Yasha's country was closer to what Fye had expected, when he first struck his bargain with the Witch of Space and Time. It was a world entirely foreign to him, that robbed him of speech and evinced no need of what he would be. It did not surprise him that Kurogane could communicate in halfway measures. They shared the values of the ninja, this dark-eyed people and their strange, pale, silent king; in a place where gestures were simple and smiles rare, he was isolated by his disguise.
Still he would not have chosen to ride into battle. Kurogane could bloody his sword to satiety: they had sweetmeats even in this grim country, though no ingredients familiar to him. Neither buttercream nor chocolate, nor brandy nor confectioner's sugar, nor hazelnut praline, nor red fruits out of season, nor even wheat flour. Instead they boiled sticky rice-paste dumplings in a sweet, fermented liquid that tasted like diluted rice wine. Served in a little porcelain bowl, the dumplings were as smooth and white and translucent as the full moon, and you never knew what you would find in the center. Red bean paste, lotus root jelly, aromatic seeds, yellow sugar crystals...
His favorite was black sesame seed paste, because it was the colour of night. Too, he fancied that black was the colour of Heart's Desire, and it all seemed terribly fitting.
He would have learnt to make them by watching. He had clever eyes, and hands too. He did not care if they thought him foolish or ineffectual. But among all their words there was only one he understood, and thus he had to see for himself: the youthful enemy king who was neither man nor woman, whose dark gaze burnt with an unquenchable flame, who shared a name that caused him to tremble. When Fye met him at last on the battlefield he understood how closely he had made his escape, for the Ashura of this world could have been a son or a brother to the one whose memory haunted each step he took - as beautiful as the night, as war, as Heart's Desire.