Chapter Text
It hadn't been long since the travellers' caravan line had entered China. The westernmost fortress at Jiayuguan had come within view not so long ago, at least in comparison to the seemingly endless days and nights it took to get this far in the first place.
The children's excited daytime shouts and giggles had long died down as they all slept peacefully in their families' wagons, the soft rain pouring from the sky gently lulling them to sleep. The Roman soldiers accompanying the large group marched tiredly, surrounding the group on horseback, their feet twice as weary as their riders'.
The soft clop of the horses' hooves, however, started to die down, as the leaders and the navigators at the front of the group yelled something out, which had slowed the movement of the entire convoy to a halt.
In one of these wagons, a young Slavic woman rubbed her eyes, suddenly awoken by the lack of movement outside. She had pulled the sheep hide off herself, climbed out of the canopy, and rubbed her eyes.
The musky scent of the inside of the wagon had been starting to get too overbearing anyway, so she figured that whatever was happening outside was a nice breath of fresh air compared to the days and nights of endless moving, their last camping stop having been near the Shule River.
Tying her foot wraps and slipping into her leather turn-shoes and fastening her woollen shawl around her head and neck, she stepped over some of her wagon mates, climbing out of the small, crowded space and into the fresh air outside, the heavy aroma of rain hanging in the air, as dense as the fog that had been enveloping them since the night faded into morning.
It was already much too difficult for her to be able to see well a foot ahead of her on a good day, but the dense fog was not doing her much good as she tried to focus her blurry, near-sighted vision at the blob moving towards them.
Her blood froze for a moment, petrified by the possibility of an attack by the Hepthalites - the White Huns. While never having attacked their wagon train, there had been others, whose carnage she and the other had spotted on the road leading through the Pamir mountains.
However, seeing as the heads of the procession didn't seem alarmed, nor did they start reaching for their weapons, she had deduced that whoever had been approaching them wasn't a threat, letting out a sigh of relief.
The relief, however, did not quench her curiosity. She stood by the side of her wagon, ignoring the rider's urges to head back inside. It was originally her wagon, anyway. As long as there wasn't any danger, and as long as she wasn't spotted, she'd watch. Anything, and I do mean anything, was better than lying curled up in the canopy with the same people talking around you all the time.
It wasn't that the Romans she had travelled with were bad people. She just had a hard time getting along with them, as they all grew up in the same cluster of villages on the east coast of Italy.
The size of the group itself dwindled considerably since the start of their journey; many had already stopped their travels along the way, either somewhere in Samarkan or in Merv. Except for a few families, the rest of the group were solitary travellers, unburdened by the need to settle and raise their children. Many of the people she'd travelled with were former Roman scholars, excited by the prospect of exploring the world.
As she stared into the horizon, the initially intimidating indiscernible blob of people was starting to take the shape of no more than a couple of soldiers, led by a man on a horse. She'd sighed with relief and hidden herself more out of view. It might cause trouble if the Chinese spotted a lone woman out of her wagon. She'd already suffered the initial culture shock of how the Romans treated her, and if their word was anything to go by, the Chinese were equally so, if not more unfriendly towards women.
"站住! 邊境檢查!" Boomed the voice of the man leading the patrol.
The commanding officer sat, intimidating on his horse. Dressed in layered black armour with a red cape tied around his shoulders. No matter how much she tried to squint, she couldn't see the expression on his face or any of the other soldiers. She couldn't have come closer to take a look, not just because of the need to stay hidden, but because unless they were standing less than a foot away, she wouldn't be able to see through her blurry vision.
"你來這裡的目的是什麼?" The officer shouted. She had only briefly glanced over at some of the scholars' Chinese notes. Not that she could read them in any case. Her fluency in Latin meant nothing in the face of the Far East.
I watched the head of our group, a man I had barely ever interacted with or even known the name of, reply in heavily accented Chinese.
"先生，我們是來自一個覆滅帝國的旅人。羅馬帝國已經覆滅，我們是前來避難的學者和家庭。我們並無惡意。" He spoke with an assertive tone that he had refined over the many months of travel. I still remember how difficult communication was with other tribes and nations along the way.
The soldiers stepped back, and after a brief pause, the commanding officer spoke again.
"我必須向上級匯報。在此期間，我的士兵會護送你前往酒泉綠洲，你將在那裡無限期地待著，直到我接到進一步的命令。" He announced, and, judging by the shift in our Leader's body language, I could tell we were permitted to camp.
"非常感謝您，先生。我和我的戰友們將永遠感激您。" He spoke, all the poise and grit removed from his voice as it was washed out by undeniable relief.
* * *
"Ah, jeez, more work." Ling sighed, slouching his shoulders.
