Unintended Cultivator

Sen watched with a mixture of amusement and sympathy as Laughing River dragged Misty Peak toward the galehouse. The fox woman reacted like a feral cat that had just been seized by something bigger. She kicked, scratched, thrashed, and screamed. Sen could just barely sense energy movement of some kind. He assumed that the pair of foxes were exchanging techniques that remained largely hidden by virtue of their fox natures. Based on the growing look of shock and horror on Misty Peak’s face, Laughing River was shutting her down hard and making it look easy. Sen supposed that the elder fox had gotten injured in the earlier confrontation because he’d been caught off guard or simply hadn’t been inclined to bear personal witness to another fox’s death. Sen couldn’t really blame him if it was the latter. Now, Laughing River had an agenda and he wasn’t going to let a little tantrum by his granddaughter get in the way.

Laughing River looked over to Sen and said, “I’ll need a little privacy to discuss some things with my granddaughter.”

Sen glanced at Misty Peak, who gave him a desperate, pleading look as she tried in vain to escape her grandfather’s iron grip. He realized that he probably could intervene here. He had some leverage and even some tenuous moral authority. They had both dragged him into things he wanted no part of, things that had or would endanger his life, and they both knew it. If Sen put his foot down, there was a decent chance that they would both listen. Of course, that might well also put him in the position of needing to moderate everything between the two from here on out. That was a job he didn’t want. This wasn’t the first time he’d been in a position like this, either. He’d learned the hard way in that capital that there was simply no place for him in other people’s royal politics. His good intentions were no substitute for direct knowledge and personal experience. If Laughing River and Misty Peak were going to make peace, it was on them to work out the details.

“This all strikes me as family business,” said Sen. “Things didn’t go very well the last time I inserted myself into that kind of affair. So, I’m going to sit this one out.”

Laughing River simply offered Sen a curt nod, while Misty Peak looked ready to start yelling at him. That lasted until elder fox started dragging toward the galehouse again amid increasingly hysterical protests. I really hope he doesn’t kill her, thought Sen. He didn’t think that was what Laughing River had in mind, but Sen had misread people before. In the end, though, all of it was fundamentally other people’s problems. He’d gotten sucked into the middle of it through sheer proximity and nothing more. If Laughing River hadn’t dragged him out into the middle of the wilds, if Misty Peaks hadn’t tried to intervene, he wouldn’t know or care about any of what those two had to talk about. He sort of wished that he hadn’t learned what he had about the situation.

He felt sorry for the foxes, in an abstract way, that things had turned out the way they did, but he was very committed to the idea of staying out of other people’s problems whenever he could. It wasn’t that he believed that was realistic. There were already too many people showing up at random and trying to get him involved for that to last. But he was going to do what he could to maintain that not getting involved policy for as long as he could. Getting back to Fu Ruolan and her version of training would help a lot with that. It kept him out of sight, if not out of mind, and nicely inaccessible to most people. The kinds of people who could reach him there were the same kinds of people who would be generally uninterested in picking a fight with a supposedly crazy nascent soul cultivator.

While he might not like shamelessly hiding behind someone else’s power, he was starting to see that it could have advantages. And it wasn’t as if he’d gone to Fu Ruolan asking to hang around her house for years. She’d insisted on it. If he was going to put up with the situation, he might as well extract a few benefits out of it. He reasoned that if he could keep that up for a while without too many excursions into the regular world, and then stay low profile for a while, he might be able to grow his own strength to the point where people would think twice about trying to strong-arm him into doing what they wanted. It wasn’t a foolproof plan because it depended on things happening the way he wanted them to happen, but he decided it was better than no plan at all.

