“How?” Liren demanded.
“Check the elemental flow going through your legs and your feet. It’s a powerful light body skill, so your weight is really nothing much. The hard thing is balance. Which explains why the manual puts so much emphasis on muscular control. You really don’t want to make any thoughtless moves, or you would definitely take a spill.”
Tian shifted his weight around. It was odd but logical that the strange drifting motions of Moon Crossing the Lake would work so well on the water. He had thought they were purely a kind of mental attack or illusion, deceiving the enemy about your true location. It seemed he really underestimated the ancients. It was both.
“I spent more than a year struggling with the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing, and picked up an initial understanding of the basics of Moon Crossing the Lake in less than a week. It seems I will be a yin man to the end of my days.” Tian laughed, a little painfully.
“That’s not such a bad thing.” Liren muttered, then slapped her cheeks. “Walk me through this. You are moving a little differently than I do.”
Tian smiled and started explaining, trying to describe the feeling of watching moonlight on a pond. What it was like that very first night leaving the dump and seeing the shimmering river in the distance, that snake of silver shining like nothing ever had before. He picked his words carefully, because Brother Wang and Sister Su were right there, but he didn’t hold back much.
“Stillness and flow. That’s water. Yin stillness, a calm pond. Yang flow, a river, the waves blown across the water, the way the moon slides from one side of the pond to the other, carried by the wind and tiny waves.” Tian groped for the words and came up empty. “I suddenly have a lot more sympathy for the people who write the manuals for arts. Even I think that was gibberish. I try to move the way moonlight on water makes me feel. As part of that, I’m following the same circulation path as you, but I’m letting my vital energy flow more in time with the emotions. Does that make more sense?”
“Not much.” Liren grinned awkwardly. “We’ll figure it out.”
Tian smiled and started to walk off the pond. It took a lot more focus than he was letting on, but he was absolutely determined to master casually walking on the water. It was domineering. He needed more domineering in his life. Hands behind his back and a little smile was good, posing with the crane was better, but he needed more means. Casually strolling across… no. Gliding effortlessly across a river or a lake would be damn impressive. Not many people in the Earthly Realm could manage that. At least, he’d never seen someone do it.
Apparently, neither had the crane. The Snow Grace Crane landed in the shallows with a splash, glaring at Tian. She cried aggressively at him, chasing him back into the pond. Tian was momentarily confused, then horrified.
“Oh no! I had been so careful.”
“What? What is it?” Liren tensed.
“Crane law. Walking on water must violate crane law! I was told that their usual punishment was breaking your legs and shoving you into deep water. It seems that the senior didn’t lie.”
“Sorry, did you say crane law?” Brother Wang yelled.
“Yes! A crane elder warned me about it when I first met the Snow Grace Crane. If you name a crane “Little White,” they can break your legs and shove you into a river. Ever since then I have been very careful to avoid making a mistake, but it seems…”
“You don’t think there was any possibility of the elder screwing with you?” Brother Wang asked.
Tian shook his head. “A very serious person, and when have you ever seen a crane tell a joke? Besides, if you think about it, the cranes were on this mountain before the monastery was. It would be stranger if they didn’t have their own laws and customs. It’s just that they don’t cross over with ours often, so it doesn’t come up much.”
Brother Wang contemplated that for a moment, then looked over at Sister Su, who waggled a hand in the air. “I am not as familiar with non-human jurisprudence as I am with the laws of the Broadsky Kingdom, but it is certainly plausible.”
Now both Brother Wang and Liren looked like they were questioning their lives. Tian nodded gravely at them. Better they learned from his mistake than making a fatal error later. The crane cried at him again and he felt her intention.
She wasn’t trying to drown him. She wanted to know how he was walking on water. Tian spread his hands helplessly. How do you explain the dao to a crane who probably understood it better than you?
He didn’t have the faintest idea. But he did know a teacher of beasts.
Sister Lin lived in a shack. Not a ‘shack’ like Tian and Liren, an actual bamboo shack that would have looked right at home in the middle of a bleak and ominous hillside, housing a particularly broke woodcutter or, perhaps, a charcoal burner.
“I can’t remember her name. I keep thinking of her as ‘Sister Lin.’” Liren muttered.
Tian opened his mouth to remonstrate, then closed it again. He had a good memory, but he was drawing an absolute blank. He desperately cast his mind back to when they first met, then to their second meeting on board the Windblown Manor.
“Ninglan. Lin Ninglan. I am appalled that you forgot.” Tian shook his head in disappointment.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Mmmhmm. Have you ever used her full name?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with your shocking disregard for a sect sibling you have spent so much time with.” Tian said, righteousness flowing from him.
“Yes indeed. And what was the name of the person you sparred with a couple of months ago? The one who you were working on the Dragon Suppressing Palms with?”
Tian drew a blank for the second time in a minute. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember. He wasn’t sure he ever knew that senior brother’s name.
Liren lightly patted him on the back. “You absolute goblin. That senior brother gave you so much care and help, yet you immediately forgot him. What kind of faithless, un-fraternal, moral monster would do such a thing? Diabolical, I’d call it. Sister Lin, are you home?”
