Title: Investigating Stillness 1/3
Fandom: Card Captor Sakura
Series: Faces of the Moon
Summary: In which there is a cat in the box.
Characters/Pairings: Yue (Xue Fang), Keroberous, Meihua (OC), Tou (OC)
Warnings: Oblique references to violence. Original characters. People being horribly domestic.

Investigating Stillness (1/3)

Hong Kong: Fragrant Harbour. Named for the ancient shipping port on an island in front of the Pearl River Delta, where spices and cedar and sandalwood were brought from distant places, and for the families of incense-grinders that once took up their quiet trade there. By 1927 it is a noisy city – the ships in the harbour coal-stinking behemoths, the wards of the city crowded with foreigners, and shiny black motorcars jostle with carried chairs and new-fangled wheeled rickshaws in the streets.

In the noisy city, in a noisy house, there is a quiet room, dark, where the shutters are never opened, and lamps seldom lit. Bolts of brocade and stolen silk share space with boxes of neatly packed opium, broken clockwork, soapstone idols, and strips of imported baseball cards. A charcoal brazier burns softly over a tray of sand in the corner. On a high shelf ticks a clock, old and battered, its wooden frame scarred by fire.

One table is very neat, covered with two mortars, a cutting board, a knife, and mixing bowls set in a rigid pattern. One high-backed chair is occupied by a small girl. She sits very still, and listens to the clock.

Day 1.

When the clock chimed a musical quarter-to-six, the girl got up from the chair and, drawing her too-long brocade robes and swags of tangled black hair about her, trotted to the brazier, moving surely in the near-total darkness. She lit a twist of paper from the glowing coals and lit the oil-soaked wick of a lamp, holding one hand close to the wick and listening to tell if it had caught. She nodded in satisfaction and lowered the glass chimney of the lamp. She put more charcoal on her fire, and set an iron kettle over it.

At just after six, by the chiming of the clock, the walls vibrated from the sound of heavy boots in the corridor outside. Voices rose up – heavy, male, raucous. "Oi, Tou, come on and drink. You only got one life, you know!" and a response, a little quieter, "Nah, gotta count my money. There's a girl I'm saving up for, yeah?" Laughter, then more quiet.

A key turned, and the door opened. The girl jumped up from the brazier, her hair sliding over her shoulders, and trotted to the door. A hand on her head stopped her at the same as something rigid and heavy fell to the ground and half landed on her foot, making her yelp. Large rough hands patted all over her as the door slammed shut.

Meihua held still, but wrinkled her nose. "What are you doing, Older Brother?"

"Hair," her brother answered worriedly. "On fire. What were you thinking?" Indeed, she could feel heat on her clothes now, and there was a scorched smell rising up from her clothes, starting to make her stomach turn. Her brother sighed finally, and stopped. "It's all gone now."

"Oh," said Meihua. She put her hands on his shoulders and let him pick her up properly. She breathed in the scents coming off his heavy duffel coat and spun-hemp shirt – wind and tobacco, alcohol, petrol, traces of sweet opium, something salty and dark.

"You should be more careful!" her brother said, then, "I'll bind up your hair for you."

Meihua rested her head on his shoulder. The coat was warm and wet there – she fingered the shirt underneath, fingered a tear, and said nothing. "Ah," said her brother. "Well, you see, I was in the middle of a delivery job – it was cans of milk – and then I tripped when I got to the restaurant but it was okay. Only soup got spilled. On my shoulder. And then when we were trying to clean it up, the shirt got ripped up. By accident. But it's just fine!"

"I see," she said quietly, and felt him wince very softly. "If you put me down," she said, more cheerfully, "I will wash your feet." Her brother relaxed, and sat down in the chair while Meihua set about with a basin of warm water. When she was done, she handed him a clean shirt and some rags and lint – to clean off the soup – and busied herself at the other end of the room, pretending not to hear him hiss as he cleaned out a gash on his shoulder.

Then it was her turn to lean against the trellised back of the chair, while he prodded her tangled hair with a comb and asked whatever she did all day to tangle it. "I talk with the milkweed fairies," she said gravely, "and they tell me stories. Did you bring me any presents?"

Her brother's voice brightened and he pulled paper-wrapped packages from his duffel coat. "Here's cowrie shells, and cinnamon bark, and a block of sandalwood. The amber was hard but I found these lumps strung on a necklace. Okay?"

Meihua sniffed it. "It's glass," she said. She heard clothing rustle as he winced again. She ruffled his hair and giggled as he ducked to protect his scalp, mortified. "What's in the crate?"

