License to Cultivate Bonus - Hiroko

This is the character sketch I wrote while creating the character of Hiroko. It may not exactly match the worldbuilding I've developed since, but it should give you a look at who the princess really is.

Princess Hiroko hiked up her indigo skirts and disappeared as quickly as she could around the garden path. She had only a few minutes before the nanny picked up from her other charges. If Hiroko was out of sight by then, she might be able to conceal herself in the imperial grounds for a few hours before being missed. But if the nanny saw her trying to escape, she would be called back and have to return to the group play.

Hiroko didn't mind lessons. During lessons, she could sit quietly and practice her calligraphy, answering questions their tutors set in front of them. But during group play, the other royal children would find ways to taunt her, to trip her up, or make her feel clumsy during group games. She was old enough now to understand much of it was envy. Currently, she was the only indigo princess being raised in the imperial gardens, and there were no violet prince or princess at all. There were two blue ladies and then a whole smattering of the lesser ranks with almost as many reds as all the other colors put together.

Rank wasn't supposed to matter during lessons and playtime. The children were all being educated to the same high standards, but it did matter, and everyone knew it. Hiroko dirtied down a side path that crossed hers and threw an arch in a flowering hedge. She picked her path at random, and after half a dozen different turns, started to relax. She hadn't been with us in a long time, and as long as she was back and clean before supper, she'd probably get away with it.

She turned another corner and found herself in a section of garden she'd never visited before. Here, the sand was raked into delicate circles, rings, and designs of small rocks had been placed on the sand. Not at random, as she first thought, as she slowly stepped along the path, careful not to disturb the sand. She began to see designs in how the rocks had been placed. Someone had set each one here with great care. The rocks weren't anything special, just smooth grey stones about the size of a pair of adult fists next to each other.

A long ways along, the path led to a tree less than half Hiroko's own height, but it didn't look like a sapling. It looked like a full adult tree, just shrunken. Its trunk was twisted, the bark coming off in delicate brown and white curls. She didn't know what kind of tree it was. Her tutors rarely talked about anything as interesting as trees and gardens. They were busy making sure she could recite all of the different provinces and their rulers, the fifteen ways of perfection, and the different honorable sects that were at ascendance right now in the Empire.

Hiroko crouched, admiring the tree. It was shaped, bent over with the branches trimmed in one direction. Somebody had grown this tree very carefully like this, stood up, and took a surprised step back. There was a woman standing behind the tree who hadn't been there when she first approached. The woman wore white robes, edged with a rainbow-colored ribbon. At her throat was an onyx clasp.

Hiroshi bowed. She knew what that meant, had met other women similarly attired three times before. This was a revered pearl, one who had been of the thousand pearls, and who the Emperor had chosen to bear a child. The woman looked old. Hiroko couldn't say how old. She wasn't good at guessing adults, but she looked older than Hiroko's father, so probably at least forty, maybe even fifty.

The woman was foreign, like many of the pearls. Her face was more oval than round, her eyes delicately tapered with black eye paint on her lids. She folded her hands across her waist and bowed to Hiroko. Hiroko was stunned. No one bowed to her. She might be an indigo princess, but she was also only eight years old.

"Good day, child," the woman said. "What's your name?"

"Ah, I am Indigo Princess Hiroko." then remembered her manners and bowed, folding her hands in front of her. "Good day to you, elder. May I ask your name?"

"Hiroko," the woman said.

Hiroko blushed, feeling like she was somehow being chastised. "Yes, that's my name."

"It is my name as well," the woman said.

"Oh!" Hiroko started up, her eyes widening. "Really?" It wasn't a common name at all. Another thing some of the children liked to tease her about, she even had to write it in strange characters, since none of the ones they had learned in school would work. One of her masters had taken her aside and showed her how to write it. Hiroko enjoyed the delicate strokes of the brush that she used for her own name, so curvy compared to the sharper slashes of everyone else's. "Well, that's funny, isn't it?"

"Not really," the older woman said, smiling graciously. "Why have you come here?"

"I was looking at the gardens."

"Shouldn't you be at your lessons, Princess Hiroko?" There was a bit of a funny sound to the woman's voice, lilting, musical, like she was choosing each of her words carefully. Hiroko enjoyed it.

