A New-found Talent.

Red hues of dawn touched Tang Yu's cheeks, as Mu Yunsheng's long fingers kept sliding in and out of her lips. His fingertips grazed against her tongue almost at the delivery of every morsel. 'Get your mind out of the gutter, spinster!' She chided herself, and tossed out the stupid teenager thoughts before concentrating on the fish taste. Wild caught fish was a different thing altogether! Farm-raised fish were most likely to be higher in contaminants. The overuse of adulterants, and wrong freezing methods sucked the real taste out of fish, making some people wrinkle their noses at the fish names per se.

Distraction worked just fine; Tang Yu's cheeks were now golden blooms of day in the orange glow of flames. "Did you eat while I was sleeping?" She asked after swallowing.

"Not dinner, but, I stuffed my face with a few rice dumplings, and tanked up on water." Mu Yunsheng smiled, as if he enjoyed feeding her.

Tang Yu blinked. Why was she picturing a proud mommy in him, who had been taking delight in bloating her kid's tummy?! "You should eat as well. I'm done." She spoke through food, abandoning her dining etiquette in the mountain.

"You can retire for the bed then." Mu Yunsheng didn't change the plate. He spooned some more rice on her leftovers.

Tang Yu pouted her lips, restlessness pecking at her heart. Ancient people's thoughts were conservatively dressed up in superstition. "Why? Are you afraid that I will cast an evil eye on your food?"

"What? Haha!" Mu Yunsheng let out a throaty laugh, shaking his head. "I am about to eat rice with a fish head, and I heard you don't like fish heads. Don't you grimace at its sight?"

Tang Yu pressed together the sharp features of her pretty face. "My brothers told you that?" He didn't say anything; his silence conveyed the answer. "They like to run their mouths off on nonsense. Don't store the information sourced from them."

"You like fish heads then?"

"I feel neutral about it."

"Will you eat this one? I will crack the skull for you. It has a good amount of meat and flavor." He offered with all seriousness.

"No, I'm full. You eat." She didn't have any Hulk mode to enter.

….

Mu Yunsheng rinsed his plate, and discarded the wash water in a bronze bowl. He placed the pots and wok in the three-tier hanging baskets which were bound with an exposed timber beam by sturdy ropes. They didn't keep the pots full of food on the floor lest a frog or mouse should run into them.

Tang Yu zeroed in on Mu Yunsheng's every action. She also noted that he was a keen observer. Obviously, he never did any kitchen chore before, yet knew them by heart from years of seeing his mother and sisters doing it.

By the way, men would never bind themselves to kitchen chores. Like never! It was an insult to their chauvinistic male ego. Hence, it left her to wonder as to why her husband committed such an immoral act.

"Is it your first time warming food, serving them then cleaning the plate and all?" Tang Yu asked with a tinge of curiosity.

Mu Yunsheng gazed reflectively at her, roasting her under his steady gaze for ten seconds. "Yes, it is." He padlocked the kitchen door, and hung the key loop on a hook hammered to the door frame. Stealing was rather rare in the village. "I believe, you don't want to divulge it to my mother or anyone else for that matter unless you badly wish to get chewed out by my family. And, don't get your hopes high, I won't do this always. You better learn how to cook for me."

Tang Yu couldn't but pout her plump lips. Power had not changed its hands yet. Goddamn you, patriarchy! Feminism—the buzzword of twenty-first century was slumbering in this era.

Suddenly, Mu Yunsheng towered over her, his gaze menacing. "What? Why are you holding your peace now? Don't you want to cook for your husband?"

Tang Yu almost jumped in her stance. "I'll cook for you!" To make it even more believable, she bobbed her head up and down, and repeated. "I will cook."

