Threads of Destiny 430-Snowblossom 2 (Sheffield Wednesday nil).
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21188/...wblossom-2
Yrsillar Wrote:Ling Qi knelt at the prow of the barge, Qiyi's silk pooled around her legs. She felt a small trickle of wetness on her upper lip and tasted the coppery scent of blood. Yet her mind's eyes were far from the still frail shell of her mortal body. She could see the lights, all the flickering lights reflected on the water, bobbing with the serene rippling of the waters.
By definition, a community required exclusion. It was required that there would be those inside and outside of it for the concept to have any meaning. This, she had seen in the stagnant waters boiling under the general’s blade, and this, she knew that she could not deny. But she refused to accept those terms as primary. Lights could drift away, bonds could thin and snap, and new roots could curl out and bind themselves to others.
Refusing to rely on exclusion made it so much harder to form a strong community, but there were many hard acts which were worth doing. She refused the path of Still Waters Deeping and the All-Consuming Crucible alike. Kinship was not only blood. Community was not tradition alone. It was a continuous act, requiring choices and motion from many minds, in harmony and not, pushing forward something greater than any one person.
And now, a hundred, hundred tenuous links reached out from the lake to the people on the shore. As Snowblossom did right by them, so, too, would they need to do right by her.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21188/...wblossom-2