The Lamb and the Gray Battle

September 23, 2022

Nianzang whined, "It's been a week and Mam still hasn't answered me."

"I'm trying to work," Diyiren said, bent over his desk, a stack of parchment before him. His father wasn't adverse to computers, but he preferred printed documents. 

Nianzang took one of the long strips of hair that was loose at his father's forehead. His father never had a single strand out of place.

"Don't pretend you're fine," Nianzang said.

Diyiren slapped his son's hand away with the calligraphy brush. "My hair is being stubborn."

The hair was still rod straight, but his father always wore it back, his Tang Dynasty-style crown perched on his head. Like all demons and strong demon bloods, Diyiren's hair was a living part of his body. Nianzang could hardly believe even a molecule was in visible revolt.

"I've never," Nianzang said. And because it was so shocking, he said again, "NEVER seen your hair loose like this. Five-hundred-and-seventy-six years, A-Die."

"You don't remember," Diyiren said, his eyes on the latest stack of papers. "When you were poisoned as a baby, my hair was unruly. I couldn't keep it tied up."

Diyiren pored over a long, involved document that basically said, "We, in the territory of Jiangsu, need more money."

"A-Die," Nianzang said, sitting on the stack of papers.

Diyiren rolled his eyes, but with his head lowered and his eyelids narrow from his Asian heritage, the action went unnoticed.

"What do you expect me to do?" Diyiren said. "She hasn't responded to me since she left me in fourteen-forty-six. Ask BoBo."

Nianzang twisted on the desk, then stretched out like a diva. "BoBo just gives an oily smile and tells me to be patient. Laoshi and Djehuty are less useful. Sutekh is an ass. Why do you let him stay here?"

"BoBo likes him. The two have a lot in common. You know all about BoBo and Satan, but you probably didn't learn about Sutekh and Wsjr. Look up the stories."

Nianzang crushed the papers, swam across the desk and begged his father's attention.

"I have spoken directly to Taffy," Diyiren said, the calligraphy brush twitching between his knuckles. "Your mother is in mourning. I have contacted the President of the PC States. He won't return my messages."

"Have any of the presidents of PC spoken to you?"

"Before they declared themselves the Pure and the Clean, yes, some of them did."

In fact, it wasn't long after the Louisiana Purchase that Thomas Jefferson discovered why the French were selling the land and begged Diyiren to wrangle the demon bloods. Diyiren was meticulous with the treaty negotiations.

Nianzang sat up, papers fluttering to the floor, said, "Just go and make him listen to you."

"We aren't in the 1700s. I can't—and won't," Diyiren emphasized, holding up a claw, "use force to get the man to listen to me. Taffy has filed an injunction, so for now, we wait. From what she could gather, no one started an autopsy. No one suspects that Bronagh was anything but an old woman."

"Mam shouldn't stay in PC."

"By all means, tell her that. I promise you, you'll never hear from her again."

"You're so melodramatic." Nianzang sank to the floor cushion where his father was knelt and climbed into his lap. 

Diyiren said, "You're calling me melodramatic?"

Nianzang threw his arms around his neck. Diyiren suppressed a laugh. Then Nianzang twisted to the papers.

"Do you really need to do this?"

He lifted the pages, wrinkled and crushed. One of the documents was about making driving while texting illegal. Wasn't that already a law?

Diyiren kissed his son's cheek.

"Get up. I have to work."

Nianzang dashed the papers to the floor. "I hate—" he screamed, but he bit the words before he finished the sentence. "I hate that you can turn your emotions off like they don't exist. I hate how cold you are."

Diyiren didn't have an answer, not a satisfactory one anyway, so he clutched his calligraphy brush between his knuckles and signed the proposed tax law and set it aside to be filed away.

"Last week, you seemed almost human."

Diyiren said, "Last week, I had hope that your mother would return to us, that I could finally talk to her again and that we could find a way to work through our differences. This week, I don't have that luxury. This week, I am reminded that your mother is an emotional, selfish bitch and she will stay in PC for the rest of her life just to spite me."

Well, at least he's talking about her, Nianzang thought. His father could go years without referencing her.

Last week had been nice, his father lying with him, telling him about his youth, about those early days with Mam.