I own nothing regarding Disney's Mulan, nor do I own rights to the original Ballad of Hua Mulan.
NOTE: This story was personal request by a fellow author to feature a physical conflict between Mushu and Hayabusa.
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Therefore proper dedication and co-credit goes to
Sammy Heroes
Thank you for being so wonderfully patient.
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The tricky thing about shadows is that they aren't always noticed straightway. They simply just loom there overhead like leaves over grass, and they won't show themselves until the sun's light shifts behind to actually reveal them moving.
Mulan is fairly unware of the certain unseen entity that has been following her around—hopping and flitting about the dark corners of the garden—waiting to attack ever since she had returned home alive and free from the Hun Invasion last spring.
Only at night, beneath the full moon can the sound of a falcon's fierce cry be heard in the distance; and sometimes, when the eastern winds stand still, there is a rustling of large golden wings taking flight from the blossom trees.
He's waiting. Watching. Hunting.
He would avenge his master's life and have Mulan's eyes presented upon a golden plate.
Shang is made General when this nesting season is almost at its end. Soon after that, he decides to it is only fair to court Mulan in a proper manner.
Marriage is a silent agreement between them already for he's asked her one day in the gardens to know for sure...but, it is the elders they must appease first. They haven't met his mother yet and parents in general are typically the ones who fret over their child's wedding and their dowry more than the beloved couple does.
Liwah Yuhan, the late General's widow, is still dwelling comfortably within the inner city thanks to the funds Shang had inherited from his father. She's also from a highly bred family herself, so, her set arrival to the outer field country raises some added anticipation.
The Fa Estate itself is on the larger side, as it is very old, showing off a good amount of traditional charm. Though still, the wood creaks sometimes under their padding feet, and the pillars are cracked at the tops and the main entrance occasionally smells of molting rooster feathers in the blistering heat.
They see a carriage rolling into the open courtyard out front, which is followed by nine lady-maids riding in behind on four white matching horses.
"Mulan, stand straight," Li tuts towards her daughter as she plucks at Mulan's clothing. "It's unfortunate as it is with your hair being not as long as it should be. It can hardly hold in one flower jewel these days."
"She looks the way she should look," Fa Zhou comments simply, voice low and gruff and unaffected. He always attempting to appear as tall as possible while against leaning on a walking stick.
"Oh? Our daughter should look like a woman who doesn't even know how to present herself to the city's wealthiest people?
"She looks like a woman who has been to war. So stop fretting about that. It's done."
Mulan clears her throat, soothing the elders. "Perhaps Mother is right. It might best for everyone today if we do not dwell on the Hun Invasion."
"My mother is strict," Shang responds accordantly. "But Mulan's story is what intrigues her most," he adds quickly, glancing straight at her. "You are the reason she agreed to come in the first place."
"Well, then," Li huffs, feeling a bit better about the situation, "let us go greet her properly, yes?"
"Wait, where's Nana?" Mulans asks, suddenly noticing their lack in numbers.
"She is still sleeping," Fa Zhou tells her. "At her age, the change of season is hard on her bones. We decided to let her rest for now."
During their daily meal, the elders have settled around Shang and Mulan at the table.
Wine is poured. Tea is made. Water is offered. Vegetables are served hot and steaming on their platters. Their plucked chicken is cooked tenderly enough to peel apart easily with their teeth. Fresh fruits are passed around eagerly due to it being almost that time of the year when the trees and roots start to soil.
Fa Zhou keeps quiet and appropriately observes everything.
It is actually Liwah Yuhan and Li who do most of the talking about the future marriage rituals and their idealistic grandchildren.
Shang bows his head each time his mother mentions something to him, and Mulan's eyes are steady on their main guest as well. Liwah Yuhan, all washed up and still respectably attractive in her upper years presents an air of practiced grace and maternal concern over the women in their family.
Mulan can sense it is all up to her to prove herself worthy for marriage, for Shang's sake. China, the land itself, was eventually won over by her courage, although, Mulan somehow knows better. This is her mother-in-law testing her now. This trail of character is far more personal than any current war she could go fight in.
Though Mulan truthfully cannot help but to wonder what Liwah Yuhan could be expecting of her. A War Hero? Or, is it a common household wife who must remain poised and obedient whenever she's at her husband's side? Naturally, Mulan wants to please everyone here right now, but she will not lie to fool them. She is an honest woman—well, that is—she tries to be as honest as each situation allows her to be. There, of course, has been days where being deceitful was the only way to survive.
"I do prefer a woman to be practical in her thinking," Liwah Yuhan says in conclusion, and the room falls into silence. The attention drifts to Mulan, and only to Mulan. She can feel it prick her skin. "Overall, despite the lives you've saved, going off to war in your father's armor seems very reckless, Fa Mulan, Woman Hero of China."
"In my experience, madam, sometimes being reckless was necessary," Mulan replies cautiously. She suddenly thinks about red dragons that can breathe fire and she remembers stealing the last canon on a whim to make the snow roar down the mountainside.
She finally meets Shang's thoughtful gaze, and it appears that he too, has his own memories reeling on inside his head.
