"You don't think she needs to know?" Ki'el looked at Meix­an, not stop­ping her walk back to their inn. She had been think­ing about how to sum­ma­rize what she had heard to Chi­an, and won­dered if the fox had any sug­ges­tions.

Meix­an looked back at her, qui­et­ly.

[ She is not a spir­it beast, ] Meix­an an­swered af­ter a while. [ The en­er­gy that she is pro­vid­ed as an in­her­i­tor al­ready con­tains her Grand­fa­ther's do­main, so she has no need to change it, only to mas­ter its use. ]

That... was not how Ki'el thought about qi use, and it was not how she felt about spir­i­tu­al pow­er af­ter what she had heard. And al­though it had been a while since the two of them had spo­ken of it... Ki'el still re­mem­bered Chi­an say­ing how she had strong in­stincts, to fear and to hate.

To think of it... Ki'el had not spoke much with Chi­an since they had left the Sect, not about things like that. And... the girl had doubt­less changed. How much, she had no idea. But... what she wor­ried about now, was be­ing a per­son who kept se­crets from her friend, se­crets that might mean a great deal, help her ad­vance rapid­ly.

"Do you not think that it will help her? Are you sug­gest­ing it would make it hard­er for her?" Ki'el found, when she spoke, that her voice sound­ed harsh­er than she meant it to, but it also didn't quite feel wrong. She felt like the ad­vice was... hurt­ful, or might be.

[ You are a kind girl, young Ki'el, but most peo­ple are not ready for se­crets un­til they have mas­tered the ba­sics. ] But Meix­an glanced away, and Ki'el thought from his face that he was not done with think­ing about it. [ ...But I sup­pose, if you are hop­ing that she will keep up with your ridicu­lous pace... teach­ing her such things will be nec­es­sary. ]

Keep up? Ki'el still felt far be­hind where she ought to be, even as a part of her re­al­ized that she had passed all of Ti­ta­ni­um Qi with­out even mean­ing to. But she had also spent her child­hood lost and alone, know­ing and do­ing noth­ing while oth­ers pre­pared. She glanced away. "Was the rev­e­la­tion ...mean­ing­ful to you?" She was still sure that the fox had only been pre­tend­ing to not be af­fect­ed by it, but she want­ed to know what he thought.

[ I have al­ready ex­plored both qi and spir­it en­er­gy in my life­time, ] Meix­an an­swered, and Ki'el not­ed silent­ly that it did not an­swer the ques­tion. [ I have built and re­ject­ed. The con­cept that was pro­vid­ed, of spir­i­tu­al law, is... a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of thoughts many have had. But the use of that knowl­edge is in care­ful­ly re­fin­ing the in­tent of our do­mains, and the girl doesn't have one. She bor­rows an im­age and do­main some­one else cre­at­ed. ]

Ki'el had not meant the ques­tion to come back im­me­di­ate­ly to that, and she turned her at­ten­tion back to the city, feel­ing a grow­ing mote of frus­tra­tion in her chest, but she took a breath and let it out. "...I have found that un­der­stand­ing qi is eas­i­er once I un­der­stood aether," she said af­ter a long mo­ment. "Even when the two are very dif­fer­ent, to un­der­stand what lies be­neath changes my un­der­stand­ing of qi."

[ You also aren't us­ing some­one else's qi na­ture, but learn­ing to make your own, ] Meix­an an­swered. [ Most young mas­ters of no­ble fam­i­lies are in­her­it­ing their qi na­ture from an an­ces­tor or an­cient tome, and while they may need to un­der­stand how qi is de­rived... they do not need to un­der­stand the fi­nal form of it un­til they are ready. ]

Ki'el found her­self un­ex­pect­ed­ly tense. It was... noth­ing that she could put a rae­son to, ex­cept that she felt like she ought to be able to share what she un­der­stood with Chi­an, to help her grow. It felt... un­nat­ur­al, that Meix­an seemed to be re­sist­ing that. "Per­haps she does not need it, but... would it harm her?"

There was some­thing like a sigh from the fox on her shoul­der, and Ki'el looked at him again, try­ing to un­der­stand what the man was think­ing, but he was silent for a long mo­ment. Ki'el found a con­ve­nient place along the road to pause and stand in a shad­ow for a mo­ment, won­der­ing what he might say.

