journey etched into your skin

Character: Lan Fan

Summary: She came a long way.

Companion: you are the silence in between

Dedication: Nika

The Golden Lotus was legendary among the citizens of the Town by the Sea of the Crescent Moon where both the royal Yao-clan and the infamous Wei-clan, a clan of minor nobility achieved through loyal service hailed from. The Golden Lotus was a tea shop, small and humble, easy to be overlooked among the fancier, bigger stores that surrounded him. In a way, this was a valid metaphor for a good warrior – he did not have to be seen in order to be highly skilled and thus a good bodyguard.

In any case, the teashop was most likely as old as the town itself and along the centuries, it had surely seen most of the legendary warriors who had hailed from the city and the owners had given more important advice than the instructors of the academy and those who earned money by telling other people what to do. To generations of young people, the Golden Lotus and the owners had been a source of inspiration. However, little did they know that they inspired the owners as well and that some kinds of tea had been composed to remember them.

Evening Breeze, a calming combination of yellow tea and rose and jasmine notes, had been created as a reminder of Fen Yao, a princess and warrior who had been the second empress of Xing as an adult and a former visitor of the teashop. Silver Cloud, a blend of white tea and lotus, had been dedicated to Yun Bo who had been a philosopher and man of mind.

Along the centuries, many important people had been given a certain blend of tea and sometimes, the story behind the tea had been forgotten by everyone but the owner of the tea shop who had a heavy book in which all the stories and teas had been written down. The current owner, a seventy-year-old man from the Cho-clan, looked just like those before him: a formerly tall old man with a grey beard and longish hair that was worn in a topknot. The apron was still white while the shirt was in a greenish shade of grey.

To Lan Fan Wei who had – like everyone else – spent many hours of her young life in this teashop, drinking tea and thinking about her training and working on new moves in her mind, entering the teashop after everything what had happened in Amestris felt like coming home. She vividly remembered the day when she had been twelve and after training, her grandfather had not headed for the house where they lived but for the teashop in the main street. At first, she had been confused because this was the place where her grandfather had met his old friends for a few rounds of chess and other board games every second Friday each month. This had been a place where she had not felt like she belonged too. She had felt too young, too inexperienced and for a moment, she had considered making up some excuse but before she had come up with a lie her grandfather might have actually believed, he had pushed open the door and ushered her in before he had – in his usual way – explained that she had reached the stage where it had been fitting to initiate her to the Golden Lotus and thus, he had chosen a mild blend – Red Sky – for her and this had been when she had realised that she was a real bodyguard now, that she had someone passed the final test without really noticing it.

Since that day, seven years had passed but as she walked down the street after having returned from a longer journey, she saw the familiar sign over the door and entered, carefully listening to the low chime over the door before she looked straight for owner who stood behind the counter, smoking his pipe and listening to the music from the backyard where – just like usually – a band of musicians camped.

"My, my," the old man said with a smile. "If that isn't Fu-san's little girl … only that you aren't little anymore, Lan Fan-chan … I can still say Lan Fan-chan, can I? Or do I have to say Wei-sama?"

She smiled as she sat down. "Simply Lan Fan will do," she said as she folded her hands – one metal and one flesh – neatly on the table. "Can you recommend any teas for a tired traveller?"

"A tired traveller?" the man asked as he opened the huge book. "Last thing I heard about you was that you're a big deal down in the capital, at the Imperial Court because you are still the prince's most loyal bodyguard and all of that…"

She sighed as she shook her head. "As you have surely heard, the prince has been travelling lately and so did I. We … we have seen more beauty than only Xing's, Cho-san."

"A journey to broaden knowledge … that's always nice, Lan Fan-chan."

She sighed deeply. "It was … until our money ran out, somewhere right behind the Drachman border. We had to work as dishwashers – and the prince refused to let me work all alone."

"Someone might want to make a story out of this – from dishwasher to emperor," the old man said as he lifted his gaze. "By the way, you have to drink Sharp Spirit … I just finished this composition to honour your grandfather's memory and since you are the first one of your clan I see since I have completed this quest."

She smiled as she nodded. "He would have liked that."

"He wouldn't," the man said with a shrug. "Fu-san was one of the most stubborn men I've ever met … everyone told him not to go to Amestris, to send Chao with you instead. He said that he couldn't … that he had failed to protect what he loved too often to risk failing again."

She froze as she slowly drew circles onto the wooden plate of the table in front of her. "That sounds … strangely like him," she finally replied. "I guess … in the end, he always cared … and we were just too blind to see this. I think he even cared about Jun in the end."

She wondered whether she had changed a lot from the last time she had been sitting on this chair, waiting for her tea. The last time, she remembered just too well. She had been waiting here with Prince Ling right before they had left for Amestris and she still knew which tea she had had the last time, back when her legs had been daggling in midair.

