In the early dawn of the seventh month of the year outside of a small city in Kou, refugees from Kei huddled against the city walls, as though merely its proximity would offer protection from youma and wild animal attacks. A lone figure approached them from the road, dust-stained from travel and wearing the apparel of a traveling minstrel. He first approached waifs huddled at the edge of the group, gesturing urgently as he spoke to them. A group of the waifs broke off, drifting in opposite directions as they urgently approached other people, speaking quickly with many dramatic gestures. And on and on the process went, until the outside of the city walls were as lively as the center of a marketplace as the crowds buzzed with hurried conversations.

Amongst the whispering of the refugees were the tidings of a sixteen-year-old taika girl ascending the throne of their homeland.

Hearing this, some rejoiced, claiming that surely the state of the country would improve and they would soon be able to go home. Others sighed in disappointment, the words 'another queen?' falling from their lips like acid. But towards the back of the crowd, huddled together in threadbare fabric, were a young man who looked to have just recently come of age and a little girl who looked to be only halfway through the first decade of her life. They were slumped directly against the wall, the little girl asleep in the man's protective embrace and wrapped in the folds of his cloak, her bone-thin body slumped peacefully in trust against his. The man was awake, eyes darting and following the conversations taking place with a distant look in his eyes, quite unlike the radiant joy or cynicism plastered across the faces of the others.

The pot of thin communal stew was offered to the man, who spooned a sparse amount into two rough wooden bowls and passed it on, not a word passing his lips as though his mind was in another place entirely. Even when he woke the little girl and offered her the bowl with more in it he didn't say a word, his eyes sliding past her and the crowd into the distance, as though he saw something which they could not, a look of contemplation settling across his face.

And unseen by the buzzing crowd, in the distance the man saw the faded memory of a memory, drifting up out of the early recesses of his mind and gaining clarity. And to him alone, the uneven, dirt road to Kei was instead carpeted with painstakingly embroidered fabric, a design that blended heavy blocks with wispy swirls in a dazzling array the colour of rubies and emeralds.

Sixteen years previous

In a port city of Kei along a backstreet leading to the open air market lay a tiny white-washed house with a candle winking cheerily through the small window. The lit room was the communal one which doubled as both the small weaving workshop during the day and their sleeping quarters during the night. In that room sat a young boy, fidgeting as he unenthusiastically carded wool, eyes darting furtively away from what he was doing and towards a young couple, his parents, who knelt at a low table in the center. They had a blood red ribbon laid out before them and were swiftly darting their needles threaded with bright spring green floss in and out, in and out, each working on opposite ends and working inwards.

The bright red fabric was quickly becoming dotted with miniscule bright green, and the small boy wondered at the bright opposing colours. He quite liked them together, much more than the dull faded greys and blues that normally he was forced to work with, but normally his parents did not share his childish tastes in loud colours. With no small wonderment, he looked away from the uninteresting white wool he was carding and towards the bright ribbon with colours that his parents would have scolded him for mixing. The rhythm of his grandmother's loom was full of angry jerks instead of the usual lulling steady, even pace. Whenever she glanced up from her work she shot her son and daughter-in-law looks of irritated disapproval until at last it seemed she couldn't hold herself back anymore.

"What in the blazes do you think you're doing, making such a gaudy ribbon to tie on a riboku? Exactly what kind of child do you think Heaven will give you for a such a mismatched array of colours in the most mismatched pattern I have seen in all my years in this workshop!"

His mother was one of the few people who was not afraid of his merchant matriarch grandmother, referred to as the Woven Dragon along the stalls in the market. His father claimed it was due to not being disciplined by her in her formative years the way that most of the the port city's middle-aged and younger generation had been. Whatever the reason, his mother found it amusing to provoke his grandmother and watch her swell at the uncommon display of insolence towards her. With a gleam of mischief in her eyes, his mother said, "Why Mother, the type of child I'm praying for, of course. Perhaps you do it differently in this city than where I grew up, but there we wove our prayers into the ribbon and presented them to the Lord God Creator at the riboku shrine. That's why people spend their time designing patterns and making the ribbon themselves instead of letting their mother-in-laws do it."

His grandmother's nostrils flared in a manner which when he was very small had made the boy believe that the Woven Dragon was preparing to breathe fire, and his father hastily intervened, "What she means is that we've thought it through and we think that an unorthodox child will be better for the times ahead."

"Well," his grandmother drawled sarcastically, "why didn't you just mix purple and orange and be done with it if you were looking for unorthodox?"

"Once the kirin appoints a ruler and a new dynasty begins," his father continued, ignoring the snide comment, "then there are bound to be lots of drastic changes. So we want a child who's strong enough to endure them, but flexible enough to bend. Someone who is kind and humble, but also strong willed and confident. The fierceness of red tempered by the peaceful influence of green. The solidity of a square with the freedom of swirls. A child who can greet a new era with a spirit of justice and be one of the ones to shape this country's future for the better."

His grandmother snorted derisively, still nettled by his mother's insolence. "Shaping the future of Kei... what high dreams for the child of simple weavers. And that's why you're putting two obnoxious colours side-by-side in a weird heavy and light mixed design? You'd do better to petition Tentei for a sensible child, with such fanciful parents the child will need sense far more!"

