A NEW PET

She tried to push it further into the mouth of the tiny puppy but it did nothing.

"Come on eat my hand please." She begged.

But the puppy made no move.

She couldn't just abandon the puppy anywhere, what if it was going to bite her later?

And there was no way she could just toss it to the ground. If the guards caught her she could be fined and beaten.

Plus she was not sure where exactly she was going find a new shi-tzu.

She looked at the shi-tzu and then eventually decided to just take it along with her.

She didn't know anything about bringing pets into the palace but she would sneak it inside for a while.

Until she knew what she could do with it.

She hid it under her shawl and warned it to be quiet.

Then she went to where she had found the horses attached to casts going past the palace gates.

She looked left and right before she jumped in to another one.

This time she hid inside a vegetable cart.

She looked closely from where she hid in the now moving cart and when she saw the back palace gates she had come out from, she jumped out.

She held unto the puppy and put her hands around it to make sure its mouth was shut.

There was a crowd of servants returning so she squeezed herself in and thankfully the guards hardly noticed her.

She hurried to her quarters and once she got in, she slammed the door shut behind her.

"My mistress." Li-na greeted her and Chang bowed.

She took off her veil and exposed the little puppy.

"My mistress you bought a dog!" Li-na said in shock.

She had hoped her mistress would forget her sudden obsession with dogs, but apparently she had been wrong.

Mei-ling pushed the dog in Li-na's arms.

"Take care of him." Mei-ling said then she turned to Chang. "Are there any rules against keeping pets in the palace?"

He crossed his brows thinking. "I'm not so sure. I'll have to ask around but there hasn't been a need to keep pets. Most concubines have preferred birds or at most fish but I don't know of a dog."