Poison Princess

          Jia had a feeling that today had been a little too good to be true, and upon hearing the footsteps and then voice of Ruolan’s daughter, that hunch was proved right. Not that the day still couldn’t be good in other ways– Hiina was not all that bad, a little too mischievous, messy, and at times too energetic for the good of herself or others, but Jia could think of far worse people to barge their way into his otherwise peaceful day.

          “A little bird of mine tells me you have been sending that tutor home quite a bit recently.” Jia, spinning his chair around to face Hiina, a calm smile on his lips, replies, “You need not worry about me telling your mother of course, but you should take more care in your studies, young master.” Jia, shaking his head, jokingly adds, “You do not wish to one day end up a big, brainless oaf of a warlord like that fellow in Pugilis, do you?”

    Crawling out from under the porch, Hiina flops down on her stomach beside Jia, muddy feet idly pedaling in the air. As she holds out her hands, the cause of the yellow fluff covering them becomes apparent; Joltiks crawl up and down her arms, emitting tiny sparks of electricity.

    “Maybe their lessons shouldn’t be so boring if they don’t wanna be sent home. I already know everything I need to! I don’t want to hear about laws, or manners, or stuff a bunch of old dead guys did that I’m s’posed to think is important.” 

    Reaching over, she lets one of her Joltiks crawl onto Jia’s knee. It seems to recognize him as a friend, it’s sparking reduced to the faintest pinpricks. Unimpressed by his suggestion, she puffs her cheeks out in disdain.

    To call the day ‘perfect’ would have been a disservice- it was the sort of day you’d put on postcards, the kind of glassy-blue-sky, warm-breeze, rippling green grass day that brought tourists across the sea to Ransei. The sort of day, then, that should have been perfect for the warlord’s most trusted advisor to relax.

    No such luck.

    “Uncle Jiiiiaaaa,” a high voice wheedled from the space below the porch. Poking her head out, Hiina waved to him, her hand smeared with dirt and clumps of loose yellow fluff.

[One! More! Time! 

“You’re just sharing your candy so you can get away with calling me gross, huh? I see how it is.”

Will he still take another anti-stink-stick? Yeah. Chocolate was delicious. 

“Smoke probably covers up the worst of it. You ever smell a Garbodor? You’d wish they smoked.”

    “Don’t be silly. I don’t need to share my candy to call you gross!”

    Plucking three sticks from the box, Hiina popped them into her mouth, pulling a face at his question as she chewed.

Huh…candy cigs?

He extinguished the stick on the closest wall (though was sure not to smother it too much so he could smoke it again later), taking a stick to bite into. 

“Mn….these are good. Thanks.”

    “Sure thing. Help yourself - I’ve got like, three more boxes of it. They’re better than those things you smoke, and they won’t make you stink.”

    “Oh. My. Goodness.”

    The voice came from behind, and then abruptly at Klara’s shoulder. A gross breakage of personal space, but who cared? If this was who Hiina thought it was, she couldn’t pass the opportunity up.