The morning light of early autumn drifted like gossamer through the carved lattice windows of the Jingyuan General's Mansion, casting a translucent glow over the ink orchids on the windowsill. Jiang Wan lowered her gaze, fixed on the rice paper on her desk. She turned the wolf-hair brush lightly between her fingers, and the ochre pigment on its tip shimmered with a warm, golden hue in the morning sun. The mandarin duck jade pendant at her wrist swayed slightly with her movements, catching the light alongside the ink in her stone well.
"Miss, is this pigment the newly refined orpiment?" Lüluo asked, crouching to the side. She carefully adjusted the angle of the palette so that the sunlight fell precisely on the heads of grain Jiang Wan was sketching. "It looks even more luminous than last year's."
"Yes, Heir Lu had it sent over from the Western Regions," Jiang Wan replied softly. Her brushwork took a sharp turn, and a full, heavy cluster of rice spread across the paper. The autumn in her paintings was never the withered lotus or the solitary goose of a scholar's desk. On the paper, golden waves of rice rippled in the wind, and a farmer in a conical hat bent to harvest the crop. The grains spilling from the edge of a bamboo basket looked as if they might roll off the page at any moment. In the distant village, smoke curled from chimneys, weaving with the rosy clouds of the horizon to create ribbons of warm red between the grey-blue roof tiles.
Chapter 105