eastbound | un: yiling patriarch

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un: yiling patriarch

Ah, Lan Zhan! I may have annoyed a magical fish because of a cultural misunderstanding and have it saying it'll nonspecifically curse me for seven years in a very dramatic way, but, uh, would you be willing to go cleanse its waters?

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It reached out to me on the fourth day. I don't know if it was shy or its spirit took some time to notice my attempts to reach it.

Considering the trials, it might have been preoccupied?

( so he was trying to sweet talk a tree... )

[Y e s. He serenaded it with affectionate touches of energy and underlying longing]

Maybe, but I've only approached it during daylight. I got the impression that it's very... internally focused.

So... self absorbed?

You're terrible.

There's a sense of childishness about its selfishness, despite the tree's age. It likely isn't a fair comparison to Yggdrasil's millennia of benelovence, but it didn't seem so terribly wise. Although I'd never communed with another tree spirit before, so I could well be misjudging its behavior. It's quite possible that it's as wise and powerful as any mortal tree is likely to become.

I am, and yet so charming about it!

It's as possible that any tree with an aware enough spirit is as individual as any person. I haven't run into as many that are from living nature, but you do see it, sometimes. The examples I know of were each uniquely different from each other, so why not the same with the trees?

Besides, while this one is part of ritual, it isn't the religion itself, yes? Yours is part of the heart of a belief system as a beacon itself, isn't it? Yggdrasil holds a different importance to your home than this tree does.

... Does this tree have a name? Or can I call it's Anurr's Mourning Wood?

[FFS WUXIAN. He's so glad this isn't voice]

It didn't give me the sense of a name, but I'm sure you don't want to call it that.

True enough that Yggdrasil in spirit is divine and this tree is not, however. Have you communed with one before?

( the sad part is this means he's in a good mood, if he's goofing around and playacting, since he very much does not believe this statement of his. but hah! he's great at pretending! )

With a tree, or a divine, or a spirit?

[His mum would be so ashamed that he understood such crude humor. The title of Luminary added a complex layer to that perceived innocence as well, so how very dare, Wuxian]

A tree.

( tell him that wood does not mourn okay

or stand nice and tall and present every morning

LET THE INNUENDO STAND UP, OKAY, nothing else will )

I can't say with a tree in particular. I've read a few cases about them! This one burned down tree came to spiritual awareness after the death of the tree, but that wasn't a very good story, more an angry, burning one, so that's one thought. I've been lost in trees! Tied up to one, or a few, or who knows, it gets fuzzy. Helped nail an eagle-owl to one!

Those sound like unpleasant experiences.

[Truly. He's a bit ill at the thought of the first and last]

I think trees with noticeable spirits of their own seem rare, but I'd be interested to try if there are others we encounter.

Night Hunts can be very exciting! Or unpleasant. Some might say they're the same thing, on some level! But it's what cultivators can do to handle what most people cannot, and helps to keep everyone safe, as much as we can.

Mm, which would make sense. Well! We can check on trees as we go along then, can't we?

[Well there's an in for a question he hasn't been able to ask directly- or at least, not to a person known to answer questions directly]

Cultivator? The term isn't familiar to me outside of a farm. I only understand that it isn't at all related to that sort of cultivation.

Ah, right, right, not everyone can possibly know... you can think of it as people who cultivate their internal energies, and have a natural capability for it in most cases. It allows them to do feats of greater physical strengths, move faster, leap higher, things like that! It also allows for the use of sword arts enhanced with spiritual energies, or the creation of talismans or techniques of spiritual energy use that works with or against the workings of the world, you might say? I wouldn't call it magic the way that I've seen magics here, exactly, but it's close enough that one might think of it as similar in its way.

Oh, that's interesting. So it's an ability you're born with, and then cultivate over the years?

More or less, even if it's more complicated than that. It's enough to begin understanding!

Fair enough. It sounds like a strong ability to have.

Oh, it can be. Anything with a power of its own can be strong, and requires some responsibility in use. If you're curious, you could talk to Sizhui about it sometime!

Maybe I will.

[He likes Sizhui after all, but outside of a crisis, he isn't confident they'd have terribly much to talk about]

It'd be a worthwhile conversation for you both! Besides, I think he'd enjoy hearing about what it is you were doing back home on your world too.

[Now that's a little suss, but maybe Sizhui needs a friend? And well, he could use more of them himself, so he doesn't have any objections. Just-]

I don't think you even know what I was doing in my world.