The Dragon's Flower by Wyn Estelle Owens

Author:Wyn Estelle Owens [Owens, Wyn Estelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-08-08T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE --- THE JOURNEY AND THE DISCOVERY

Despite the faint cloud that Shichiro’s current situation cast of Hanako, she found that she enjoyed traveling very much—except, of course, when Akashi Keiji decided it was a great time for her to get down and walk for a spell.

“No one will want to serve an empress that can’t walk more than a mile before fainting from acute exhaustion,” he reasoned. “How will you ever manage to navigate your Imperial Palace otherwise?”

Hanako pouted unhappily, munching on a leftover rice ball from her breakfast as she walked in the wake of the little prancing fox. “I have never fainted from exhaustion, Akashi Keiji-sama. You are exaggerating.”

Akashi Keiji shrugged his shoulders (or at least, she assumed he did. It was rather hard to tell considering her traveling companion was currently a fox). “Well, you never know. It certainly could happen if we don’t work on building up your stamina. Look on the bright side, though, your stamina has definitely improved in the past several days.”

So Hanako was forced to slowly walk fifteen minutes at a time if Akashi Keiji deemed the terrain easy or safe enough for her passage.

She took another bite of her rice ball and chewed unhappily, wondering how much time had passed, and how soon she would be released from her misery. With that, The Clever One stopped and suddenly morphed into his larger self. “All right, fifteen minutes are up,” he said.

Hanako happily climbed onto his back, and he set off again, running over the mountains.

Normally Hanako enjoyed the experience. Today, however, the faint rocking caused by the fox’s loping stride seemed to make the princess’ stomach rebel, stirring uneasily within her gut.

The few times she had felt similarly back at the pagoda, the handmaidens had advised her to eat something to settle her rioting stomach. And conveniently, Hanako had the rest of a rice ball in her hands at that very moment. She popped it in her mouth and immediately made a face. Somehow, she didn’t recall her rice ball tasting quite so… not bad necessarily, but unwelcome?... when she was eating it only a minute before. Nevertheless, Hanako powered through, chewing and swallowing, and waited for the inevitable easing of her gut.

Except, however, that the easing wasn’t as inevitable as she hoped. Instead, she felt a bubbling wave beginning to claw its way up her throat, accompanied by a sudden twisting, hollow feeling in her stomach, and she yanked suddenly at the Fox’s scruff.

The Fox stopped immediately, immensely shocked at the vaguest of ideas of the gentle little Empress committing such violent actions, and Hanako tumbled down off his back and scrambled for the nearest bush, where she proceed to collapse on her knees and vomit the entirety of her breakfast, including that last ill-fated rice ball.

It was some time before she was done, but at last she sat back and washed her mouth out carefully with water from the canteen that the Clever One had shoved daintily towards her.

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