For all that he had done his best to prepare her for it, and that he had made similar trips in the past, Ai seemed no more settled with the idea of him leaving than any of the other times he’d gone. She refused to let him out of her sight, or her grip, for any longer than absolutely necessary. She kept giving him sad eyes and a quivering lower lip without ever actually bursting into tears. She finally gave him a serious look.

“I want to come,” she declared.

For all that Sen knew it was a truly terrible idea, just for a second or two, he thought about it. If he took her with him, then he wouldn’t have to miss her. Instead, he made himself act like an adult. He reminded himself that while the capital might not be the worst possible place for him to take her, it had to be near the very top of the list. Just as importantly, even if he could protect her there, something he wasn’t entirely confident about, that he might need to was enough reason not to take her along. Besides, even if she didn’t know, he was pretty sure she’d hate the place almost as much as Falling Leaf. The children he had seen had mostly been working, which meant there would be painfully few children for her to befriend.

Here, she had friends, and she was under the protection of people that Sen had absolute faith in. The sky would burn and the world would drown in poison before Uncle Kho and Auntie Caihong let anything, anything at all, bad happen to Ai. That was assuming that Falling Leaf didn’t find those poor, doomed, disastrously stupid souls first and turn them into tiny little pieces of unidentifiable red matter scattered through the forest. Sen also knew that trying to explain any of that to Ai would be pointless. The dangers were too abstract for her. Crouching down so they could look right at each other, he leaned into what she knew and cared about.

“I know you want to come. But if you come with me, who will play with Zhi?”

Ai’s brow furrowed like she maybe thought he was trying to trick her, but she still looked pensive.

“Plus, who will take care of Falling Leaf, Uncle Kho, and Auntie Caihong if you’re not here? Or show the birds which yucky bugs to eat?”

He thought he’d gotten her most of the way there with Falling Leaf, Auntie Caihong, and Uncle Kho, but it was that bit with the yucky bugs that drew a look of severe worry. Ai was very concerned with the number of those bugs, and she went out of her way to tell whatever birds were in sight that they needed to be eaten. The disconcerting part was the birds seemed to go and eat those bugs more often than pure chance would account for. Sen had added it to his long list of things to look into at some point. If she was somehow ordering birds around, that would be very odd. Not that Sen felt he had much room to talk about anyone else being odd. His own ascent through the ranks of cultivation was so improbable as to be laughable, at least for anyone who hadn’t been there for every painful step of the process.

“The birds do need me,” she said, looking torn. “They’re dumb.”

“They do, and they are,” Sen agreed and steadfastly refused to unleash the smile that kept trying to push its way free.

Whatever had been holding her tears back gave out.

“I don’t want you to go,” Ai sobbed, throwing herself at him and wrapping her arms around his neck.

Sen stroked her hair and patted her back while she got it out of her system. When the tears finally seemed to run dry, he gave her a smile.

“I don’t want to go, but sometimes I have to do things I don’t want to do. You know what, though? I am going to miss you so much.”

“How much?” she asked in a quavery little voice.

“This much,” said Sen, spreading his arms out as far as they would go.

“Promise?”

“I promise, and I promise that I’m going to come back as soon as I can.”

Ai seemed to weigh those words on some scale of sincerity that only existed inside of her head. Sen concluded that, while she might not be happy, she was at least mollified by the truthfulness of his promises.

“Okay,” she said, her head hanging down.

Sen scooped her up into his arms and planted a big kiss on her cheek. That got a little laugh as she rubbed at her cheek.

“Tickles,” she said.

“It does?” asked Sen, feigning ignorance, and then poking a spot on her belly. “Does that tickle?”

Soon, the sadness was, if not forgotten, then displaced by peals of laughter. Sen eventually, reluctantly, put Ai down.

“You should go say goodbye to Uncle Glimmerite and Auntie Mingxia.”

“Okay, Papa,” she said and dashed over to tackle hug Glimmer of Night’s leg.

Not that Sen saw that, or heard anything that anyone said. His entire world had ground to a stop at the word Papa. He had never asked her to call him that. He’d never even used the word in her presence. She loved him. There was no room to doubt it. She said it in a thousand different ways every single day. That was enough. It was more than enough. He had never needed her to see him as her father. He was her family. She knew that. But that word held a kind of power that made anything a cultivator could do seem trivial. It was a truth. An expression of a primal bond so powerful, so potent, that any attempt to describe it was doomed to fail. For her to choose to call him that left Sen feeling simultaneously like the most important person alive and like a horribly, irreparably inadequate imposter. Not that any of that mattered. Just as she had once called for him, now she had chosen him, and he would find a way to be what she needed him to be. Bowing his head, Sen reached up and brushed away the tears that had gathered in his eyes. With his senses finally functioning again, he heard Ai’s gleeful voice.

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“Do it again!”

He glanced over and saw Glimmer of Night transform from his human disguise back into his black, chitinous form. This led to Ai jumping up and down in pure excitement. Sen wasn’t sure how long he’d been lost inside his own head, but the way Shen Mingxia was leaning against a tree and watching gave him the impression that this had been going on for a while now. He went to walk over and free the spider, but a new presence brought him up short. He looked toward the forest and Fu Ruolan stepped out of the trees. He was a little surprised to see her since she had declined to join them the night before. She strode over to Sen, watched Ai commanding Glimmer of Night to change, and snorted in amusement. Only then did she turn her full attention on him.