"It's a play afternoon, Elder Hiroko," she said.

The woman's eyes sparkled. Hiroko was pretty sure she had guessed that she was supposed to be with the other children. "Do you like my tree?"

"Your tree?" Hiroko said in surprise. "Is it yours?"

"Yes," the woman responded. "I grew it, and others like it."

"How did you get it so small? Is it a special kind of tree?"

"No, indeed. It is an art in the land where I am from, and the Emperor granted me leave to practice my art here in his garden when I retired from my previous duties. I have been growing trees ever since. They're called bonsai in my own tongue."

"Bonsai," Hiroko repeated. "How pretty."

Older Hiroko smiled down gently at the girl. "Would you like to learn how it's done?"

"Yes!" Hiroko's heart leaped in her. She followed the woman to a shed where she was given an apron to cover her robes and a pair of gloves.

Then Elder Hiroko picked up a pair of shears and gave them a snip experimentally before handing them to Hiroko. "You take these." She bent and picked up a bucket. "Come."

They wandered farther down the garden path to another tree, this one barely taller than Hiroko's knees. Elder Hiroko bent down beside it. "Can you tell what sort of tree this is?"

Hiroko looked. She shook her head. "I don't know trees very well," she admitted.

"This one you might. This is a white oak."

Hiroko did know that one. She gasped in astonishment. "But oaks are tall, broad, at least a hundred feet tall."

Elder Hiroko laughed. "They can be, though not all. This one is as tall as I'm going to let it. You have to tend them carefully."

"Do you chop them with these?" Hiroko worked the handles on the shears awkwardly.

"When they grow too big, first you trim them with your eyes," Elder Hiroko said. "You must see the tree you wish to grow and encourage it that way. This is my greatest tool." From her bucket, she fished out a ball of twine.

She measured off a section, chopped it, and then carefully tied two branches together. "See? We will train this branch to grow a little more in this direction." And she looked over the tree and pointed to one branch that extended a twig and a leaf a little farther out than its fellows. "We shall trip here. See?"

She marked a spot. Hiroko brought the cutters over and carefully snipped where Elder Hiroko had pointed. An inch of twig and a single leaf fell to the ground. She picked it up and didn't know where to put it, so she held it in her hands. Elder Hiroko smiled. "And thus you began your first step," she said.

Hiroko realized a little time after she began spending one afternoon a week with Elder Hiroko that the woman was her grandmother. Nobody told her that. But somehow, after a few sessions together, she knew.

Hiroko had never known her mother, who had died when she was born. Her father came into her life when he could, but he was a very important man, a general, the greatest general in the Emperor's army. They called him "the Fist of the West" and let him wear the special golden armor that only the Emperor's chosen could wear. He had climbed almost as high as a man could, and someday Hiroko knew he would climb even further. That was why the Emperor had let him marry into the Violet Court, giving him one of the Violet Princesses as his wife. It was an honor bestowed on very few. Only a few Violet Princes or Princesses were born every year.

As Hiroko grew older, she treasured the time she spent with her grandmother learning the art of bonsai. It taught her more than just about trees and growing things, though she learned that, too. It taught her patience, how to measure something up, how to trim when it was needed, how to bear deep hurts without showing.

When she was fifteen, she was taken to the Tower of Heaven, along with several other princesses her own age. They were escorted by a group of soldiers, met at the entrance by a stern-faced woman, dressed like her grandmother, another of the most honored pearls who had been chosen to bear the Emperor's child, and who now served the Emperor in other ways.

"It is time for you to be escorted along your first steps of the climb," she said. "In order to ensure that you are prepared to marry climbers who have reached the second peak, or even beyond, you must be brought up to the third step of the first peak. You will not be given steps past that unless your future spouse's peak of cultivation is such that you must come higher or risk injury in the course of your marital duties."

Some of the other girls giggled at that. Hiroko did not. She listened carefully to the retired pearl's words. "The soldiers will protect you. You must listen to them. If you do not listen, if you do not stay within the circle of protection, you may be injured or even die. They know what they are doing. If you disobey and die, you bring shame to your parents. Do you understand?"

The girls sobered up and nodded. Hiroko found herself shaking, but nodded as well. "Then enter."

And Hiroko stepped inside a living nightmare.

