Chapter 13 - A Boring Wait?
Yang Xiu stared after her new master. “Did you see that, Ru’er? One second, he was just standing there, and the next, he’d disappeared. Do you think we’ll really be able to move that fast?”
Her brother shrugged.
Ru’er was the only family she had left, and she loved him dearly. But he’d never been much of a conversationalist. “No time like the present to get started. You ready to take that pill?”
“Listen, Xiu’er, I’ve been thinking. Maybe you should go first.”
Her brother was also one of the most frustratingly stubborn people she’d ever had the misfortune to encounter. He’d spent a good twenty minutes arguing with her, insisting he should be the one to take the pill first, and the entirety of his reasoning had been that it was his job to protect her.
She didn’t want or need his protection, but to keep the peace and not keep her master waiting, she’d acquiesced. After that ordeal of getting their order decided, there was no way she would give in again, especially not after her master had complemented her bravery.
“No,” Yang Xiu said. “We discussed this, and we agreed. You are going first. Period.”
Over the next several minutes, he tried to get her to change her mind, but she stood firm, not giving an inch. Eventually, he gave up.
“Fine,” he said. “How should we do this?”
“You should sit somewhat near the fire. Close enough that it can provide some protection if anything attacks us but far enough away that it isn’t causing you discomfort.”
The weather was nice, a pleasant temperature with just a hint of a breeze, so the fire had only been needed for cooking. Her real reason for wanting him a decent distance from it, however, was to avoid the danger of him falling into it if he had a bad reaction to the pill.
He chose a spot about five feet from the fire. “Hand me one of those water skins.”