The Fox Princess And Her White Dog

5: Of Love and New Beginnings

Gentle sunlight was streaming in from the circular hole at the top of the yurt when Snow opened her eyes.

I'm late!

She uttered a curse word she had learnt from Fourth Brother, and struggled against her blanket. To free herself, she rolled off the bed and onto the floor.

"Aiya," she groaned, before looking up at the point where the sunrays were hitting the red and gold painted column of the yurt. She heaved a sigh of relief. Looking at the time, it's not too late.

She got up and quickly tidied their dwellings. It was small by Palace standards but it was warm and cozy to her, especially with their vibrantly painted furnishings and plush carpets. The west side of the round yurt was for his things; his saddle, ropes and weapons hung from the lattices holding up the walls. The east side was where she kept her possessions, cooking implements and water buckets.

Snow went to her wooden chest to fish out her cotton deel and put away her pearl headband, when she spied her cloisonné enamel jewelry box at the bottom. She had brought it with her from the Palace, but hardly took it out, as she had no need for her precious stone jewelry while out on the plains.

It's been so long since I last looked at my things, she thought. It felt like a lifetime ago when she was a cossetted princess who was dressed in the finest silk robes like a living doll and confined to the four high walls of the Palace.

She set the jewelry box in her lap and lifted the lid. Hairpins, earrings and bracelets made of gold, jade, pearls and other precious stones glittered from their bed of silk. They reminded her of the days spent in mind numbingly dull lessons with the royal tutor, playing the guzheng, and embroidering. I don't miss that life, it was a miserable, suffocating existence, she told herself. I have a new life now.

She was about to shut the lid when a bluish, adularescent gleam caught her eye. In one corner of the box, a pair of moonstone earrings twinkled at her.

Moonstone. A stone of love and new beginnings.

She picked up the dangling earrings and held them up to the light, watching the round stones change from milky white to a brilliant iridescent blue. A strange, bittersweet feeling stirred inside her, along with a distant memory that she could not form in her mind, like smoke at the edge of her vision.

Where did I get these from? she wondered. She had worn them for a while at the Palace, but since coming to the steppes, they remained buried in her chest. On a whim, she decided to put them on, and they sparkled when she looked at her own reflection in a small looking glass.

After she figured she had tarried long enough, she got dressed, smoothed down her bedraggled hair, prayed before the Goddess of Mercy at the altar, and stumbled out the door with her milking bucket in hand.

The morning sun washed over her from her right, casting its warm light on the walls of her white yurt. She looked up at the endless blue sky streaked with fine clouds. In the distance, she could see the jagged mountain range over the evergreen plains.

It's such a beautiful day! Today is going to be a really good day, she thought excitedly.

"Ugh," she groaned as she hurried towards the yak enclosure on wobbly, achy legs. Along the way, she greeted the womenfolk with a bright smile plastered on her face, and wondered whether they could tell that she was hiding something.

"Erden, you. . ." she was about to call him all sorts of unsavory names but then she stopped herself.

Snow, you did this to yourself. Why did you have to challenge him? What more, she had stubbornly refused to plead for him to stop until she could not take it any longer. The soreness that she felt within her was definitely her own doing.