Sayaana sat across from Qing Liao. She had chosen to place her image on top of his little stove, as the cut stump he presently occupied was the only thing resembling a proper seat the camp possessed. Sparks from the fire currently roasting the morning meal in its stone pot occasionally escaped the spaces between the bricks and zipped through her projected form. Such disruptive intervals caused her body to flicker and twitch, hurting Liao's eyes and gradually giving him a headache as his mind strained in the effort to try and resolve the two overlapping images.

  He knew Sayaana chose that spot deliberately. She did it to offer multiple reminders. That she was not truly present but was merely a remnant soul bound to his qi was one, but another was that she had been, in life, an immortal. Sitting atop a burning hot stove would never harm her even had she been visiting in the flesh.

  Such demonstrations disturbed Liao, though he could never properly articulate why. He knew only that Sayaana's open defiance of the ordinary functioning of everyday life always left him feeling out of sorts, disconnected and detached from the necessary focus his work demanded. Though he knew it was a response derived from weakness, he simply turned away rather than stare at the manifested form.

  Unable to appear outside his field of vision, Sayaana chose to re-materialize in front of him instead of asking him to turn back. This time she chose to stand against the rough wall of the lean-to, idly pressing her shoulders along the timbers. Green eyes granted him a slightly piqued look, but she said nothing. They'd been over this ground before, it was not worthy of another argument, not today. Bound together as they were, each could tell when persuasion would avail nothing.

  “You've spend almost a year within this bamboo,” the greenish immortal noted. “You've learned plenty since,” her eyes flashed. “Enough to demonstrate it. Your mastery of pig and boar hide is as far as it will go without putting it into proper practice. Training is not enough, you must express the dao, not just listen to it.”

  Liao did not consider his mastery of pigskin leather complete by any means, but ten years of treating it as his primary material of artistry had pushed him beyond what the manuals, or anyone living in the sect, could teach. Accepting this, he tentatively agreed with the remnant soul. Perhaps he should, as he knew Sayaana intended, make something more substantial.

  He did not mention that surviving in the wild, however gentle the surrounding environment might be, combined with cultivating and study of the animals and plants needed to advance his artistry left few spare hours in the day. Sayaana did not believe in challenges that did not result in extraordinary effort and energy expenditure. Such was the lasting legacy of her land of birth. Time would be found, somehow, a problem he would need to resolve himself.

  “You think I should make something,” it was an observation rather than a question. Somehow, thinking about that prospect left him excited and tired all at once. “Out here, with no metal tools and limited facilities?”

  “Yes,” Sayaana smiled, greatly amused.

  Her confidence possessed a considerable infectious element. Faced with that, Liao slowly turned his mind toward the embrace of this idea. Perhaps, he mused, it would be worthy to impose such a challenge on himself. There were ideas, concepts, he could try, things he had considered but not yet done. A blending across age and gender, piglets, sows, and boars all tied together in one assembly, it would only be properly expressed in a complete work, not some simple apron or makeshift boot.

  One question, however, left his mind blank. “What could I possibly produce?” Not armor, of course, he would never truly trust self-protection to something manufactured with such limited resources and tools as the wilderness provided alone. Even if he did, it would result in something brutally temporary, discarded for a better piece as soon as he returned to the sect. Any article of clothing was likewise a poor choice, for garments of pure leather did not breathe well and moved stiffly against the body. He could make some utilitarian item, of course, but bags, cordage, and other simple things were meant to be utilized towards inevitable destruction, any form of such an article made ornately would be purely decorative or at war with its own dao. It would be a waste to pour his totality of effort into such a thing.

  He could make a belt, or boots, but knew that neither item was best suited to the properties of pigskin. They required stiffness, and it was softer and more supple than other hides. Gloves were a better option, not a thick set for work purposes, but a decorative pair intended as an accessory for formal occasions. That would serve, but he would rather have access to proper tools, especially fine needles and thread to conceal the stitching, when making such a deliberately decorative piece. Besides, the idea of making such a thing while living in a hutch in the bamboo forest struck Liao as more than a little ridiculous, which mattered since it would corrupt the dao tied to his intent.

  Scabbards were an option, one he considered next. Excessive protection for ground stone blades, of course, but Liao knew the standard size and shape of the sect's knives. He could produce a mock-up in wood and shape the sheathe around them. It was an acceptable idea, one mixing function and decoration, but small, simple. It lacked the appeal of a true challenge, unable to hold any large open surface.

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  Indecision must have bled through his qi. Sayaana speared him with her emerald eyes, perfectly focused, and gave out a suggestion that might as well be a command. “A bowcase.”

  Liao fell silent as he considered this possibility with the utmost care. He knew what a bowcase was, of course. Members of the archery hall possessed them and used them to carry their weapons back and forth from their residences to the hall, before they were placed into storage unstrung. They were generally simple things, cloth wraps designed for protection against wind and rain rather than anything further. It took little speculation for his imagination to recognize that the remnant soul had something more substantial in mind.

  Without speaking, the remnant soul pulled an object from behind her back. It flickered and jolted as she moved, forming up in Liao's sight only with difficulty as Sayaana hauled upon their bond for all the clarity she could project, expanding her image beyond its typical boundaries of self-possession. Resolving just long enough for Liao to take a single good look, her bowcase took form for the first time in hundreds of years.

