Sun Ce pushed the pillow in the strange bed around restlessly. He had taken a leak, turned the pillows over, and he still couldn't get back to sleep. Maybe it was this moonlight. The guest room shutters hardly seemed to block it out at all.

He thought about "comforting himself," but his sworn brother Zhou Yu was sleeping in the bed next to him, as was common among male close friends and brothers in their era. Zhou Yu seemed to sleep like the dead, but there was always that chance in a thousand that he would choose that moment to wake up. He and his real younger brother Sun Quan had walked in on each other doing it several times, and it was not something he wanted to replicate with his sworn brother.

With a frustrated sigh, he got up and dressed as quietly as possible in his usual clothes, much more comfortable than the formal clothes he had been wearing all day, and slipped out for a walk in the Qiao's gardens.

The cold November moon shone off the paving stones as he walked. Today he and Zhou Yu had delivered the bride prices to the Qiaos for their two daughters, and it had also been the first time either of them had seen the girls they would be wedding in three months.

He grinned. He was pretty sure he had been a lot more pleased with his bride than Zhou Yu had been with her younger sister. Xiao Qiao was very beautiful, but she was a very beautiful child. Not that you could expect any more from a thirteen year old, and as Zhou Yu had muttered as they got ready for bed, "Well, they grow up, right?"

Fourteen-year-old Da Qiao—they would be fifteen and fourteen when the wedding actually happened, as Madam Qiao had said several times, possibly more to reassure herself than anyone else—was definitely in the "growing up" phase. One was a rosebud, while the other was opening her petals. Very, very lovely petals.

Sun Ce and Zhou Yu would be twenty. A perfectly honourable match, especially compared to the counteroffer from Cao Cao. The man was older than their father, and already married to boot. No one was fooled by the idea that he wanted them as wives for his sons.

As he exited a curving tunnel of evergreens, he suddenly came across another person, sitting on a bench by a fish pond. A very small person, who turned towards the intruder and revealed herself to be his fiancée. The tear streaks on her face reflected the moon even more brightly than the stones had.

"Ah, Lady Qiao," he said, stopping, embarrassed. "I didn't mean… why are you out here? You shouldn't be out alone in the cold like this…"

She turned toward the ground and wiped her face with a handkerchief. "My lord, it's… it's nothing important… I just didn't want to wake up my sister. We share a room."

They were both silent for a minute, Da Qiao pulling her coat tightly around herself and Sun Ce trying to figure out if he ought to offer to walk her back to her room or if that would be more compromising than letting her walk back alone.

"Uh… I hope you're not crying about being engaged to me," he said, then instantly regretted it. What if she was crying about that? Didn't she have a right to her own feelings on the subject?

But she shook her head. "No, it wasn't that. I'm just worried about my sister." She let loose a deep sigh. "What is your sworn brother like? Is he kind?"

Sun Ce scratched the back of his neck. Kind? He hadn't really given a thought to Zhou Yu in the role of a husband… but why would he? He tried to think about it now. "Well, he's a gentleman, I guess. Girls always seem to like him a lot."

She looked up quickly at that, shocked, and he realized she may have gotten the wrong idea… well, the right idea but also the wrong idea. "Uh, not that he'll keep running around like that once he's married, I'm sure! I mean, I can tell you I'm not planning on it!"

She blushed and looked away, and he tugged on the end of his ponytail. Great, his first non-rote conversation with his future wife and he was totally blowing it. "Uh… he likes to play music? He's really good at playing the flute and the qin, I mean that's what people tell me. I don't really have that much of an ear for it, to be honest."

"That might be good… she likes to dance…" she said, but it was strained, and she shuddered. "I'm sorry. I'm insulting you both. Please forgive me, my lord."

"Don't worry about it, Lady Qiao, honestly. Getting married… young girls like you, they never like the idea, right?"

"My sister doesn't have any idea about the idea," she said softly. "She still plays with dolls and sleeps with a fake panda. His name is Mr. Panda. She can't sleep without him."

He had to laugh at that, then thought about Zhou Yu being introduced on his wedding night to Mr. Panda, and laughed even harder, to the point that he needed to sit down. He took a seat on the extreme other end of the bench. She looked over at him, and she had a slight smile despite herself.

When he managed to catch his breath, he said, "Look, Lady Qiao, would it reassure you if I talked with Zhou Yu about it?"

"Would you tell him that I don't think she's ready to be married? I know we have to be to someone, otherwise my father will have no way to avoid handing us over to that man without losing face." She spoke so seriously, looking at him directly, then suddenly flushed and looked down. "She's so small…" she said, barely loud enough to be heard, and he knew at once that Da Qiao did have some "idea about the idea", as she had put it.

