“Little friend! Thou hast returned! Here, I have some rice for thee.”

As usual, after flying for an entire day to reach Lychee Grove, I headed straight to Miss Overgrown Taila’s house for dinner. As usual, she set aside her sewing to pour rice on the windowsill for me, and watched me eat with a face full of wonder. I didn’t get the point of watching a common sparrow peck at a handful of uncooked rice grains, but hey, as long as she kept feeding me, I wasn’t complaining.

After I’d eaten my fill, I spread my wings to take off as usual – and then hesitated. I’d promised Flicker that I wouldn’t go charging off for Honeysuckle Croft at once, that I’d give life in Lychee Grove a try first. If I stayed here longer than a day or so, Miss Overgrown Taila would be a useful food source, er, ally.

Flipping my wings across my back, I hopped one step closer to her, cocked my head, and chirped.

Her eyes lit up, and she chirped back, surprisingly well. Slowly, she extended her right forefinger. “Come, little friend. I won’t hurt thee.”

Hmm. How much did I trust her? She might not have thrown a net over me while I ate, but she could still wring my neck and take me downstairs for her mother to cook. Or she might grab me too hard and snap my bones by accident.

With another chirp, I sidestepped her hand. Before her face could fall, though, I flew into the room and landed on the table next to her sewing box. Skeins of colored cotton thread and a partially-embroidered purse peeked out of it. The cotton thread I dismissed at once – everyone knew that the only thread worth embroidering with was glossy, brightly-dyed silk as fine as hair – but the design on the purse caught my eye. The cotton might have been thick and dull, but the execution was reasonable, and there was something appealing about the way she’d captured the sway of the peony blossoms and the flutter of bird wings. You could practically see them move. Had she copied a painting, perhaps? That had been common in Cassius’ time.

I glanced back at the young woman. She was sitting very still by the window, hardly breathing as she watched me. No, as she watched my wings, my head, the play of light across my feathers.

Taila would never have sat still for so long. She’d have lunged at me five minutes ago, squealing, “Mr. Sparrow!” Then she’d have grabbed me, snapped both wings in the process, and started wailing even more loudly than I could have screamed. Ah, Taila.

Maybe it was a good thing that Miss Overgrown Taila was so much more subdued. Even if that patient intensity were a bit unsettling.

In a chunky earthenware jug on the table were two pink peonies, tied together with a reed. A scrap of parchment with writing on it peeked out from under the jug. Watching Miss Overgrown Taila out of the corner of my eye, I hopped over, took it in my beak, and yanked it out all the way.

A rustle. My head jerked around. Miss Overgrown Taila had risen halfway out of her chair, one hand outstretched, anxious lest I ruin the parchment, I supposed. Since she wasn’t attacking me, I went back to my inspection.

Decent calligraphy, I noted automatically. The writer had obviously developed their own style, sort of connected and ribbony, which made it a little hard to read but not illegible by any means. You could tell a lot about someone from their calligraphy. This person – hmm, yes, definitely the artsy sort, probably someone who wore their hair a little too long, and their tunic a little too loose, who made all the old folks cluck, “In my day, we’d never – !” Satisfied that I’d pinpointed the writer’s personality from just their handwriting, I turned my attention to the content conveyed by aforementioned calligraphy.

It was a poem. In the formal, Empire-era Serican that Floridiana, Baron Claymouth, and Anasius had all struggled with, it declared:

Let us live, my Lodia, and let us love,

And let us value the gossip of old men,

Spiteful and stern, at just one copper!

Ha. Nailed it!

I scanned the rest of the lines, which basically urged the addressee to seize the day and live – or rather, love – with passion, which was pretty much what I expected from my mental image of the writer.

No one had better be sending Taila any poems like this any time soon. I’d peck their eyes out.

Cocking my head to a side and cheeping, I examined Miss Overgrown Taila, a.k.a. Lodia, once more, searching for hints of Taila in her features. Other than the obvious ones of a general human shape with one head, two arms, two legs, and black hair and dark-brown eyes, I found none. Lodia had a narrower face and larger eyes. (Although maybe Taila still had her baby fat. As for her eyes, they were always half shut from laughing. Or crying. Or wailing.) Miss Overgrown Taila had smoother skin and thicker hair too, but that had to come from the higher standard of living here in Lychee Grove. Whatever her parents did for a living, she’d never plowed the fields or nearly starved to death in the early spring.

I discovered that my chest feathers were all puffed up in indignation. I resettled them. When had that happened, and why? But more importantly, if I couldn’t return to Honeysuckle Croft for a while to direct Taila’s life, I might as well organize Miss Overgrown Taila’s and earn some positive karma for it.

So what was I going to do about this human girl? Should I also send her to school and turn her into a mage? But she was already literate, and anyway, what was the quality of education in the south? Had all those exiled nobles done Serica a favor by starting up decent schools here?

As I scanned the room for books, that half-embroidered purse caught my eye once more. The design really was quite good. I really did want to see what Miss Overgrown Taila could do with proper silk.

