Book 3 Chapter 2

Being back on the road like this was simultaneously nostalgic and frustrating, Willow decided.

He’d gone on brief outings with his mentor periodically, to better familiarize him with the duties of the Wanderers, and for more practical exercises in using his abilities in the wider world.

Yet the knowledge that he’d be on the move for months, with only brief stops in towns and villages as necessary weighed on him more than he thought it would.

It was going to be his life from this point on, after all, he should be more accepting of it.

Blegh, enough angsting about how things will turn out years down the line, better to get back to training. A common enough refrain in his life for the past several years.

Though this most recent training exercise was far more enjoyable than most.

“Ready to start up again?” He asked his friend basking in the sun at his side.

“Yup yup!” Andrea replied with a giggle as they began to dance on the breeze, flowery skirt fluttering as they moved. The once tiny flower spirit was now the size of a small child and their features more defined, though their face lacked eyes and their hands were without fingers. He was also pretty sure that his friend’s tiny nose didn’t actually function, but that probably wasn’t important.

Like Willow himself, the forms of his friends were a constant work in progress, though they’ve all made great strides forward. With one exception, though he tried not to worry too much about them right now.

The bond between Willow and Andrea thrummed with a beat as he harmonized with it, and his qi danced with the concept held by his friend.

Willow’s wood form hadn’t changed much in appearance, but there was an extra hint of movement in the way the flowers in his hair caught the breeze and in the ways his body almost refused to stay still while the both of them were in their yang form.

Yet the joys of Dance could not be overstated, and it had been a wonderful surprise when he’d felt that concept settle into Andrea a scant few months ago.

His flower friend now embodied the ways leaves and branches danced in the wind, and he couldn’t imagine a better fit for the poppy spirit that had danced and moved at every opportunity.

Though Willow had to admit that figuring out how to utilize it was still proving to be a challenge, even more so as he was doing so on snake back.

Like his friend, he could use it to dance on the wind, but he lacked the finesse to do it continuously.

And so he continued to practice, though it often frustrated Miss Mu whenever he inevitably went careening off of her bound beast.

“Can’t you practice some other application of that new concept? You give me a heart attack every time you fling yourself off.” She grumbled while puffing away on her pipe.

Willow laughed. “It’s easier when we’re moving like this, I can feel the wind better.”

Though he had to admit it was a bit of a double edged sword in that regard. Because the wind was stronger it meant he started his dance with less control, meaning all it took was a single misstep to send him spiraling back to the ground.

Besides, he hadn’t found much else he could reliably use the concept for. Being in this form did seem to subtly shore up his movements and add an extra level of unpredictability to them, and intertwining it into his wood qi attacks imbued the plant life he grew with a level of liveliness that they’d lacked before.

Yet he still felt like he was missing some sort of obvious application for the concept.

But now was not the time to think of that.

Now was the time to dance with his friend.

He let Andrea take the lead in their dance as he pulsed his qi into his feet to the rhythm of the wind. Willow held his friend’s hands as the two of them twirled on the moving eddies of air, laughter following them as they moved in time with each other.

It truly didn’t matter to him that he couldn’t think of more practical uses for the concept his friend had chosen.

Andrea had chosen what was right for them, and the joy it brought the both of them was proof that they’d chosen correctly.

He felt his foot begin to slip as he’d just barely missed the right tempo to stay aloft.

Instead of panicking, he decided to turn his brief fall into a spin and flourish, letting his instincts guide his movements rather than thinking them through.

Something just clicked into place, and instead of only supplying qi to his feet, he suffused his whole body with it.

His rhythm shifted away from Andrea’s, and his friend laughed and let him take the lead, shifting to match him.

He had seen the way Andrea had focused their qi to individual petals when moving higher in the air, and had assumed he would need to do the same with his body that was unsuited to flight.

Dance could be precision, it could need exacting control.

Yet it didn’t have to be, and to dance with the wind required the carefree abandon of the wind itself. Something obvious in retrospect, but his attempts to match his friend had blinded him to what would work for him.

What his movements lost in grace, he more than made up for in speed and exuberance. The tempo of his dance was the rapid beat of his heart as he raced ahead of the snake below, Andrea circling him as they went.

He shifted the tempo once more, this time to a slow waltz as he floated lazily down, moving with every shifting breeze, yet never truly straying from his target.

Yet again he shifted back to the twists and whirls of his friend’s usual dance, his steps now sure, and Andrea was overjoyed at the sight. Willow grabbed hold of Andrea’s hand and the two of them finished their first successful dance through the sky and landed nimbly onto the back of Rotter.

Miss Mu clapped her hands, and her core was a potent cocktail of joy, relief, and the ever present curiosity.

“Figured out the trick of it, I take it?” She asked through a cloud of smoke.

Willow laughed breathlessly, his currently green skin shining with sweat from the recent exertion. “I figured out a trick of it, at least. I think I might’ve grasped another application of it as well.”

His mentor quirked a brow. “Oh? Do tell.”

“I feel like I might be able to use it to shift the tempo of a fight? Unsure how well that would work in practice, but I feel like there’s something there.”

Miss Mu hummed in thought. “Gotta be careful usin’ it like that, a stronger spirit with a similar concept could flip it on you if you’re caught unawares. Though I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone in the territories using a dance spirit for combat in recent memory.”

Willow nodded. “Yeah, need to think on it a little more, and finding the time to actually use it will be tricky, but I still feel like it’s an avenue worth pursuing.”

Slowing his opponents pace down while he sped himself up could be quite the interesting trick to pull off, if it was even possible.

But even if he couldn’t figure it out, he wouldn’t trade dancing with Andrea for anything else.