[ Per­haps she is, and per­haps she isn't ready, ] the fox said, af­ter a much longer mo­ment than Ki'el might have ex­pect­ed. His voice, broad­cast by qi, was deep­er, melan­choly. [ Young Ki'el... Con­trac­tor. It is not for me to tell you what to do or what pow­er to give to your al­lies. But a part of me yearns to once more be ig­no­rant of the tallest moun­tains in the world, in or­der to ex­plore them again with eyes like a child's. When some se­crets are learned, the sun and moon and stars are no longer watch­ing over us, but mere­ly cold re­flec­tions. ]

[ In truth, young Ki'el, if you raise your In­her­i­tor friend high enough, she will have no choice but to learn to reach past her an­ces­tors. At that time, she will need to ex­plore how spir­it en­er­gy re­jects the world. And you can cer­tain­ly tell her that it is a re­flec­tion of qi, try to ex­plain what you un­der­stand of this 'aether' of yours. But even if you are will­ing to learn all of the se­crets in your youth and spend your life­time learn­ing to ap­ply them, many wish to spend their youth, at least, im­mersed in sto­ries of im­pos­si­ble things and the mighty he­roes that ac­com­plished them any­way. To dream of be­ing one who shat­ters hori­zons and reach­es the heav­ens, soar­ing over drag­ons to be­come a star, re­turn­ing home to be­come a sec­ond sun. ] The small fox on Ki'el's shoul­der looked up at the sky, at the twist­ing and bro­ken clouds that were blow­ing slow­ly past.

Ki'el fol­lowed his gaze, but was sure that she saw noth­ing. In­stead, her mind had latched on to what Meix­an had said... in a way the fox had not ex­pect­ed.

"Meix­an," Ki'el asked af­ter a time. "What does myth mean to you?"

[ Myth? ] The fox turned back to her, and Ki'el was sure that she saw sur­prise in the fox's eyes. Af­ter a minute, the gaze... per­haps stopped fo­cus­ing on her, or at least, not so in­tent­ly. [ There was a time--a very long time--when there were many myths about me. Peo­ple will al­ways tell sto­ries about the pow­er­ful peo­ple, and es­pe­cial­ly beasts--and in a way, that helps us. When we find that we are not pow­er­ful enough to live up to the myths oth­ers have made about us... it can be easy to re­ject that, turn­ing that frus­tra­tion with one­self into pow­er. ]

[ But more of­ten, the myths peo­ple tell about us are hor­rif­ic, ] Meix­an con­tin­ued. [ I... af­ter I was ex­iled from the Em­pire, I trav­elled the world. I took on a hu­man form to dis­guise my na­ture, did my best to learn qi in or­der to blend in. I fell in love with a hu­man woman... more than once. But each time, even­tu­al­ly, my true form was dis­cov­ered, and most of the women I loved, the women I mar­ried... af­ter­ward, when they looked at me, they saw the hor­ri­ble myths, the false­hoods, the cru­el sto­ries meant to di­vide man and beast. Those who did not leave me be­hind were killed by oth­ers. ]

Ki'el... was un­sure what to say about that. She looked down, think­ing of her vil­lage again, about how lost she had felt af­ter every­one had van­ished. And Ki'el... had no rea­son to find fault with her­self. She could not imag­ine be­liev­ing, af­ter such a thing, that all that death had been be­cause of her.

Af­ter a long mo­ment, Ki'el asked a sim­ple ques­tion, hop­ing it was not rude. "...I thought that spir­it beasts could not have chil­dren with hu­mans?" Kuli had said as much.

[ Ah? ] The fox's head turned in a way that sur­prised Ki'el, and the look on his face was... strange. [ Is that... well, that doesn't... seem to be wrong. ] He glanced away. [ ...The daugh­ter I spoke of ear­li­er was with an­oth­er fox. I did... try to have chil­dren with hu­man wives, but... to no avail. I did adopt chil­dren through the years, as well, but... ahem, that isn't the point. ]

"I re­mind you of a fox-child?" Ki'el looked at the fox on her shoul­der, though a sound near­by--of foot­steps--re­mind­ed Ki'el that this was the kind of con­ver­sa­tion per­haps best not had in the mid­dle of the city, even qui­et­ly. She start­ed walk­ing again, pro­ject­ing her thoughts, still some­what awk­ward­ly, back to Meix­an. [ What was she like? ]