"Hmm." Black smoke vaporized from Mu Yunsheng's face. He held her shoulders, and rotated her towards the main house, letting her lead the way. Tang Yu carefully stepped on the even-surfaced rocks, the lamp in her hands shedding light for them. The base of the lamp was fully filled with kerosene. Cool rainy breeze cruised through the night, it slammed on their bodies, and evoked goosebumps. The wind didn't even spare the hurricane lamp from its mischief, charging at it menacingly, and trying to snatch the flame out of it. But, it failed. The copper-lamp had a transparent glass chimney protecting the flame from the drafts and winds.

Mu Yunsheng closed their bedroom door with a light thud. "Tuck yourself under the quilt; the weather is chilly."

Tang Yu placed the lamp on the reading table, biting her inner cheeks, hoping his words didn't have any underlying meaning. "I woke up thirty minutes ago... so I can't fall asleep any time soon." Sensing his gaze on her, she felt as though her scalp was going numb. "Tossing and turning on the bed with a full stomach is very unpleasant."

Mu Yunsheng's lips twitched. He pulled out his chair, sat on it, and opened his unfinished book.

Tang Yu smiled. He was a gentleman; he even slept on a mat over the earthen floor when the host strictly refused to consummate their marriage. "How long at night do you usually study for?"

Mu Yunsheng rotated the knob protruding from the lamp base, adjusting the wick. It increased the flame size, in other words, the quantity of light. "Till the stroke of midnight."

Tang Yu let her observing gaze roam around the bookshelves, her tongue running over the teeth. Most of the cases were choked with either books on classics or history and politics. She spotted some medicine and mathematics books in the upper cases too.

Education was far behind from entering its golden age in this era. It was a privilege of the rich, and inaccessible to a greater majority of the population — nearly eighty percent of the mass were illiterate. The government was still going whole hog with history, and classic literature in education; at least, five more decades away from rolling out the modern education system which would incorporate engineering, science, and military strategy, the subjects of western strength while maintaining the integrity of their own culture.

The current academic system was unquestionably dominated by the imperial examination, the exclusive path to government positions. Mu Yunsheng was preparing for it. He already climbed up two steps of the three-tiered ladder by passing the local and provincial exams with the highest marks. The court exam would take place a year later.

Tang Yu pried open her chest, and brought out the blank parchments, and ink bottles. She put them on the table, sitting in a lotus position on the bed.

Mu Yunsheng took his eyes off the words laden in his book.

"I want to practice calligraphy." Tang Yu said.

Mu Yunsheng went back to his book, where the thirst of knowledge bewitched and bound him to the pages.

Tang Yu dipped the brush in the ready-made ink, and started to write. One meticulous stroke at a time.

She was from Los Angeles — born and raised. So were her brothers. It made her grandparents fear that they would be uprooted from their culture and traditions. Therefore, the couple forced eight-thousand Chinese characters down their throats.

Tang Yu heaved a ponderous sigh, recalling all the times she had to read Chinese newspapers aloud to her grandfather; more mouth-aching, the classic novels and poems to her grandma. The couple taught her a universe about Chinese culture and traditions in the segments of time she used to spend with them on holidays and weekends. Until they took the big bus uptown in her sophomore and senior year in the high school.

'How on earth?' Tang Yu enlarged her eyes -- a full dose of amused surprise plain on her face. The first symbol she wrote was a mess. It would be safe to say ugliness took over the character in a way that it barely retained its basic look. However, this wasn't the real shocker, as she knew the masters from the school struggled hard to decipher the host's writing.

What actually robbed her breath was this calligraphy underwent a drastic game change. The third and fourth characters on the rice paper had a very clean and elegant look to them. It wasn't the host's writing style and she had never held a brush in her entire life! Perhaps, heredity played a role here and unbeknownst to her, she inherited it from her grandparents! Damn! Had she known this before, she would've taken it to the Instagram and flaunted it before the world. It was a highly prized skill after all.

The discovery of a new talent lent Tang Yu a boast of enthusiasm; she poured it all into the ink and paper, creating one after another masterpieces.

"When did your calligraphy improve so much?"