Book 3: Chapter 12: Rest and Reflection
Sen kept them traveling at night. At first, it was simply to avoid other travelers, but things changed on the third day. While Lifen was sleeping the afternoon away in the tent, Sen felt a potent spiritual sense sweep over the entire area. It wasn’t enough to penetrate or collapse the obscuring formation he’d set up, but it was more than enough that Sen felt it strain the formation a bit. That put Sen’s nerves on edge. He waited for the spiritual sense to make another pass or focus on the area they were in, but it didn’t. While he managed to relax after another hour passed with no recurrence, it made getting any sleep at all much more difficult. That night, as much as he hated to do it. He hid almost the entire time they walked. He also warned Lifen to keep her qi as constrained as possible.
“Was it someone looking for us?” she’d asked.
“It might not have been, but I can’t say that I like the timing,” answered Sen. “I’d rather not take the chance.”
There was very little idle talk as they walked that night, with both of them focused on leaving as little evidence of their passage as possible. Sen also pushed them a little harder. He even entertained traveling exclusively in the forest by the road. Yet, while that might be feasible for him, it wasn’t realistic for Lifen to travel that way. She’d be entirely reliant on his senses and skills to keep moving forward. While that might work as long as there wasn’t trouble, she’d have to run blindly through the forest if he needed to fight someone or something. The benefits simply didn’t outweigh the potential costs. The pace of travel and sleeping during the day was already visibly wearing on Lifen. Even if she refused to say anything to him about it, his eyes worked fine. He saw the way she collapsed into nearly immediate sleep at the end of every day. He saw the shadows that were slowly getting darker beneath her eyes. He wasn’t willing to add something else that might make it worse for her.
After another three days of travel, though, it was clear that they needed to take a break. As much as Sen wanted to move faster, Lifen simply didn’t have the same kind of endurance that he did. She wasn’t walking anymore. She was trudging. Every step looked like an act of will. When he considered it, the pace he’d been setting would probably have killed a mortal. They’d also been eating as they walked, only rarely stopping for meals and even more rarely stopping to make hot food. When they stopped the next morning, Sen set up three layers of protective formations around their camp that, if he’d done it right, should keep anyone from detecting them using spiritual senses or mundane senses. Then, he cooked a huge, hot meal. Even through the haze of her fatigue, Lifen hovered by the fire the entire time he cooked. Once the food was ready, Sen fed her plate after plate of food until she waved him off.
“I’m going to explode if I eat any more,” she said.
“Fair enough.”
“What’s the occasion?” she asked, even as she tried to stifle a yawn.
“We’re going to stay here for a day or two,” announced Sen.
Lifen looked alarmed at that announcement. “Why?”
“Because we’re both tired. And while there isn’t a proper bath to hand, there is a small stream not too far from here. So, we’re going to stay for a day or two. We’ll sleep. We’ll eat. We’ll bathe. Then, when we’re both rested, we’ll move on again.”
Lifen looked torn between an intense desire to just agree and concern. “Is it safe?”
“No one else has come through searching the area with their spiritual sense in the last few days, so I think it’s safe enough.”
“I could use a bath,” murmured Lifen.
As she had pleasant thoughts about baths, Sen watched as her eyes drooped and then closed. He made sure she wasn’t going to topple over into the fire, then finished putting up the larger tent that he’d been gifted back in Emperor’s Bay. If he’d known how useful it was going to prove, he’d have thanked the person who gave it to him even more than he had. Lifen didn’t even stir when he picked her up and settled her on some blankets inside the tent. He stayed up for another few hours, mostly to ensure that the formations were working properly. He adjusted them a little to tighten up minuscule gaps that he privately admitted might have only existed in his mind. With nothing left to occupy his mind, he doused the fire. He’d never shaken that fear of setting a fire in a forest that he wouldn’t be able to escape. With their safety locked down as tight as he could make it, Sen joined Lifen in the tent.