"And here I was, looking for a fight." Yao sighed, punching his own hand as he grumbled in defeat.
Shang pointed to the foreigners' procession and spoke sternly. Yao wondered why he still refused to get off his high horse when they saved his back one too many times. His respect for him was like a seesaw. Sometimes it rose, but most of the time, it was dwindling down low. Part of him was surprised that he didn't have his shirt off for the confrontation.
"Surround them. Make sure you have every wagon accounted for. We will regroup at the Jiouquan Oasis, where you'll receive further orders." He reined his horse back as it neighed, turning to head towards the Great Wall. Ever since the Hun invasion not so long ago, the patrols have been upped considerably, and Yao, already content with the life of the soldier, and very much enjoying the status of a 'War Hero', was one of the first men to volunteer. Ling and Chien Po, of course, followed shortly after.
Yao and the others nodded and watched the commanding officer gallop away, as he usually did. Yao rolled his eyes and started to circle back to the far end of the caravan, along with his friends.
"That's what I wanted when I signed up. Babysitting." Yao continued to grumble, his back slouched as he dragged his feet through the muddy ground, disgustingly wet from the rain that hadn't stopped since sunrise.
"Cheer up, Yao. Aren't you glad we're helping people?" Chien Po asked softly, carrying himself with his ever-present optimism like always. Chien Po was probably the only person whose sickeningly sweet personality didn't make Yao want to punch things.
"Eh..." Was the only thing Yao could reply with as he continued to absentmindedly stare in front of him, no doubt visualising a more epic confrontation that would have secured him more awe and admiration. No offence to Mulan, but he wanted it to be his time to shine, too. But it seemed to never come.
"Psst," Ling whispered, to which Yao only responded with a short grumble, until Lin's taps and whispers were too annoying to disregard anymore.
"What?!" He shouted, turning around to face him, his back straightened and muscles tense, to show that whatever Ling wanted to say better be urgent, because he wasn't in the mood for pointless tomfoolery right now. If not a battle, then the second daydream of choice was a nap. The weather was making his brain foggier than usual. He was one inconvenience away from taking out his combat fantasy out on someone.
"Look! I've been tapping you for ages." Ling said with irritation, nodding his head inconspicuously towards the wagon train.
"Look? At what?" Yao retorted, waving his hands up in an exaggerated shrug as he turned his head rapidly like an owl to gawk at the western wagons.
Ling immediately dragged him back and smacked the top of his head. "Not so obviously, you numbnut. There's a western chick staring at you. Outside her wagon." Ling whisper-shouted, and Yao had to suppress the urge to turn his neck around 90 degrees as he had before. As calm and collected as he could be, he shifted his eyes to the general direction Ling had gestured towards, scanning rapidly for any such woman.
"Ah, you'd just missed her." Chien Po suddenly spoke, right as Yao caught a glimpse of some western-print fabric disappearing into a horse-drawn carriage, the door shutting silently, yet firmly behind.
Yao pretended not to care about the apparition that seemed out of view only to him, waving his hand dismissively to look back at Ling and Chien Po. "What's the big deal, anyway?"
"The big deal is, I swear she was staring daggers at us. You, especially. She looked kind of..." Ling started, turning his hand in a way that signalled he got caught on his own words.
"Odd. She had big teeth. And she was tall. She looked like she really didn't like you." Chien Po continued right where Ling left off.
"What? Why would a westerner be angry with me?" Yao seemed baffled.
"I don't know, dude! I'm just telling you what I saw!" Ling squawked.
"Weird. Maybe we just saw it wrong." Chien Po pondered.
"Or...maybe she was an evil Mogui, and she'd come to harvest your soul for being so angry all the time. She sees right through you, you know?" Ling teased the short soldier.
Yao only responded with a frustrated grunt as he rolled his eyes.
"No, no, no, think about it! A woman draped in foreign fabric, as tall as a tower, with eyes that are filled with pure hatred and teeth that are ready to rip your throat out... You better watch your back, Yao!" Ling continued to joke, erupting into laughter at his own delusional theories.
"Or maybe she's after you, for being such an annoying piece of shit all the time!" Yao retorted, elbowing Ling right into his mid-section, hard enough to make Ling fold over and clutch is abdomen in dramaticized pain.
"Careful, Yao! The path you're on right now...She's gonna come by our tent tonight and rip you to shreds!" Ling jostled one final time.
* * *
Yelena disappeared into the wagon, her skirt flowing behind her, just enough for her to catch the very edge of it before she got caught in the door.
Her heart was beating at a hundred miles a minute. Her curiosity had got the better of her, as no matter how close she'd gotten, the soldiers remained too blurry for her to see. The short man turning his head was what finally made her realise they'd been onto her.