[ Mai was a sweet child at first, but af­ter she ...lost her old­er sis­ter, she be­came very se­ri­ous, fo­cused on grow­ing up as quick­ly as she could so that she could take care of her­self. As a fa­ther, watch­ing her hurt me, be­cause she could no longer have faith that I would pro­tect her. No mat­ter what I wished or what I did, it felt like she nev­er had a child­hood or a youth of her own af­ter that. There was lit­tle joy, and it felt like every scrap of hope she found she had fought for. As some­one who loved that child... I felt like I had failed her, even be­fore... she died. ]

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There were sev­er­al ques­tions Ki'el want­ed to ask, but too many of them seemed like they would have only sad an­swers, and so she walked in si­lence for an­oth­er few min­utes.

When at last she spoke again, she had de­cid­ed to change the sub­ject back once more. [ To you, the myths of oth­ers were a weapon against you? ]

[ Hum, ] Meix­an an­swered, his thoughts clear­ly shift­ing. [ They were a tool that some peo­ple clear­ly want­ed to use to de­fend their peo­ple. There's noth­ing wrong with telling peo­ple that beasts can be dan­ger­ous. But myths are passed down by peo­ple who do not un­der­stand the pur­pose, and they be­come warped in the retelling. Some­times, on pur­pose. ] He looked over at her. [ Telling lies, you un­der­stand, is a form of pow­er, just as telling truth can be. If you can con­vince some­one of some­thing, then you con­trol how they will act in the fu­ture. The sto­ries we tell our chil­dren, and the sto­ries that are told to adults who do not un­der­stand, both shape them as though the words them­selves were true. Some­times, that means that they be­lieve ter­ri­ble things. ]

Ki'el stopped. In truth... she had not heard any­one speak so much on the top­ic. She had be­lieved that Sobon un­der­stood some­thing im­por­tant about myths, but this... this felt more re­al­is­tic, more ground­ed, than she had ex­pect­ed. Af­ter a mo­ment, she forced her­self to con­tin­ue walk­ing. [ So it is... con­trol? ]

[ An at­tempt, ] Meix­an an­swered, the tone of his men­tal voice a clear­er re­but­tal than his words. [ Just as qi and spir­it en­er­gy them­selves are only at­tempts to ac­com­plish some­thing. It is a pow­er that might be able to con­trol, but it is as like­ly to fail. ]

Ki'el con­sid­ered that. When... when she had spo­ken with Sobon, she had been... per­haps naive, talk­ing about myth as sim­ply peo­ple's ig­no­rance. And... in some ways, what Meix­an an­swered did not ad­dress, how, for ex­am­ple, her grand­moth­er had ex­plained qi to her. It was... not an at­tempt to con­trol her, as she doubt­ed it was an at­tempt to con­trol her grand­moth­er when it was taught to her. But...

[ My mas­ter once said that strong myths can gain pow­er of their own, be­com­ing ...like a prophe­cy, in some strange way. That qi gets tied up in them, and... and... ] Ki'el re­al­ized that she couldn't quite trans­mit what she want­ed, be­cause she wasn't en­tire­ly sure what she was try­ing to say.

[ Prophe­cy... ] Meix­an mused on that. [ An in­ter­est­ing ob­ser­va­tion. But, I think that 'qi' would be the wrong con­cept, there. The foun­da­tion of qi is al­ways learn­ing; spir­it en­er­gy, in con­trast, is of­ten emo­tion­al, a re­fusal to ac­cept some­thing. Spir­it en­er­gy is far eas­i­er to use in ig­no­rance, to build on lies. ] He paused for a mo­ment, clear­ly think­ing. [ Per­haps there is a 'spir­it' of myth, in that sense. And if so, it would not sur­prise me if it can be wor­shipped as a spir­it beast can be, and if not pro­tect­ed, warped. And who would cre­ate pro­tec­tions for some­thing like a sil­ly myth? ] Meix­an shook his head, and then the rest of him­self, be­fore set­tling. [ We are al­most back. Have you cho­sen whether you wish to ex­plain things to your In­her­i­tor friend? ]

