Complete silence followed for perhaps three heartbeats while everyone processed what had just happened. Water continued spraying wildly from the damaged irrigation line, soaking everything within its considerable radius. Shuyin looked down at herself, taking inventory of the disaster. Clothes utterly ruined. Hands are completely muddy. Hair plastered to her head with water and decorated with clumps of dirt.
Then she laughed. Not the polite chuckle of soone trying to maintain dignity. Not the quiet amusent of soone in control. Full, unrestrained, belly-deep laughter that startled even herself with its intensity and freedom.
"Run!" Yuyan laughed, already completely soaked as water splashed across her legs and torso, turning her clothes dark with saturation.
The ground transford into slick mud almost instantly under the continuous spray. Yuyan tried to step away from the fountain, tried to reach stable ground, but she slid sideways instead, her feet finding no traction. She grabbed instinctively at Shuyin’s arm for balance. Both nearly fell again in a tangle of limbs and laughter.
Chen Xiao attempted to retreat carefully, his movents characteristically cautious, but his shoe found a particularly slick patch of mud and slipped slightly. He froze completely, eyes widening, body locking into immobility. Waiting. Always waiting. For the anger that his mistake would provoke. For scolding about ruining clothes or making a ss. For a punishnt that seed to follow every accident in his previous life.
Instead, Shuyin deliberately, obviously on purpose, slid toward him through the mud, moving like she was ice skating on the slick surface. She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper that carried just far enough for him to hear over the water spray. "This battlefield has beco extrely dangerous. I think we might be losing this fight to the garden."
Yuyan burst into uncontrollable giggles at the dramatic pronouncent. Water sprayed over all three of them as they struggled and failed repeatedly to stand upright on the increasingly treacherous ground. Mud streaked their clothes in abstract patterns. Laughter filled the garden, echoing off the mansion’s walls, probably audible to every servant inside who must be wondering what madness had possessed their miss.
Chen Xiao slipped again, his body going down. This ti, Shuyin dropped deliberately beside him in the mud, sacrificing any remaining dignity, and lowered her voice to sothing softer. "I think we’ve definitely lost this particular battle. The water has a superior tactical position."
A small sound escaped from Chen Xiao’s throat. Soft. Hesitant. It took a mont to recognize it as laughter, quiet and rusty from disuse but genuine. His smile was barely there, tiny and uncertain, but it was a smile. Real joy breaking through trauma’s thick walls.
Shuyin’s heart squeezed painfully at that small victory, but she kept her expression light and playful, not wanting to draw attention to the mont and risk making him self-conscious. Instead, she turned her attention to the broken irrigation line still fountaining enthusiastically. "We should probably fix that before we flood the entire estate."
"Probably," Lu Yuze agreed from where he’d been watching the entire spectacle unfold, equal parts amazed and amused. He moved to help, locating the water main control, but by the ti he got the spray shut off, everyone was already completely drenched and mud-covered.
The temporary cessation of the fountain didn’t end the chaos. If anything, it escalated. Shuyin, standing in the center of what had beco a muddy battlefield, looked down at her ruined clothes, at the destroyed garden, at the puddles everywhere. Then she looked at the children, both of them watching her with expressions mixing uncertainty and delight, waiting to see what she would do next, whether punishnt or permission would follow.
"You know what?" she announced, her voice carrying decision. "If we’re already this muddy, we might as well make it worth it. Prepare yourselves." She crouched low, scooping up a handful of slippery, dark mud that squelched through her fingers. "The garden army strikes back!"
Before either child could react, before they could mount a defense or retreat, she flung the mud at them with theatrical aggression. Yuyan squealed, ducking sideways, but the glob still caught her across one cheek, leaving a dark sar. Chen Xiao, more cautious than most children his age, flinched instinctively but then sothing shifted in his expression. He bent down, scooped up mud from the puddle at his feet, and hurled it back at Shuyin with surprising aim. The first handful hit her shoulder with a wet splat, and she shrieked with laughter that held no anger, only joy.
"Is that all you’ve got?" she challenged, diving sideways to roll in the mud like a child, flinging wet earth everywhere in her wake. Yuyan followed suit imdiately, sliding across the wet grass on her stomach, her feet sending sprays of mud up into the air with each kick. Chen Xiao finally let go of his remaining hesitation, let go of the caution that usually ruled his every movent. He scooped up a thick clump and aid with surprising precision at Shuyin’s back.
Mud flew in every direction, landing in hair, on clothes, on boots, even splattering the remains of the carefully arranged garden that had once been so perfectly maintained by Shuyin’s stepmother. Every toppled plant and broken flower was thoroughly baptized in chaotic joy, christened in the ss of reclamation and rebellion.
At one point, Shuyin slipped on a particularly slick patch of mud, her feet going out from under her completely. She slid directly into Yuyan with enough force to knock them both over. Both shrieked as they tumbled together, mud flying into Chen Xiao’s face as they fell. He burst into uncontrollable giggles, actually threw himself deliberately into the fray, sliding toward them with arms flailing, hitting both with another splattering handful before the montum of his slide carried him past them.
Lu Yuze stood at the garden’s edge, watching with an expression that cycled between disbelief and amusent and sothing softer that might have been affection. He could hardly believe the sight before him...
User Comments
0 comments from readers