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Sen heard a thump and the walls of the galehouse shivered for a moment. It brought Sen out of his speculative reverie. Shaking his head, he ignored it. Instead, he returned to what he’d been doing before he’d been interrupted. With a bit of a break, he was able to objectively evaluate where he was weak and start working on those parts of his jian forms. It was slow, methodical work, but the repetition of moves let him fall into a meditative frame of mind. It was a state that let him look at his shortcomings without the judgment that can cloud someone’s thinking about their own skill level. After a couple of hours of that, night had fallen. Sen could have kept working, but there was a point at which you simply weren’t going to wring any more improvements out of a day. He’d built his skills over years. Correcting his current deficiencies wasn’t the work of a day.

Instead, with the galehouse still hosting the impromptu fox royal summit, Sen turned his mind to the matter of dinner. He ended up making several small fire pits with earth qi. He set one up as a spit to roast some meat. He cheated outrageously with fire qi to condense a modest pile of wood into a nice bed of coals and then buried some sweet potatoes to roast. A third fire was used to cook the all-important rice. The last fire pit was used to cook up some dumplings that Sen found hiding in a storage ring. He knew he must have prepared them at some point but couldn’t remember exactly when. Since food never went bad in a storage ring, they literally could have been in there for years. When the food was all more or less cooked, he made a pot of tea. When there was still no sign of the foxes, Sen checked his annoyance and went over to the galehouse. He opened the door and stuck his head in. Misty Peaks was sullenly staring away from her grandfather, while Laughing River was standing a few feet away from her looking positively imperious.

“Hey,” said Sen, causing both foxes to shoot him glares, “you’ve been at this for hours. There’s food now. You can argue some more after you eat.”

Both glares softened a bit at those words. Sen didn’t wait to see if either of them would say anything, he just pulled his head out of the galehouse and closed the door. It took a few minutes, but the foxes did come out. The foxes found seats and gave each other unhappy, sidelong looks while Sen dished up food. As the food accumulated on each plate, though, the foxes started looking at the food and him more than each other. He handed them each a plate. Laughing River had seen Sen cook before, although it was usually less extravagant. Misty Peak was giving him a look like she didn’t quite know how she was supposed to lodge this new information into her perception of him. He just smiled at her. Then, he poured them each a cup of tea. After he handed those out, he gave the foxes both a stern look.

“Someone, and I’m not asking who, but someone broke my favorite teapot while you two scuffled yesterday. I expect it to be replaced,” said Sen.

Laughing River gave Misty Peak a very distinct I told you so look. The fox woman sighed and nodded at Sen.

“I broke it. I’ll see to it that you get a replacement.”

“Good,” said Sen. “With that out of the way, it’s time to eat.”

The three barely exchanged a word as all of the food slowly vanished. It was Misty Peak who finally broke the silence with a question for Sen.

“Aren’t you going to ask how it’s going?”

“Nope,” said Sen.

“You aren’t curious?”

“I’m not interested,” said Sen, and then clarified. “Rather, let’s say that the less I know, the less likely I am to get dragged any further into fox politics. I don’t want random foxes thinking that I had anything to do with whatever you two finally decide about all of this.”

“You really think it’ll be that easy?” asked Laughing River.

“No,” said Sen, “but I can hope. I’ve already got mortal humans thinking I’m okay with interfering with their governments. There are zero benefits to me if the foxes start thinking the same thing. That’s a caravan’s worth of trouble that I don’t need or want. It might be inevitable, but I don’t have to help things along by actually weighing in on any of it.”

“It seems like you’ve given this a lot of thought,” observed Misty Peak.

“That’s probably because I have.”

“And if I asked for your opinion?” asked Laughing River.

“Don’t,” said Sen. “I’m happy to make food and give you somewhere to squabble in peace, but that’s as far as I’m willing to go. You’ve already made one of your problems into my problem, and I let you. I’ll be much less accommodating if you try to do it again.”

Misty Peak looked stunned that Sen had spoken to her grandfather that way, but the elder fox just gave Sen an approving nod. Then, Laughing River turned to Misty Peaks.

“That is what you do when someone says something stupid to you like your grandfather helped to murder a bunch of foxes.”

Sen threw his hands into the air. “What did I just say?!”

The elder fox just howled in laughter.

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