Ki'el had to pause and al­low her think­ing to shift, though she did her best to cap­ture her thoughts for now in men­tal space that Kuli pro­vid­ed. [ I will. She de­serves to know. ]

[ I will an­swer ques­tions if she has them, but I will let you take the lead, ] Meix­an an­swered, al­most im­me­di­ate­ly. [ Try to leave some mys­tery for her. It dri­ves young peo­ple to ex­plore, which can be just as im­por­tant as grow­ing stronger. ]

Ki'el con­sid­ered those words as she round­ed the last cor­ner to where their inn was. It was an up­stand­ing place, if rel­a­tive­ly small; the man who owned it was qui­et and pro­fes­sion­al, and his two young sons had both been ea­ger to as­sist when­ev­er they had any is­sue or ques­tion. When it came into view, Ki'el not­ed that Mian was stand­ing out­side, look­ing a bit ner­vous.

"Ki'el!" He sound­ed a bit re­lieved. "I... sor­ry, I don't know why I didn't come along with you. I should have." If his gaze shift­ed to the fox on Ki'el's shoul­der, she was still too far away to tell for sure. "Even with Meix­an with you... a girl shouldn't walk through the city alone."

[ Not gen­er­al­ly, but she was pro­tect­ed this time, and every­thing was fine, ] Meix­an an­swered, some­what more loud­ly. [ A few strange looks, but noth­ing worse than that. ]

Mian nod­ded. "Did you find ...what you were look­ing for? And things went well?"

"Yes," Ki'el an­swered. "The city's guardian de­ity was will­ing to lis­ten to Kuli, and I was able to lis­ten to an in­ter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion." She paused only briefly. "Is Chi­an still around?"

"Yes, though she talked about go­ing down to the baths." Mian opened the door as Ki'el got near, and the two of them went in­side.

In the end, in­stead of bring­ing the top­ic up im­me­di­ate­ly, Ki'el let Chi­an con­vince her to go to a near­by bath­house, with Mian com­ing along on the walk just to keep up ap­pear­ances. Meix­an... re­fused to go, de­spite what he'd said ear­li­er, say­ing some­thing about how he wouldn't be wel­come.

Be­cause of the hour, per­haps, the bath­house was not busy when they ar­rived, and Ki'el was able to se­cure a room for only the two of them. Ki'el made sure to study the qi scripts, in the places where they were ex­posed, both for the baths them­selves, and what Kuli sug­gest­ed were pri­va­cy scripts around the edges of the room. Both were sur­pris­ing­ly com­plex for what they did, but Ki'el was able to pick out some ob­vi­ous con­cepts, such as 'heat' and 'wa­ter' and 'noise.'

When she first sank into the hot wa­ter, Chi­an let out a strange­ly des­per­ate sigh of re­lief, one too cute for Ki'el to make any at­tempt to copy. Still... she put one foot in the wa­ter first, ex­per­i­men­tal­ly, feel­ing the heat start off at un­pleas­ant be­fore be­com­ing sim­ply too warm. But, trust­ing Chi­an, she stepped in fur­ther, and again, un­til she was up to her hips in the hot wa­ter.

It... was start­ing to feel bet­ter, at that point.

"Have you nev­er had a hot bath?" Chi­an looked at her strange­ly, the girl hav­ing only her head above wa­ter.

"The peo­ple of my vil­lage did not have qi or scripts," Ki'el an­swered, mov­ing deep­er into the wa­ter. "They would boil wa­ter some­times, but... it was of­ten too hot." In the time she was with Lui and Sobon, she had gone out to a bath­house there, but had re­fused to go in. The peo­ple who ran that bath­house had the wa­ter filled with some kind of scent that she did not like, and the wa­ter had looked un­usu­al, per­haps as a re­sult. This ap­peared to sim­ply be clean wa­ter.

"Ah." Chi­an ducked her head ful­ly un­der­wa­ter, com­ing back up a few mo­ments lat­er with her hair ful­ly soaked, and she got up, run­ning her hands through it. "Script­ed baths are the best, though. You don't have to wor­ry about get­ting the wa­ter dirty, usu­al­ly, and the tem­per­a­ture is al­ways just right." A mo­ment lat­er, she ducked her head back un­der­wa­ter, and Ki'el saw her play­ing with her hair un­der­wa­ter.

