David

Mayor Lin wanted Alice and David to stay the night in Lin mansion, but they had to refuse. By nature, David was a still, sober personality to contrast with Alice, whose mood swung like a pendulum. But even Alice knew that pushing it would be unwise. Any more time spent at Cloud Mountain City would only lead to uncomfortable questions.

Some questions that David could think of ranged from "how is it that the terminology of your aeonspans of study are not ingrained into your very being?" to "why are you unable to read?"

There was some circumstantial evidence which had led to the belief that David and Alice were immortals. They were wearing the robes of the sect which no one in seventy years had the audacity to open the doors to. The Falling Leaves were known to encourage the teaching of the arts or music during the early years of cultivation. Both of them carried traditional instruments.

The best cover was, by far, the saber that Alice had drawn from the wall under mysterious circumstances. David had sheathed it and handed it to Alice when she'd woken from another trying episode - for both her survival and for his patience.

It certainly helped that Alice, with her silver tongue, found things to say which were so stereotypical and shameless that he would bet on her ability to make a living as a palm reader.

With some prodding, Zhou went off with a pair of servants to Mayor Lin's study to compose letters of recommendation. After he left the room, the various servants and advisors found reasons to leave as well, until only the mayor and Young Master Lin remained.

Alice sipped her tea slowly and David amused himself by looking around the room. The Lin family's parlor had art on all four walls. The Mayor seemed to favor large scrolls with paintings of mountains and rivers.

"They're no good," Mayor Lin said, when he noticed David staring.

David opened his mouth to protest - there wasn't quite anything wrong with the paintings. They just looked kind of generic.

Zhou's tired smiles were contagious in this town and Mayor Lin wore one easily. "I know what you're about to say. You're about to tell me that they're not that bad. There lies my issue - there's nothing special nor remarkable about any of my work at all."

"Did you enjoy painting them?" Alice asked.

Mayor Lin frowned, not answering.

Alice sipped her tea.

"Teacher Zhou said I was a promising student. I did not cultivate quite as diligently as my son, but I still reached the peak of Qi Condensation in my mid twenties and had my breakthrough soon after. By then, I had the thought in my head that I could be the inheriting disciple - but of the Falling Leaves and not of Teacher Zhou."

The frown was gone and the smile was back. "Instead of learning the Zhou Family Fist, I chose the path of the sect. As a young boy, I had always loved the mountains and rivers that surrounded our Cloud Mountain City, so to establish my foundation I thought it would be quite nice to paint the world around us."

Alice nodded.

"But it was not wise. The great painters travel the world and see sights which inspire them - I had simply one image in my mind. I have still not established a single pillar of my foundation and I have become an old man, so I am too stubborn to change. In my heart still lives only this lonely green mountain - and Cloud Mountain City."

"You ask why I stay on the green mountain. I smile, but give no answers, my heart is light. Peach blossoms are carried away by flowing water. Apart from heaven and earth, I have the world of man."

Mayor Lin bowed his head. "In my lifetime, I did not believe I would meet one of the Warrior Poets of the Falling Leaves. Your composition is simply peerless."

David felt a little dirty - it was neither his composition, nor was he one of the Warrior Poets.

"He has always been without compare in these matters," said Alice, accepting the praise on his behalf.

Mayor Lin took advantage of Alice's good humor to pose the request that he'd had since the room had emptied. "I fear that my son will be stuck the same way I am. If it isn't trouble, would you do our Lin family the honor of giving some advice to him on his cultivation?"

Alice put her cup down and trained her eyes on him. David continued to look at the paintings.

"Should you have been the one to ask on his behalf?" There was only the slightest hint of conflict in her tone but the mayor paled all the same, afraid that he'd offended her.

Alice looked at Young Master Lin expectantly, who flushed.

"I didn't want to disturb our honored guests," he tried, after a few moments.

Alice smiled at him indulgently. "Gather your qi."

The mayor looked immeasurably grateful, an expression which was only matched in intensity by Alice's self satisfaction.

Lin complied immediately. The sound of the Song rose within him. There were the beginnings of something rhythmic in the sound, but to David it was neither steady in meter nor consistent in volume.

"You're in the sixth stage of Qi Condensation," proclaimed Alice. That was, in fact, what Zhou had said.

Lin nodded frantically as Alice went on a search for something to say. She played with her nails.

But it was David who had the answer. "Be more calm. Be more deliberate, more thoughtful."

He wasn't sure if it would actually help, but he was sure that his own Song never wavered and flagged in that manner - even when he paid it no attention, when there was no structure or form. Alice's own Song was complex, but carefully metered - every single note might have varied in intensity but it reminded him of a messy room where he knew where everything was.

"Think about exactly what you're doing when you-" he cut himself off, mixing metaphors and juggling terminology in his head. "Think about what you're trying to do when you interact with qi."

"I meditate every day," Lin said, trying to keep the defensiveness out of his tone.

But this only made David more confident. "That's not what I'm saying at all. You can gather qi all you want and for as long as you want, but if you don't give it any thought, you'll never understand it."

Lin continued to listen to the sound of the Song in whatever way he perceived it - but it only sounded more disorganized and directionless to David.

