If her absence from the dinner in her honor that night caused any problems, Mother didn’t mention it. It was late when Mother visited, nearly midnight, and Ruyi was alright by then, still a little red-eyed, mostly just angry at herself and sad. She was angry for letting what he said matter to her. She was sad because she knew by now she couldn’t help it. It was always the case with her; once she loved someone it was very hard to unlove them.

When she was small she was too dumb to know it. But she was grown now, and she could see what was happening to her, and she still couldn’t do anything about it, which was pretty pathetic once you thought about it. And she did, a lot.

Ruyi didn’t answer Mother the first time she knocked, nor the second, but she managed to haul herself off the bed before the third.

“Rue! Thanks Heavens. Are you—oh my.”

She saw the room behind Ruyi. Ruyi shrugged. “Yeah…”

It was incredible how badly she’d managed to trash a room she’d stayed only a day in. Most of the things were sideways. She had made camp in a blanket fort on the ground.

“Would it be alright if I came in?” said Mother.

“Yeah,” said Ruyi softly.

Mother joined her on the ground in the blanket fort. Ruyi gave her a cushion to sit on. They sat there for a while in silence.

“Do you want to talk?” said Mother.

Ruyi did. The trouble was, once she started talking about it all the feelings she’d shoved away came spilling out again. She tried very hard not to cry. If she wasn’t a child anymore she should act like it, but she couldn’t even get that right. Mother ended up holding her and stroking her hair and whispering to her for what must’ve been an hour, and then they were back where they started, sitting there in silence, but now Ruyi was sniveling a little.

“Your Father…” Mother began, then paused, like she was trying to find the best way to say it. “He might not seem it, but…” She sighed. “He wasn’t supposed to come here. This is a detour for him on his way back to the front. He came just to see you. In his own way, he does still—”

“Stop defending him,” said Ruyi. “Just stop.” She was growing cold again. “If you’re here to do that, leave.”

Mother raised her hands. She nodded, and Ruyi knew Mother was just trying to help, maybe reassure her, but she wasn’t in the mood.

For much of the night, Mother stayed with her.

***

The army left in the night, Father with them, without even a goodbye. She hadn’t really expected one.

***

“Are you recovered?” said the Patriarch over breakfast.

“Yes,” said Ruyi. “Thank you.”

“Stomach bugs… regrettable business,” he said. “I’ll have stern words with the cook.”

“That won’t be necessary. It’s my fault, really. I’ve always had such a delicate constitution.” She gave him a dry smile. He looked like he wasn’t sure if she was joking or not; he chuckled, just to be sure.

That was what the others said of her as she walked the paths of the Outer Clan—“Terrible thing, her condition…” When she was small her not having a core made her hated. Now they were only more awed because of it. She wasn’t just Ruyi, the Alchemy Grandmaster. She was Ruyi, the crippled Alchemy Grandmaster; they made it sound all romantic.

There was much whispering and pointing whoever she passed, but nobody dared approach her, maybe because of the look on her face. She’d picked it up from Sen. A certain flatness of the expression, a half-lidded, almost derisive gaze. She added to it a mocking lilt of the lips, her own invention. Really she just wanted to walk the paths alone, but if she stayed in that villa any longer she felt she’d suffocate.

Stolen story; please report.

The least she could do was remember the the way the sun lit up the surface of the lake near white, the way the mists hugged the wooden piers, the way disciples stood atop platforms, eyes closed, slowly moving to the rhythms of their Techniques. As they moved, arms drifting out, wafting back, shifting with some invisible wind, they seemed to have captured in their bodies something of the lapping of the waves, the gentle brush of a dawn breeze. At a pier she took a canoe back up to the Inner Mountain and saw the same Technique done by a white-haired master, balanced on a single log in the middle of one of the upper lakes. She saw him move the same way—slowly at first, and then faster, faster, until the breeze became a cutting gale, the thrusts of his fists like raging waves.

She saw disciples battling atop the dueling platform, visited a dozen-odd waterfalls up the mountain. There was even a museum dedicated to Li history which even apparently featured a plaque dedicated to Mother, but Ruyi couldn’t stomach going there. Museum were still sore for her.

She held these things in her memory. That was all she was good for now, seeing; she owed it to herself. She knew intellectually it was all beautiful, maybe profound, but she could feel none of it. But she wouldn’t mope, like Father said. She would go out and make herself exist.

