Sobon spent much of the rest of her day prepar-ing ad-di-tion-al quartz rods from the sandy soil, while also spend-ing part of her at-ten-tion at-tun-ing her bones and mus-cles to aether. It felt very good to have a body that was be-com-ing at-tuned; both Sobon and Alas-si could feel the world so much more clear-ly, al-though Alas-si's sens-es, be-ing at-tuned to qi and not aether, strug-gled. For Sobon, at-tun-ing her body to pure, un-tainted aether left her feel-ing more and more like she was stand-ing on breezy cliff, her nose catch-ing scents as they min-gle and me-an-der on a jour-ney from some-where far away to al-most any-where else.

  [ Your po-et-ry is aw-ful, ] Alas-si groused. [ And I just don't like this feel-ing. It's so hard to sense what else is out there when there is this... field of noth-ing al-ways right there, in the way. It's... be-yond my ex-pe-ri-ence. It feels like it should be a sign of some-thing hap-pen-ing, but it's just... you. ]

  [ Well, I did steal your body and your life, ] Sobon re-mind-ed her, suc-cess-ful-ly sup-press-ing any in-stinct to feel bad for the old woman. It wasn't as though she hadn't had her chance. [ You will grow used to it. ]

  By the end of the day, when Mian and Lui re-turned, Sobon had used up all of the free sand in the court-yard, down to a depth of a foot or so. That had turned out to be a rel-a-tive-ly large por-tion of the lo-cal soil, and so Sobon had been forced to leave re-gions close to the build-ing foun-da-tions untouched. The re-sult-ing dip in the rest of the soil was noticeable, but Sobon wasn't in-ter-est-ed in that part of the aes-thet-ics. And giv-en that she had craft-ed a large num-ber of the thin rods...

  "You look like you had a good day," was all Mian said as he closed the gate be-hind the two of them.

  Sobon shift-ed her at-ten-tion eas-i-ly, fin-ish-ing her thoughts offhand-ed-ly as she looked at the two. Mian was in a ri-otous-ly good mood, his spir-it pos-i-tive-ly spin-ning, and he'd clear-ly gained a star, ap-proach-ing the top of Iron and the edge of Sil-ver. Lui looked good, too, if tired. "You both as well."

  Lui was ob-vi-ous-ly about to speak, but Mian stepped over her with-out notic-ing. "I found what I was look-ing for--cor-rupt pa-trollers, of course. Not a whole lot of them, per-haps two or three, but they had a wealthy pa-tron who had put pres-sure on the city pa-troller's guild not to take ac-tion. I wasn't sure that I had the right group, but... some-one tried to kill me, so I must be get-ting close. Not any-one re-al-ly strong, yet." He took his mas-sive butch-er sword out of its sheath, and Sobon could see that it was once again blood-stained, and slight-ly more chipped than it had been. His eyes fol-lowed Sobon's to the blade. "Only wish I could use my qi bet-ter. The strength is nice, but I feel like I need an in-script-ed blade to make bet-ter use of it."

  Sobon con-sid-ered, for a long mo-ment, be-fore look-ing to Lui. The girl had shrunk slight-ly, dis-ap-point-ed that Mian had got-ten his words in first, and so Sobon spoke to her. "And you, Lui? You seem hap-py."

  "I am, very much." Lui's smile widened, and was per-haps a lit-tle hard. "I saw Lady Mide mak-ing a pill. Al-though I couldn't fol-low every-thing that was go-ing, on, I think I un-der-stand the process, and she liked that. She has me prepar-ing a few sim-ple in-gre-di-ents, now. It's very care-ful work." Her smile slipped a lit-tle, and she looked down at her hands. "I... wor-ry a lit-tle. My hands have al-ways shak-en, some-times. Es-pe-cial-ly when I'm scared. But it didn't hap-pen at all, to-day."

