moonsday's child is fair of face

Hyo was back to work at last.

He'd taken a few more days off than Long Feng would have preferred in order to mourn his wife — but then again, Hyo had hardly been wed seven years before his wife passed to illness, and the man did have a young daughter to look after.  Long Feng supposed he'd found someone to care for her while he worked.

He strode into his second-in-command's office and was immediately distracted by the sight of a small child in the corner of the room.  A pretty enough little girl, with rich brown hair perfectly braided, an immaculate dress of a dark green, and a bit of rose quartz in her hands.

He was too long in watching her; Hyo looked up and said calmly, "Yes, sir?"

The Director turned to his subordinate and got down to business, the child put from his mind for now.  When the business was concluded, however, he returned his attention to her once more.  After a few minutes, she looked up.  "Hello," he told her.

"Hello," she replied, her voice clear despite the babyish tone to it. 

Long Feng approved — Hyo was not the sort to allow his daughter to retain babytalk beyond the proper years for it — and favoured the child with a smile.  "You are whom?" he asked her. 

She rose very carefully to her feet and bowed politely.  "Mi-Cha, sir."

His earlier assumption had been correct, the little girl was indeed Hyo's daughter.  Though really one only needed about half a brain cell to realise this.  "Hm."

Mi-Cha blinked, tilting her head curiously.  Long Feng sat down cross-legged, giving her leave to do the same.  "Are you enjoying yourself?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," she answered him, settling down as well and picking up a stone.  The rose quartz had been set aside and she now held some blue agate; both stones had been tumbled and rounded for easy resale as love- and protection-stones — made and sold cheap in this city of idle earthbenders.

He did some of his work on the floor in Hyo's office, keeping an eye on this strange and new factor in his environment.  The little girl seemed utterly fascinated by the striped stone: she was turning it over and over in her hands, running her fingers over it.  After several minutes, she picked up the bit of rose quartz and laid it in her lap, then put the agate next to it.

At this, Long Feng raised his head to stare off into the distance, his brush poised over the paper as if thinking of what to write next.  So poised, he could see her close her eyes and run her fingers over first one stone, then the other, for a few moments.  Then she put the rose quartz away.

Long Feng returned to writing.

After several minutes more of playing with the agate, Mi-Cha settled the stone on the ground and curled up against the wall for a nap.  Shortly after that, Long Feng finished his current paper and rose with easy grace.  "You should bring her more often, Hyo."

His second-in-command looked up from a roster.  "I may not have a choice for a time, sir," was the careful reply.  Ah, of course – as Mi-Cha's presence here indicated, Hyo was likely having trouble finding someone to care for her.

Long Feng beckoned, and the gems she had been playing with flew easily to his hand so he could examine them closely.  That was when he noticed something: while the rose quartz was fairly uninteresting, something about the agate seemed… off.  He peered closer at it, and realised that the pale bands going across the stone were not blue, but a pale pinkish colour.

Well.

Wasn't that interesting.