There were already soldiers inside the tower, fighting devils and terrors that she couldn't even grasp as she looked at them. Pictures like tigers, but with purple stripes and roars made marrow in her bones freeze. Cows that shrieked down on them and breathed fire. Tall cranes that pecked at them with razor-sharp beaks. Large, stunted creatures walking on two legs like men, but like no men she'd ever seen. Twisted and misshapen, carrying outlandish weapons.

The soldiers herded the girls closer as they slaughtered the creatures. With each death, Hiroko felt power surging into her soul, strengthening her. But her power felt wrong. It felt twisted, somehow, like it was making her into something she didn't want to be. Like a tree that has caught a blight. She resisted, even as the other girls shouted in joy and exclaimed that they could feel their first step, feel their core coming to life and filling with energy. Hiroko resisted.

The other girls followed the soldiers. One of the older soldiers dropped back and checked. He called his commander over, and they both studied Hiroko. "Princess, what is wrong?" they asked, bowing. "Why do you fight the lux that we harvest for you?"

She shook her head, tears forming in her eyes. "It's not right," she said. "It doesn't feel right."

An older man was summoned from outside the tower. He wore as tall as ropes, and his white beard hung down almost to his knees. He dismissed the other girls and had the soldiers bring Hiroko to a badly injured black-and-white bear creature. They murdered it in front of her eyes. She felt its life rushing into her. She resisted. It just wasn't right. Her soul would not take its power.

"Incompatible lux," the man said, raising his great bushy eyebrows in surprise. "Fascinating. To be expected, perhaps, from such a high rank. This is General Huang's daughter, is it not?"

The soldiers nodded, looking deeply unhappy. "We do not want to be the one to report to General Huang that we have failed to raise his daughter even to the first step,” the commander of the soldiers said.

"I understand your apprehension," the scholar said. "Perhaps we can resolve this. It is unusual for one who has not yet chosen a path to have a flavor aspect to her lux. What have you killed so far?"

The soldier rattled off a list.

"That is comprehensive," the scholar said. Yet he pursed his lips. "Let us not be too quick. There are other aspects on this floor.”

“We had not planned the long trek through this level of the tower," the captain said. "I would have to requisition new men. Some of mine are near the height of this first peak, but have not been granted leave to take that step."

"I shall take care of the requisitions," the scholar said. He disappeared, and a few hours later, Hiroko, the soldiers, and the scholar set off deeper into the tower. They made their way past various groups of monstrous creatures like the ones they had killed, without attracting any of them.

Hiroko could sense that the captain of the guard was doing something to keep them from being noticed. They came to a quiet, still lake. The captain urged the soldiers forward, and a many-armed monstrosity erupted from the lake, striking at them. The soldiers killed the beast, and an aspect of the lux streamed, approached the princess. It felt worse than any of the others. She screamed, threw her hands up in resistance.

"Definitely not that," the scholar said. "Distribute it among your men. They deserve this reward for their hard work."

The captain seemed pleased about that. His men picked up the pace. They found a glade. They found a land full of fire. In the distance, a volcano spewed forth lava. Swollen demons made of fire raced toward them. The soldiers killed a pack of the fire demons, and their lux raced toward Hiroko. She felt the heat in it. It wasn't as bad as the cold, clammy lake monster, but it hurt her. She would not let it into her court.

The image flashed in her mind. Her grandmother's trees. Training them carefully, trimming them, choosing what nutrients to work into the soil at their base. It felt like that. Like she was one of those trees. The lux they were offering her would make her grow, but it would make her grow out of the shape that she wanted to be. She didn't know what that shape was yet, just that this wasn't right.

They moved on. Hiroko lost track of time. There seemed to be no day, no night in here. They stopped to eat when they were hungry, and then went on. They found a snowy hillside. An enormous yeti bounded out of the cave. Attracted by the soldiers, they spilled its blue blood across the snow. Hiroko touched its lux, felt the icy coldness seep across her soul, and blotted it out.

With every failure, the scholar grew more and more excited. “She has rejected all of the most common forms of lux. She truly has a remarkable core. I shall report to General Huang that his daughter must have exceptional trainers once we have identified what her core is compatible with.”

The captain grumbled. “We're starting to run out of options here.”

"Take us to the glade," the scholar commanded.