  Sobon stood and moved over to her body's grand-daugh-ter. With her hands more or less at-tuned, now, Sobon could feel the flow of aether through them with much high-er sen-si-tiv-i-ty, al-though it was far from per-fect. She took the girl's hands and felt along them, her fin-gers trac-ing up and down the aether struc-tures of the arm. Lui sucked in a breath at first--the girl was still fair-ly shy, even here and with her--but Sobon was gen-tle, and Lui didn't so much as flinch at the con-tact, or her search-ing mo-tions.

  "There is a lit-tle knot," Sobon said af-ter a mo-ment, "but it isn't a flaw, ex-act-ly. You've al-ways..." Sobon sought for words to de-scribe at-tune-ment. "...felt more at-tached to your hands than the rest of your body, haven't you?"

  Lui looked em-bar-rassed at that. "Uh... well, yes? I saw so many dif-fer-ent kinds of hands when I was serv-ing. Some were strong, oth-ers frail. Some were fat, and oth-ers... not." She looked down at her hands, and then quick-ly away. "I... got com-ments on them, a lot. But most-ly, I just knew that I had to hold the plates and mugs with-out let-ting any-thing drop, and many of them were heavy, when I was young. I guess... I thought about them a lot?"

  It was Alas-si who thought she un-der-stood, and Sobon let her come for-ward to speak, her voice chang-ing sub-tly. "You hat-ed them, in oth-er words."

  Both Lui and Mian snapped their at-ten-tion to the woman. Alas-si let the girls' hands drop, but not be-fore briefly squeez-ing her. "I didn't hear them; I didn't lis-ten. But I know the com-ments you must have heard. Al-ways about how you would be a good moth-er or a good woman, how you would find a good man. Nev-er about your strength or your will, and they would nev-er ask about your de-sires or dreams. And I know you had dreams, Lui. I didn't..." The woman frowned, but Sobon forced her to speak. "I didn't... care, back then. I should have. But I did hear you talk-ing about them, about run-ning your own busi-ness some-day, about show-ing your fa-ther that you could do it. They were good dreams."

  "The way they looked at my hands," Lui agreed, qui-et-ly, "al-ways seemed wrong to me. Some-thing in their eyes saw some-thing in my hands. I don't know what."

  Alas-si and Mian both chose not to an-swer that, and Sobon didn't dis-agree.

  "You can be proud of your hands," Alas-si said, though it took Sobon to push her into break-ing the awk-ward si-lence ear-ly. "I don't know... what Sobon saw, ex-act-ly. But I ex-pect your hands shake when you doubt and fear, be-cause they are at-tached close-ly to your spir-it, and your spir-it is very sen-si-tive. As long as you can keep this," she tapped Lui's chest, clos-est to her heart, "calm and sta-ble, your hands will an-swer you. Of that I have no doubt."

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Lui con-sid-ered, but nod-ded. "Thank you, Grand-ma Alas-si."

  The woman tsked slight-ly, but Sobon didn't force her way back in front. The woman con-sid-ered her grand-daugh-ter, and then the man be-side them. "It isn't all bad, you know."

  The two of them tensed, but Alas-si just sighed.

  "I... should have been dead. I don't think I ever re-sent-ed him... re-sent-ed Sobon for tak-ing away my life, or not af-ter the first mo-ment. It stopped be-ing my life a long time ago." Alas-si shook her head. "I sup-pose you both know that well enough. You were both wait-ing for me to come back. I was just wait-ing to die. Maybe I am dead. Maybe Sobon just keeps me here to ask me for help. I don't know, and as I un-der-stand it, he didn't have any choice in this, ei-ther. But it's not tor-ture for me to be locked away. It isn't painful, re-al-ly, es-pe-cial-ly know-ing that he would do the right thing. Has done the right thing."

  "Sobon is a man?" Mian's voice was some-where be-tween doubt-ing and scan-dal-ized. Lui turned to look at him, a dis-ap-prov-ing look on her face.

