Si'Wren's heart pounded like thunder as she abruptly pulled the reins suddenly, halting and wheeling her black steed as she turned him out of formation and walked the high-stepping stallion skittishly up in front of him. Then she adroitly slipped a leg over the top of the saddle and plummeted down with a sudden rush of air to alight on her feet and stand smiling impishly down at him with her little fists on her hips.
Habrunt peered narrowly at up her, and she bowed ceremoniously to him, an unprecedented gesture of respect from such an exalted member of the Emperor's royal court to a mere beggar, which caused no small commotion among the other elders sitting around them.
Habrunt's dull eyes grew slowly wide as he took her in disinterestedly at first, and suddenly stared at her in dumbstruck disbelief. All of a sudden, he was struggling with his walking stick to rise to his feet.
"Si'Wren!" he said in a hoarse voice. "Can it truly be you?"
Si'Wren nodded vigorously, and stood beaming cheerfully at him as Habrunt wrapped his burly arms around her with an inarticulate exclamation of joy, and suddenly Si'Wren found herself weeping, crying and laughing all at the same time, heedless to the sea of faces surrounding them cheering the Emperor in a continuous deafening roar.
Realizing that she had something she must show to him, she pulled free of his embrace and wiped quickly at her tears with one rippling silken black sleeve and turned to the black stallion.
As the stallion shook his dark head and long shaggy mane, and neighed and snorted loudly and lifted and clopped his hooves on the street with a series of heavy thuds, Si'Wren steadied him with her hands, and swung her arm back to sweep her flowing cape out of her way, and reached up to pull from one of her saddle bags the ivory cuneiform writing sticks, and a used clay tablet already covered with writing, in a bamboo frame.
Turning to Habrunt, she smiled her most radiant as she held these up for his appraisal.
"Aha!" said Habrunt, taking and examining everything carefully.
"You—wrote this?"
Si'Wren nodded vigorously.