skimming over the pages of a brittle herbal treatise. Her gloved fingers turned each leaf carefully, though she wasn't reading. Not truly.

She hadn't seen Rowan in days.

Not since the fight, the near-confession, the awkward parting. The silence had returned, wider now—thicker, more deliberate. The absence felt less like a shadow and more like a wall.

Yunhua didn't seek her out.

And Rowan, for once, didn't come to find her either.

So Yunhua turned her attention to books, to roots, to hours spent in the infirmary sorting dried bark from moldy ones. Her days clicked back into old rhythms. Efficient. Detached. Quiet.

Until the dignitaries arrived.

The bells rang early, pulling most of the outpost's inhabitants from their routines. Scribes and apprentices clustered by the southern walk, murmuring. Nobles and soldiers came in waves—two, then five, then nearly twenty—foreign and striking against the familiar stone.

Their clothing was layered in pale silks and burnished linens, dyed in delicate pigments like blush, ivory, and sun-dried apricot. Some bore tattoos along their throats or arms—cursive script Yunhua could almost read, though it sat just outside her memory. Their accents were softer than the clipped Common of the outpost, vowels lilting like drifting music.

And most noticeable of all: none of them sneer in disgust at the sight of ears pointed downward.

Here, in the East, the bloodlines had long mingled. There were half-elves among them, even quarter-elves, and no one batted an eye. The distinctions that sliced so cleanly in the Western territories were blurred here, smudged into something else. Something softer.

It felt like breathing in a different kind of air.

It made Yunhua uneasy.

Lady Sairen, whose name Yunhua learned from the whispers of other apprentices, stepped from her carriage last.

She was taller than expected. Elegant, yes, but with a bearing that did not invite frivolous conversation. Her plum colored hair was coiled into intricate loops pinned with thin jade combs, and her expression was unreadable—a perfect mask of serenity. Her robes were a gradient of soft greys and opalescent whites, like early morning fog before it warms to day.

Yunhua, standing at the back of the assembled apprentices, watched her from beneath her hood.

She had seen beautiful women before. Distantly. But there was something about Sairen that was less about beauty and more about gravity. She drew attention not by demanding it, but by existing. Like an inevitability.

Later, when the dignitaries were shown to their quarters and the courtyard emptied, Yunhua remained behind under the excuse of fetching herbs for the infirmary.

She should not have lingered.

She knew that.

But she did.

And that's when she noticed the way Lady Sairen's gaze had passed over the others—and paused, just briefly, on her.

Not long enough to be rude.

Just long enough to be remembered.

---

In the following days, the entire outpost seemed to shift. Training schedules were rearranged to accommodate demonstrations. The mess hall served richer fare. Even the library received a cleaning it hadn't seen in years.

Yunhua tried to keep her head down, but it was no longer possible to move unnoticed.

"Her eyes are too sharp," muttered one apprentice after Lady Sairen passed through the eastern corridor, attendants fanning behind her like the train of a bird.

"I heard she's here to broker terms," whispered another. "With whom, no one knows."

"I'd let her broker me," snorted a third, to muffled laughter.

But it wasn't the stupid jokes or the speculation that put Yunhua on edge.

It was the second time it happened.

She had been helping Master Irel sort medicinal roots by the infirmary window, hair pulled back, apron smudged with soot from the herbal fire. The sun had slanted just low enough to cast the stone halls in amber, and the air smelled of vinegar and steeped calendula.

And then: footsteps.

A rustle of fine cloth.

A shadow in the doorway.

Yunhua turned, expecting a courier, perhaps a healer's assistant.

It was Lady Sairen.

She stood with one hand loosely wrapped in a silk muff, the other resting lightly against the carved doorframe. Her gaze found Yunhua again. Calm. Measuring.

"I'm told you have knowledge of eastern plantwork," she said.

Yunhua hesitated. "Some. I was taught by one of the herbalists here."

"I see." A pause. "And before that?"

Before that.

A hundred memories tightened like threads pulled too taut. Her mother's hands, mixing crushed ginseng and rice paste. The scent of mulberry bark boiled for fever. A dialect Yunhua barely remembered, except in lullabies.

"My mother," she said at last.

Something flickered in Lady Sairen's eyes. Recognition? Or perhaps expectation confirmed.

She took one quiet step inside. "Your features... I thought as much."

Yunhua didn't speak.

Sairen continued, voice soft. "You resemble the northern tribes of the Lower Passes. The cheekbones. The eyes."

Yunhua didn't know whether to thank her or hide.

"I would be pleased if you would walk with me tomorrow," Sairen said at last. "If your schedule allows."

It wasn't phrased as an order.

But it also wasn't quite a request.

---

Yunhua debated refusing. The thought of being seen beside someone like Sairen—someone flawless, poised, powerful—made her stomach coil in discomfort. She had no talent for courtly manners. She didn't know how to flatter. Her role had always been to observe, not to be observed.

But the next morning, her hands dressed themselves. She found a tunic with clean cuffs and brushed the dust from her outer coat. She tied her hair back with a plain ribbon.

And when Lady Sairen appeared by the garden's east gate, she was waiting.

Their walk was quiet. The conversation, lighter than expected. Sairen asked questions—not invasive, but curious. About Yunhua's work with tinctures. Her opinion on frost-hard root versus goldmint. She listened.

Listened in a way that others never did.

And Yunhua, wary and withdrawn as she was, found herself answering.

Only later did she realize: they'd passed every major corridor. And every corridor had been full.

---

It happened three more times that week.

Once during a greenhouse visit, where Sairen asked for Yunhua's thoughts on a discolored lotus. Another during a lecture on Eastern healing practices, where Yunhua found herself seated beside her, though she hadn't chosen the spot. And a final time when Sairen, passing through the garden with her retinue, stopped to speak with Yunhua in full view of several senior instructors.

It caused a ripple, naturally.

She heard it everywhere—half-covered behind pages, whispered behind doors.

"What could she possibly want with her?"

"She's a mutt. Doesn't even speak the language."

"She must be some kind of pet project. Or novelty."

Yunhua didn't respond.

She simply began avoiding the garden.

And when Sairen's eyes scanned the stone benches at dusk and didn't find her, Yunhua didn't stay long enough to see if she frowned.

---

But it did something to her.

Seeing someone who looked like her, walked like her, spoke her mother's language. Seeing it admired, not hidden.

It stirred a strange ache inside her. Something like longing. Something like shame.

And through all of it, Rowan did not appear.

Not in the scriptorium. Not in the lecture halls. Not in the corridor when Yunhua passed the west stair.

They moved around each other now like stars in distant orbit. Never colliding. Never eclipsing. But too aware of the other's presence not to feel the space between them.

And Yunhua, distracted by Sairen's sudden interest, found herself unsure whether she wanted that space to shrink again.

Or not.