Another week flew by without incident before Falling Leaf brought up the toddler at the village.
“How did you know what to do? When that little girl grabbed my leg, how did you know what to do?”
Sen gave her a surprised look. “I didn’t.”
Falling Leaf gave him an exasperated look. “You obviously did.”
Sen laughed and shook his head. “I didn’t. It worked, which was great, but I didn’t know it would work. I was just looking for a way to distract her, and everybody likes presents. Plus, I figured a little qi magic would impress her. I think everything seems like a miracle when you’re that age. So, I performed a miracle for her.”
Falling Leaf’s mouth was hanging open a little when she asked, “That’s it?”
Sen shrugged and nodded. “I mean, yeah. What were you expecting? Some complicated answer that delves deep into the human mind?”
“Yes!”
They’d stopped to eat before venturing back into the wilds for their final leg of the journey. Sen figured that they should have plenty of time as long as they didn’t slow down too much. He was sitting under a tree with his back up against the trunk. He let his head tip back until it rested against bark. He tried to think of a way to explain what he’d done and why in a way that would make sense to Falling Leaf.
“Most people aren’t that complicated when you get right down to it. There are exceptions out there. Cultivators and nobles often have obscure reasons for doing what they do. The same applies to bandits but for different reasons. On the whole, though, your average person just isn’t trying to run complicated schemes or be obscure. People want their basic needs met. Food, shelter, and a little bit of safety. Most of what they care about is going to be centered on those things. If they have a family, they worry about their family and try to think of ways to keep their family sheltered, fed, and safe. Anything beyond that is a bonus. For children, it’s even simpler. They want attention. They want to be entertained. So, that’s what I did. I gave her a little attention and provided a little entertainment.”
Falling Leaf was frowning up a storm at those comments. “Humans seem a lot more complicated than that to me.”
“They are but that’s when you’re dealing with people you know. Personal history, personality quirks, and even your mood can influence how those things play out. When you’re dealing with people one time and never likely to see them again, you can generally assume that food, shelter, family, and safety are their priorities. If you can throw in some entertainment or kindness, you’ll probably be on safe ground more often than not. Plus, you’re a cultivator. If you act a little strange, most people will just chalk it up to that.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“Well, easy is probably overselling it,” said Sen. “It’s probably more accurate to say that it’s straightforward. You probably got a bit of a skewed view of things because most of the people you’ve dealt with regularly have been cultivators, nobles, or both. Master Feng, Auntie Caihong, and Uncle Kho are so old and have so much experience that you can’t use them as an example for anything except how really old nascent soul cultivators work. I end up dealing with cultivators and nobles all the time, so all of those people are bad examples too. You’ve gotten an extraordinarily lopsided experience of people. I’ll tell you what. I spent some time in a village a while back. I just lived there with a family. I learned a lot from doing that. Once we get this business with my body cultivation settled, we’ll find a place like that. We’ll just live there for a while. You can get to know people at your own pace. See how they live and how they interact. If you hate it, we’ll move on.”
Falling Leaf stared off into the forest for a while before she finally nodded. “Alright. If you think it will help.”
“I have no idea,” said Sen with a chuckle. “I make this stuff up as I go. I hope that it will help balance out your ideas of what people are like. The way we travel and the nonsense we get involved with isn’t a good way to learn about people. It’s too chaotic, too violent. We’re always there for the best day, the worst day, or the last day of people’s lives. It’s extreme, and that’s a terrible way to see how human beings are the rest of the time.”
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Falling Leaf didn’t say anything to that, so Sen let the conversation lapse back into silence. It had been a while since he last thought about the Luo farm. He wondered how Luo Min and her mother were doing. He’d meant to go back and visit, but he’d barely had time to keep himself alive, let alone go and visit people. Thinking of the Luo farm also made him think of another little girl with a stuffed dragon named Jin-Jin. How long ago was that, wondered Sen. Years? That little girl with the toy dragon wouldn’t be so little anymore. Luo Min might well have a husband and child by now. He remembered how overwhelmed he’d felt those first days on the Luo farm and the frantic race to keep Luo Ping alive.
Sen was a little stunned at how little of alchemy he’d understood then. He thought it was a little miraculous that he hadn’t killed her with his ineptitude. If faced with the same situation now, he could probably replicate all of those days of work with a single elixir. He could likely perform that minor surgery to remove the bone splinter from her leg with nothing but air qi. He needed to go back there if only to say hello. He did need to go find that damn turtle at some point in the relatively near future, so that would be a good opportunity to drop in on some old acquaintances. He wondered if that little girl with her toy dragon would even remember him. He smiled at the thought. Even if she didn’t remember him, he’d always have that memory of her.
“What’s that smile about?” Asked Falling Leaf.
“I was just thinking about another little girl I met a long time ago. She had a stuffed dragon toy named Jin-Jin. It didn’t look anything like a dragon. I don’t even think it had wings.”
“Why?”
“Why didn’t it have wings?”
“Why did she have a stuffed dragon toy? Actually, why didn’t it have wings?”
“Children have toys. It’s just how humans raise their children. As for why it didn’t have wings, I expect it’s because their family was poor. Her mother probably made it for her.”
“Humans are strange,” said Falling Leaf.
“Well, that’s certainly true. I’m going to go and visit them at some point. You’re welcome to come along if you want.”
Falling Leaf didn’t seem to have an opinion about that one way or the other. “Okay. When?”
Sen thought about it. He didn’t know when. Sooner than later, he hoped.
“Fu Ruolan was clearly fine with me leaving for months on end. So, sometime in the next couple of years,” said Sen before sighing a little. “Speaking of Fu Ruolan, we should get moving. I’d rather get back early than get back late.”
“Do you think she’d refuse to give you the manual if you got back late?”
“I honestly have no idea what she’d do. She might not be insane the way everyone thinks she is, but that doesn’t make her any easier to understand. I mean, we spent six months living there and I think I had two conversations with her. She’s as much a mystery to me now as she was on the day we met her.”
Falling Leaf pursed her lips before she spoke. “I think she is insane.”
That made Sen pause as he was storing things back in his storage ring. “Why do you say that?”
“She isn’t mad the way some people seem to be mad, but there’s a smell about her. Even when she seems to be in control, her scent changes by the second. It’s like she’s wearing a very good mask. I’ve never smelled anything like it before, but it makes me nervous. She might not kill us out of hand, but I don’t think we should rush to trust her either.”
“I see,” said Sen, trying to fit this new information into his picture of the nascent soul cultivator.
“I know you need her for that manual,” said Falling Leaf. “Just don’t assume her judgment is good. Not unless you see some signs that make you think she’s got the right of it.”
“Well, that certainly doesn’t make me feel good, given that I’m stuck with her for another four years and a bit.”
Falling Leaf looked down. “I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be sorry. I’m glad you told me. That would have been a very bad thing to learn the hard way.”
Sen watched a bit of tension leave Falling Leaf’s posture at those words. He wondered how long she’d been debating whether to share that bit of suspicion with him. Given that he’d been keeping back bad feelings and suspicious thoughts for a while, it might well have been months. The difference was that Sen knew he was over-primed to expect trouble. He didn’t trust his own gut reactions to alert him in quite the same way he once did. Falling Leaf didn’t seem to suffer that affliction of minor paranoia.
“You can always talk to me about it when you have concerns like that. You have excellent instincts for trouble, probably better than mine in a lot of ways. I’d rather you tell me and have it turn out to be not true than get blindsided by something.”
Falling Leaf perked up at that blanket permission to vent her suspicions. “I will.”
“Good,” said Sen. “With any luck, we’ll get through this last bit of the journey without much trouble.”