My breathing grew shallow. Yet his words did not leave me. Legend. Kingdom. History. These were new words in my vocabulary. They carried weight, solidity. I turned them over on my tongue, and they tasted sharp, like metal and blood. They were so different from what I was used to hearing: beautiful. That old blessing, that tired curse. So flimsy and temporal, so easily faded, like the plum blossoms that withered in midwinter.
