the unsung.

amah.

    Amah's house sits atop a hill, somewhere in the mountains of northern China. None but a chosen few can find it.

    It's surrounded by trees, and an occasional cloud of mist covers it from common eyes, along with a handful of ancient spells which have stood there for as long as she has.

    She's lived there for a thousand years.

    It's modest for a kind of castle, where the exterior is uncolorfully traditional — but the interior has evolved consistently with the times. Some of the aunties even said that once, in the fifties, Amah had had linoleum chequered tile installed in the kitchen, like something out of old Hollywood. Or perhaps a cheap foreign diner. Either way, such a design choice was not particularly well received.

    Now, it's bare — neutral in style as much as in atmosphere. The walls are the color of eggshells. The floors are either greystone or wood in the residences. Each of the levels, which they call the apartments, houses a specific kind of Amah's favored children. Like the aunties, who gab about world domination over hours of mahjong. Or the orphans, a select few of Amah's descendants who need looking after. The penthouse apartment, however, has always been reserved for her beloved magic eight, whom she lovingly regards as the spirits of her first children, the first tigers.

    Those who live in Amah's house are those who need her — each with a special story, each one a rescue case. But this does not mean Amah does not care for her other children, in fact she cares for them very much.

    Some speak to her at night, asking her for blessings and protection, almost like prayer. Some don't even know she exists. But she hears and sees them all, looks after them and guides them, even indirectly, towards their worded fates.

    Amah has outlived her children, their children, and a millennium worth of generations of children. But she still remembers every single one by name. Her curse, her blessing, a life fully lived. For each generation, her eight tigers return. It is only she who teaches them to roar.

"First it comes in dreams, like a fire inside, building all over, pulling you like gravity towards being something else.
Then you wake, in humbling darkness, realizing it's what you already are — what you've always been.
Fearing that which you never expected, and yet somehow always knew,
eventually,
inevitably,
Amah calls you home —
and the tiger answers."
- Song Kiho, The Blue Tiger (1986-2014)