"You leave it to me, Lady Qiao, I'll make sure he waits until she's ready," he said, although he didn't have clue one about how he was going to even bring up this topic with his sworn brother, let alone inform him that he had promised something he knew very well he didn't have any right to dictate.

"Oh, thank you my lord," she breathed. "You relieve me beyond measure."

"Glad to hear it," he said. "You'd better go back to bed before someone catches you out here."

She nodded, stood up, bowed, and walked off.

He watched her go, and then chuckled again. Mr. Panda, oh boy.

—

Zhou Yu had to shake Sun Ce awake the next morning. "Bofu? Bofu, wake up. What's the matter with you?"

"Ahh, leave me alone, I slept like shit," he said, rolling away from his friend.

"You need to get up and be dressed in about five minutes. I've let you sleep as long as I can. Open your eyes and look at the time."

Sun Ce groaned, but sat up. Zhou Yu was already fully dressed including outerwear, and there was even remains of a breakfast on the table. His sworn brother hadn't been kidding then. "Uh, did you leave anything for me?"

"I left you a few meat buns," he said. "Get dressed quickly, I'm going to go see to the loading of the baggage. And dress neatly, our future in-laws will certainly intend to see us off."

Da Qiao and Xiao Qiao, each conspicuously wearing some of their bride price gold, stood next to their mother and waved as the firecrackers burst, startling the horses into going at a faster pace.

He couldn't bring up his promise to Da Qiao on horseback, with their retinue all around. There would be plenty of time later… he had three months…

—

So, three months passed…

It was the morning of the day before their wedding, and Zhou Yu suggested they go deer hunting. Sun Ce loved hunting, and he immediately said, "Yeah, sure, just the two of us!"

Sun Quan, who was standing nearby, could not conceal his hurt. Sun Ce laughed awkwardly and rubbed his brother's shoulder.

"Sorry bro," he said. "It's our last day of freedom, y'know? Someday when you get hitched, I promise I'll go hunting with you one on one, alright?"

"Yeah," muttered the boy, quickly leaving.

"Was that necessary?" Zhou Yu inquired. "He feels left out even when we include him."

"I wanna talk to you, alright? Let's kill something first, though."

Zhou Yu wasn't usually as keen on the actual hunting part of the hunt, but today he was just as intent as Sun Ce. They didn't speak as they roamed the forest, the breath from their horses raising like wisps of clouds in the frosty air. There were very few sources of running water in this weather, and they had a blind set up by one of them. It wasn't long before they were fortunate enough to startle a young stag. They hit it with two arrows before it could run, and then it was just the chase, waiting for it to tire and collapse.

Sun Ce started the process of field dressing it while Zhou Yu got out the rope to hang it from a tree and the containers to collect the desirable organs. The deer hung, Sun Ce took a seat on a nearby fallen tree and waited for his friend to join him, but he seemed to be fiddling around with something by the deer.

"So, uh, what I wanted to talk to you about…" he said, since his friend was taking such an unaccountably long time to join him. "I had a talk with Da Qiao—"

"When?"

"Uh… y'know…"

"No, I really don't," said Zhou Yu, finally joining him on the log. "When did you have a chance to speak with her alone?"

"I went for a walk at night and found her out in the gardens, ok? That part isn't important. The point is—"

"She shouldn't have been out there by herself!"

"Would you shut the fuck up for two seconds Gongjin? She didn't want to wake up Xiao Qiao with her tears over how you were going to destroy her little sister's vagina, ok?"

"Are you serious? That's what you talked about?"

"Obviously she didn't put it that way, but yes," snapped Sun Ce.

"And you told her… what? That you were going to talk to me about it?"

"Well, I kind of told her I would make sure nothing would happen," said Sun Ce, rubbing his neck guiltily.

Zhou Yu sighed in exasperation and ran a hand through his hair, which didn't seem like an encouraging sign, but then he said, "Well, It's a good thing that I brought these then, isn't it?"

He pulled two flasks out of his sleeve, and held one out to Sun Ce, who took it. It was filled with the deer's blood, only just cooling.

"Oh, so you already had a plan? Huh, clever."

"Of course," he said contemptuously. "I can't believe you would have thought it even required discussing. Poshen would be the literal truth. [A Mandarin phrase for "deflower a virgin," literally means "break the body".] I'm not an animal."

"Well, that's great to hear," said Sun Ce, offering the flask back.

"That one's for you anyway," Zhou Yu said. "I don't want you pounding on my door in the middle of the night because you realize you forgot to do something about it until then. Or worse, trying to cut a vein and ending up bleeding to death."

"Uh…" said Sun Ce, taken aback.

"Bofu, you weren't planning on consummating… were you?!"

"Well, mine is older!" he said, defensively.

