It was a dark and stormy night.

It hadn't started out that way. Just a few months ago, he'd been sitting quietly in the gardens located in the heart of the city, listening to the fountains tinkling and the muted sounds from outside the walls. Sounds outside the wall were always muted and not necessarily because of the straw that was laid out in the street to muffle the sound. Now that he thought about it, well now that the thought had finally gotten brave enough to enter into his mind, he felt it probably had more to do with the fact that any sound considered to loud would probably earn its originator a long term in prison.

Lu Wang had spent the better part of his brief term as one of the ministers to the Emperor in this particular garden which in his opinion was one of the most pleasing. It was made up of artfully raked gravel and stones and laid out carefully as though it might be part of a mountain torrent, albeit an exquisitely refined one.

He'd risen quietly through the civil service, studying all the arts thought essential to the practice of good government and administration. He'd mastered calligraphy, flower arranging and poetry. As a matter of fact, his poetry and calligraphy were so finely tuned that it would take all day to write a short poem about the beauty of the lotus. Granted it did make recording minutes of meetings a bear but but that was fine and beautiful and how it should be.

But that was about 5 months ago.