The sky is dark and grey with clouds who give no hope of rain. The brittle boned dead armies of the grass perish before a dusty dirt moat that surrounds a decrepit castle.
This is a castle that has been injured by time. The roof is open and exposed, caved in like a fractured skull. The spiral spine has broken steps and missing vertabrae. The eaves hangs about its face like an uneven beard framing a mouth whose front door is loose on the hinges.
Sitting on its sagging and distended tongue is a girl in a dress of white embrodiered with dark red flowers, perhaps peonies because peonies would suit her exotic looks, but they are most likely tight lipped roses. She is sitting showing plump thighs and well-shaped calves and ankles. Her knees are bent and flawless. She is cradling a child in her empty arms, gently patting its buttocks in the cup of her delicate porcelain hand as she hums from behind a veil of her jet black hair.
She thinks she is dead because she sees that the barley is still high, because the sheep are stenciling their hunger into the grassy hillside. She thinks she is dead because the baby birds over her head are sending their demands into the sky and their poor mother in her hurry has dropped all her shopping except for one lone earthworm who had suffered such a shock that he was as slack as a piece of string in her clutches.
She was one of the great prides of the Shin family. Like all the Shin women she was beautiful. She would, like her elder sisters and her mother add another parcel of lands to the great Shin farm by marrying well. She would bear many children; boys who would grow into mythic men and girls who would bloom into rose hipped goddesses.
She was still so young and yet, promise clung to her like dew. Already she would singlehandedly increase the size of the Shin family farm by double, enough to make the farm almost a kingdom of its own. Her main suitor was the only son of the hard-working Chung clan.
In a year they would have married, but Shin grew impatient with each meeting. She had desires beyond land and increasing fortunes. She was quite innocent. She did not know where her desires would lead her.
This is a castle that has been injured by time. The roof is open and exposed, caved in like a fractured skull. The spiral spine has broken steps and missing vertabrae. The eaves hangs about its face like an uneven beard framing a mouth whose front door is loose on the hinges.
Sitting on its sagging and distended tongue is a girl in a dress of white embrodiered with dark red flowers, perhaps peonies because peonies would suit her exotic looks, but they are most likely tight lipped roses. She is sitting showing plump thighs and well-shaped calves and ankles. Her knees are bent and flawless. She is cradling a child in her empty arms, gently patting its buttocks in the cup of her delicate porcelain hand as she hums from behind a veil of her jet black hair.
She thinks she is dead because she sees that the barley is still high, because the sheep are stenciling their hunger into the grassy hillside. She thinks she is dead because the baby birds over her head are sending their demands into the sky and their poor mother in her hurry has dropped all her shopping except for one lone earthworm who had suffered such a shock that he was as slack as a piece of string in her clutches.
She was one of the great prides of the Shin family. Like all the Shin women she was beautiful. She would, like her elder sisters and her mother add another parcel of lands to the great Shin farm by marrying well. She would bear many children; boys who would grow into mythic men and girls who would bloom into rose hipped goddesses.
She was still so young and yet, promise clung to her like dew. Already she would singlehandedly increase the size of the Shin family farm by double, enough to make the farm almost a kingdom of its own. Her main suitor was the only son of the hard-working Chung clan.
In a year they would have married, but Shin grew impatient with each meeting. She had desires beyond land and increasing fortunes. She was quite innocent. She did not know where her desires would lead her.
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