👶Chapter 29: Winter's Gift
🌍 November 24th, 99 BCE — Late Autumn 🍂
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While stone blocks groaned into place and iron tools rang against chisel-bit granite, another kind of labor took place in the heart of the valley—quieter, but no less monumental.
Lianhua, Junjie's mother, gave birth to a daughter during Early Second Winter, just as the fortress wall surrounding the valley reached waist height and the gatehouse began to take form. Snow clung to the slopes like a white shroud, and bitter winds needled through every gap in the stone. But inside the family compound, the hearth blazed, and sweat beaded on foreheads for very different reasons.
The birth was overseen by Meiya, the village's seasoned midwife, a woman in her forties with steady hands and a calm voice that had seen dozens of children into the world. At her side worked Shulan, her much younger apprentice, eager but nervous, fetching cloths and kettles and learning by doing. Between them, they carried the weight of the valley's oldest kind of knowledge: how to guide life safely into trembling air.
Despite the cold, the village was alive with purpose. The wall-building teams—stonecutters, haulers, and scaffold hands—were working in rotating shifts, bundled up in furs and fire-warmed cloaks. Junjie had perfected a pair of mechanized winches for lifting stone, and even crude crane arms made from salvaged metal parts. Nano's design input made the impossible merely difficult, and the villagers powered through that difficulty with the kind of grit only born of desperation and belief in something better.
But none of that prepared Junjie for the tension he felt waiting for news from the birthing room.
Lianhua had carried quietly, gracefully—though the pregnancy had surprised everyone, even herself. She had joked about being too old for this sort of thing. Chengde had looked both proud and vaguely terrified. But they had good food now, real medicine, warm beds, and Nano watching in the background for signs of trouble. Childbirth in winter wasn't for the faint of heart.
The home was cleared. The village midwife and two trusted assistants worked through the night. Junjie remained outside, pacing under the eaves, half-distracted by messages from the wall team, half-listening for a cry that might not come. Meiya came out briefly with a steaming kettle and caught his sleeve.
"You're going to wear out the stones if you keep circling like that," she told him gently.
"I can't sit," Junjie muttered. "Every sound feels like it could be the one that tells me she's gone, or she's here."
Meiya pressed the kettle into his hands. "Then drink this and breathe. Whichever it is, you'll need your strength."
Chengde sat on a stool near the fire pit, silent, fingers interlocked and knuckles pale. Fenma crouched beside him.
"You're awfully quiet," she said.
He swallowed, his throat tight. "If I speak, my voice will shake."
Fenma rested a hand on his arm. "Then let it. She'll know she has a father who feels it."
Neither man replied, but the silence between them carried the weight of unspoken prayers.
Just before dawn, the door creaked open.
The midwife stepped out, hair damp with sweat, her face weary but lit with a tired smile. "She's here. A healthy little girl. And your wife..." she nodded to Chengde, "...is resting."
Fenma gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. "A girl?"
"A girl," the midwife confirmed.
Chengde stood slowly, and a laugh caught halfway to a sob escaped him. "A daughter... Lianhua, you stubborn miracle."
Junjie let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Fenma's eyes shimmered as she whispered, "The valley has its first winter flower."
They named her Meiyun, "beautiful cloud," in honor of the snow-laced skies under which she was born. The name spread through the village like a spark. After breakfast, workers passed the news from the scaffold to the forge to the kitchen. Smiles bloomed on frost-bitten faces. Everyone knew what it meant—life could still take root, even in the coldest season.
Gifts poured in: smoked strips of venison from the hunters, hand-woven swaddling blankets, tiny carved toys. One blacksmith made a miniature knife charm for protection. An old woman from the pottery crew left a small child-sized cup of fired red clay glazed in blue—"for her first tea."
Even amid the grueling wall construction, morale soared.
Junjie bent over the cradle with Meiya at his side. "She looks so small," he whispered.
"Small doesn't mean weak," Meiya said, brushing the infant's cheek. "Clouds carry storms."
Chengde chuckled hoarsely from the corner. "And I'll be there when the storm breaks."
Junjie smiled at that, though his mind was already turning. A child born in a hidden valley fortress, in the dead of winter, while the people forged their future one stone at a time? That was a story. It gave weight to what they were building—not just a place to hide, but a place to grow.
Nano, ever discreet, had kept close watch during the birth. It quietly logged vital signs, chemical levels, and even noted a rare protein expression in the newborn's blood—likely a byproduct of the immune upgrade embedded in the villagers' months earlier. Meiyun was not just healthy—she was likely one of the healthiest infants born in that region in a hundred years.
Lianhua, once recovered, began brewing teas and tonics again with the help of the midwife. Even the apothecary shop saw new traffic as mothers and young couples sought advice, eyeing Meiyun with hope. "If Lianhua can do it..." was said more than once around kitchen fires.
As for Junjie, he stood a little taller. Not just a son or a village hero anymore. A brother. A builder. And in a way, a future protector of what his sister would grow up to inherit.
Outside, the wall continued to rise, stone by stone.
And within it, the village welcomed its first true child of the new era.