Water Mirrored Moon - 水鏡月

Part I - Born of the Water Moon: 2. Awakening

Casey felt something spill down her chin and she coughed, swallowing the water. She automatically wiped a hand across her damp chin and blinked.

"Guniang!*" grunted a warm gravelly voice from somewhere above her head.

Casey squinted her eyes and blinked into the face of a bearded man who was bending over her.

The man looked to be about sixty with cheerful smiling eyes that twinkled brightly at her. His salt and pepper hair was pulled up into a top knot and very neatly secured with a single blue ribbon.

Weird. What...?

"Guniang xing le*?" he smiled again, looking patient. He seemed pleased that she was awake.

She sat up, pulling the blanket around her, starring at him and the strange surroundings.

"Who are you!?" she asked, shrinking backwards a bit.

He frowned and she repeated her question in slow awkward Mandarin: "Zhe wei xiansheng shi shei*?"

His face cleared and he smiled brilliantly. He said something very rapidly and smiled again looking even more pleased.

Casey shook her head. She had picked out some of what he had said to her, but she barely knew the language.

"Daifu*...?" she repeated two words that she had understood, pointing at him with a question in her voice. This was a very archaic way of saying 'doctor' in Chinese.

He nodded.

"Guniang na? Ming zi*?" He pointed at her, asking for her name. He pointed at himself and said very slowly: "I am Yang Ming Xi."

She thought for a moment, converting the words from Cantonese to Mandarin.

"Cui Xi," she said. She took his hand, startling him, and wrote the words for 'western emerald' into his palm.

"A good name!!" he said. "Where did you come from? Your family...?"

He spoke very slowly to allow her to understand the words.

"Canada. Where is this?" she asked.

He shook his head at the unfamiliar word 'Canada'.

"This is Tiansheng," he said.

Tiansheng? Where is that? she wondered in confusion.

Casey gathered that she must have floated down the river and ended up in some little town, but it just didn't make any sense. Why was she in an old, strangely furnished wooden building rather than the hospital? If she had washed up in a remote village, there still should have been services? But perhaps this was the local doctor's house? The boat had not gone too far, and she recalled seeing the lights of the city in the distance as they had floated down the river. Why wasn't she at the hospital?