It came as a surprise to no one except Yuhan himself that, in the Year of
the Goat, he fell in love with one.
She was particularly beautiful, his goat, with a gleaming coat of silver
threads and small wooden wheels instead of hooves. But people frowned on
overt goat love, even in the remote village of Sunrise, and Yuhan was forced
to keep his love hidden, both literally and figuratively.
Yuhan rolled his goat up a long, winding path in the nearby mountains
until he reached a small but cozy cave.
"Here you shall be protected from the wind and rain, from the early
morning frost, and from the floods of springtime."
The goat said nothing, but simply regarded him with the dull brown
circles of her eyes.
Her silence didn't deter Yuhan. In fact, he redoubled his efforts to win
her affection by climbing the trail to her cave not merely once or twice a
day, but a full dozen times, his arms laden with gifts and treats to amuse her
and bind her heart to his.
But Yuhan's work suffered. He was the town's only cobbler, and he'd
never been more than just adequate at the task. The weather grew colder,
the rains fell harder, and the number of shoes Yuhan needed to mend
swelled as quickly as his love for the goat. When he wasn't visiting his true
love, Yuhan was making himself new shoes, for just one day's worth of treks
up the mountain and back ruined his soles and covered his feet in blisters.
And still, the goat refused to return Yuhan's love.