  "As I re-call, one of his first thoughts was so dis-mis-sive of the dif-fer-ence be-tween men and women that he con-sid-ered it lit-tle more than shapes. He has worked to think of him-self as me, since then." Alas-si shrugged. "He has not dis-re-spect-ed my body or my will, which is more than I can say about many."

  Sobon, with an ef-fort of will, dis-tanced her-self from the con-ver-sa-tion by think-ing about Mian's sword, in or-der to give the woman space to talk. In truth, al-though Sobon had been flip-pant with the in-scrip-tion-ist, she wasn't en-tire-ly cer-tain how mere-ly chan-nel-ing qi through the blade would af-fect it. Us-ing pure aether scripts to en-hance the blade would be triv-ial, but if Sobon was go-ing to work with qi scripts, she had to un-der-stand how they were all meant to in-ter-act with the var-i-ous qi na-tures, or what-ev-er the fla-vors were called.

  A quick pe-rusal of the Ri'lef notes on qi brought her to a sec-tion about the ac-tu-al geom-e-try of qi, which was fas-ci-nat-ing. Sobon had known that it in-volved sev-er-al dif-fer-ent spins--or, as the Ri'lef thought of them, the essence of sev-er-al dif-fer-ent lay-ers of re-al-i-ty all bun-dled to-geth-er into a sin-gle en-er-gy. Ac-cord-ing to Ri'lef thought, qi con-tained links to var-i-ous re-gions on dif-fer-ent lay-ers, each of which may con-tain in-nate scripts that link to each oth-er. These scripts were re-spon-si-ble for the "na-tures" of qi, and each na-ture of qi had dif-fer-ent ways in which those scripts would need to be cre-at-ed to work suc-cess-ful-ly.

  For what-ev-er rea-son, the doc-u-ment didn't go into depth on what those scripts ac-tu-al-ly were, in-stead sug-gest-ing that prac-ti-tion-ers would fig-ure out how to add na-tures to their qi as long as space was pro-vid-ed to do so, and so qi was giv-en at-tach-ment points on all of its spins--us-ing the Ri'lef terms for them, Right-eous and Sin-is-ter, Gen-e-sis and Con-sump-tion, Ac-cel-er-a-tion and Re-vival, Sa-cred and Cor-rupt. The "raw" en-er-gy had some ba-sic scripts at each point to make sure that qi could still ful-fill the ba-sic func-tions of aether, and which reg-u-lat-ed what kinds of scripts could be writ-ten into the qi, but the notes also in-di-cat-ed that they ex-pect-ed--and to some ex-tent, knew for a fact--that the aether war-riors of the plan-et would dam-age those scripts when cre-at-ing qi na-tures, cre-at-ing things that did not func-tion as in-tend-ed and which could be cor-rupt-ed.

  With that back-ground, Sobon looked back over the li-brary of qi in-scrip-tion sym-bols, not-ing that there were sets of glyphs in-tend-ed to copy scripts into and out of the qi, ef-fec-tive-ly adding in-tent and na-ture to the qi, or re-mov-ing them from it. There were also de-tect-ing and block-ing glyphs of a sim-i-lar char-ac-ter, but now that Sobon un-der-stood that they were based on these qi ex-ten-sions, they made more sense. In her mind, then, she sketched out a sim-ple set of en-grav-ings for some-thing like Mian's sword, with a qi chan-nel that strength-ened the sword, and one that emit-ted any en-er-gy from the very edge of the blade, with an op-tion-al mode for that chan-nel to re-place the emit-ted qi's in-tent with one of pure, Sin-is-ter de-struc-tion.

  It was rough, in Sobon's opin-ion, and it was still waste-ful com-pared to us-ing raw aether. Giv-en the size of Mian's blade, she also knew that she could add all kinds of ex-tra func-tions if she chose, but she didn't ex-pect the man would want it. The only real ad-van-tage over some-thing like Sobon's bar-ri-er blade was that the blade strength-en-ing in-scrip-tion didn't need to rely on geom-e-try, al-though the cut-ting edge script did. In the end, Sobon couldn't con-tent her-self with the ba-sic ver-sion, adding a script to de-tect the geom-e-try of the blade, and then adapt-ing the strength-en-ing and cut-ting edges to use that geom-e-try, de-pend-ing on the user's will and in-tent.

