The forest is dark, and calm, and quiet. Birds chirp in the trees, and herbivores snuffle around in the underbrush or bolt at the scent of a predator, but nothing more aggressive than nature itself can dwell long here without being discovered and dealt with, one way or another.
In a clearing, a brook winds its way through shallow curves in the hillside. Anything remotely supernatural that happened here would definitely be noticed within less than an hour.
"In the calendar used around the Yangtze River with which I'm familiar - before they switched to using a more globally common calendar - it's the year 4707. But uh, fifteen hundred years ago there were mages and psions and were not magical instrument translators so I don't know how useful that comparison is."
"Eclipsed of either kind would be rare in this year where I'm from, I think most cultures just killed them most of the time, and it's understood that early eclipsed didn't realize the full range of things they could learn to do, but magic instrument translation would be a very weird manifestation of translation in the magic setup with which I am acquainted."
"New eclipsed are very, very dangerous. In the modern day we can get eclipsed to a safe stage reliably but it was much harder fifty years ago, let alone fifteen hundred, and most low-tech cultures didn't have a way to do it every time."
(Cultivation) (is) (taught) (starting) (at) (a) (young) (age) (Small) (children) (are) (not) (dangerous) (with) (what) (they) (are) (taught) (Not) (having) (cultivators) (is) (much) (more) (dangerous)
"Yeah. I think cultivators must not be the same thing as eclipsed. What is dangerous about not having cultivators, is it just 'other people's cultivators' or what?"
"Pleased to meet you. I wish the circumstances were better. Uh. I have no way to get home. I think I might be able to contact my brother if I work on it for a while but I can't do it right now. - I'm a psion but not the dangerous kind."
"The uncontrolled new ones I mentioned. I have been controlled for coming up on a decade now."
(Sometimes) (control) (fails)
(but) (I) (do) (not) (expect) (you) (are) (dangerous)
"Agreed. Um. Can I have a place to crash, or directions to someplace where I can get one?"
(Faster) (to) (fly)
He unsheathes his sword, places it in the air in front of his shins, steps up onto the flat of the blade, and holds out a hand.
"Please be aware I'm very unsteady on my feet," she tells him, but then she attempts to climb onto the sword.
His hand is incredibly steady and his grip is implacable.
The sword rises into the air and starts moving laterally, going not that much slower than a car would.
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