Motherheart Dragon Priest

Chapter 5a - Fatherhood

Motherheart Priest — Chapter 5

A man is known

by his relationships.

Not by their number

but by their nature.

San dao Jing

__________________

The old man stared silently out across the plain below him and tried to understand  the turmoil he felt. It was not right for a man of his years and of his standing to feel like this. Stillness Desert was used to adjudicating the turmoils of the traders. Of arbitrating the politics of the Temple. Of policing the violence of some of his clansmen against their wymin.

With these he remained clear-headed and knew what action to take; but this inner turmoil! He could not remember experiencing such feelings since first entering the Temple. Even assisting his own master in the Soong wars against the Monqhul, he had always known what to do.

Jade Sunrise was pregnant to him and he was overjoyed, and angry at himself all at the same time. He had yielded to the passion of the moment instead of controlling his emissions as he nearly always did. Now at his age he was to be a father again. He had two wives living with their clan out in the desert country, and he travelled there regularly to be a husband and a father as well as an elder.

He was also a father to a number of children within the Temple, but he was more than all of these things and his children knew it and expected nothing more of him than he could give. Being in a clan or the Temple, the children were raised by their aunties and uncles but he was always there for ceremony.

Stillness Desert breathed a deep breath and let it out slowly. An elder to a clan, an elder to the Temple and now a father of the child of the Jomon Consul. He was many things to many people and as was the way of the Temple he could only be all of these if he remained true to himself. He was first and foremost a companion to the King of the Mountain. A king who was about to abdicate and with his successors already having begun the rituals that would decide the succession. Aye his life had just become more complex than he could have imagined.

Desert turned and watched the love of his life walk carefully toward him along the cliff top path that was part of her daily exercise. Jade Sunrise would walk a circuit that took her along the cliff edge then inland toward one of the small waterfalls that fed the stream that flowed near Redcliff Temple and filled its rockcut water reservoirs. She would then follow the forest trail back down through the hill valley, singing and talking to her swollen belly the whole way till she climbed the winding hill path back to Redcliff.

There her armed personal guards would leave her in solitude as the axetooth and knifebeak that lived in the valley did not venture close to Redcliff. Leaner had taken a liking to her and accompanied her all the time during these walks and more. None of the other stripedbacks or starfur that also lived  at Redcliff had shown Jade any attention, and Desert thought it was her former familiarity with Leaner that had led to his attachment to her.

“Will you walk with us today Grand master?” she said in that soft feminine Jomon voice that she effected when she was being coy with him.

“Aye that I will my lady,” and he hefted his pack to his shoulders and pulled his spears from the ground and walked across to the path to join her.

“At least to the waterfall pool,” and he paused and smirked in that way of his, “there I will wash your feet and rub your legs with clay to freshen your veins and keep the insects and worms away!”

Jade frowned at him. “Must you always remind me of the necessities of this place” she asked.

“Well,” he began shifting his spear thrower to his left hand with his spears and taking her hand in his, “it maybe that you grace my life for a few more years yet so I need to make sure you know how to be safe!” Jade looked down at her trousered legs and booted feet then up at him.

“Is this not fitting attire Grand master?”

“Aye my lady it is and I’m sure Master Silent Gaze has taught you much, but there are some things she will leave for me!” Leaner appeared from the scrub ahead of them and waited for them, then nudged Desert and walked along with them.

“Clay good, eh Leaner?” and the stripedback looked up as if to confirm the question. Jade giggled and Desert looked at her. He smiled at her girlish pleasure and squeezed her hand. She smiled at him and they walked on in silence till the path led them away from the cliff top and their guards joined them.

Solemn Cloud was beaming and Desert could see he was making no attempt to hide the fact hat he was enjoying the company of the two new Soong students that had been assigned to him. “Master,” the three said almost simultaneously.

“Cloud, Lotus, Jasmine,” he said acknowledging each in turn and then they bowed to their charge and and took up their positions. Cloud let Lotus Blossom take the lead today while he walked just in front of his master. A position that allowed him to watch his acolytes and listen to every word of his master at the same time.

They walked on in silence with Jade Sunrise singing happily to herself and using Desert’s hand for balance occasionally as the path became rough stone steps descending toward the rock outcrop that overlooked the forest trail to the waterfall.

There they stopped and Jade sat on her favourite boulder and rubbed her belly. Desert Stillness frowned, the forest was very quiet. It wasn’t the hushed expectancy of an axetooth waiting in ambush for a leathernose or longleg. It wasn’t from the barely audible thrumming of shearbeaks talking to each other as they searched for the sick or the dying. No, this was wasn't a sound this forest usually made. He knew this hush from the higher mountains but it was not the voice of this forest not now, not ever in his memory.

Desert hand signed to Cloud who motioned the two Soong wimyn and they knocked arrows into their bows and held them at the ready. Desert stood quietly next to Jade letting his eyes roam the forest for any sign that might quell the disquiet in his belly. He squatted down next to her and whispered.

“Something is not right here my lady, but I’m loathe for us to move from this vantage point!” Jade looked up at him then out across the small valley and its forest surrounds. Her eyes followed the course of the chattering creek till it disappeared behind the scrub line, then she giggled again.

It is a very unlady like sound but most becoming at the same time, he thought, as he followed her outstretched arm. A pride of axetooth were warily making their way along the forest edge. They hissed and coughed as they kept looking behind them.

Suddenly a small covey of shearbeak broke cover from the scrub line and fled across the bowl of the valley into the rocks and scrub below them. Desert heard them thrumming in distress as they then broke cover again to dash further down the valley back into the forest there. Desert nodded to himself and waited.