Rumours of rebellion filled her with longing she did not remember. She should not be so jealous of glories past, when she was there before, and they were not for her to have then, either. But still she was back in Beijing, as though she should be there to witness 100,000 deaths with her own eyes. They thought they were bullet proof - she remembered a man who had died when she was young while he searched in vain for immortality. The one who had given her that sick gift was too shy to approach a throne directly. Or perhaps he was just too clever for it. They were hard traits to set apart, often enough. And here she was, home again, with more than enough of her own shyness and cleverness.

She actually happened to be bulletproof, relative to these rioting fools, but they were not wise men. They'd have no help from some meek woman. So she watched the mistakes in their forms as they went about their foolish business. And smiled knowingly as she watched their deaths from the shadows. She watched when they bled to death clutching their trinkets in impotent prayer.

Seeing the uprising's failure convinced her the miserable Qing would linger with British boots on their throats. As she heard it, distant emperors were making the rules suit them in every direction now. This is the way our civilization falls, toiling in a pool of its own stale blood. They keep saying opportunities lie beyond the sunrise. But they do not want us there, either.

So she prepared a grand ruse. She had located one of her many-great nephews in the so-called land of the flower flag, rivers of gold and overflowing fish which waited across an Ocean from all of this. She would be his daughter on paper, born in a new land. Quite a difficult task, to learn such strange speech so convincingly they could believe it if she had to tell them she been born there. She had to convince them she had once crawled as a baby beneath the din of its bland notes. But what she lacked in genuine love of this absurd animal noise, she made up for in wit. She knew how to appease, and she knew how to hide. She knew how to yield like water, and worst come to worst, she knew how to steal a man's breath with her bare knuckles.

This empire tumbling down with not a single hopeful sign to ease her mind fueled her meticulous mind. She procured one of their American instruments with with to occupy her fingers inside of the ship while she searched for clothing. Her hunger was still weak enough, so she could afford all the necessary arrangements to travel to the New World on a ship loaded with chickens. She memorized every detail any Yankee ever shared with her. They accepted the payment to ask no questions with barely bothering to barter.

Apparently there was no local dialect in this city she'd spent hours learning to pronounce perfectly - San Francisco - but she had found a delightfully talkative man, at least for purposes of learning from him, who claimed to be from just south of the nation's capital. He'd fought in a failed rebellion, himself, it seemed, of provinces wanting to break away but being crushed. Maybe this place would not be hard to adapt to, and his dialect was certainly a touch more charming than the awful croaking of British soldiers.

"I do declare."