So the fight was actually pretty interesting.
Firstly, she won! And killed a guy! Honestly very affirming.
“Wouldn’t you agree, Dink?” she asks. Dink, cowardly yes-man that they are, nervously agrees. She really does need to help the little fella grow a backbone.
Secondly, and more importantly, when she was fighting she fell into a state that she hasn’t felt in a long time. The hardest challenges bring the best results, as they say, and there’s been fights before where she hit that zen moment, that state where she could feel every part of her body at once, where everything moves slow and crystal clear and beautiful and she knows exactly what parts are doing what.
This wasn’t that, but she could feel her heart beating, like a drum inside of her, and it does give her an idea.
As she’s considering it, she hears shuffling coming up behind her.
Ah. Well. If she does have to get her shit kicked in today, now’s as good a time as any. She shuffles back, awkwardly turning with her crutch, Dink held out like a weapon ready to be ineffectually poked into a body. She won’t go down without a fight, at least, which is honestly as much as she can hope for in any of the fights she’s had since she- well, lost the ability to fight, really.
Except as it turns out the person coming up behind her is one of the few people alive who may very well be absolutely terrified of tuning forks, now. Makes the whole “intimidation” part of the conflict a lot easier.
It’s the kid. Head still bleeding, stumbling about, kicking up snow into awkward piles behind him as he moves. He has one hand on the closest wall, managing to walk just fine but clearly dizzy. His eyes look a bit better, though, so not brain damaged, perhaps, just concussed. Which is brain damage, but for babies, so barely classifiable as such obviously. Other than that, his only injuries seem to be cut knuckles and bruises, maybe a broken rib at most. He’s basically healthy, honestly, not much to complain about that she can see.
He does look at her like a deer before a fire though, eyes wide and confused. Which… might be a concern.
She looks at him, waiting for anything. He just kinda stays like that, staring at her. She taps her sternum with Dink.
That gives her a reaction. He full-body flinches, as if afraid the sound alone is going to reach out and pop him like a blister. Which Raika has seen happen before, from a sound-Qi cultivator, so fair enough, not actually unrealistic. Still sort of silly here though; Dink is hardly all that impressive.
It protests meekly as she taps it against herself again, and she shushes it. “You’re not, Dink, don’t pretend,” she tells them.
The kid cocks their head, confused, and she just sort of shrugs at him. If he can’t follow a basic conversation that’s not really her problem. Instead she just shifts a little bit and, with as much of her body language as she still has, tries to say “What?” at the kid.
“Are… are you the ringing hag?” The kid asks.
She raises one eyebrow. “That’s a shit name,” she rasps. “Plus, I’m twenty seven. That’s not a hag yet, unless marrying age is some stupid low number nowadays.”
He flinched again, his body language terrified even as his eyes start to look curious. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s just what they call you. The weird lady in rags with the evil eyes and the ringing sound where she walks. They say you have a broken bell from an old lover, and you use it to lure stupid kids into your cave for eating.”
“Well that’s stupid,” she says, “so obviously it’s not true, since there’s still stupid kids making up stupid ideas. If I could lure stupid children, you think I’d be this skinny?”
He blanches a bit and she can’t help but roll her eyes. During and after cultivation, some things remain true; the sun still sets, the wind still blows, and her comedic genius remains ahead of its time. Frankly, that was witty, smart, and well dried, the exact blend, and all in such few words thanks to her scars! The kid is obviously one of the aforementioned stupid ones, or, if she’s being generous, more brain damaged than she thought.
She shrugs again (which is starting to hurt, honestly). She has better things to do than try to explain humor to some kid, if only barely.
“Dink” goes Dink as it agrees, ringing slightly against her forehead this time. Alternating the points of contact is either important or slightly less boring, so either way, she’s doing it.
“Wait!” The kid yells. She hasn’t really moved yet, crippled and all, but it’s still annoying having to shuffle back around to face him again.
“What?” She asks.
“Why did you kill him?” He whispers.
Not “why did you save me” or “why were you there”; why did you kill him, he asked.
She gives him a smile, pulling in scar tissue and watching him flinch as she does. “Didn’t do it for you,” she rasps. “Just don’t like shitheads. Good chance to hurt someone earning some hurt, and didn’t want to watch something I don’t like. Guess you got lucky.”
He frowns as she’s coughing. “Lucky?” He asks. “He almost killed me and now I have nowhere to go. What the hell should I do now?”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
She shrugs. “Not my problem,” she rasps, Dinking her sternum again. “Just wanted to hurt him. Glad you’re alive. So shoo.”
Finally, she is allowed to shuffle back around again and start walking. The idea she had is still here somewhere, hidden by the memory of conversation but still fresh-washed in the feel of adrenaline from the fight, still sharp in her mind. It was something about her heartbeat, something about vibration, part of a feeling she got from feeling it beat so hard and so clearly as she gripped and yanked and bit and-
She can hear him walking behind her. Shuffling through the snow, along the wall, and even then still faster than her. He does slow down before he reaches her though, staying an awkward few feet behind and slowing further to keep pace, more or less, with her own awkward gait.
