Back then, Tira-Lian had been the largest village in a hundred li. The scattered kingdoms that occupied the Land of Song and Snow were experiencing cataclysmic collapses one after another, and the Land of Sorrow suffered a revolution and splintered into two separate kingdoms again.
In the south, a thousand-year empire ca to an end, and in the west, the White City overthrew its newly crowned Queen, and the kingdom of the Great Fall went into isolation when its last king beca ill.
It was a ti when it seed like every kingdom on the rock was falling apart.
Despite this mayhem, Tira-Lian, alone on the prairie, remained sowhat disengaged from it all. Too far to be dragged into anything and too small to be worth taking.
Since it survived on trade, the most powerful rchant family in the region controlled pretty much everything in the village, and a mber of the family was always elected village head.
At this ti, it was a man nad Song Rohan, and he had many children, one of whom was a daughter known for her beauty and elegance. A creature of refinent in a place that didn’t have much of it. Gentle and studious and skilled at the harp, she was well loved by her family and popular among the villagers. In the evenings, she would sit in the village center and play her harp as the sun went down, and the villagers sat down to their evening al. She even taught the children how to play for free.
The year she turned fifteen, a band of travelling swordsn arrived. Having lost their king in the collapse of one of the eastern kingdoms, they were looking for a new ho and were eager to settle sowhere after years on the road.
Song Rohan, fearing the lawlessness that always ca from collapsing kingdoms, saw their arrival as a blessing and offered them a ho in the village, so long as they swore to protect it.
The soldiers quickly beca part of the village, and it grew with the addition of several more families from nearby lands.
Everything seed to be going so well for Tira-Lian and the people who called it ho. While the rest of the rock fell apart, this village thrived.
Then Song Rohan’s gentle daughter, Song Rui, t one of the young soldiers as he rose through the ranks and beca one of the village heroes. As the daughter of the village head, it was expected that she would marry well, perhaps even out of the village; a lowly soldier was beneath her.
The soldier, nad Tan Suk, had a good heart and a strong body. He was beloved by his fellow soldiers because he always looked out for them, and by the villagers, who always helped and wanted desperately to have a family of his own. One day, when he was returning from a patrol, he saw Song Rui playing her harp in the plum tree orchard and fell in love with her, but he was convinced she was above him. Likewise, Song Rui was afraid to anger her family by requesting to marry a lowly soldier, so neither of them spoke of it.
Instead, they developed a deep friendship, each convinced they couldn’t have the other and eting in secret to share their dreams and fears.
It went on like that for several years. Song Rui and Tan Suk grew closer and closer, but as the village grew bigger and her father beca more powerful, the divide between them grew bigger as well.
Until, unbeknownst to either of them, Song Rui’s sister, Song Ran, took a liking to Tan Suk and decided she wanted to marry him. She drove away any other woman who showed interest in him, even resorting to underhanded ans of spreading rumors, blackmail, and paying off witnesses. She spoke of her love for Tan Suk to anyone who would listen and petitioned her father for permission to marry.
Unaware of her actions, Tan Suk and Song Rui believed her love to be genuine. Though Tan Suk did not want to marry Song Ran, Song Rui didn’t want to hurt her, so she insisted that Tan Suk marry her sister and gave them her blessing.
Song Rohan was thrilled that one of his daughters wanted to marry a soldier he held in such high regard and decided to host the wedding as soon as possible.
Song Rui fell ill before the wedding and went into seclusion for several months before she recovered, but she did miss the wedding. Which was probably for the best, as Tan Suk had barely been able to look at his new wife, despite Song Ran’s excitent and the lavish ceremony paid for by Song Rohan.
While Song Rui eventually recovered her health, Tan Suk found he did not enjoy his marriage. Every ti he looked at Song Ran, he found he could only see how she wasn’t Song Rui, and threw himself into his work to avoid her.
Song Rui couldn’t stand to see Tan Suk with another and likewise began avoiding them both, and then everyone, as her heart grew heavy.
Song Ran, who was deeply in love with her husband, tried desperately to reach him, to convince him to love her, but no matter what she did, Tan Suk would not look at her.
Tan Suk spent longer and longer away from the village, fighting the bandits and tribes raiding the rchant caravans that ca to and from the village. Song Ran even begged her father to assign him to a command in the village so he wouldn’t leave, but even trapped in the village with her, Tan Suk could not look at his wife with anything but disinterest.
In an attempt to make her husband jealous, Song Ran had affairs with several n, including a friend of Tan Suk, but even when they were revealed by an old rival, Tan Suk was said to have felt nothing.
~ tbc
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