Lily would be the first to admit that she much preferred East Saffron without the snow. Sure, the city had a certain beauty to it all wreathed and wrapped up in ethereal white, crystalline and frozen in the beauty of winter’s frigid breath, but she’d long gotten over all her excitement about winter break, and the solstice holidays— which she’d missed, anyways— and settled into the usual grumpy wait for the weather to get better. At least the library wasn’t going anywhere. There had been that one time before she’d spent most of her time amongst the books, when the power had gone out and she’d huddled under the blankets with all the others… that had sucked.
She had her own personal space heater now, though! Which was to say that she had Avyr, whose mastery over his heating technique had only improved. He’d been putting a lot of training into it. They’d been putting a lot of training into it…
A paw nudged her, and she glared at the offending cat— the ground was too muddy for him to go around poking her all the time! The snow had started to melt, and the first bits of fresh grass had begun to peek out from beneath the frozen white, but that just meant that all the parks had transformed temporarily into mores.
She rubbed at the spot, brushing off the imaginary dirt Avyr had gotten on her. He was very good at keeping his paws clean, somehow… “what?” Avyr just chuffed, nodding back over to the open space, which… “I’m tired, okay? I can only do so much training before I need to rest. I’m not a super awesome cultivator like you are, you know?”
“You’ve been resting for two and a half hours.” She crossed her arms, meeting the cat glare for glare— not a very equivalent exchange, with just how intimidating Avyr could be, being a giant vicious looking cat and all, but still. “You can go another round. I know you can.” The worst part about it was just how supportive he was being. As if the entire fiasco she’d caused meant nothing at all.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
She sighed, snapping her notebook closed and heaving herself up off the small boulder she’d colonized. Avyr was right, of course, as he insufferably usually was… she wasn’t going to get any better if she didn’t practice. Immortality wasn’t reached in a day. Most of the time, legends disregarded… “so… what’re we doing this time?” She’d run herself ragged the first few days after she’d returned from her ill-advised expedition, and she’d not managed to win even once against Avyr. It was just a little disheartening. “More mock battles?”
“I was thinking that you could try managing how fast you use your talismans this time.” Which was to say, use talismans as fast as humanly possible— something that was a little more difficult than the idea suggested. None of her talismans actually stored their own qi, which meant she had to be very deliberate in how she used them to make sure that the disturbance from their decomposition wasn’t unduly affecting the next talisman she used, which could then affect the next… and so on and so forth. All for something she couldn’t even see.
At least she took some solace that even with the ability to see the natural qi of the world, Avyr seemed to understand even less of the subject than she did. “Alright.” She walked over to the center of the muddy field, her boots squelching just a little until she reached the circle of hardened earth Avyr had dried with his heat technique. “Ready when you are.”
Avyr gave her a nod in return. “You can start whenever you want.” For a long moment, a silence fell over the field, cut only by the far off rumble of cars flowing through city streets and children playing in the park behind them, by the very first winds of spring—
Lily moved—
Avyr moved faster.
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