Just in time, however. She'd been getting bolder with the eavesdropping as of late. The trek was so boring, and if she wanted to know anything about where they were headed, any threats, or simply anything interesting, her only shot was sitting in discreetly at the scholars' campfire discussions.
As they finally pulled in towards a small campground, right next to a military base, she watched it all through the inward-facing window through the smallest peek in the curtains, ready to pull them back were she to be discovered again. She wasn't trying to get into trouble with the Chinese military.
Their Leader started to knock on all the doors of the lined-up wagons, signalling everyone to move outside. The distinct wailing of the few remaining children carried itself through the campgrounds, as everyone started to pour out.
She bit the bullet and exited her wagon again, helping some of the older Roman widows she shared the space with step down the difficult gap. She kept her head down, knowing that if she were to stick out too much, she'd be spotted in no time. Her height made it so that she stuck out like a sore thumb regardless of where they arrived.
As the travellers regrouped in the centre of the camp, she physically crouched in the crowd, peeking behind her to watch the soldiers search their wagons and count them. She winced at the thought of all the embroidery and weaves that lay unfinished, rolled up in a satchel at the foot of the bed. It wouldn't have been the first time some of them had gone missing during an inspection like this.
Finishing up, all the soldiers pulled up towards their commander, who had already been waiting for them, horse reins in hand, documentation in the other. She couldn't see if the soldier she'd spied on was part of the group. She was too scared to try and find out.
After receiving intel from one of the soldiers she didn't recognise, a scrawny, limp-noodled man that wouldn't have survived a single harsh winter where she'd been from, the commanding officer stepped forward again to give orders to the refugees.
"您可以在此露營，直至另行通知。目前，您必須嚴格遵守午夜宵禁。違者將受到相應處罰。暫時告別。"
A soft murmur had spread out across the small mass of people she was travelling with.
"We can camp here a while! There is a midnight curfew, so I'd better not see anyone outside their wagon after midnight. And for Christ's sake, be respectful to the soldiers." Our leader translated for those of us who weren't fluent in Chinese.
The murmur died down as everyone went back to set up their belongings, and I remained invisible, crouching in the crowd as I slipped back into my wagon, deciding to wait it out until the Chinese were gone.
* * *
"Well, it's official! That chick was for sure a Mogui!" Ling said, as they were making their way toward's the Roman camp right after sundown.
Music played amongst the wagons as a faint smell of food wafted through the air. It all felt so alien, yet so familiar. While the music and the smell of food were unrecognisable to the food and music they were used to in their lives, having their world consist of only Chinese culture their whole lives, they saw campfires with people talking and eating, children playing and laughing. They were not that different.
Yao waved dismissively at Ling again. "At this point, I'm not even convinced you two didn't just drink too much jiu yesterday. I didn't see the darn woman anywhere in the crowd!" Yao griped.
"Uh- You drank more than both of us, if I remember correctly." Ling retorted. "You stood up and chased us around with a spear, calling us Hun trash."
He laughed as he continued to recall the situation. "Then you fell butt-first into the campfire. So much for a noble warrior, ey, Yao?"
Yao's face reddened as he turned around, ready to sock Ling in his smart mouth, when Chien Po interrupted the silence. "Guys, I think we ought to keep it down if you don't want General Shang to catch us."
"Oh, relax, Chien Po! We're outside the military base already, come on now, enjoy yourself! Look at all the food you can eat, I bet they'd be kind enough to share!" Ling distracted, smoothing over Chien Po's worried brow in an instant.
"Food, you say?" He perked up sheepishly.
"Yeah, I mean, look around you! Smell the night air... do you smell that?" Ling's voice, however, slowly faded out the further they walked into the campsite, until Yao stopped listening completely, standing still in his tracks, his eyes wide.
At one of the wagons, stirring a small pot of something was ...her. The Mogai.
* * *
"你好！"
The sound of the raspy voice startled her so much that she had physically jumped, dropping her wooden spoon in its entirety into the pot.
Turning around, she squinted. A couple of meters away from her stood one of the soldiers she'd been watching earlier. The one who'd spotted her first. With her heartbeat in her ears, she took a very cautious step back.
!不，不，不！別怕！我沒有惡意，我保證！" He spoke again, more frantically, taking a step forward and putting his hands up.
'What the hell is he saying? Does he not know I don't understand a word he's saying? Did he come here to chastise me? Threaten me?' She thought to herself.
She took a couple more frantic backward steps, almost getting caught on the clothes line she had set up earlier.
* * *
'Mogai my ass...' Yao thought to himself.
Ling and Chien Po have fucked off to whichever wagon had the biggest pot of food, not even noticing that Yao had slipped away from their group the moment he noticed the tall woman.
