[Saiunkoku Challenge 27] Jade Blossom

[runiclore]

Jade Blossom
Author: Amber Michelle
Rating: K
Genre: introspective
Warnings: n/a
AU/Canon: canon.
Pairing/Characters: Shuurei
Words: 300

Prompt: rise (300 words max.)
Notes: Cross-posted at saiun_challenge.



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The silk Shuurei wove at home was a close weave of decent quality, though she knew many merchant's wives who wore finer cloth in more vivid colors. Kouchou's skirts and scarves were so smooth she couldn't see the weave unless she held the fabric to her nose in front of a window. They saved to purchase silk for her father to wear to court. She'd never mastered the darker dyes. Pink she could do, and yellow, and green, and purple, as long as they were pale, but not red. Not brown, black, or indigo.

When Shou Taishi tricked her into entering the Inner Palace, the maids stripped her comfortable robes away, rubbed her skin with lily-scented oil, and wrapped her in the softest white robe she'd ever touched. It clung to her legs when she walked, sticking embarrassingly to her breasts and the hollow of her hips. Her hair ornaments chimed when she moved, gold clinking against gold, pearl, and jade. The outer layers of her dress were light and smooth to the touch. Her calloused fingers caught on the fabric when she smoothed it over her arms.

Shuurei wasn't made for finery like this. She was thin, and Shusui had to find longer ties so they would wrap around her figure to emphasize what was there, and give the illusion of something that wasn't. She couldn't turn her head without the shadow of a jade flower dangling in her peripheral vision. Too soft, too fine, too expensive to appreciate.

The emperor's heart was too soft for her hands - like the silk, like the unnatural smoothness of her oiled skin. It bruised whenever she touched it. Someday it would break, and hers would fragment after it.


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