Liren called out when they were still a hundred yards from the hut. There wasn’t a gate or anything, but Tian had quickly noticed that once they were outside of shared cells, his sect siblings really liked their privacy. Admittedly, he only spotted that on the occasions when he was forced to go and see other people. One of the best features of their cozy little home was that it was both far away from the main monastery, and difficult to reach. It discouraged casual visitors. Or any visitors.
Tian truly loved his brothers and sisters, but he had to admit he wasn’t the most sociable person these days. It seemed that neither was Sister Lin.
“Oh, the King and Queen of the Outer Court have come and visited my little shack. Should I be honored, or dreading the future?”
Sister Lin stepped out of the shack wearing the sect robes as sloppily as the senior members would stand, and with her hair grown out a bit longer that decency permitted. It was a dress code violation by degrees, designed for maximum irritation with minimal actual infraction. Tian squinted a little. He might actually be wrong about her hair. Somehow, her slouchy posture made it look shaggier than it actually was.
“King and queen?” Tian glanced over at Liren, who rolled her eyes.
“We won the tournament.”
“Yeah, but we haven’t established a government or granted patents of nobility, I haven’t even begun building bunk beds for a harem, and I think you would need bunk beds if you are going to fit three thousand people in one room-”
Sister Lin started rubbing her forehead. “I’d forgotten, somehow, that sarcasm tends to either bounce off of you, or trigger violence. I really don’t know how I forgot, but I did. What do you want? Correction, what is the purpose of you visiting me at this time?”
“How do I communicate the feeling of using the true essence of an art to the snow grace crane?” TIan asked.
“You can’t. You can show her how you move your energy, but she doesn’t have the same meridian and acupoint map that you have. Eerily close to it, but not the same.” Lin shrugged.
“Eerily close?”
“It’s one of the less discussed things amongst those who work with beasts a lot, but a remarkable number of beasts share some worrying similarities with humans. I mean, look at her. Two eyes, two nostrils, two ears, one mouth, one tongue, one spine, ribs protecting the organs, those wings look more than a little like arms, and her gait looks strange to you because what you think are her knees are actually her ankles, and her foot is way, way longer than you think it is. A different number of toes and fingers, obviously, but the similarities really add up. Dogs are even more similar, and if you can’t see how close apes and monkeys look to humans, there is nothing I can do to help you.”
Tian rocked back under the wave of information. He really hadn’t thought of any of those things.
“But if they are so similar-”
“Is ‘similar’ the same word as ‘identical?’” Lin started to sneer, then seemed to think better of it and just shook her head. “Different meridian paths, different acupoints, and the acupoints do different things than human ones. Similar, but different. So you can demonstrate the art to her, and try to draw her attention to what you think is important, but it’s up to her to figure out if it’s something she can adapt. And she probably can’t.”
“Why not?” Hong asked.
“Because that’s not how her brain works. She thinks in a much more human way than most cranes, but she is still unquestionably a crane. Her spiritual wisdom hasn’t awakened, and until it does, most arts are going to be beyond her.”
Tian couldn’t help but notice she spoke a lot more civilly to Hong than she did to him. His hands twitched, wanting to swing. His emotions were rather muted these days, so that was a surprise.
“She is insisting, though. What would you recommend?” He asked.
“Demonstrate the art as often as possible for as long as possible. Give her all the time she wants to study it. What else can you do?” Lin gave Tian a ‘patient’ look.
“I thought there might be some beast training secret art or something.”
“There might be. But I don’t have it, and I don’t know of anyone in my clan who might have it. Which, since the Lin Clan on Ancient Crane Mountain has been reduced to a mere four, is not saying much.”
Ah. Right. And Lin had a difficult relationship with her family at the best of times, and she had been forcibly yanked away from a job she actually enjoyed to be trapped on a mountain with the remnants of them. Tian took another look at her, then at the shack, connecting a few memories. He smiled faintly, and cupped his hands.
“My thanks. My tea service remains the most valuable thing I can offer.”
“I’d rather die.”
Tian blinked in confusion, shrugged and let his rope dart drop from his sleeve. “You will be mourned for the appropriate period.”
“OH FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE IT IS A FIGURE OF SPEECH!” Lin shouted, stamping her foot. “I know you know it’s an expression. I KNOW you know. But here you are acting as if I want to commit suicide. Again! You keep…” She trailed off.
“Oh. You sneaky little wretch. Piss off and never darken my door again.” She turned around and went into the bamboo hut, doing her best to slam the door behind her. Her muffled scream of frustration was quite audible through the gaps.
Tian and Liren made their way back towards the hospital in a contemplative sort of mood.
“Think she’s going to be in the group raiding the trial ground?”
“Definately.” Liren nodded, then fell silent for a little while longer. The immortal mists twisted around the bamboo, tickled by the long leaves and carrying the sweet scent as it rolled down the mountain. High above, birds circled and in the grass insects sang. An ordinary sort of day.
“I’ll bite. Why did she call you sneaky?” Hong asked.
“No idea. I am very straightforward.” Tian shrugged.
“Yes, you are. Mostly. There is a definite sneaky streak in you, though.”
“Slander. I am simple and direct in all my dealings. A beacon of humility.”
“Is that so? Why don’t I know about it then?”
“Lack of filial virtue, I’d assume.” Tian gave her a dark look, and the two wandered off bickering, watched carefully by the crane.