Threads 283-Winters End 2

Ling Qi blew out a breath. “Too much to put in good order, little sister.”

Her eyes scanned the books, the neat scrolls, and journals and collated anthologies before straying to the far messier corner of the table. That corner was filled with stacked worn and tattered pieces, single pages, scrolls with broken batons, and rolls of bamboo slats missing panels or scraped and burned.

Stories. Stories from across the Emerald Sea in both distance and time. These were the gathered scraps she had picked through to keep from the vast wealth found in a corpse immortal’s ring.

It was in a walking corpse’s rotten face that she had first gotten a glimpse of what refusal to end looked like. Hui Peng had refused to change, trying to hold the world in place, and refused to see beyond the end of his nose or beneath his feet. The buzzing of flies and the sight of maggots squirming under papery skin was a potent reminder.

“Self-obsession is the worst poison. Art should be about the world around you, the world that can or should be or the world that is,” Ling Qi said. “Old things must be allowed to die, but that doesn’t mean that you have to discard all that they were. An ending doesn’t have to be a complete desolation.”

Hanyi tilted her head. “I don’t know about that. You’re pretty awesome, Big Sis. You’re even better than me! What’s wrong with telling everybody how great you are?”

“I think it’s more the obsession bit,” Sixiang said. “You got better over your tour, right?”

“I guess so. Oh, I think I know what you’re talking about. It’d be like if I only ever sang one song cause I’d already decided it was the best one. That would be lame.”

Ling Qi breathed out. “Something like that.”

It was true that maybe she went too far. Hanyi was right in that there was nothing wrong with a little pride.

“Ice can easily be stasis though.”

Hanyi paused, kicking her feet.”Yeah, it can be. Papa was like that. You can freeze stuff and keep it forever. You’ll break it though.”

“You will break it,” Ling Qi agreed.

“Winter blows in, and things die or go to sleep, labor is put to rest, and the world is made pure for the coming of the new year,” Hanyi said.

It was Ling Qi’s turn to tilt her head. “Now where did you copy that from?”

Hanyi pouted at her and crossed her arms. Ling Qi kept her gaze steadily. Finally, Hanyi huffed and turned her head. “From that priest who followed us around. It’s a pretty saying, huh? Very smart.”

“Maybe,” Ling Qi said.

It matched some of her thoughts. Winter wasn’t a grand incomprehensible concept, but it was an end all the same. It was the punctuation of the year, the end of labors and the preparation for new ones. It was cold and without mercy for those who had no warmth to huddle around.

Ling Qi postulated, “Cold creeps in. Always, it comes in the absence of warmth.”

“We want things ‘cause we don’t have them,” Hanyi said with a shrug. “What’s the big deal?”

“It’s easy to only take,” Ling Qi replied.

“Sure, it is a lot easier that way. But it’s boring and lonely.”

“No deeper reason than that?”

“Does there need to be?” Sixiang wondered.

“I think there should be,” Ling Qi said thoughtfully. “If only because of how easy taking is.”

“I guess,” Hanyi said.

She looked over the table and reached out, making a grasping motion with her hands. Ling Qi snorted. A small controlled gust sent an open scroll flapping into Hanyi’s hands.

“It’s all well and good to do as you like, but if that’s the only rule, then I think events can only go badly,” Ling Qi mused, looking at the more tattered Hui books. She considered the screaming wind around her, sharp despite the thinness of the air. She had come to more deeply touch the element of wind, the soaring freedom of the sky, but the endless blue she glimpsed in her contemplations remained unappealing.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

She couldn’t see that desire, the pull of total freedom, the refusal of any constraints, as anything but childish selfishness or a self-absorbed tantrum. But all the same, she did love to fly, and she was still a thief at heart, even if she stole ideas, traditions, beliefs, and stories these days.

<And the occasional gross bomb or toys,> Sixiang whispered.

<Don’t make me get you with the net,> Ling Qi mock threatened.

Above, Sixiang’s manifestation stuck out their tongue.