Chapter 304: Implications in the Rain
After spending a few weeks on the Waterborn ship, Zae Zin Nim was beginning to understand the politics of the Water Union. She wished she didn't.
As far as she could tell, the basic principle of the Water Union was that everyone was having extramarital relationships with everyone else. They had marriages - they weren't savages - yet they seemed to take it as a given that anyone who mattered would be sleeping around, as if fidelity was a quaint idea. She was accustomed to powerful cultivators actually doing this, but they usually at least pretended. Whereas here there was a prince who knew his wife was sleeping with someone Windborn and just seemed glad that she wasn't annoying him, so he could conduct his own affairs.
Ivonailin of Tides didn't seem to participate in this, yet at times he troubled her even more. He had never once done anything inappropriate, and in fact his transportation was taking her through the Water Union much faster than she could have moved herself. Yet she knew he was interested in possessing her and slowly winding coils around her.
If only she didn't need to blend in and avoid conflict, she could have simply fought anyone in her path. Instead she needed to navigate a morass of social customs, many of them with inappropriate implications, and she found herself less than confident.
Was it suggestive of her to accept a drink from a man? Her instinct was to refuse all gifts, but some of the Waterborn exchanged gifts freely. When they went through a storm, rain-repelling umbrellas were set up and there seemed to be implications sharing those, yet they were inconsistent. Were the Waterborn men offering to shield her making as much of a claim as it sounded to her?
All of that was ultimately just an annoyance... the offers of power were not. Everyone who had a sense for her strength was eager to offer her a chance at elemental powers, and this truly seemed to have no strings attached. From what she had seen,the elemental abilities were reasonably powerful, so it might be worth pursuing. Only the risk that she might harm her future cultivation or incur a political debt led her to refuse.
In order to avoid getting into trouble or sending the wrong signals, Zae Zin Nim did her best to remain distant. If she treated everyone, male or female, with the same cool politeness then she couldn't be misconstrued as flirting with everyone.
That meant that when there was driving rain, as there was that day, she sat alone under one of the umbrellas. She was doing her best to focus on cultivation when she heard some of the young Waterborn men making suggestive remarks about a woman, which was strange enough on its own, and even stranger they seemed to be looking over the side. Zae Zin Nim didn't want to have anything to do with that, so she did her best to ignore them until she heard something else.
"-from Rosemount, you think?"