“Where are we going?” Chin asked.

"Sightseeing."

"In the woods?" He asked.

"Lots of things to see in the woods."

"Like what?"

"Trees."

"Trees?"

"And animals," I replied.

"We're going to see trees and animals?"

"In a sense."

Chin frowned and I smiled.

“Can you just tell me-”

“And here we are.”

Chin turned his head and looked around, seemingly unable to see what was happening.

“Where?”

I snapped my fingers and immediately the forest fell away. The illusion collapsed to reveal a stump, a giant stump filled with an uncountable amount of little animals yelling at each other. Of course Chin couldn’t hear them, they were all using their auras to speak. They must have looked like a bunch of strange little mice hustling around one another to him.

“Alright,” Lin Tai yelled. “Line up!”

Her voice was stern and impatient. She was commanding the beasts and surprisingly they were obeying. I had worked up a nice little defensive talisman for all the girls, and I’d given Lin Tai a particularly strong one. Still, the talismans were defensive, not offensive. The beasts couldn’t hurt her but they certainly didn’t have to obey her, and yet… they did.

It was weird and nice. She seemed happy as she directed them to their roles, like a very strict but well-meaning preschool teacher. But instead of toddlers, this teacher was managing a bunch of Divine Beasts that made their nests in the void between universes. Aside from that though, it was a very similar job.

“Things going good?”

“Yes. The Dragon has requested to have a death battle with every faction leader so far.”

“THEY PISS IN MY POND!” The lizard yelled.

“Your pond extends to our territory, making it our pond!” A small monkey retaliated.

“YOU DON'T EVEN NEED TO PEE!” The dragon retorted.

“That’s true, but it is our right to do so and it is our land we pee upon!”

The dragon roared indignantly.

“They’re speaking now?” I asked.

“Yes,” Lin Tai nodded.

“Why?”

“Well the groundhogs started to do it-”

“We are the Prarie Party!” A small groundhog yelled.

“Then the monkeys did the same-”

“The Free Beast’s Republic!” A tiny gorilla rebelled.

“Then the birds joined in-”

“The Fowl Kingdom!” A small pheonix harumphed.

“And they’ve all been doing it ever since,” Lin Tai sighed.

“What’s going on?” Chin asked. “What are these things? Why are they yelling at each other?”

“You ever read those fairy tales about little forest creatures having a secret hidden world of their own?”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Yes.”

“That’s what these are.”

Chin looked around with a squint, studying the little animals from a distance.

“You’re lying. These are animals, small strange animals,” Chin stated

“Yeah, little forest creatures,” I rebutted.

“No. Forest creatures are fairies or elves… not small angry hamsters.”

There was a faint and appalled yell coming from one of the groundhogs, but I ignored them, and so did Chin.

“This is your doing, isn’t it?” Chin said accusatorially. “You given beasts the minds of men to see how they fare?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“It is!” One of the groundhogs yelled from the stump. I turned towards the creature and glared. It scurried away, running through its people and into the surrounding bushed.

I sighed.

“I didn’t make them what they are, this is their natural state. I just brought them here.”

“Why?”

“Reasons.”

It was Chin’s turn to sigh.

“Is this why you told me to keep out of the forest?”

“Yeah, needed to get these guys under control first.”

“Are they a threat to the village?”

“Are mountains a threat to the ants that crawl around them?” The same groundhog yelled from the bushes.

This time I frowned and sent out a metaphysical nudge to keep the thing quiet. It screamed again and scurried to another bush.

“No, they’re not,” I replied.

“Can you guarantee that?” Chin asked with a noticeable shift in his voice. It was the same tone and look he’d given me when I’d told him about making my own sect—a firm and questioning look, something that displayed both annoyance and acceptance at the same time.

“Yes Chin, I can guarantee that they will not harm your village.”

Chin kept looking at me for a moment more, then nodded.

“Interesting mix of animals though,” he mumbled.

“It’s what the recipe called for,” I replied.

“You’re going eat them?”

“No, I’m going to eat their presence.”

Chin turned away, once again having given up on getting a straight answer.

The baby, which I had been holding tightly to this whole time was strangely silent. I looked down and found her staring, dumbfounded by all the animals. She had that wide-eyed look children got around dogs and her eyes glimmered with hope, looking from one little creature to another.

A lot of the animals looked at her, though many actively tried to avoid her gaze. I had told some of the beasts and by now I was sure that most of them knew of what she was. They didn’t know the details. They didn’t know the source of her bloodline or her parents or any of the particulars, only that she was the child of some powerful beast who outranked them all.

I’m sure some suspected. After all her aura was in some ways raw and unrefined, but her qi was now hers. I didn’t know if it was Wukong or her own natural development, but over the month or so since she’d been born her qi had settled down. It had mixed and melded and changed to become its own thing. I’d never thought that a primordial’s bloodline could be subdued and hidden away that easily, but I suppose if any bloodline held a chance at competing against it, it would be the Tamer’s.

And I suspected that Wukong had also done something, aiding the mixture and coagulation of the two natures. I knew he had helped the girl mask her bloodline as one of his favors to me, but I didn’t know what that implied. Did he change the bloodline, or did he merely hide it? Had given her a bit of his own essence, making some kind of threeway blood child?

I didn’t know. And honestly, I didn’t care.

I laid the baby down on a small wooden crib and immediately she started to struggle, screaming angerily for release.

“Alright fellas, you know the drill!” I yelled.

And all the little animals did indeed know the drill. They all line up from the crib to the forest and even further on. A lot of them were the weaker members of the species, those around the seventh to ninth rank, but that was the composition of most of the beasts in the forest. Only the few tenth to twelfth rankers stuck around, prideful and watching from a distance.

I stared at the first animal in line. It was that groundhog, the noisy one. I frowned at him, but the little hamster glared back in bravery. Damn, the little bastard must have known I wasn’t going to do anything.

I waved impatiently at him, and he jumped over the crib. After that, the one behind him did the same as well, and the one behind them, and so on. Chin and I watched as the little creatures jumped one after another, and the girl in the crib’s eyes glazed over.

“Is… is she counting sheep?” Chin asked after a minute of contemplation.

“Yeap,” I replied.

“And that works?”

“In this case it does. She’s a fifth-rank Chin, she doesn’t need sleep. And because she doesn’t need sleep, if I want her to sleep it’ll have to be through special means.”

“And that’s by counting little talking hamsters?”

Somewhere a groundhog squaled in anger.

“It works. They all have different qi signatures and characteristics and the baby loves looking at them one by one. It’s more like consistent overstimulation of the senses rather than counting sheep.”

“Letting her tire herself out with little toys,” he replied.

“Precisely.”

“Why haven’t you named her yet?” Chin asked.

“I have, she just doesn’t like any of the names I’ve offered.”

“Oh,” Chin replied with a nod. “Do all babies name themselves or something? Up in the higher realms?”

“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “This is my first baby.”

As we continued to talk, the baby continued to count. Her eyes glazed over as monsters and immortals leaped over her head. She focused her senses and relaxed her little mind the best she could, and she watched. Watched the beasts, watched us, watched the world, go by. And eventually, her little baby eyes and her little baby mind gave up and closed.