  A hard leather sleeve, open at the top and closed and tapered at the bottom, it would hold the strung bow fast, with the high half projected free, and tie easily along the back flush to a carried quiver. Sayaana's was dyed green, of course, and fringed with white fox fur. The outer surface was laced with silver studs, emeralds, and delicately embroidered images of greatly magnified snowflakes.?It was simple, with clean lines, but molded to absolute precision and proofed against hard usage. Age seemed to leak from every surface, filled with deep character and passion.

  Sayaana moved her hand, and the case vanished, excised from her self-image once more.

  “Why do we not make these?” Liao had never seen the like. He already wanted one. Ideas as to how he might construct such a carrier swirled through his thoughts even as he knew there would need to be countless subtle changes to accommodate the difference in style between his bow and that developed in Sayaana's homeland.

  “You live in a farmer's pen,” the remnant's answer was bitter, not angry. “That even a weak cultivator can cross in a day. Bows are secured in chests or placed on racks, taken out for practice and only used in war from atop walls. Your sect walks to its great fence to fight. You've never marched to war, much less ridden to it. So, you don't need them,” she concluded the short tirade with an unexpectedly disarming shrug.

  It was, Liao recognized, very true. Considering where he sat, in the edge of bamboo forest brushing upon the very boundaries of Mother's Gift, he could hardly be more aware of this reality. At full speed it would take less than an hour to reach the nearest village. The local bamboo cutters and herb gatherers knew of his presence in the woods and avoided him, intuitively aware that the visiting cultivator desired privacy, but they were never truly far away. He felt the brush of their qi many days, hunting out tubers. Evidence of their presence, in the form of harvested plants, discarded detritus, or cut vegetation, was encountered nearly daily.

  Mother's Gift was said to be the largest of the hidden lands. The old histories claimed as much, and Sayaana said it was more than four times the size of the largest that she had ever encountered. True though this might be, it remained a small place, especially on the scale of cultivator existence. Liao would not call it a pen, that felt unnecessarily cruel, but if labeled as a garden he could not help but agree.

  He did not need a bowcase, not now. One day though, when he went beyond the gate, then he would. Sayaana's choice was not only practical, it was aspirational. He felt warmth spread through him, appreciating that, the shared dream of their pairing. “I will need one,” he told her, earning a soft smile in return.

  “Then get started,” the immortal instructed. “And you're not getting help from me. Figure it out yourself.”

  She punctuated this declaration by vanishing once again, the sort of trick a remnant soul could play that Liao knew she found greatly amusing.

  Liao tried not to be offended at such maneuvers. He struggled to even imagine the full scope of isolation his companion must feel, trapped inside a gemstone and only ever able to talk to a single person. In such circumstances any source of amusement was surely absolutely essential. Thinking on this always made him wish he was a better conversationalist, just so his companion would not be so relentlessly bored. Sayaana claimed that living with him was for more interesting than her previous existence, but considering that she'd spent nearly two centuries stored in a display case this was not a strong endorsement.

  “A bowcase, very well,” he carefully removed the stone bowl from the stove and slurped down a hot stew of spring bamboo shoots, onions, and the last of yesterday’s lotus roots. Crunchy and pungent though this meal was, he'd long since grown used to the taste and had learned to ignore the strong flavors. Cultivation could reduce sensitivity as well as increase it, a lesson he'd been forced to master. This was, he supposed, the beginning of the process of leaving food behind entirely.

  He did not devote himself to the project immediately. There was the camp to clean and the daily gathering to accomplish. With the coming of spring he was able to harvest both early fruits and spring bamboo shoots. There were also fiddlehead ferns, though they had to be unearthed carefully, which offered a distinctive new variety to his meals. This was welcome, despite the increased time it took to supply his pot. Liao found that state of affairs perfectly acceptable, especially as he could tie it to the examination of his traps and snares, now set out in abundance to gather those animals rapidly emerging to great the new year.

  Only as the sun pushed past noon did he begin to seriously consider this new project. Long and swift cultivator strides brought him back to camp as he did so. Once his food and takings were put away, he put his thoughts in order as to how he might undertake to make a bowcase. He began by sketching out simple design comparisons in the dirt using the ashes from his stove. These first attempts were all unworthy, but they served to provide a sense of proportion, size, and shape.

  From such simple models he moved up to the use of bamboo strips. Tied together and treated to hold a simple charcoal-based ink, they allowed development of a proper diagram. Holding the brief image of Sayaana's case in his mind for inspection, he considered how differences in the structure of their bows – the sect's design was shorter, with greater recurve and long tip lathes compared to the bows of the distant north – would necessarily change the form.

  This done, he moved on to mock versions using scrap hides, adjusting to refine the shape and gain understanding of what thickness and texture was appropriate in different parts of the case. At the same time he considered where he might bond a fringe and what portions of the outer surface would be suited to stamp designs. He had only begun when the shadows lengthened and the shifting progression of hours called him to make dinner and conduct evening meditation.

  The work, Liao had already realized, was going to be lengthy.