Her brother whacked heavy dust off the crate before pushing it over to his sister who bubbled quietly but happily as she explored the rough wooden sides of the crate with her hands. "It is so much fun to guess, Older Brother," she said, tapping it and feeling for the opening. "Is there a present for me inside? Maybe just a little one?" There were heavy wax seals around the opening, with twirly dents from the chop. They felt warm to her hands.

"Oh, uh, well, we'll have to open it and find out, Little Sister," he said, scratching his head. "There might be a little something I picked up while I was, uh, bargaining for goods. You never know 'til you look – uh, find out."

Meihua ignored him and pressed her ear to the crate, rocking it a little. She cracked a seal. A tiny mew came from inside. Meihua sat up straight, shocked. "How long has it been trapped there?"

"Oh! Uh, sorry," he said, dejectedly. "Um, well, I didn't think." He grabbed up a crowbar and jimmied open the lid from the other side, avoiding his little sister's small hands. It came open and a silver-grey cat with the long lines of a Siamese eeled out from under the lid, scrambled over a teetering pile of boxes, and shot under the divan bed at the far side of the room. "Bad cat!" He knelt by the divan and peered dubiously underneath. It growled. "Here, you, be more polite," he admonished and reached one brawny arm underneath. "Beats me where you came from," he muttered under his breath. The cat scratched him.

"Let it be, Older Brother," Meihua said gravely. "We shall be introduced later."

Tou sucked at the scratch, sat back on his feet, and looked at the rest of the contents of the crate he'd... obtained. A small round mirror with an enamelled red border. A stack of rice paper written with elegant calligraphy. A bundle of envelopes bound with blue ribbon, addressed in flowing Western-style writing. Three carved ivory combs. A heavy book, bound in red leather, with a golden, winged lion embossed on the front, and a lock. It might be worth something. He gave the combs to his little sister.

Later, there was food – hot steaming rice with snowpeas and green onions, and Tou read to his sister from The Jungle Book, because she liked to hear about wolves running under the moon. He bent his head under the divan and scolded the cat to come out and be nice to his sister, but it growled at him. It was against his dignity to growl back.

Later, when he had gone away, and the walls of the room vibrated with rhythmic noises and voices coming from the rooms beyond, Meihua released the ties from her hair so that it fell loose and free. She sat up from the bed-clothes, and leant over the edge of her divan-bed. "Hello," she said.

"Older Brother thinks that you should be a cat who will sleep on my lap, and purr, and make me happy. I do not think you are like that. That is alright. You do not need to be happy to please me – I am sorry," she said, her level eyebrows wrinkling in distress over blind eyes, "that did not come out right. How do I say - if you do not choose to be affectionate, I will not be offended."

There was no sound from under the divan. She turned her head to the deepest area of silence and said, "Falling snow is not affectionate, or happy, but it pleases just by being what it is. Ah!" she said, smiling. "May I call you Xue Fang? Fragrant Snow? If you do not want, please say so now." There was silence again. She giggled a little. "Xue Fang it is." The blood was falling in her head. "Good night, Xue Fang."

That night, Meihua did not dream of sunlit gardens, or her mother cooking, or lessons, as she normally did. She did not dream of fire. There was someone talking, in a strange voice that shifted from a booming growl to small and plaintive in mid-sentence and back again. Well, that was a nap and a half I say. Yue, can you hear me? If you're there, some discussion of where we landed would be handy. Yue? It's hard to move in here, I feel like I'm wearing a hobble. Oomph, ech. Yowzer! Aaaaahhh, that's better. I'll get the hang of this in no time! Look, old son, the boss had his reasons, right? Who are we to argue if he doesn't wan- The boss had his reasons, do you hear me? I miss him too. Yue? Answer me, please...

(to be continued)

NOTES:

strips of imported baseball cards According to A Brief History of Baseball Cards (., retrieved 2 July, 2008), baseball cards were around as early as the 1840s, though in a slightly different form. In the 1920s, they came in perforated strips. I have no evidence suggesting that they were in Hong Kong, but I don't have any reason to think they weren't in a cosmopolitan port either. Something for Tou to be trading on the blackmarket.

Always fun playing with names and the meanings thereof. In this case, 'Meihua' uses the characters for Beautiful Rose, and 'Tou' is Peach, after the peaches of immortality. It is entirely consistent for the pair to address each other solely by their position in the family. 'Xue Fang' is explained in the story.

She ruffled his hair... Probably shouldn't have, actually, being younger and female and all. I s'pect those two have been living alone long enough to develop their own protocols.