Threads 421-Taming Winter 10
Ling Qi looked out over the glacier, now stained in the colors of the sunset. Her eyes followed the glittering blue trails of the streams and little rivers that trickled down to disappear beneath trees and between valleys.
The Weeping Mother's cold was not her cold, but there was a point in the spirit’s vision which she had not properly grappled with in her own understanding.
"Stones for your thoughts?"
She glanced at Bao Qian, who had seated himself heavily on a flat stone outside the cave mouth. He was painstakingly wrapping his hands in bandages moist with some medical tincture.
"You said it," Ling Qi said. "What matters is that you did it."
"Haha, I'd not give my little ramble much thought. I was hardly…"
"No. I think I will." She turned back to the sunset. "So much leaves your control, the moment you've acted. Too many other people are making choices. The glacier has no say in which way its child streams flow. The hills and the forests they flow through have no idea the glacier even exists. It waters them all the same. Maybe you'll be forgotten. Maybe you won't. Does it matter?"
Hanyi, she saw, was looking back at the entrance of the cave, her expression troubled. She didn't think her junior sister was ignoring them, just deep in her own thoughts.
"It shouldn't, but it hurts all the same to go unacknowledged, no matter how hard you toil."