By the time that Lan Chang returned to her room, Ming Cheng was bundled up in bed with his head firmly below the blankets with only one, tiny tuft of black hair sticking upwards out of it, onto the pillar.
Lan Chang quickly deposited her newly acquired possessions on the tiny desk in the corner, before making her way over to Ming Cheng, stroking over his head for a minute.
She leaned down and kissed his head, watching him not move at all in response.
...
So her son was awake.
Lan Chang smiled down at her son, leaving him be to eventually drift off on his own.
He was still a child and needed rest.
She sat down at the writing desk in the corner of the room, uncovered the ink stone and began grinding some usable ink for her to use with the water she had brought.
The stolen medicinal scroll was laid out to the side of her on the floor, the desk far too small to hold it and the writing work that she was completing.
Copying words and characters across was a simple, mundane task that was simply there for her hands to be busy while her mind was allowed to drift off as it would, doing something so boring.
The first thought that entered her mind was the fact that maybe, because of the utter droll of this work, she would accidently, without meaning to, fall asleep at this desk here as well before she had completed her task.
It was a very likely thing, and Lan Chang felt the corners of her lips quirk up at the thought.
The room felt colder tonight than it had done previously, and Lan Chang simply supposed that there was a little stronger breeze blowing outside than what she was used to, considering the warm day of weather that she had been acclimated to.
She couldn't help but wistfully look back over to Ming Cheng, lying there and pretending to be asleep as she copied out all that she needed to adequately take care of him.
She knew that she was a deep sleeper, while in contrast Ming Cheng was a light sleeper, but she was sure that she was being quite enough regardless, the swishing of her brush, the flickering of the candle, and the rustle of the pages being the only noise in the room.
Or maybe, the boy had become too used to having a source of warmth to latch onto while he slept, and that was the thing that was keeping him awake at the moment.
She had made a point to force herself to stay awake long enough at night to ensure that Ming Cheng always fell asleep first, just in case there was a problem and to make sure that he was actually getting some sleep during the night.
It was nothing that she wasn't already used to.
Before Ming Cheng, she would drift off with a book or some other writing and drawing work, for her own entertainment, and she didn't particularly mind not being able to particularly go on with them.
Her handwriting was not, by any stretch, neat, and she couldn't draw to save her life.
And she had already read through the entire fiction segment of the public portion of the town library, not particularly interested in civil engineering or the patterns of the stars above her.