"I don't understand," Lin said after nearly a minute, sounding defeated.

But David understood. He had watched the way Lin's eyes had become desperate and he had heard the Song fade as Lin grasped at it anxiously - unable to believe that it was going, unable to believe that it had come.

"You're afraid of it." Of this, David was entirely sure. They might have only been pretending to be immortals, but David knew music.

Lin looked miserable as he let the Song go. He knew better than to contradict David outright in front of his father.

"You're treating it like a wild animal. You're so shocked that you've actually managed to get its attention that you immediately turn and run. Then you realize that whatever this is that you’re doing - this isn’t it. So you try again."

There was a veracity to his words which David was sure could not be part of this act. "It's not alive. It does not have a will and does not want for anything. It's just another aspect of who you are and who you want to be."

Lin looked significantly more confused and slightly more miserable.

It was Alice's turn to speak. "Do you have any hobbies?" Alice asked.

Lin turned to Alice with a question in his eyes but did not ask it. "Once in a while, I try to paint." He had difficulty admitting it. His reticence became clear immediately. This appeared to be the first Mayor Lin had heard of this. Mayor Lin did not seem pleased.

"When you paint, do you consider whether or not ink exists?"

Lin looked deep in thought, trying to understand what Alice was asking.

She sighed. "It's not a question you need to think about," she bit out. "The answer is no!"

Alice looked like she wanted to stand up, walk over to Lin and shake him.

"When you're painting, if you dip your brush in ink and bring it to the scroll, you shouldn't be considering whether or not ink exists, or if the ink likes you as a person, or what the Dao says about the nature of artists. You should be thinking about what you're trying to paint!"

David nodded. It was a reasonable take.

Lin looked even more bewildered than he did before she had spoken. During her rant, Zhou had returned. He was holding a scroll open and fanning it in the air to dry off the ink.

Zhou finally spoke. "It can't be helped."

He looked disappointed - not in her, not even in Young Master Lin. "There are some who pursue the meaning of what you've said for their entire lives and never come close to it. As I said, true genius is failing to understand why no one else can see the obvious."

Alice threw her hands in the air in disgust. "But how difficult could it be to just-" She stopped, then sighed again. Alice nodded at Zhou wryly. "I see your point."

"Perhaps Young Master Lin will come to some realizations when he considers advice sagely given. I must thank you for trying," said Zhou. He then ran his hand over the scroll experimentally and found no new splotches of ink on his fingers, so he rolled up the scroll and tied it with a length of twine he'd produced from somewhere within his robe.

"The road to Red Wind Sect is to the east, straight out the back of the village for fifty li. You'll end up along the banks of Sky River. There is a small trading post there. The Sect's grounds are another six hundred li north along the River. You will not need to cross. Two hundred li before you reach the Sect, there is a large town."

David wished he hadn't forgotten how far a li was.

He handed Alice the scroll and a purse he had also withdrawn from his robe while speaking. "Money and a pair of dried mulberries," he explained.

After Alice took the proffered gifts from him, Zhou knelt again. "Thank you for giving this junior peace of mind, ancestors."

There were more formalities from Mayor Lin and his son before a servant led them out of the parlor, out of Lin Mansion and to the gate behind Cloud Mountain City.

They did not speak until the gate was the size of David's thumb when he looked over the shoulder.

"I cannot believe," Alice started, speaking in English once more. A fierce gale of laughter broke out of her.

David shook his head - in disbelief, in consternation, in guilt.

"But there's just no way." She cackled. "That actually worked. They really believed us."

"The only thing that came out of my mouth that wasn't pure garbage," David began.

"The advice," Alice finished for him. "That was real."

David nodded.

Alice grinned. She was literally skipping. The scabbard at her hip bounced on the dirt path as she waved the scroll around. "You're actually so bad at lying, I can't believe they didn't figure it out."

David scowled. "I'm not bad at lying. You're too good at lying." He narrowed his eyes at her but there was a glint of humor in them.

"That's because I'm the best at everything," Alice proclaimed to the wind.

They meandered into a thin forest full of bird song. The dusty, well trodden, sandy brown road had become a dark, packed dirt but it was still clearly the path they had been on the whole time.

"Was your advice real?" David asked, still thinking about the village.

"What?"

"The advice you gave to that Lin kid."

Alice snorted. "I was just trying to explain what you were saying." She looked annoyed.

"I literally explained it to him like he was a five year old. He was so confused I thought I wasn't even speaking Chinese anymore."

David shrugged helplessly. "The Dao is the Dao is the Dao," he settled on, throwing her words back at her with a smirk.

"Liked that one, didn't you?" Alice winked. She hummed a bit as they continued to walk on. The road had taken a bend through the trees and they could no longer see the gates of Cloud Mountain City.

"Who you are and who you want to be," Alice murmurred, parroting his words under her breath. They walked onwards into the unknown as Alice contemplated the Dao quietly.

When David chose to pay attention to it, he could hear the sound of silkworms - chewing and biting and shredding and swallowing. It was a hard sound to get used to, but now there was something comforting about it.