The captain looked surprised. "Master Li, I will not gainsay you, but unless I allow three of my men to advance past the first peak, I am not certain the glade is safe. I know this level of the great tower of heaven is supposed to host only creatures of the first and second step, but the glade is notoriously harder than that.”

“Do what must be done. I will fill out the forms,” the scholar said, and they set off once again.

As they trudged through a grassy green meadow, Hiroko felt lighter somehow than she had before. They were approaching a great grove of beech trees. She recognized it from her studies with her grandmother. Beech didn't make for very good bonsai, but there were some in the imperial gardens of normal height.

In amongst the beech trees were small, flowering cherry trees. Grandmother had allowed Hiroko to begin her very own cherry tree bonsai, planting the sapling herself six months ago, tending it twice a week. These were full size. Their blossoms drifted on the wind. A pale pink snow of flowers. She inhaled. The air smelled like honeysuckle.

The soldiers flushed a roe deer out of hiding. It bounded across the meadow, where they shot it full of arrows. Hiroko felt its lux. There was a pleasant freshness to it. Almost, almost she let it in.

She turned to the scholar. "Master Lee, it's not quite mine.”

He nodded gravely. "Yes, I thought so. There was still too much ordinary lux to it. Captain, summon one of the dryads."

The captain barked orders to his men. They seemed tense. He himself approached the grove and cast some sort of spell. Hiroko could feel it resonate with her core.

As they had progressed through the tower, she was feeling her core more and more clearly. It sat just under her stomach. It was empty. She could feel its shape, its outline. It felt like if she tried, she could make it jiggle or spin. But there didn't seem to be much point to that.

One of the cherry trees got up on its roots and lunged toward the captain, who turned tail and ran. Hiroko cried out as the soldiers approached it. They shot flaming arrows into it, but it came on anyway. They slashed at it with axes, and it hurt them with its branches, smashing against them. She could feel its anger, its pain. When it died, its lux rushed into her.

She wanted to resist, like she had the rest, to throw it out, but she couldn't. The lux slipped inside her, inside her core. She couldn't even feel it entering, because it was like breathing. The lux washed through her and settled in her core, leaving her feeling refreshed, invigorated.

"Yes," Master Lee said. "Yes, she is attuned to blue lux." He seemed excited by this. "Captain, you may begin your plan of attack. We must raise her to the third step with only creatures of life lux."

The captain sighed. "That's going to take a while," he said. "We're going to have to rest up between fights. At least they don't tend to come until you call them."

Hiroko turned to the scholar, understanding what he meant. "No, no, we can't kill these. They... they're alive. They need to live."

Master Lee shook his head, smiling sadly. "Princess, the things that live inside  the Towers of Heaven are not truly alive. They are made of lux. The only way we humans can advance on the climb toward Heaven is to harvest their lux. It is part of the natural cycle. When these are gone, the lux in this place will harden and condense into more. They will recover in time, and you, Princess, will be filled with their precious lux."

"No." but she had no choice as the soldiers cut through, dryad after dryad. She wept as their lux filled her core and lifted her higher and higher. When she felt her core fill for the first time, she dropped to her knees.

"You must embrace it," Master Lee said. "You must take the next step."

"No, no!”

“You must," he said. "You are a princess of the Rainbow Court. This is your duty. The immortal Emperor has commanded it. Your father will be in disgrace if you do not do as you are told."

That was enough to make her tears stop. She swallowed hard. “What must I do?"

"I am not an expert on any of the paths of life," the Master admitted. "But I know their steps are different than ordinary paths. Seek your core. Find how to take the next step."

She concentrated on her core, closing her eyes, letting herself feel it. It was full of power, roiling inside her like a pond in stormy weather. That didn't seem right. She imagined it calming, like the pond in the middle of the bonsai garden on a warm summer day. The lux answered her, settling smoothly.

She imagined herself in the center of it. It was like she was kneeling in the garden before her very own cherry tree, thinking about how she wanted to make it grow, what she wanted it to be like.

Her core pulsed and then flooded her. She gasped as a sensation ran through her whole body, shuddering.

She opened her eyes. Master Li nodded. "Well done. You have taken the first step. Thank you, Captain. Two more to go.”

Hiroko cried out again, but they would not listen.