Ki'el knelt, then sat, in the wa­ter, feel­ing a rapid change as the wa­ter be­gan to heat her core in­stead of her limbs. As she felt the warmth be­gin­ning to spread, she could feel her stress be­gin to melt, and could ad­mit that there was cer­tain­ly some­thing to be said for a good bath. It was... not quite like swim­ming, and this bath wasn't deep enough at its deep­est to let her more than pre­tend to swim, but it was good nonethe­less.

When Chi­an came up out of the wa­ter, Ki'el not­ed that her Rag­ing Storm Qi--or rather, her blood­line's Rag­ing Storm spir­it en­er­gy--had cre­at­ed a thin lay­er of wa­ter around her un­der her con­trol, and Chi­an was run­ning it through her hair, sweep­ing out what­ev­er had been caught in there, restor­ing some of its col­or in the process. She watched for a mo­ment, be­fore broach­ing the sub­ject.

"When I was meet­ing with the Guardian Beast..." it felt weird to speak of, and she want­ed to rush through it, but how even to be­gin? "...Kuli want­ed to speak with it, as I said be­fore, and in ex­change for it lis­ten­ing, Kuli spoke with it about the na­ture of spir­it en­er­gy."

"Spir­it en­er­gy...?" Chi­an turned to look at her, a look of sur­prise on her face. "Is it re­al­ly that dif­fer­ent? I ad­mit it's strange, hav­ing qi that al­ready has in­tent in it, but..."

"Meix­an says that it's dif­fer­ent when you are cre­at­ing your own, but he doesn't think the dis­cus­sion would be all that use­ful to you."

"Hm, maybe." Chi­an closed her eyes for a mo­ment, and Ki'el thought that she looked odd with all the wa­ter mov­ing through her hair. "I'd like to hear it some­day, but right now, I'm wor­ried about oth­er things. I don't have a place where I can safe­ly play with ...spir­it en­er­gy, not un­less we find a house."

Ki'el felt a twinge, be­cause she want­ed to talk about it with her friend, but sim­ply nod­ded. "I would like to tell you, when you are ready."

Chi­an nod­ded, and let her­self drift away in the bath, again, and Ki'el, though it felt weird to do it, dunked her head into the hot wa­ter, and be­gan scrub­bing out the dirt that had got­ten into her own hair.

It be­came ob­vi­ous as she did that she had not tak­en good care of her hair... not that she re­al­ly cared all that much. She resur­faced, run­ning her hands through her hair, but it felt too thick in her fin­gers, coarse and un­pleas­ant.

"Can I?" Chi­an moved clos­er, and Ki'el turned to let the girl touch her hair. Chi­an's stormy wa­ter en­er­gy tin­gled as it moved across her hair and scalp, and Ki'el did her best not to make strange nois­es as it did. "You haven't washed your hair in a while, have you?" Chi­an tsked at her.

"Not well," she said. "A lit­tle bit... a while ago." She had tried to wash it in the bath­house, but the soaps they had all smelled aw­ful to her.

"I can tell," she said. "You know, one of the perks of... of my fam­i­ly, is that there is a pow­er specif­i­cal­ly for clean­ing hair. I guess... I guess they like to keep clean, you know?"

Ki'el sup­posed it was nat­ur­al that a spir­it fox blood­line would want to keep their fur clean, but re­spect­ed Chi­an's para­noia about speak­ing aloud on the mat­ter.

Af­ter re­lax­ing and talk­ing about small mat­ters some more, Chi­an and Ki'el left the bath­house feel­ing fresh, find­ing Mian wait­ing out­side for them. The man, too, seemed to have washed him­self a bit, though Ki'el thought he must not have soaked as thor­ough­ly as they did. On the walk back, though, Mian did com­ment, "The hot wa­ter cer­tain­ly does help. It al­most feels like my bur­dens are lift­ed, a lit­tle."

Ki'el con­sid­ered that, but al­though her body felt stronger... if she had felt bet­ter in the mo­ment, it had not last­ed. There was too much... and she had no idea what was right, what was com­ing, or whether she would ever be­long any­where.

And that... that bur­den was some­thing she sim­ply didn't know how to car­ry, and no amount of hot wa­ter could wash it away.