"One cup of Sharp Spirit on the house and later on, you can get your usual…" the old man said as he placed the plain white cup in front of her. "You still drink Rose's Summer, don't you?"

"Yeah," she confirmed as she remembered her cousin's grin as he had seen her ordering this blend. (For Chao, there would never be another option of Bittersweet Spice after all.) She looked around and wondered where the days had disappeared to, the days when everything had been okay and she had never doubted anything. When she had been six, she had believed. She had believed that nothing in this world could take her sister away from her. Three years later, it had happened. Jun Li had disappeared to somewhere where no one had been able to find her and it had taken years for Lan Fan to understand that Jun Li's seat at dinner would not be filled for a long time. She had once – like any child – believed that there was nothing she could lose because the worst things imaginable to lose back then had been the toy kunai her cousin had won for her on a fair where Jun Li had bribed him to take her to while the older and more skilled sister had been off on a date.

"Are you okay, Lan Fan-chan?" the teashop owner asked as he wiped an empty table.

She nodded as she wondered where the point in opening old wounds even was. Some of her relatives – with her cousin Chao in the leading position, as usual – were quite happy with suffering again and again from the same old wounds but she rather forgave and forgot. True, it was nice to remember the good moments and to Chao, the good things about Jun Li probably had probably more weight than the memories of the day when she had betrayed him and yet, there was no reason why Lan Fan would do the same.

She slowly smiled as she turned her head. "You … you know that feeling … the thing you feel when you remember and feel like it is not over yet?"

The man sighed deeply as he rested his hands on the table in front of him for a moment. "Yes," he said as he smiled the same way her grandfather had used to smile when he had been proud of something Chao, Jun Li or her had done. "In a way, this teashop is a single memory … the memory of another time, of a time when many things were easier. To be honest, the music you here is the music of a time that is long gone and yet, it does not seem like a single day has passed in here since the day the shop was first opened. Sometimes, I still see your grandfather and his friends at the table in the corner, playing chess and laughing … and I see that no matter how much time will pass, they will forever be sitting there."

"A memory? A store cannot remember anything?"

"Do not try to argue with logic when you are talking about something special like the Golden Lotus," he said. "The owners of this shop have created so many blends to keep the presence of the most frequent, most characteristic patrons in here. Rose's Summer has been named after Xiang Wei, an ancestor of yours. She has forged the first Crimson Blade, a sword made of a metal that is slowly died red from the blood of the people who are killed." He shrugged. "Your cousin's new favourite, Bitter Love, is a memory of Huan Cho, a man passionately in love with a woman for beneath his social status, a woman he could never marry."

"Chao no longer drinks Bittersweet Spice?"

"He has not ordered this since your grandfather's death. I think that Bittersweet Spice remembered him too much of Jun Li in the end."

She lowered her head. "He and Min Li stopped travelling with us a year back," she slowly said. "He said that no matter how informative this journey was for her, he had to make sure that she will get the education befitting of her social status. If he stops by, please recommend another blend. He … he of all people shouldn't … take the blame for something no one is to blame for."

"I will make sure to tell him," the old man smiled as he picked up his work again. "You might want to ask me what tea your sister used to order when she still visited. I mean, I can pride myself and say that I served both the current emperor and the current empress their tea."

"Well, tell me if you think it is interesting…" she said with a sigh.

"Jun Li was a burning admirer of Burning Breath … that's the spiciest tea we have."

Lan Fan looked at him for a moment before she started to chuckle. This was ironically the funniest thing she had heard in a while because she knew that her sister had hated and loved spicy food at the same time, for her to drink such spicy tea made sense nonetheless: like Chao who had been drinking bitter blends for as long as Lan Fan could think back, Jun Li had believed in punishing herself for her weaknesses as well and drinking the spiciest of all teas was a strict punishment for someone who had a weak stomach at times.

Lan Fan sighed deeply as she spotted her reflection in the tea. She had grown along the years, she was more mature and more patient now. Her hair had grown and was now tied in the typical style of her clan – the style she had admired on her sister for years to find out that it was annoying to style the hair each morning – and sometimes, she wondered when her face had become ladylike pretty instead of babylike cute.

"You have really become a pretty one, Lan Fan-chan … if I were forty years younger and not married, I'd really go for you but I guess that the prince might mind that," the shop owner smiled as he placed her favourite tea in front of her. "You are no little brat anymore."

"Thanks for implying that I ever was one," she said as she turned her head before she froze because for a second, she had truly believed to see Jun Li and Chao in their festival armours at the table in the corner but they vanished within moments. Yes, the old man was right. The teashop captured the souls of those who had been there frequently and she found herself happy at the thought that she, too, would stay here forever.