She was tall, and she did have noticeable front teeth, but she was far from a Mogai. She stood still like a cicada in deep winter, and her glare was more of a... squint. Like she couldn't see all that well
'Those idiots...'
"I... I mean no harm, lady." He spoke again, putting his hands more up in the air, hoping that the universal sign of surrender would permeate the language barrier.
Her eyes widened even further, until his hands were way above his head, and he'd taken a considerable step back. Only then did she finally take a couple of steps forward.
"U..um..." She spoke up, and Yao tensed his breath, hoping for some semblance of broken Chinese.
"kъto jesь ty?" Was what came out of her mouth instead. Yao gave her a raised eyebrow, but realising she most likely couldn't read his expression from so far away, he made a very obvious shrugging motion.
* * *
'Why did I think that would work?' She asked herself. Of course, he couldn't understand Slavic.
Well, maybe he understood Latin?
* * *
"Quis es?" She spoke up again. Her voice was so soft and nasally that he had real trouble hearing her as it was, on top of the fact that she was speaking in an unfamiliar tongue.
Again, he raised his shoulders in an obvious motion, to which the woman's face fell.
She was wearing heavy skirts, under which her feet protruded ever so little. He already felt short on a good day, but next to her, he barely made it up to her waist. She was almost as tall as Chien Po. Almost.
She had on a sort of blouse with a lot of amulets tied to leather strings around her neck. There was one aspect of her that he'd found quite odd. She was wearing Chinese-style makeup. or at least, an approximation of it. Her face was naturally pale, yet it seemed damaged. She had charcoal eyeliner around her eyes and rouge on her cheeks and eyelids. Her hair was dark, not quite black, but easily mistaken for such. It was wavy and about shoulder length, looking like it had been taken care of with oils.
Foreigner or not, she clearly knew her stuff.
"I...Yao." He spoke simply, pointing to himself, and then extending his hand to make sure she understood that he was friendly. She didn't have to, but he'd have loved for her to take it.
To his surprise and joy, she actually took a couple of steps forward.
"azъ... Elěna." She spoke, doing the same, then hesitantly taking his hand. Her hands were delicate for someone her size.
Yao smiled widely and shook her hand firmly, yet carefully, as gentlemanly as he could muster.
"Yelena," he repeated, trying to make sure he got it right.
She nodded and bowed slightly. How oddly polite for someone who'd been spying on him and his friends earlier.
"Yao," She repeated in turn, smiling a bit after he grinned and nodded furiously.
'Yup, you've got it.' He thought to himself.
* * *
"你已經見過莫蓋族婦女了！" The limp-noodle man from earlier arrived, patting 'Yao' on the back, which made him scowl. Her vision was still blurry, but the way he got red was undeniable.
" 瞧，她不是莫蓋！你好，小姐！我叫錢婆。" A big and tall soldier followed closely behind. He spoke with a smile in his voice and bowed politely as he approached, to which she bowed back, not having a clue what he'd said.
" 我叫凌！很高興見到你，莫蓋小姐！" Limp-noodle intercepted again. She bowed, confused, but she figured it was probably my best course of action.
* * *
"You guys are acting like total idiots, she clearly doesn't understand Chinese..." Yao muttered, pulling them both down by their arm and earlobe respectively.
"azъ... Elěna!" She spoke up, a bit more confidently this time, which surprised the three of them and absolutely delighted Ling, whose face twisted into a shit-eating grin.
"Well, pleasure to meet you, Miss Yelena! Now I can finally stop calling you a mogai, huh!" He wasted no time approaching her and shaking her hand violently. Yao would have been seething if it wasn't hilarious how much she towered over him. How much sturdier a person she seemed to be.
"You're not secretly a mogai, are you?" He leaned in conspiratorially, which made Yao roll his eyes.
"She doesn't speak Chinese, you idjit." He grabbed Ling by his collar and dragged him to a more comfortable distance from the awkward-looking giant lady.
"Right, right..." Ling smoothed himself off.
"So how do we communicate with her, wise guy?" Ling turned to Yao, crossing his arms.
Yao wasn't even sure if he wanted to keep talking to her. He'd made sure she was real, exchanged names, and that seemed like a perfectly acceptable time to go their separate ways, given how jumpy she seemed to be.
Too bad fate had other plans.
"Excuse me, Miss Yelena? Can we have some of your food?" Chiem Po said, pointing at the pot of brewing stew above the fire and the plate he was holding that had seemingly materialised out of thin air.
Yao groaned once more.
"She doesn't-"
But before he could finish, Yelena had smiled and nodded, having understood what was asked of her. And soon, all four of them were sitting, eating stew at the campfire.