Threads 149-South 2

It had been a relaxing afternoon, negotiating with the spirits of the valley. The Sect’s planners had easily worked her into things. As it turned out, they were quite good at wrangling highly individual volunteers. Who would have thought?

She really didn’t credit Zhengui enough sometimes. She had not had to do much. With spirits closer to his own nature, he was even better than her in some ways. In the not-words used to communicate with inhuman spirits, his own instincts served where she needed the lessons of her art. That wasn’t to say she hadn’t helped, that her songs had not soothed temperamental spirits and given him more leeway to speak, but somehow, in the back of her mind, she had still been expecting to be more necessary. There was something to ponder in that.

Ling Qi opened her eyes, letting the cycling of the qi in her dantian still. She sat atop the cushion-hill of Sixiang’s realm, looking over the spirit’s sea of colors. In the noise and motion of the Sect’s war camps, Sixiang’s realm was quite a useful cultivation aid since she couldn’t stray too far up the looming hills and cliffs to find natural silence and starlight.

“Are you almost ready?” she asked the empty air.

“Getting there,” echoed Sixiang’s voice from everywhere and nowhere. The glittering rainbow stars winked and blinked down at her. “Zhengui’s almost through. You can head down to the shore.”

Ling Qi nodded absently, and with a thought, she was there, standing ankle deep in the cool “water.” As she watched, the rippling waves began to bubble and churn a hundred odd meters out. From the multihued waters, land emerged, black and fertile, bare of life, first a great hill in the center, and then plains spreading around.

Dull spikes erupted from the earth, followed by a fiery hiss, dirt glowed and melted, and a serpentine head punched through. The shell rose, and blunt limbs churned the dirt, dragging Zhengui up and into the realm.

“Welcome, little brother,” Ling Qi said, resting her hand on his head, brushing away stray dirt. The waters around the new island rippled, turning white as the landmass Zhengui and she stood on began to move away from the shore.

“This is kinda weird,” Gui said, peering around.

“Is the Sixiang sure we are not all the way into the Dreamplace?” Zhen asked, flicking his tongue warily.

“We aren’t going in deep,” Ling Qi said soothingly. “This place is just Sixiang.”

Gui’s eyes narrowed in concentration. “But if Gui is in Sixiang, who is in Sister, and Sister and Zhengui are in Sixiang, how does…”

“Don’t think about it too hard, yeah?” Sixiang chuckled, their face shining down from the moon. “Doesn’t do anybody any good.”

“Agreed,” Ling Qi said. There was a time for thinking about the actual mechanics of liminal movement and location, but she wasn’t in the mood for a headache right now. “Are you ready to get to work today?”

“I have had many ideas,” Zhen said. “I, Zhen, think that it has been good to get away from the Sect.”

“Why is that?” Ling Qi asked.

“Gui has not paid much attention at other times, but the Sect is weird,” Gui said thoughtfully as they began to walk toward the sailing island’s shore. “Um, it is…”

“Artificial,” Zhen finished. He looked proud of his vocabulary.

“You really think so? The Sect is definitely more ordered, but it’s still wild enough.”

“Gui does not think it is like the human homes,” her little brother disagreed. “But it is not wild either. Gui thinks…”

“There is no room for I, Zhen, to be,” his other half said. “Outside, there are such places.”

It came back to the little things. Ling Qi had seen the small idol in the family’s shrine, and she had heard him mention hearing prayers from the villages he had protected. Zhengui was really not an average spirit beast.

“Well, we won’t be at the Sect forever.”

“Yes. Then Sister and Gui can make a place for Grandmother and Little Sister and Hanyi too,” Gui agreed. He seemed to hesitate at the end, and Ling Qi shot him a concerned look.

“Is that what Sister wants though?” Zhen asked.

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“What do you mean?”

“Gui just wonders why Sister is doing this sometimes. Gui worries that she is just humoring him,” he said, looking out over the water.

Ling Qi frowned, feeling a pang in her chest. She wasn’t humoring him. She wanted to do this.

“This is something that makes you happy, and I want to be part of that,” Ling Qi said firmly. There really didn’t need to be any more to it than that.

It took a second for Zhengui to answer as they walked along the shore. When he did though, it was in two voices. “Okay.”

But despite the fact that she had her answer, Ling Qi still felt dissatisfied. Whatever her intentions were, Ling Qi knew that she had fumbled many times with Zhengui, causing pain where she hadn’t intended. In the end, were good intentions enough?

“You said something earlier about not having a place. Is that why you want to make a garden?”