***

Noon was when she was meant to depart; she had maybe two hours left. She was finishing up her morning wanderings. The sun was a pale disc behind a shroud of clouds, as though afraid to come out, but she still felt a little warmer as she ambled back to the villa.

A building stood out to her, past the villa, poking over the top of a water-borne neighborhood. A slender tower. It seemed to her from afar, slabs of ringed stone stacked atop one another, all differing sizes, all gradients white to gray, so it seemed a tornado frozen in motion. As she neared, she saw hung over the door—ARCHIVES.

She stepped in.

The inside was much calmer than the outside. Sunlight filtered through the clear glass roof, touching stacks upon stacks of books, spiraling down a long spiral staircase again, and again, and again, over and over, dizzying, until it hit landfall. Every so often a platform broke up the staircase. She saw Elders browsing the stacks, disciples studying by lamplight. A few bore on their robes sigils, some the hammer of the Artificers; others the rod of the Alchemists.

There weren’t many here this time of day; she could hear the sounds of people being insufferably happy out by the mess hall. She managed to sneak in undetected. She drifted over to the Alchemy section almost unconsciously—she wasn’t even sure where she was going, and suddenly she was there. She plopped herself down on a polished wood chair. This study area was snuck in one of the larger ‘slices’ of the tornado, so that the slices above and below gave it some shelter, made an alcove of sorts.

She hadn’t been there a minute before a squeaky voice piped up.

“Excuse me? Auntie?”

She hadn’t give it any thought; she assumed it wasn’t for her. Then something prodded her in the leg.

She frowned down at it—it was a shoe, a small one. On the foot of a rather small girl with big owlish eyes.

“You’re in my seat,” declared the girl.

“…”

Ruyi blinked at her. The girl blinked back. Did this little pipsqueak just call her auntie? Ruyi glanced around at the table—there was no bag, or notebook, or even book stack.

“Why’s it your seat?” said Ruyi, frowning.

“Because I always sit here,” said the girl, sniffing at her. “And you’re in it. So move.”

“…”

On any other day Ruyi would’ve probably found it within herself to rise above squabbling with a little girl. But today, “No,” she said petulantly. “I was here first. It’s mine.”

“Scram!” said the girl.

“Make me,” said Ruyi. She managed to stop herself from sticking out her tongue. Just barely.

The girl glowered at her, but she couldn’t have been more than twelve and still had all her baby fat. She just didn’t have the face for a proper glower.

Defeated, the girl ambled over to a seat five feet away, said, “Hmph!” and plopped herself up. Then she unslung her bag, muttering, “Stinky auntie.”

Ruyi couldn’t believe it. Children these days—no respect for their elders!

Now that she was all riled up she was finding it quite hard to retreat into her dazed funk. Instead her eyes were drawn to the tomes the little girl was piling up. There was three sub-volumes of the Encyclopaedia Alchemica, a few copies of various Treatises, and even the latest Alchemy Quarterly. The very same Quarterly in which Ruyi had a column.

Suddenly Ruyi was very interested.

“You’re an alchemy apprentice,” said Ruyi.

“Yeah,” said the girl, eyeing Ruyi suspiciously. She scooped an arm over her books, pulling them into her. “What of it?”

“How old are you?” It was rare for an apprentice to start study this early. In a way it reminded Ruyi of herself.

“Old enough. What’s it to you?”

“Just asking…” Ruyi was taken aback.

“Hmph.” The girl pulled out a textbook—Rao’s Complete Chaining Manual, a text most apprentices didn’t get to until their fifth or sixth year—and started puzzling out a problem. Ruyi, watching out of the corner of her eye while pretending to stare blankly down the staircase, caught a flash of a diagram.

Then she referenced her memories, flipped through her mental copy of Rao, and came upon the problem. She remembered solving this… nine years ago? Maybe ten, now? It was quite difficult—you had to chain the aspect interactions out to the third order. Sure enough, ten minutes in the girl was still frowning at the paper.

“Hey,” said Ruyi. “What’s your name?”

The girl frowned at her. “Lin,” she said. “What’s it to you?”

“I just want to help!”

“With what?”

“As it so happens,” said Ruyi, fake-casually, “This auntie happens to know a thing or two about Alchemy.”

She waited for the little girl to ask who she was.

Instead—“I’m sure,” Lin sniffed, and went back to her text.

The audacity!