It had been a long day for Asen Meili, Princess of the Empire and Junior Internist at the Guild of Healers. She'd been forced to defend her position on a course of treatment, and had to pass two exams, and now she wanted to get home, strip out of her greens-and-purples, and climb into bed with a good book. She noted, absently, that she was so tired she didn't even consider climbing into someone else's bed. That was a first. Probably the first time since she'd hit puberty. Maybe she was maturing?
...further data was needed before she went with that.
"See you tomorrow morning, Nmmr." Her driver meowed in reply and drove off, leaving her alone with her thoughts and the sound of the thundering waterfall and the constant first watch crowd. She liked the neighborhood. It was peaceful enough, quiet enough, close enough, and it was filled with the right kind of people for her. Which was to say, people who accepted her presence as just 'one of them things'. As she walked down the block, she smiled at people. And was smiled at in turn.
Despite what her father thought, she'd only slept with some of her male neighbors. The really interesting ones. The ones who'd stopped to seduce her, treated her like a woman they wanted and not a princess they feared or a particularly deep notch to cut into their beds. Some of them she'd had flings with. Some of them would have gone for more, if she'd let them... but she couldn't let them. But even if they hadn't understood, she'd not let them go away unhappy or angry. No, no one here hated her. Not the men, nor their (new, in some instances) girlfriends.
She stopped, and she chatted, and as she chatted she noted which of her friends were pregnant, and how many children were running around, waving to her, treating her just as... normal. Because she was. That was what she had been raised to be. "Big sister, big sister!" That was a young woman, Li (no relation) Sila. Well, technically Sila was a girl, still wearing a girl's smock. But both she and the neighborhood's boys knew that wasn't going to last much longer. Meili sighed inwardly. When she had been that age, boys had thought her flat and boring. Granted, she was competing against her elder sister, who'd started 'blossoming' when she was eight, but it had hurt. Still hurt to think about it, despite the development since...
and what that development had led to. The fun, the joy, the (occasional) aches and pains. Maybe there was something wrong with her, that she'd wanted to feel more than just pleasure. Her mother had always told her that it took work. Well, it hadn't for her and daddy. They'd known before they even touched... why couldn't she want something like that?
"Asen Meili, are you listening to me?" Li Sila put her hands on her pubescent hips, probably in imitation of her mother or elder sister.
"No, I'm sorry, I was elsewhere, little sister. You were saying something about my house?" Meili bowed slightly in apology, cheeks red. She'd been raised, and trained since, to listen to everyone. It was good practice.
"There's a guard at your house. A lot of them! My mom said not to go there! Lu Bei was talking to one of them, and his mom dragged him away! He told me he just wanted to try the guard's gun out. He's always trying... Are you okay?" Ah. Oh dear. The princess's breath caught in her throat. The habits of a lifetime caught up to her. What had she done now? Was one of her brothers in trouble? Had Lixuan followed through on her threat to 'find her someone interesting'? Li Sila kept talking. "There's a big wooden thing there, too! It wasn't there earlier, but it is now!"
A big wooden... her father. Why would daddy have come to where she lived? She hadn't been sure he knew where she lived. Surely he was with mother; mother was pregnant and due any day and... had something happened? "I'll talk later, I need to run!"
