“They looked at me like a stranger,” said Sen, trying to keep the hurt out of his voice.

Falling Leaf turned her head to peer at him for a moment before she went back to looking at the sky. They were sitting on top of the mortal training hall, which had long since gone dark and silent for the day as everyone went home. The stone remained warm beneath them, despite the unusual chill of the night. Sen had retreated to the galehouse after telling the townspeople what had happened with the sect cultivators. Always happy to discuss what she had done during the day, Ai had proved the balm to his soul that he’d imagined she would be. Her uncomplicated joy at everything from finding a pretty rock to experiencing the phenomenal powers of Uncle Kho and Auntie Caihong was a sharp and welcome contrast to the murky complexities of so much else in his life. For her, everything was simple, because everything was a miracle.

He had taken refuge behind the light of her joy for a time, and let it blind him to all else. But that kind of refuge was, by nature and necessity, a temporary one. After he had put her bed and entertained her with shadows dancing on the wall, everything he’d been hiding from was still waiting for him. However, that brief respite had muted the sharp stab of immediate pain and allowed him to see it a little more objectively. It still hurt because he thought he’d made at least a few friends among the townspeople. That he’d pushed past all of the accumulated garbage that came with the word cultivator and been seen as a person. The deathly silence that greeted him inside the very training hall he now sat on had the put lie to that fantasy. Falling Leaf kept her gaze firmly fixed on the stars when she spoke.

“Did you imagine it would end any other way?” she asked.

The words were said gently, with kindness, but also with a tone that suggested she was not surprised. Sen grimaced.

“Yes. No. I just… I guess I just wanted it to,” admitted Sen. “Was it too much to ask?”

“The Caihong tells me that those are made of fire,” said Falling Leaf, gesturing at the stars. “She says that they are very far away, but burn so hot and so bright that we can see them here. She also says that many of them are so large that they could consume our world without even noticing.”

Sen gave her a perplexed look, wholly uncertain where she was going with this talk of stars and fire.

“She told me the same thing.”

“Campfires are also made of fire, yet you would not expect a star to be a campfire. Nor would you expect a campfire to be a star. They are the same, but they are also not the same. It shouldn’t be a surprise when a person fails to mistake one for the other.”

Sen gave Falling Leaf a wan look. “I take it that I’m the star, expecting people to see me as a campfire?”

She nodded. “You want the mortals to treat you like a mortal. Perhaps it’s because you are still so close to your mortal life. Those memories are fresh enough, close enough, that they seem right to you. But you are not like them anymore. Expecting them to see you as one of them, to treat you as one of them is unfair. It’s dangerous.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“While you might welcome them treating you as ordinary, what other cultivator would? Do you imagine training them to treat cultivators with such casual disregard can end well for them?”

Sen had to swallow hard when he considered it from that angle. He hadn’t looked at all the possible consequences. All he’d thought about was how much he hated the way mortals reacted when they found out he was a cultivator. Even worse, this was a lesson he should have learned long ago in Inferno’s Vale. Hadn’t the Matriarch of the Order of the Celestial Flame explained it to him? She tolerated all of the obeisance that she clearly despised because the alternative was worse. Falling Leaf was right. It would be dangerous for mortals to treat other cultivators the way he wanted them to treat him. It would get them killed. There were a few exceptions. Master Feng would probably find it amusing. Uncle Kho and Auntie Caihong might tolerate it within limits. Most cultivators, though, would see it as flagrant disrespect and a grave insult. The kind of insult that would justify murdering mortals who would otherwise enjoy the safety of being beneath notice.

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“When did you get so wise?” asked Sen.

“Is it wisdom to see what is obvious?”

“If you expected all of this, why didn’t you say anything?”

“Some things can be learned by example or explanation. Other things are only learned through pain. I could have told you. You might have even stopped. But you wouldn’t have believed. This was something that you could only learn through pain,” said the ghost panther.

There was a current of empathetic understanding in her voice that snuffed the dim flame of anger that Sen wanted to feel. This wasn’t a sentiment that she had heard from someone. It was a lived truth for her. He didn’t know which of her many difficult experiences she was thinking of right then. After a thoughtful moment or two, he realized it didn’t matter all that much how she had come to that conclusion. She believed it with deep conviction. Sen leaned back until he flopped against the roof of the training hall.

“So, I just live with it?” he asked. “I just live with the fear, and the false respect, and kowtowing?”

“The respect doesn’t have to be false. You can earn that. You have earned that from many here. As for the fear and the kowtowing… Yes, you just live with it. You live with it because that’s what’s best for these people. You can live apart, but they must live in the world as they find it.”

“I hate it, you know.”

“I know.”

Sen rubbed his face with his hands in an act of mute frustration. All this power, he thought, and I’m still helpless. He once again imagined finding some mountain of his own and building a manor in the sky like Uncle Kho’s. That particular dream felt both closer and farther away in ways he couldn’t articulate, even to himself. Knowing that continuing the conversation would only lead them in circles, he picked a new topic.

“I’ll have to head to the capital soon,” he said.

Sen could almost feel the tension in Falling Leaf’s body at the mere mention of the capital. While Sen had disliked the place, she loathed it with a near-religious fervor. He didn’t keep her in suspense.

“You don’t need to come.”

She didn’t collapse in relief, but he did hear her release the breath she’d been holding. Not that she was necessarily happy about the turn of events, though.

“Who will keep watch over you in that terrible place?” she asked with a guilty edge in her voice.

“I’m not expecting this to be a violent visit. And, if it does turn into that, I can always ask Lo Meifeng for help. She’s not one to shy away from bloody business.”

Falling Leaf nodded. “She is capable enough in a fight.”

“And if things turn really, really ugly, I have one or two favors I can call in.”

“The sects?”

“The sects,” agreed Sen.

“Can you trust them?”

“I doubt it, but the people who matter owe me, and they know it.”

“You mean to take the Mingxia with you?”

Sen snickered at the very thought. “I do.”

“This is an unkind thing you mean to do,” chided Falling Leaf.

“Probably,” said Sen. “There is value in experience, though.”

“Why not take the other one?”

“Wu Meng Yao? Mostly, it’s because I need her here. Teaching. Someone needs to be in charge while I’m gone.”

Falling Leaf made a dissatisfied noise. “And what about the other, other one?”

“I have no idea what to do with or about her.”

“You could take her with you. Perhaps someone will kill her,” said Falling Leaf with far too much enthusiasm.

Sen didn’t particularly like Sua Xing Xing, but he definitely wasn’t to the point where he was hoping someone would violently help her reach her next incarnation. She was outrageously selfish, self-involved, and arrogant, but that was an accusation that could be laid at the feet of just about every cultivator alive. Himself included. Aside from overstepping with the body of Sheung Tian Kuo, the woman hadn’t actually done anything wrong that Sen knew about. She hadn’t hurt or even been noticeably unkind to the townspeople. She hadn’t destroyed anything that didn’t belong to her. She’d abided by his rule that higher-level cultivators couldn’t order around those with a lesser cultivation. It was just her personality. She bothered people, and Sen didn’t think that should be enough to warrant death. Then, a notion struck Sen that he almost dismissed before he turned a gimlet eye on Falling Leaf.

“The reason you want me to take her along is so she won’t be here to aggravate you, isn’t it?”

Sen sat through a pregnant pause with his gaze locked onto the ghost panther.

“No. Of course not,” said Falling Leaf in the most blatant and badly delivered lie he’d ever heard.