While he was certain that he’d only sleep for a few hours, Sen discovered that the pace he’d been setting had worn him down a bit too. By the time he woke, it was early evening. The sun wasn’t quite down, but it was dark beneath the forest canopy. Sen got back to work building a fresh fire and warming up some water for tea. He’d discovered long ago that he could simply warm the water for tea using qi, but he was equally certain that it changed the taste of the tea. By all rights, it shouldn’t make a difference, yet it did. So, he patiently waited for the water to warm over the fire. He had no idea how long Lifen would sleep, so he didn’t cook any food. He could cook once she woke. Once he had tea in hand, he started groping around mentally for something to do and came up empty. Usually, they broke camp around this time. Except, they were staying. Sen felt a little lost with no pressing activity to fill his time. They’d been going almost non-stop for six days. They’d push until the sun broke the horizon, then they’d get back on the road once true night fell.
In the end, Sen fell back on what he knew best. It hadn’t been intentional, but he’d made the formation bigger than usual because he knew they were staying. There was enough room for him to practice his forms. So, Sen started at the beginning. There was something comforting in the basic unarmed combat forms. The simplicity of the punches and kicks, the reaffirmation of years of disciplined training, it all grounded him, brought him back to a center that had been largely missing since he left the mountain. Even as his body almost rejoiced in the familiar motions, he let his mind drift over his recent memories. He didn’t try to evaluate them at first, just observe them, the way a bird might observe the landscape from the air. From that lofty vantage point, Sen was able to see some truths that he’d missed in the moment.
He’d spent so much time being disciplined and focused on the mountain that he’d pushed a lot of things down. Some of them had been purely physical needs, although those things didn’t trouble him so much. There hadn’t been any shortage of willing partners for those pursuits when he desired them or even when he didn’t. And those years of discipline made it easy to ignore those desires when they were inconvenient. Yet, he’d also pushed down a lot of emotions. He’d had a lot of anger and hazy but potent resentment lingering inside himself. There’d been no room for those things on the mountain. Once he’d been out in the world, though, they’d come bubbling up to the surface in a variety of ways. Sometimes, he’d lashed out too much at others. Sometimes, he’d been defiant when it wasn’t necessary. Without the counterweight of Master Feng, Uncle Kho, and Auntie Caihong’s expectations to keep him on course, he’d…Sen wasn’t even sure what the right term was for it.
He hadn’t exactly gone crazy. Little if anything he’d done was truly irrational. Yet, he hadn’t been acting in line with his own principles or even with his own best interests front and center. Of course, those principles had been too idealistic. He supposed that was part of growing up. You test your principles against the reality of the world and see how they hold up. His no-killing stance hadn’t held up well. Not that he found killing especially palatable or pleasurable, but it had become painfully clear to him that it was necessary. Sometimes, it was necessary in the defense of one’s own life, and sometimes it was necessary in the defense of others. Sometimes, too often in Sen’s opinion, there truly were people whose death could only serve to improve the general state of the world. As much as it pained him, though, Sen could recognize and adapt to that truth.
Acting in ways that didn’t serve his own best interests, though? He struggled to understand why he, or anyone, would do that. Let alone do it as often as he had. Sen knew that there were times when honor might make such demands on a person, but his honor had rarely been at stake. He’d just been impulsive or stupid. Of all the mistakes he’d made, that was the type of mistake that had to stop. He’d been relying on others to reign him in before, but they couldn’t be there all the time to enforce emotional discipline. It also wasn’t fair of him to expect them to do that for him. He didn’t expect it to be easy or to happen overnight, but he’d done hard things before. Impossible things, to hear others tell the tale. If he could do the impossible, then keeping tabs on his own reactions shouldn’t even be in the top half of difficult things in his life. Yet, somehow, he knew that it would be. Still, he’d recognized the problem, and it was a problem. That was an important landmark. Now, he needed to do something to fix it.
Sen’s reverie was broken by Lifen’s voice. “Well, it makes me feel a little better to know that even the mighty Judgment’s Gale has to practice every once in a while.”
Sen sighed. “I really hate that name.”
Lifen giggled. “I know. That’s why it’s always so much fun to say it to you.”
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