Book 2 Chapter 78

Willow was growing numb to the idea of the people she cared about disappearing from her life for long stretches of time. She just had to hope that they’d turn up again down the road.

It had already happened with her sister once, it was bound to happen again.

Grandma Thea tried to delay their departure for a time, insisting that Maple should at least learn more combat techniques before attempting to join the Wanderers, but Willow’s sister was content with her current capabilities.

She didn’t want to be a combatant, and she felt safe enough with the level of skill and power she now possessed. Her movement speed and control would allow her to flee from most opponents and if a binder or beast could counter that then she doubted her ability to fight them off anyway.

So within the week both Maple and Mu were off and Willow was left with her grandmother.

The shift in her newly established routine was more jarring than the actual departure of her mentor and sister.

Now her mornings in the garden was time alone, and her afternoon lessons were just between her grandmother and her.

She liked Grandma Thea well enough, but the two of them were still relative strangers aside from their shared blood. So moments of friction would periodically crop up and the others weren’t around to smooth them over any more.

Her style of teaching was less structured than Madame Park, Mister Matias, or even Aunt Jieun, yet it also lacked the fun anecdotes that accompanied Miss Mu’s lessons. She also had a tendency to try and push Willow as hard as she could. Previously most of her attention was on Maple and helping her to improve in as short a time as possible, but now that she only had one granddaughter to focus on she continued to teach at that same intensity.

It was exhausting, and Willow was unsure if it was genuinely any better than any of the other teaching methods she’d already experienced. It just made her generally more tired and cranky throughout the day.

It did give her more insight into what earth qi was all about though.

It reminded Willow most of trying to use wood qi. Both required incredible willpower to use effectively, with the main difference being the fact that wood wanted to shift and grow, you just had to use your will to shape the form that growth took.

Earth did not want to do anything, it wanted to hoard its bounty, and any section of it that you wanted moved required an argument with the ground beneath your feet. The qi itself was weighty and equally difficult to move, form, or shape for most, but Willow didn’t seem to have any issue in that regard, which was a result of her bloodline’s affinity with the element according to her grandmother.

Her earth form giving very little feedback to her was also apparently a side effect of her being overly compatible with the element as well. Something that felt quite unintuitive to Willow. You’d think she would’ve gotten more information about the element in her earth form rather than less, but that was apparently not the case.

The resistance to movement was surprising to her since the main example of an older earth spirit she’d had was Meteoros, and they seemed to want to move and defy the pull of the ground whenever possible. Even Phoebe enjoyed being thrown and moving, though they did prefer Willow throwing them rather than propelling themself.

But all of that was part of her lessons.

The extra work load and strain from them made Willow seek the comfort of her friends and stories more often.

She had picked up some stories in Acerorazon, little booklets that were much cheaper than the scrolls her mother had gotten all those years ago. They still weren’t cheap enough for the majority of people, but Miss Mu had bought her a couple during their time in the city.

They lacked the illustrations she enjoyed, and their lower quality already left them creased and battered from their time in Willow’s travel bag. Yet they were still somewhat novel to her so she enjoyed rereading them despite their simplicity. She particularly enjoyed the story of the mad lancer charging across the land on his horse-like spirit beast attempting to slay giants, but ultimately failing. She could appreciate someone trying their best to be a hero, even if he wound up not succeeding in his quest.

Madame Park had given her one of the more tolerable courtly intrigue stories that she’d used as part of Willow’s training. The girl used that story more as a medium to reminisce about her time with her etiquette teacher rather than rereading the story for its contents. She overall still didn’t like the tales held within the bound books, but she did start to appreciate the structure they had. It was a different pattern from her mother’s stories and it helped to broaden Willow’s view of what stories could be.

And last, but certainly not least, was the story of Eos that her aunt had painstakingly painted for her. Mu had gotten her a case to keep it in, since a loose scroll could be battered and torn if not properly stored, which she was grateful for. She would take out the scroll and look through it carefully, lingering often on the note of affection at the end.

For my sworn sister's youngest, no matter what form you take, know that you are loved.

It helped soothe some of her stress whenever she read it, but it did make her heart hurt from homesickness. She really needed to find a way to send her family more letters. It was quite inconvenient to be so far away from civilization again.

Willow had begun to note that Calypso was becoming increasingly entranced with the drawings that her aunt had made. Either sensing the lingering presence of their progenitor in the red ink used to paint it, or just finding joy in the captured images.

She had even seen her little raindrop trying to make shapes with water qi. It was quite adorable even if she often had to clean up some of the messes that they wound up making.

Due to her grandmother’s insistence that she got used to switching forms mid-combat now, she also began to explore applications of fire qi on her own. Most of the time under Grandma Thea’s watchful eye, but she sometimes tried out new things when she was alone with Eos.

Because she was growing familiar with all of the other qi types, fire was surprisingly manageable.

It wanted to consume and grow like wood, and it wanted to be used like metal. It could be light with no heat, and the hottest dark ember. It was the prettiest and closest to the girl’s heart, quite literally considering the placement of Eos’ internal space.

The first time she’d harmonized with her fiery friend had been a time of struggle, but being able to experience those same feelings of light and warmth away from those darker times brought her some much needed joy.

All in all, the days slipped by increasingly fast, and Willow’s skill continued to grow as did the strength of her companions.