  Sobon came out of her de-sign fo-cus to find Alas-si and the oth-ers hav-ing a meal to-geth-er. Al-though Sobon would have let her stay a while longer, Alas-si sim-ply passed the body back, and so Sobon found her-self back in con-trol mid-chew. It was a sim-ple meal, as the ones at home of-ten were--rice and cooked veg-eta-bles, with a lit-tle spice. Sobon found her-self pay-ing at-ten-tion to the taste sim-ply be-cause it hit her out of nowhere, and she had to ad-mit, again, that Mian was a de-cent cook.

  The eyes of the oth-er two were on her, of course, but Sobon fin-ished her mouth-ful and swal-lowed. "Yes, I'm back," she said. "I thought she de-served some time with you. And I spent some time think-ing about how to en-hance your sword, if you want it." Sobon glanced at Mian, who im-me-di-ate-ly bright-ened. Sobon then turned to Lui. "And Lui... I am a war-rior, not a doc-tor, but Alas-si was right about your hands. The knot that I saw is a deep con-nec-tion be-tween body and spir-it; the con-flict comes when you can't keep your spir-it in con-trol." She paused, frown-ing. "But sen-si-tiv-i-ty, es-pe-cial-ly height-ened sen-si-tiv-i-ty like yours, re-quires nev-er try-ing to con-quer your spir-it, which means not be-ing able to force con-trol. I am very sen-si-tive, for a war-rior, but I may still not be the right per-son to teach you how to keep con-trol with-out los-ing what you have."

  Lui nod-ded, set-ting down her own bowl of rice. "Grand-ma Alas-si had a few words, but I think I will ask Lady Mide. She is sen-si-tive enough that she must have dealt with it as well."

  Sobon just nod-ded, and con-tin-ued eat-ing. Af-ter she fin-ished, Mian lent her the sword, which--af-ter a few min-utes spent clean-ing and sharp-en-ing it--Sobon at-tempt-ed to en-grave, af-ter first run-ning through every-thing in her mind twice. The en-grav-ing process took a cou-ple hours, and Lui and Mian both left her to it, al-though Mian re-turned fre-quent-ly just to watch.

  By the end, when Sobon filled the in-tent marks with the right specifics to strength-en the met-al and emit de-struc-tive in-tent, the sword worked just the way she had drawn it up. Us-ing her own body's qi and care-ful-ly craft-ed in-tent, she was able to shift the blade re-in-force-ment from full-body, to the cut-ting edge, to one of the broad sides of the blade, and she could ac-ti-vate the cut-ting edge emis-sion with or with-out the sin-is-ter qi fla-vor added to it, and even shift which parts of the cut-ting edge emit-ted qi.

  It felt odd, then, to hand it over to Mian, and see him com-plete-ly fail to ac-ti-vate the sword.

  "I've nev-er used ex-ter-nal qi be-fore," Mian ad-mit-ted, cy-cling en-er-gy into his hands but fail-ing to pro-ject it down the qi chan-nels of the blade. "I thought I knew... I thought it would be ob-vi-ous, and sim-ple. I guess I was wrong."

  Sobon just sighed. "I'll teach you," she said af-ter a long mo-ment. "But not to-day. To-mor-row, af-ter you es-cort Lui."

  The smile on Mian's face said that he more than ac-cept-ed that in-vi-ta-tion.

  God of Eyes (Recently on Trending! Apropos of nothing I've done), and Lui is very close to Loi. Lui also talks a lot about people's eyes, but that's not specifically a reference to that story. It's more a 'eyes are the windows of the soul' type thing.