Well, alright. She hasn’t exactly made where she’s living a secret, and she doesn’t actually have anything there besides broken wood and a bowl she’s not using, and if he tries to hurt her she just has to hurt him worse, faster. Which she can theoretically do, as she just proved. See? Properly emotionally affirming, the fight was, worth every drop spilled, especially from the waste of a man. Pretty soon she’ll be crushing Feng Gui’s bones between her teeth and spitting them back at him while he is turned on a spit or something.
Then she remembers the kid is still following, and laughs to herself. She decides to let him follow as she finds food and “meditates”, though the kid flinches every time she varies the rhythm of Dinks or visibly moves the tuning fork around.
Even still, she didn’t actually expect him to stick around, but for some reason, despite the slow pace, he does. By the time the sun has started to set, just barely past the middle of the afternoon, she’s found her way home, belly at least full-er than when she left, and the kid, staggering as he may be, trips and falls on his face as they turn a sharp corner into a somehow even less maintained backstreet of Paleblossom. She tries to chastise him for it, because laughing really hurts if she isn’t ready for it, but she’s a bit too busy holding back said laugh as she watches him absolutely eat dirt. He doesn’t stay down or puke, though, which says wonders for his potential recovery from experiencing the initial operation for a cracked-open skull.
She lets him pick himself back up as she leans against the wall along her alcove, starting the painful process of getting down off her feet by sliding awkwardly down inch by inch until she’s made it down to one knee (the right, as always, unbending and awkwardly splayed instead). She leaves the crutch along the wall for when she gets up again, and takes one of her “cloaks” to start hanging back up, the improvised tent-wall rounding out the hollowed space and ruined wood.
The kid, still staggering a bit, surprises her when he takes a big step forward and takes the cloak out of her hand. He must see something in her eyes as she looks at him, at the way her hand grips and she starts to lean forward as if to move, and stutters out some kind of apology. He holds the rag like an offering, before slowly (and disgustingly easily) starting to wrap it up and against the wind for her. She doesn’t move for a while, eyes following his movements, but… he just seems to be trying to help.
“Not enough money for an apprentice, idiot,” she rasps. “And not much in the mood for a suitor.”
Defying all conventional logic, the kid actually blushes at that, just a bit. “I’m not- you killed him, is all,” he mumbles.
“Yeah,” she rasps. “If I hadn’t, he would’ve done you in first, then himself, beer-belly first, not long after. What about it?”
“When he doesn’t come back, they’ll blame me,” the kid whines. “They’ll kick me out. It’s not much, but they keep us warm, and-”
“Orphanage or red light house?” she asks.
Amusingly enough this time he doesn’t blush. “Red light,” he tells her. “I’m old for it, but I can count and I’m quick, so I can take some from the purses when no one is looking, and they keep me around. I take care of tha little ones.”
She nods at that. If he can count, that makes him useful; there’s plenty of even cultivators who never bother to learn, and if he’s figured out numbers after, he’s ahead of the curve. She was never great at them either; simple writing gets meaning across, and if someone owes you then they owe you. It’s enough to know how much you have and how much you gain or lose in any big trades or with sect tokens or some sort, but keeping track of finances is a specialized thing. Chances are they’re wildly underpaying the kid.
“Go back anyways,” she says. “Say he cost too much, you got rid of him.”
“What?” he asks. “I… that’s not something I can say. He kept out the bad ones, made sure things stayed-”
“He was one of the bad ones,” she says with a cough. Only a few words left. “You got rid of him. Can even take his place, you buy a knife you can show or eat a bit more. Then if they kick you out it's for being stupid twice, not just stupid once, and I can tell you about begging, but if there’s a chance, it’s your job to grab it and bite and not let go.”
By the end of the sentence she has started to feel a bit of blood in the back of her throat, and the cough hurts worse than normal, so she waves her hand at him. Before he can reply, she’s already Dinked him in the forehead, which has him flinch back so bad he falls on his ass.
Shit, now he made her laugh again. Or she made herself laugh, more like; she really is too funny for her own good.
The kid just looks at her, clearly confused but not nearly as scared as before. She just makes a vague grumbling noise at him and shoos him away, doing a terrible job dispelling the idea of being an old hag.
He looks like he just doesn’t really know what to say, at first. Then, he gets up and gives her a terrifically bad bow, like he’s barely ever done it before or like he’s tried very hard to never learn how to bend at the waist without looking like an idiot.
“I am JiaJia!” the kid says, way too loudly, like an idiot. “I will take your advice, old hag lady. If it works, I might come back and help tie your tent, since I do it so much better than you anyways!”
Raika’s eyes widen and she grabs and flings her begging bowl at the little shit’s head, tasting happy copper and bright red bubbles as she does. He effortlessly dodges, though he does sway on his feet as he does with residual dizziness, but before he runs off he does sort of kick it back towards her. Whatever face she is showing, he seems to find some reassurance there, because he smiles brightly and laughs with her rather than at her.
And then he’s back off around the corner, heading back the way they came.
…huh.
Cute kid.
Ding, insipid yes-thing that it is, agrees the next time it chimes against her.
“Oh can it, ya damn can opener,” she whispers, keeping the volume as low as she can. “We got work to do.”
And she puts the little meeting from her mind, breathing as deep as she can and trying to find the right rhythm to Dink to the beat of her heart. There’s something to this, she can feel it.
Also, she killed a man. She killed someone.
The savage joy of that is almost as good as the feeling she gets when she manages to start picturing the ripple not of Dink, but of the drumbeat of blood inside her.