Book 4: Chapter 3: One Day

Book 4: Chapter 3: One Day

Everyone let Sen be for the rest of the day, which suited him just fine. He had plenty to think about. It wasn’t until later in the evening that Falling Leaf pulled him aside and led him away from the camp a short distance. It probably wasn’t far enough to keep people from listening if they really wanted to, but it was far enough that no one would casually overhear their conversation. She stared at him for a long moment with those odd, green eyes before she spoke.

“The things you said to that spirit beast, did you mean it? Would you really do all of those things?”

Sen supposed he should have expected something like this, but it still caught him a little flat-footed. He really thought about it for a little while.

“I wouldn’t burn down their forests. That would be punishing every living thing that lived or grew there. That wouldn’t be fair or right. As for the rest, yes, I meant it.”

Falling Leaf immediately relaxed. “Ah, that’s fine then.”

“Wait. What? You don’t care if I hunt those things to extinction?”

She tilted her head a little to one side as if considering his words. “No. Why would I? They are no kin of mine. They chose their enemy poorly. Cubs should not tempt the wrath of dragons. All know this.”

“I’m no dragon,” said Sen, snorting a little.

“Not yet, but your teachers might as well be. The Feng most of all. You follow in their footsteps.”

Sen chewed on that for a minute. “Yeah, I suppose I do. Listen, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”

Falling Leaf stared at him for an uncomfortably long time before she jerked a little, seemed to remember something, and said, “Yes?”

“It’s your name. We really need to change it to something more,” Sen thought about how to phrase it, “human-like. It will help keep people from paying extra attention to you.”

Falling Leaf looked deeply unhappy about that idea. “Change it to what?”

“I was thinking something like Fa Ling Li.”

On hearing the name Sen came up with, most of the unhappiness drained out of Falling Leaf. “That’s not so different.”

“It’s not. I tried to keep it as close to your real name as I could.”

She paced a little bit, thinking about it, before she finally nodded. “If I must.”

“It’s mostly to protect you from people who might wish to...experiment on you.”

“Experiment?” asked Falling Leaf.

“Spirit beasts that transform the way you have are very rare. Very, very rare. There are sects that would want to study you. They’d lock you up at best. Some would want to dissect you, just to see how you work.”Explore the labyrinthine roots of this substance at Nøv€lß¡n

“Then, none of this would have been necessary. You could have stayed as you were. I wouldn’t be constantly getting into bad situations. It’d be peaceful. Maybe, we still could.”

Falling Leaf grew quiet and her eyes were far away. “There are many mountains. As strong as you are now, you could likely claim one. Build a Sen den for yourself.”

Sen snorted. “A Sen den? I like it. What about you? Would you build a den for yourself, or stay in mine?”

Falling Leaf shrugged. “Either. Both. Shelter is shelter.”

“We could go now if you want.”

There was a look of yearning Falling Leaf’s eyes. She wanted to go back to the wilds, back to her mountain or, barring that, a mountain they picked. In the end, though, she shook her head.

“We can’t. Not yet. You need that,” she thought hard, “teaching book.”

“Manual?”

“Yes! You need that manual for your cultivation.”

“Maybe I don’t.”

Falling Leaf shook her head emphatically. “You need it. Your body change is incomplete. Unbalanced. It will serve for a time, but it will harm you if you leave it like this for too long.”

That was news to Sen and unwelcome news at that.

“How do you know?”

Falling Leaf shrugged. “How do you not know?”

Sen opened his mouth to answer, but he didn’t have an answer to give. It was his body. Shouldn’t he know? If he didn’t even know why he didn’t know, it probably wasn’t reasonable to expect Falling Leaf to know why she did know. The important part was that he was on a clock now.

“Do you know how long? Are we talking weeks or decades?”

Falling Leaf frowned. “A cycle of seasons? Maybe two? It’s hard to know for sure.”

“So, no mountain for us.”

“Not yet. One day, though, we can claim a mountain as the Kho has done and forbid it to all.”

“One day,” murmured Sen.