Back in Cassius’ court, I’d had a wardrobe mistress who selected and cared for all of my gowns. Miss Overgrown Taila might have a knack for it. I’d have to investigate employment opportunities for talented seamstresses in Lychee Grove.

At that moment, a woman in her fifties, who looked very much like an older version of Miss Overgrown Taila, entered the room. She wore a long, leaf-green gown with gold embroidery at the neckline, cuffs, and hem. I recognized the livery of the Lychee Grove Earth Court.

“Grandmother! Good even.” Miss Overgrown Taila stood up at once to bow.

Ah, it was good to see the old courtesies preserved in the south, even if I were going to have to get used to their speech style. (Echoes of my first days at Honeysuckle Croft.) But wait – if this gentlewoman were the lady of the house, that meant that the other woman downstairs, the one I’d seen washing rice in the river, who’d chased me off the first time, must be the cook. I revised my idea of the family’s finances.

“Good even, Lodia,” replied the grandmother in a serene voice. She swept across the room, her silk gown swishing softly around her ankles, and laid a gentle hand on her granddaughter’s head to push it down further. “If thou hadst bowed just a hair lower, it would have been perfect.”

“I thank you, Grandmother.”

“How fares thy brother?”

“Well, Grandmother. Nurse says Silvus is the happiest babe she hath seen.”

The grandmother smiled, pleased. “Hath thy father returned?”

“No, Grandmother.”

As if in deference to his mother’s wishes, a man in his thirties, also dressed in gold-trimmed green, entered the room. His mother turned towards him with a smile.

“Good even, Rohanus. How was work today?”

He kissed her hand and smiled at his daughter’s careful bow. “Good even, Mother, Lodia. Work was as normal.”

Lodia clasped her hands before her. “Hath the design for the new silvers been finalized, Father?”

New silvers? As in, silver coins? Did the kingdom of South Serica mint coins here in Lychee Grove? That would explain the town’s – no, city’s – affluence. I held very still next to the sewing box, trying to look like a twist of cotton thread. Eavesdropping thread.

“It hath indeed.” Rohanus’ eyes crinkled, as if he were about to present her with a delightful new brooch. “And thy design was selected! When we mint the new coins, the obverse will depict the Lady’s profile and the reverse will depict thy cluster of lychees! We will have to make some modifications, of course – ”

He went on to detail some technical reasons that the mint would have to modify Lodia’s original drawing to make striking the coins more feasible, but the gist was clear. Here in the fief of Lychee Grove, the Lady didn’t use, or didn’t only use, the kingdom’s official currency. She minted her own.

What kind of kingdom was this?! What was the queen of South Serica doing, allowing her nobles this degree of impudence? Not even near the end of the Empire, when it was crumbling at the edges, especially in the south, had any of the nobles contemplated such a move!

Lodia was in shock too, albeit for a different reason. “Truly, Father? Truly truly? Her Ladyship liked my design?”

“Yes, she did, truly. I am proud of thee, daughter.”

“Have more faith in thyself,” counseled her grandmother. “Thou hast talent, but thou lack’st the confidence to make full use of it.”

Looking down, Lodia bit her lip. “Yes, Grandmother.”

What a meek little mouse she was! If you took her and Taila, mashed them together, mixed them up like minced pork and beef, and then divided them back into two meatballs – er, people – they’d be perfect.

Oh. I was still hungry, wasn’t I?

Stealthily, I spread my wings, planning to fly back to the windowsill for a second round of rice. The motion caught the older woman’s eye. “Ah, Lodia, hast thou made a new friend?” And, just like her granddaughter, she put out a forefinger and chirped at me.

Well. From her attire, she worked in the Lychee Grove Earth Court. She might be a useful ally, no matter what I decided to do with my life here. Best to get on her good side now and decide how to use her later.

Cheeping, I hopped onto her finger and let her lift me to eye level. A small smile played on her lips as she examined me. Lodia came up close, face bright with awe that her grandmother had succeeded where she had failed, and Rohanus beamed at both of them.

It was such a different scene from the ones that played out in the Jeks’ tiny, dark cottage, where Mistress Jek bellowed orders while the rest of her family whined (the boys), burst into tears (Taila), or obeyed in sullen silence (Master Jek). If they’d been born in Lychee Grove, if they lived in a house like this and didn’t have to farm or cook all the time, would they act more like this family?

Cocking my head to a side, I tried to replace the grandmother’s features with Mistress Jek’s.

That was when I heard Lodia utter the fatal question: “Should I bring the birdcage?”

A cage! Not again! On instinct, I recoiled.

“Shh. Thou art scaring it. Fear not, little friend,” the grandmother soothed me. “I know thou art a wild creature, and that thou wouldst break thy heart in a cage.” She flowed to the window and extended her hand past the sill, letting me go. “Come back tomorrow, little one. Thou art always welcome here.”

I chirped one last time and rubbed my head against her finger before I took off into the night.

And that was how I let this new family “tame” me.