[Spirit Lights] A Quiet Cup of Tea

It was surprising how often one found pleasures in the simple things in life.

The night was a quiet one, as they always seemed to be in the village. Such a change from back home in Ba Sing Se! Out there, the sun going down simply meant that one's evenings and nights were to be accompanied by the lights of candles and lanterns throughout the night, lasting for as long as one wished. Parties and events would usually last long into the night, and the lights would last until nearly dawn. A silly little thing like darkness was never enough to quell the life in Ba Sing Se.

Here, though... the people seemed to vanish into their beds almost as soon as the last rays of the sun slipped away beyond the barren horizon. Candles were rare here, and what few Lady Yu had seen had never lasted long into the night. These were certainly a different sort of people here, in ways that constantly surprised Lady Yu. If anything, it had reinforced her overall distaste of this place.

Though... there were some perks to a backwater nothing such as this, she had found. The sky, for one. She had never witnessed nights such as this back in Ba Sing Se.

Sitting upon a chair her servants had dragged out behind the home fer her, Lady Yu sipped at a cup of tea, admiring the view the twilight desert afforded her. Stars, and stars like that which she had never seen. Here, unobstructed by the nightly glow of lanterns, the looming walls of Ba Sing Se and it's buildings, the stars were a thing of wonder. They spread out brilliantly across the night sky, flooding the inky night above her with a dazzling array of patterns and lights. Out here, with only her cup of tea for company, Lady Yu almost felt like she was the only living thing in the universe, beneath the stars. It was an oddly comforting sensation.

She wished her husband could be here to see it as well.

Wait. What was she thinking? Xue Rengui was half a kingdom away, back home. It was his fault she had suddenly found herself out in this miserable sand pit in the first place! She was supposed to be mad at him, damn it! Stupid idiot and his stupid idiot ideas. What was sending her all the way out here going to prove? That she hated the desert, and hated his hometown? Why the hell did she even marry him in the first place? She was a fine lady, damn it! Oh, how she wanted to slap him!

Still... as much as she had raged at him and was still furious at him, she wished he could be here with her. Just for this. Under these stars, she felt like they could, for once, talk. A proper, honest, frank talk-- far unlike anything they had ever attempted before. Back home in Ba Sing Se there were rules for such conversations, unspoken ones that everyone followed, even behind closed doors.

Especially behind closed doors, she noted.

Mmm. This tea and this night were making her feel all introspective and thoughtful. It was a train of thought that almost surprised Lady Yu. She was one who rarely gave into introspection of any depth or substance. It was making her feel almost maudlin. Silly woman, she told herself. Don't let yourself get caught up in a cycle of self-pity and despair. A lady must be stronger than that. Smarter. Out here, especially, in the desert, with nothing familiar to root yourself to...