It was the fourth day of our descent, when the foothills gave way to river country.

  Lower elevation meant warmer air, softer ground, the gradual return of vegetation that didn't need to fight for survival. Willows along the banks — the long-limbed, lazy variety that grew where water was reliable and violence was infrequent. Sunlight hit the water and broke into aimless fragments.

  A good day. Empty of threat, empty of agenda. Shaped by weather rather than will.

  Wei fished.

  It was the third attempt since the village. The first had produced nothing. The second had produced a broken line and a vocabulary that suggested his father's influence more than his mother's. This one he'd approached with the grim determination of someone who had elevated a minor task to a matter of personal identity.

  A stick. A string. A hook made from a bent needle. The setup was crude, but better than his last success. His technique was still awful. He stood in the shallows, ankle-deep, his grip on the stick too tight, his qi leaking into the water and scaring every fish within ten meters.

  I sat on the bank. Feet in the water.

  This was unusual. For me. I didn't touch things I didn't need to touch. Putting my feet in a river was an aesthetic decision, not a functional one. A gesture of something I'd stopped naming centuries ago because naming it made it real.

  The water was cool. Clear. It ran over my ankles the same way it ran over the stones.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "HA!"

  Wei pulled. The stick bent. The string went taut. He leaned back — nearly fell, caught himself with a qi-pulse to his heel that cratered the riverbed.

  From the water came a fish.

  Small. Very small. It fit in his palm with room to spare.

  "That's a fish." Holding it up. Dripping. Triumphant.

  "That's an argument against fishing."

  "It's a START."

  He held it higher. The fish struggled — silver, wet, panicking with an energy that exceeded any possible utility. Wei grinned. Proud of something nobody else would consider an accomplishment. Right to be proud. Wrong to believe it mattered. Correct about both.

  I almost smiled. The almost was enough.

  He waded out. Sat beside me — close, the habitual proximity, the two-meter radius he occupied without thinking and that I permitted without examining.

  He held the fish. Looked at it. The grin faded into something smaller — not less happy, but more honest. A boy slowly realizing that holding a very small fish was, objectively, not a significant event in the history of cultivation.

  Then his hands trembled.

  A shudder from his wrists to his fingertips — the same vibration as in the mountains. He set the fish down quickly. Into the water. It darted away — a flash of silver, gone.

  "Too small. Wouldn't have been enough for both a meal."

  I said nothing. His hands were shaking too hard to hold a fish the size of his thumb. The shaking was getting worse.

  The river moved. The willows swayed.

  I kept my feet in the water. Not because it helped. Because it was what a person would do on a day like this and I wanted, for the duration of this afternoon, to be a person. Just a person. Watching a boy fail at fishing.

  Underneath: his qi pulsed. Stronger than yesterday. Always stronger.

  Not here. Not now.

  Wei waded back in. No bait this time. Just standing in the current, hands underwater where I couldn't watch them shake.

  Tomorrow, the Reed Stilling exercise. Not a fix — a function. Something for his hands to do that wasn't pretending.

  The afternoon passed with the current and I let it go.