(Fresh off the press, come give it a try!)
Su Chacha followed the desolate mountain path, slowly making her way out by instinct. The air in the woods was very different from what she remembered before falling asleep, carrying many strange, pungent smells. She stopped at the foot of a steep slope.
A strong stench of blood mixed with the sharp smell of metal and gunpowder hit her head-on.
Below the slope, a man lay unconscious against a boulder. He wore badly torn dark clothes that Su Chacha couldn't make sense of, and his body was covered in nasty wounds. The one around his waist and abdomen was still slowly bleeding, staining the dirt beneath him dark red.
But what drew Su Chacha's gaze most was his face.
Even though it was smeared with dirt and dried blood, and pale from blood loss, the lines of his features still looked as if they had been carved with an axe and chisel. He was so strikingly handsome it took her breath away. His brows were sharp, his nose high-bridged, and his lips pressed into a thin line. Even unconscious, he radiated a fierce, stubborn air that warned others not to come near.
Su Chacha tilted her head and studied him for a long time.
In the memories she had from before she fell asleep, she seemed to have seen plenty of humans. But someone this… well, someone who fit her tastes so perfectly seemed to be a first. Just as the mountain spirits all favored the most lustrous pearl beneath the moonlight, she was now simply struck by a beauty so exquisite it transcended gender.
“Pretty,” she murmured softly, with certainty.
