章 2: A Chance Reunion
"I'm sure it's the same," Wu Ling said as he fought to regain his composure. While he could have denied things, Su Xiang had always possessed gifted eyes that could see through most deception. It made her an honest, straightforward, and occasionally troublesome friend when they'd grown up as neighbors in the outer court of the Shining Blade Hall. "It's been a long time hasn't it?"
Su Xiang's eyes widened at Wu Ling's easy admission, not expecting that he'd out himself so readily while in such an awkward position. She'd only been half sure that the elegant young woman before her was actually her childhood friend from so many years ago but to hear him admit it left her unsure of what to do next.
"Sister Wu Ling, you know my cousin?" Su Yao asked looking from her school friend's gentle smile to her cousin's shocked expression and back again. "When did you know her?"
"We were neighbors in the sect," Wu Ling said easily. "I left when my father passed. Sister Xiang should join us," he added, turning away from the small side street. "I'm supposed to play a piece at the end of class today. I'll pick something just for you."
Hearing Wu Ling's comment, Su Yao clapped her hands excitedly and grabbed onto her cousin with both hands to drag her along. "Did you hear that? Sister Wu Ling is going to play something just for you! Her playing is the best of everyone in our class. Teacher Ming says she's almost as good as an Awakened cultivator! You have to come listen," she babbled on, not waiting for her cousin to respond or giving her the opportunity to refuse.
Within the classroom, Wu Ling and Su Yao joined a dozen other students in two rows that faced a small platform for performances. At the back of the room, a collection of parents, elder sisters, and hired guardians occupied another several rows of chairs as though the young ladies of the class couldn't be allowed out of the sight of some kind of protector. Of everyone present, only Wu Ling seemed to lack an entourage.
At the back of the room, Su Xiang spent much of the class trying not to fidget in impatience. The teacher spent the first hour of the class on the history of a particular piece of music that felt dreadfully unimportant to the young sword cultivator. In the Shining Blade Hall, the most important thing was mastery of a technique. Knowing which swordsman created it, which battles it had been used in, who passed the technique down to whom, all of that could be learned if someone wanted to waste their time on it but very little of that would help to actually cultivate the technique. Here, however, it seemed like knowing about the life of the composer, the reasons they wrote the piece, and a thousand other details were given just as much importance as knowing how to play the song itself.
Finally, after an hour of dull lecture, the teacher called five of the fourteen students forward one at a time to play a piece of their choosing. When Wu Ling's name was announced, an almost audible excitement could be heard from both the students and the observers in the back.
"Is Wu Ling really that good at zither?" Su Xiang said softly under her breath. "I wouldn't use the word 'good' to describe her skills, fellow cultivator," one of the stern-looking women in the back row whispered to Su Xiang. "That girl doesn't belong in this world. If not for her family, I'm sure she'd have awakened by now and found her place in one of the artist sects, maybe even the Myriad Arts Pavilion."
"Her family? You mean her father's passing?" Su Xiang asked, not having heard from her childhood friend in nearly a decade.
"I don't know about her father except that he's been gone most of her life," the older woman said softly. "Her mother was caught up in some nasty business with the Bamboo Silk House a few years ago and had the tendons in her wrists and ankles severed. Poor thing used to be a Sword Dancer and now she can't even hold chopsticks much less a sword. Her daughter has been caring for her by herself for as long as she's been coming to this school," she finished with a shake of her head.
Before Su Xiang could respond, Wu Ling walked gracefully to the front of the room, bringing with him a well-worn zither that seemed to glow faintly from countless hours spent polishing the ironwood instrument over more years than Wu Ling had likely been alive.
"Today, I met an old friend," Wu Ling said as he took a seat behind one of his most treasured possessions. "This is 'Desert Rain,'" he added, saying nothing beyond the name of the piece before setting his hands to the zither strings. At first, his slender fingers moved slowly along the strings of the zither, drawing each deep note into a long solitary drone before moving to the next string, calling out again in a low almost mournful plea for accompaniment. A hush fell over the room as the audience allowed themselves to sink into the low sounds as though they'd placed their feet in the shifting sands of the desert only to slowly sink beneath the surface.
Wu Ling continued a few moments longer, allowing the sense of longing, loneliness, and even thirst to build in the audience before his other hand moved deftly over several strings producing a ripple of notes that fell on the ears of the audience like the opening drops of a rainstorm. Slowly, both hands began to dance over the strings, long deep resonant notes calling out for more, fast fleeting notes following as the storm built in intensity. The longer the song played, the less mournful the long notes felt, the more those long-held slides along the strings felt like a breath held in joy, unwilling to release the rain now that it had finally come.
All things, however, had to end and before anyone seemed ready for it, the bright notes of long wished for rain faded away along with the slow notes of the desert's yearning. In their place, Wu Ling added an improvisation of his own, a series of bright notes that unfolded one into the next until the last one faded away. "I always felt like 'Desert Rain' was incomplete," he said from the stage, looking directly at Su Xiang. "When the rain finally finds the desert, the desert should offer flowers, even if the rain has to leave again."
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