"By a year!"

"A lot can happen in a year, Gongjin!"

"Did we see the same girl in Lujiang?" demanded Zhou Yu. "Her fan was bigger than she was! Are you telling me you're actually attracted to her? I would never have thought… she's nothing like the women you usually go after."

"Of course she isn't. She's a lady."

"Bofu, seriously? Even fine ladies are as different from each other as men are. The two Qiaos are different, and then there's your sister—I know she's only twelve, but you don't seriously think she's going to be like Da Qiao in three years, do you? Being a lady doesn't necessarily mean being timid and shrinking and crying at everything."

"Just because I caught her crying one time doesn't mean she cries at everything."

"Well, how do you know that? You met her once! Look, don't be stubborn about this, Bofu. At least give her a few months to get used to you, and for you to get used to her. Think of it as an extended engagement."

"Alright, fine," Sun Ce muttered, sticking the flask into a pocket.

—

When they finally made it back to the stables, a very nervous looking retainer practically pounced on them. "Lady Wu has been asking for you, my lords. For the last several hours. Repeatedly."

The two men approached the meeting with Sun Ce's mother with a certain amount of trepidation, but only because they knew she was a woman who did not like to be kept waiting. She was a master planner and completely in her element arranging a lavish double wedding banquet for her son and his sworn brother. Doubtless she wanted to run them over the coals over some ceremonial issue.

She wanted to run them over the coals alright.

"As your fathers are both dead," she began, "a certain distasteful task falls to me."

The two young men exchanged a panicked glance. She couldn't mean…

She could. "You are both adults now," she said, but in a skeptical tone, "and thus I expect you to listen to this with maturity, in silence. No giggling or cringing or blushing. I know very well that up until now you have both carried on as young men always do. Leading your younger brother into errors beyond his years, I might add, Xiao Ce. However, that is all to be in the past now. Whatever harlots you take from now on, you will do so discreetly. Preferably the kind who complete their transactions for coin, and thus will not cause embarrassing scandals in search of other compensations."

Lady Wu glowered at both indiscreet harlot-taking men for a moment, then continued. "In addition. You may think yourselves experienced, but this kind of experience is not relevant with a young lady of quality. In fact, quite the reverse. I understand that young men are vulgar enough to boast about their prowess in terms of size and stamina. Let me assure you that ladies desire and require neither."

Sun Ce did not know where to look. He found himself staring at the faint moustache on his mother's upper lip, which only added to the overall grossness of the experience.

"Your sole goal, as caring husbands, should be to importune your wives as little as possible—both in duration and in frequency. The first, third and fifth days after the cessation of bleeding are the only times you should ever trouble them at all, if you wish to obtain sons for yourselves. If you cannot control yourselves, you should never speak a word of complaint if they give you daughters instead. As well brought up girls, I am sure they would accommodate whatever disgusting desires you have without complaining directly, but if I notice you mistreating them, I shall know how to act. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes," both men said quickly, hoping that this meant they could leave, but Lady Wu pinned them in their chairs with another searing glance.

"Remain as you are," she snapped. "I am not finished. Now, first, we should discuss what to do if either of them become overcome by terror tomorrow night…"

—

"You could have saved your breath in the forest, Gongjin," Sun Ce said when they finally escaped. "I'm never having sex again. I'm going to go castrate myself right now with my tonfas."

Zhou Yu laughed nervously. "With tonfas..?"

"Yeah, I'm not sure how it's going to work either. Maybe I should just beat myself unconscious and hope I wake up with no memory of any of that."

"How about we try wine instead," said Zhou Yu.

"Oh man, that is a much better idea," said Sun Ce, clapping an arm around his sworn brother's shoulders. "I knew I kept you around for a reason."

—

As Sun Ce and Da Qiao entered their nuptial chamber, the young marquis suddenly said, "Oh, shit!"

Da Qiao's veiled face turned upwards towards her new husband's sharply. He couldn't see her face, but he could still guess its expression, and he flushed even deeper than the wine had already done for him. "Uh, sorry, I just realized I forgot something. I gotta go grab it. I'll be back soon. You just, uh, make yourself comfortable here…"

He darted off towards his rooms, praying to whatever god or ancestor might be hanging around that the servants had not collected his clothes from where he had shed them, barely conscious, after his drinking session last night with Zhou Yu. The blood flask was still in the pocket!

Fortunately, with the servants all overwhelmed with the banquet preparations, the clothing had been left exactly where it was, and he breathed a sigh of relief as he retrieved the flask. He wondered if Zhou Yu had gotten into the same kind of trouble. No, definitely not; he never forgot things like this. He sighed, and decided to take his time walking back, so he wouldn't be out of breath or panicked. Time to be the smooth, caring, sort-of-husband-sort-of-fiancé-sort-of-brother-thing.