"Alright, but surely...," Liwah Yuhan continues, "...you can understand my worries, even if I've come here to agree to the marriage."
"What do you mean?"
"I can see that you are not a common woman, Fa Mulan. That is my worry. You are not always practical. You are impulsive and high-spirited. You have a warm light in your soul that burns brighter every moment."
Mulan does not know if she should smile at this or not. Is that flattery? It doesn't sound like a bad thing. Liwah Yuhan doesn't even sound that angry. She seems humbly amazed. Interested. So, why the brief look of hesitation? "...And that worries you, madam?"
"Yes." Shang's mother confesses genuinely. "Because I may never have fought with a dagger or an arrow, but I am the one who knows what it is like living as a War General's wife. It's a duty filled with strict responsibility and regulations. And we never truly know what the future holds for my son. Or for you. All you have to base your affections on is the past. That sort of choice, was a one-time passing...and you are a once-in-a-century rare woman, unlike the rest of us. It will never be the same way again as it was at the Emperor's Palace or at your training camp. Things will be different from here onward. I fear that this marriage will put out that flame of yours. You may become bored with such chains restricting you. What then?"
"I—" Mulan, candidly, was not excepting that to be the woman's answer. "I—could never be bored with your son, madam. He's an honorable man."
Liwah Yuhan smiles somewhat faintly, sadly. "That...isn't what I asked."
Shang is equally dismayed. He's confused and longs to right all the wrongs. He moves in to interject Mulan's next shaky remark, "Mother, please, may I? Mulan is loyal, no matter what happens. And she's brave. She is exactly—"
He can't finish his plea. For the doors suddenly slide open with a loud clack!
The wooden frame moans and the paper in the walls tremble around them.
In storms Grandmother Fa, still dressed in her sleeping robe with her long weathered white hair flowing down and unbound. She stomps through the sun-room in a type of blind frenzy, ignoring Fa Zhou's questions. She simply forces herself between where Mulan and Shang are kneeling and grabs Mulan's face with both hands, lifting up her chin for better inspection. "Let me have a good look at you, love."
Shang and Fa Li both gaze upon the old woman in quiet shock.
Mulan can only blink. "What's w-wrong, Nana?"
Grandmother Fa then turns Mulan's cheeks side to side one last time before she sighs. "Hm. It must have been all a dream."
"What was? What's happened?"
"I saw your face, love...," she says with a tone holding great significance, "it was bleeding, and mangled. Your eyes were gone."
"Gone?"
"Scratched out it seemed like."
"Oh. How dreadful, Grandmother!" Li protests at once in full embarrassment. She peers at Shang's mother who is now busy staring at the whole scene as if a ghost had just floated out from their table. "That's no way to talk over our most important meal of the day! We have company!"
Nevertheless, Grandmother Fa doesn't release Mulan quiet yet while looking down into the girl's deep, dark, dark, passionate eyes. She's steadfast in her reasoning, "It's an omen, Fa Li. I know it is. Something is coming, and it's because of your girl. It's because of what you did, Mulan."
Three days pass.
This night's storm is ruthless and it rages on well past dawn.
Then, it stops, just as nothing had happened. The gardens surrounding the Fa Estate finally grow still and the aftermath brings a clear white sky on the horizon.
White is a color for spirits.
Up by the Prayer Temple, Cri-Kee sits shivering upon the windowsill. He lets out a single chirp of woe and displeasure.
"I know, my little friend," Mushu acknowledges him as he winds himself up tightly around a lit torch above the graves. "I feel it too."
Shang gets lost in thought.
It seems as though there will be always something he must worry about with Mulan—whether it's finding out that she is a female posing as a male solider, or that she follows her heart over following her duties and nearly getting three Grand Princesses drowned along the way to Qui Gong—or now, having her strange, yet rather bold-mannered grandmother barging in on during his mother's first crucial visit here. To make it feel worse, the old hag was all frantic about seeing these supposed omens.
"I...suppose I cannot be too surprised by your grandmother's behavior these days, can I?" he mutters while he lulls with Mulan along the edge of the running creek. "From the first time you had invited to me to eat supper with your family, I could tell she was not...like other women. She's out-spoken. And evidently the superstitious type."
"She's seen dragons in her dreams before...," Mulan recalls instantly, "...and she knew I ran off to war before my father and mother did. Her dreams can be severely truthful sometimes. She even told me once that Oracles ran in her family as a child in her home village. Spirits can show her strange things when she's asleep."
Shang's chest rises and falls with a soft breath of derision. Truly, Mulan's head will get too far up in the clouds if no one stops her.
Nevertheless, as her intended-husband, he has vowed to protect her and adore her regardless.
He just prays to all the Ancestors that he may be able to do so.
Mulan does not sleep that night. She can't.
The sure whispering of the wind does all but dissipate. It grows louder in her ears.
As she glances over the trees paled by moonlight, there is something odd flying out there...a blackened shape drifting over the hill. It curves downward and ducks out of sight.
She sighs.
The tricky thing about shadows is that...they aren't always noticed straightway.