The Mind's Journey Home
AUTHOR: Chata Saladbar
Chapter 4: The Kiss
With the excuse bringing him of some morning tea Mulan slips into the bedroom. She knows he will be asleep but she thinks how nice it would be for him to wake up to good sweet smell of tea. The day is just breaking and the house is still. She tiptoes across the room to the nightstand to place the tray down, trying not to steal glance at him. She looks anyway and her breath becomes caught. She first casts her eyes on his hands gently clutching the blanket around him, then his peaceful face with its even features flushed with the warmth of rest. He is intensely beautiful, a golden tanned figure against the wintery white silk sheets; and so deep in slumber he doesn't even stir when she clumsily clanks the pot with the cup as she blindly puts the tray down unable to take her eyes off of him.
It feels illicit, practically taboo to watch him sleep. She is suppose to turn around and leave now. She is not suppose to be in a room with a half dressed sleeping man. But the sight of him, laying on her bed, safely tucked away inside her home, with her favorite teapot and cup next to him--the sight stirs her heart. Instead she watches how the first morning light plays on his bare shoulders, and how his chest rises and falls without a sound. The lean and powerful muscles of his arms are intoxicating. She yearns to touch him. She wants to feel that tender demarcation line on his biceps. She steps forward and cups her hands over his upper arm, which is hard and taut even though relaxed in sleep. She thinks everything about him exactly right.
When she had first saw Shang striding up into her garden she thought her imagination had conjured up him in thin air. She never imagined she would again see the man that in just a few weeks had completely turned her life around, had made her question and change her quest, who had bloomed an excitation deep inside of her that she never knew existed. Although he looked as if he had lost weight, and the area beneath his eyes were a shade darker, he was still the most handsome man in China. There hadn't been time to discern his intentions. He obviously was nervous but she was too inexperienced to read his eyes or his body language. There was so much she wanted to tell him, so much to thank him for.
How would she describe to him his role the instance of her ascent beyond the child, the daughter, the woman? How could she describe the tumultuous moment she saw him lay unconscious across from Shan-Yu. The motive of her journey had been one to prove her worth to her family, then to her captain, and finally to herself. But as she watched Shang, finished in his task and a few seconds from death, her father's words "I will die doing what's right" resonated in her ears. Doing what was right should be the only motive, Shang and her father already knew what she had just realized. Until then she had never been able to join a cause and pour her soul into it without first having to do it for someone, to have someone else give it a reason, a character and a manner. But now she knew in an instant that killing Shan-Yu and removing him from China forever, and saving her captain was the right thing for other no reason other than that, even if it meant her death. And as she faced her nemesis, it was their strength and lessons that flowed through her.
She watches him for a few moments more, then leans toward him and lightly presses her lips to his. His lips are smooth and warm. If he leaves in the morning forever at least she would have this. "Thank you" she mumbles to him. She then turns and tiptoes out.
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