As he opened the door into the nuptial chamber again, he was so startled that he dropped the flask, where it rolled off. He didn't see where it rolled because he was staring at his new bride transfixed. She had a guilty expression on her face now, but the expression she had had when he opened the door, combined with how it had suddenly changed and the way one of her bare arms had quickly come out from under the blanket… "Were you… were you doing what I think you were doing?"

"Ah," she said, blushing fiercely and looking down at the floor—he followed the gaze and realized she was focusing on the pile of bridal clothing, with the underclothing on top. "I'm sorry…"

"No, really, really, don't be," he said. "I'm just… how…?"

"I'm a virgin," she said quickly. "I swear I am. You'll find out for yourself." She still wasn't looking at him.

"Ok, I never doubted you were a virgin," he said. "But I still didn't think… you… you touch yourself?"

"It's something I sort of discovered by accident a while ago," she muttered. "It was… it was hard to wait…"

"Like… hard to wait tonight, or hard to wait generally?"

"Ah, both, I guess," she said with a nervous laugh. "Is that bad?"

"No, no, definitely not!" he said, glad he didn't have to go looking for wherever that flask of blood had rolled after all. Sun Ce approached the bed and sat down on the corner. "Uh… so… do you know what to expect?"

She looked at his face again tentatively, and seemed to relax a very tiny amount at his friendly, pleasantly surprised expression. "Well… my mother talked to me about it when I first started bleeding… that was about a year ago… the way she put it, she said that it is either horrible or it's wonderful, and if you let a man fool you into giving in, it will be horrible, but… but with the right husband… that it could be… something nice…"

"Well, I'd like it to be that," he said seriously. "Did she, uh… describe the… mechanics?"

"Last night she did," she said with a sigh, "although I don't know why she thought it was necessary. I mean, horses and pigs and sheep and even ducks all do something like it, don't they?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess they do."

"Even Xiao Qiao just thought it sounded funny," she frowned. "You did talk to her husband, right? She's definitely not ready."

"I did, but it turned out I didn't need to. He already planned on marking the sheets another way."

"….was that what that flask was for?"

"Well, yes," he admitted. "But… it seems like you're saying I don't need it?"

"You don't need it," she said shyly, and he reached for the tie on his hanfu.

—

"Bofu, you absolute son of a bitch," said Zhou Yu when Sun Ce hailed him the next morning, surprising the latter very much. "You couldn't wait even one night?"

"Uh, is it that obvious?" he said, rubbing the back of his neck with a nervous laugh.

"You had the smuggest shit-eating grin I've ever seen," he said. "It couldn't have been more obvious if you tattooed it across your stupid forehead. What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Gongjin, you really, really, don't understand. She was ready."

"Yeah, after the amount of wine you put away at the banquet I bet she seemed so," snapped Zhou Yu, not at all mollified.

"Look, let's talk about this somewhere private," he said, pulling his friend towards his rooms. When he closed the door behind him, he took a deep breath and said, "I promise I intended to use the flask. But I realized I forgot it."

"Oh, and so that was a sign from heaven, huh?"

"Where did this interrupting habit of yours come from, huh? Look, if you're sexually frustrated, take it out on one of my mother's discreet harlots, not me. Can I explain or not?"

"Fine," he sighed, sitting down in a chair. "Let's hear you justify it."

"So I ran back to my rooms to see if the flask was still in my clothing from the night before, which it was. Then I caught my breath and took my time walking back so I wouldn't be flustered. When I open the door, she was touching herself."

Zhou Yu stared at him. "She wasn't."

"She absolutely was," he said, the shit-eating grin back in place. "Things just went off from there, alright? I won't kiss and tell, but it was fantastic."

"Of all the… Bofu, do you know how I spent my wedding night? Being introduced to a stuffed bear."

"Mr. Panda, I've heard," said Sun Ce, cracking up.

"Oh, it gets worse! She said she had been told what to expect by her mother, and she was all ready to go, so she said! She asked me to excuse her if she started laughing, and then asked if she was supposed to go on her hands and knees like a horse, or should she put her head down on the bed like a duck does?"

"Oh, you poor bastard," said Sun Ce, convulsing with laughter. "Better than a bucket of ice water, huh?"

"You said it," he sighed. "When I told her I thought she might need to grow up a little bit before we could do that, she just said, 'Whew, that's great Lord Zhou Yu! I'm actually pretty tired!'" His imitation of his wife's squeaky voice pushed Sun Ce so far that the laughter was actually starting to hurt.

"Well, just wait a year or so," Sun Ce managed, when he could breathe again. "If she's anything like her sister, it'll be worth it."