“The capital? Do you feel like you didn’t give it a full opportunity to kill you the last time you went there publicly?”

“Oh no,” said Sen. “I definitely gave it a full opportunity.”

“Then, why go back?”

Sen tried out a couple of answers in his head before he just shrugged and said, “Because I told my friend I would.”

Fu Ruolan sighed and said, “Well, don’t do anything stupid while you’re there. I put way too much time and effort into you for you to throw it all away when you’re finally getting interesting.”

Sen regarded the nascent soul cultivator for a long moment. He considered how lonely she must have been, living all the way out here, isolating herself the way she had. Even if they both understood why she’d done it, he didn’t expect that had made it any less difficult. He’d probably spent more time with her than almost any other living being in centuries. He was, he realized, probably the closest thing to a friend she’d made in a very, very long time. Someone who shared some of her keenest interests. Someone who could shadow walk the way she did. And now he was going away, again. He intentionally turned his gaze away before he spoke.

“I’ll miss you, too.”

He heard the sharp little intake of breath, the rustle of clothes as she stiffened, and finally her annoyed huff.

“Just don’t die,” she said in a tone that was half order, half pleading.

Sen nodded. “I’ll do my best. With any luck, this will be a quick trip. I’ll go, play whatever role it is that Jing has in mind for me, and then leave.”

He could feel her rolling her eyes.

“You don’t really think it’ll go that easy, do you?”

“No, but I can hope.”

“Well, just remember that a bit of—” she hesitated. “No, not a little. Giant, heaping bucketfuls of paranoia are appropriate there. Don’t let your life here trick you into thinking that everyone else has stopped being awful.”

Sen let out a little chuckle.

“Your faith in humanity is truly boundless.”

“I have plenty of faith in humanity,” said Fu Ruolan. “I have faith that they’re terrible”

“Duly noted. Is there anything you need from the capital? I mean, since I’m already going.”

“Nothing I can think of,” she said. “Travel safely.”

“I will,” he said, finally turning back to her and offering her a bow.

She rolled her eyes again but returned the bow. Shooting her a quick smile, Sen finally went over to stop Ai from demanding more transformations. They didn’t seem to cost the spider much in the way of qi, but Sen had no idea how many times he’d switched already. He didn’t want the poor spider to simply fall over from exhaustion a few hours down the road. Uncle Kho and Auntie Caihong came over then to say their goodbyes. Auntie Caihong also took the opportunity to pick Ai up and hold her.

“I’ll keep an eye on those spear students of yours. Just don’t take too long, or I might get bored and decide to actually teach them something,” said Uncle Kho with a bemused look.

“Well, we certainly wouldn’t want that,” agreed Sen.

“Be mindful, Sen,” said Auntie Caihong. “I know he’s your friend, but you should still be cautious. Also, don’t do anything that Ming would do.”

That drew laughs from Sen and Uncle Kho, a baffled look from Shen Mingxia, and Glimmer of Night was ignoring them entirely because he’d found a toad somewhere and was holding it up to his eye to study it.

Ai frowned and asked, “Who’s Ming?”

Auntie Caihong looked at her and said, “Oh, he’s a terrible, terrible man.”

“He’s not a terrible man,” said Sen. “He’s my teacher. He’s sort of like your grandfather.”

Uncle Kho nodded in approval, while Auntie Caihong gave him a look of utter betrayal.

“No more lotus cakes for you,” she muttered.

“Oh, now that’s just mean,” said Sen.

“Well, maybe I’ll have forgiven you by the time you get back,” said Auntie Caihong.

“I guess that will have to do,” agreed Sen, before he leaned down and kissed Ai’s forehead. “You be good while I’m away.”

“I will, Papa.”

Sen got the momentary pleasure of seeing Auntie Caihong’s eyes go wide. Then, she looked like she might cry, which made Sen feel kind of bad for his amusement at her expense. Uncle Kho just beamed at the little girl.

“Where’s Falling Leaf?” asked Auntie Caihong. “I thought she’d be here.”

“She’s hiding in that shadow over there,” said Sen and pointed.

The ghost panther emerged from the shadow and gave Sen an annoyed frown. Sen excused himself and walked over to her.

“How do you always know where I am?” she asked.

“How could I not know? You’re one of the two most important people in my life.”

Falling Leaf pondered those words for a moment before nodding in a way that suggested that was exactly as things should be.

“The mad one is right. Be careful in that place. You have friends there, but you have enemies too.”

“I will,” said Sen.

Then, much as he had with Ai, he leaned in and kissed Falling Leaf’s forehead.

“Watch out for Ai,” he said. “And watch out for yourself. I expect to see you both healthy and happy when I return.”

“Nothing will touch her,” said Falling Leaf, and there was a flicker of something dangerous in her gaze.

Knowing that Falling Leaf would never actually say goodbye, Sen simply reached out and squeezed her arm for a moment before returning to Shen Mingxia and Glimmer of Night.

“It’s time to go,” he said.

Suiting actions to words, Sen formed a qi platform beneath himself and Shen Mingxia. She couldn’t hope to keep pace with Sen or Glimmer of Night, so he’d just resolved to carry her along. The spider looked at them hovering in the air, shrugged, and formed a qi platform of his own. Sen lifted an eyebrow. He hadn’t known the spider could do that. With a final wave to everyone, the trio shot down the road. They moved in silence for a short time before Shen Mingxia looked over at him. Sen braced himself mentally when he saw the smirk on her lips.

“So, are you going to do some wedding shopping in the capital?”