"Of course," his mother added with a sly smile, "we're also weaving in the prayer that our child be smart, but not fall to rigidly following predesignated concepts of what's is and isn't good and appropriate."

His grandmother swelled like a bullfrog at that, and unluckily for him at last noticed he was dawdling in his carding. "Ra Kanchuu, you lazy child, get back to work!"

"-san? Nii-san? Are you listening?"

Kanchuu snapped out of his inner reminiscing and glanced down at where his younger sister, Sunmi, crouched in front of him bouncing in childish excitement. More than 16 years had passed since his parents had first prayed for a sibling for him and tied a red and green ribbon to the riboku, yet his younger sister had only just turned six years old. Sunmi had been prayed for with a lilac and sunny yellow floral patterned ribbon the year that Yo-ou had ascended the throne, his parents certain that their third child would live in an era of growing prosperity with the new queen's enthronement. Yet before her fifth birthday Sunmi was disguised as a boy and handed to her brother, who had all of his parents' life savings thrust into his numb fingers and was told to take her to Kou, where their parents promised to meet them at the city they were currently at. That had been almost two years ago now. According to rumour, their home city had been raided by Yo-ou's army and all women found still on Kei soil or anyone who tried to stop the arrests were executed, by order of the queen.

"Why are you being so quiet?! Can't you hear? We have a queen! They say she's young and beautiful and has the prettiest red hair ever! D'you think she's nice? I bet she is, Keiki-sama picked her and kirin are the nicest people ever! Can we leave Kou now, please? Please? Please? I hate it here, my tummy's always hungry and there's no bed and youma show up and attack. Please? Please? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaassssssse!"

Sunmi only dimly remembered Kei or their parents, and had not been born yet to have seen the red and green contrastive ribbon carried off 16 years ago in a shoku. The only place it existed was in a distant childhood memory inside Kanchuu's mind and wherever the supernatural storm had carried it. The odds of their second sibling returning to this world had always seemed so phenomenally low that it had simply never crossed Kanchuu's mind past his years of childhood fantasy. The odds of refugees being the siblings of the taika queen were so unbelievable that Kanchuu would never in his life dare to send a message to her, especially in light of the recent civil war caused by the previous queen's sister. The siblings of the monarch were always merely ordinary people. If they wished for special rank then they needed to achieve it by their own merit, the same as everybody else. They were not otherwise allowed to be made sennin, or even to live in the royal palace.

"Pllllllllllllllleeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaassssssssssssssse! I promise I'll be good forever and ever! I wanna go home! Queen Kei will make everything good again and we'll have breakfast, lunch, AND supper everyday and I'll go to school and you'll be on the 'sen-sus' and we'll have a house again and... and... and we won't have to sit beside this stupid wall! Queen Kei is a good person and she'll make leaving people outside the gates at night 'ee-lee-gal'!"

Sunmi's big childish eyes implored him, her bony fingers clutching his arm and jiggling it as she spoke.

Although Sunmi was being hopelessly idealistic, she wasn't entirely wrong. In Kou they'd only ever be refugees, only by returning to Kei could they be citizens and be granted the institutions that came with it. Before he was forced to abruptly flee Kanchuu had been accepted into a university in Ei Province, where he had wanted to become an official. He had never been particularly ambitious beyond that, perfectly willing to settle for a low ranking position, not even requiring sennin status. After all, the only reason he had wanted to be an official was because it was the only career path that his parents would support over carrying on the family business. Yet now...

A child who can greet a new era with a spirit of justice and be one of the ones to shape this country's future for the better, his father had once said. It was meant for the second child, the lost ruby and emerald coloured ribbon, who perhaps was destined to realize that prayer in a manner greater than his parents had ever imagined in their wildest dreams.

For the first time, Kanchuu wondered what colour his ribbon had been, and what design had been on it.

Placing a hand on Sunmi's head and ruffling her dirty hair, Kanchuu chuckled, "Alright, alright, I get the picture. But don't think you can just weasel out of responsibility and place everything on poor Her Majesty's shoulders! Kei is even worse then Kou, you know, and Her Majesty going to be right swamped trying to sort the mess out. She's going to need all the help she can get! So, shall we go back to Kei and pitch in?"

Sunmi flung her skinny arms around his neck and squealed, "Thank you! thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou! You're the best!"

Smiling slightly and trying to move Sunmi off enough that he could breath, Kanchuu gazed down the distant road that he saw as lined with ruby and emerald, winding and leading somewhere far out of sight, to a 16-year-old girl he didn't know the name or face of who lived far above him in a Sea of Clouds. The road would be long and he may never reach the palace atop the Ryou'un Mountain at the end, but he'd like to think his journey would be one that would help her, whether she ever became aware of it or not.

After all, that was what family was for.

/**

* For those who care:

* Ra Kanchuu is the Japanese version of the name of the ancient Chinese author Luo Ben, better known as Luo Guangzhou, who wrote the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

* Sunmi's name comes from mixing the Chinese names of two of the women in the story, Lady Sun and Lady Mi.

* I haven't actually read the book, but I was running low on naming inspiration.

**/