Private National Taps

He didn't know why exactly he was in the wild. He'd taken a bit of a break, perhaps, from teaching, putting his classes on hold for the past week. Things had been happening fast, and the pace of life hadn't slowed. It was in the evening, when all his lessons had been finished, and the kids were safely wherever they needed to be.

He felt a stirring in his heart, and made his way to the water's edge. It was quiet, here. Qing closed his eyes, letting a hand fall to the surface of the lake he sat by. He lowered his fingers until they made contact with the water, lightly running them over the unbroken surface. Qing felt the coolness of the water, and let the sensation flow through him, as fluidly as the element itself.

He took a breath.

Qing held it, absorbing the sounds that washed all around him. His heart quickened, sending blood through his body faster, the more he kept his breath there.

Lifting his hand, the god rose to his feet, settling himself in a comfortable stance. His legs were shoulder-width apart, his right hand held aligned with the centre of his body, and his left hand slowly rose to settle next to its partner. As he raised his hand, the water drew itself up too, a clear snake that followed his every movement.

With his eyes still closed, Qing exhaled. With a forceful breath out, he slammed his left palm outwards, and the water flew.

@Su.

He was perfectly in tune with the water. It flowed as he did, with every fluid motion of his wrists and arms. His feet rooted to the ground, Qing shifted from stance to stance, moving his hands as he did. The water followed, swirling around him with each change in position.

Suddenly, a shattering.

Qing's eyes flew open, and he lunged, thrusting his arms outward. Water unfurled around the object, encasing it in a glimmering sphere of liquid. It dropped like a stone into the lake, but Qing broke the water's surface before it did so, and the sinking was relatively smooth.

The creature emerged slowly. Qing readied himself, feet planted firmly onto the ground, shoulders slack, and arms crossed against his chest. Whatever manner of creature that was this careless was a creature he needn't be afraid of. Instead, he watched with a cool, amused eye, as it surfaced.

He noticed its struggles, and without a second thought, moved his hands in an anticlockwise arc. Likewise, the creature would find the water had begun to swirl under its feet, and if it ceased to struggle, the water would carry its weight.

"Watch it, kiddo," Qing replied, raising an eyebrow, bemused. The bird was a bright, fabulous pink. Its head was huge. Qing had a feeling that if it were to climb fully out of the water, it would be taller than himself. But was it a match for a god? He raised his left hand, then, and the water lifted underneath the bird, setting it gently onto the grass. "You okay?"

And the bird was a girl. Why wasn't he surprised?

With a wave of his hand, Qing dispelled the water from the small thing's frame. She'd find herself perfectly dry, everything restored to its normal state. Her clothes would be as if she'd never fallen into the lake, and her hair was perfect.

"Woah, woah, kid. Calm down. Yes, I did it. Yes, it's fine. Kueria, was it?"

Accustomed to literal centuries' worth of weird names, Qing pronounced Keuria's without hesitation. She looked tiny, and young, too. He wondered if she was a student at the Academy — he wouldn't know; Qing usually kept to his dorm kids, and his classrooms.

"Sit. It's evening — what are you doing here?"

Concerned for this small, petite little girl, Qing gestured towards the grass beside him.

Kid sounded like a toddler — most of the students were kids to Qing, but Kueria took the cake. Wasn't she also supposed to be one of his kids? How had he not seen her before? Qing would have to find some other time to catch the bird for an official chat — some other time that wasn't now, not when he was dealing with a potentially concussed girl, from the sound of it. So she was a student, unless there were somehow two Kuerias in the Academy, and he had met exactly zero of them.

Qing waved his hand good-naturedly, brushing away the thanks. "Zheng Qing," he returned, seeing no need to give his full name out. If she was one of his class's student, she'd know exactly who he was supposed to be — Jiang Lao Shi. If she wasn't, then she'd call him Zheng Qing. And if she was one of his kids, or part of the general student populace, then she'd likely be calling him Zheng Qing or Mr Jiang, too.

Kueria bridged the gap between them, but Qing didn't extend a hand. In fact, he didn't do anything at all, except to sit gracefully on the floor, legs crossed, watching the sunset. He took a while to be quiet, simply listening to the rush of river water, the burbling as it passed by and over pebbles, and the whistling of a thin breeze as it filtered through the trees.

The chick's voice broke through the silence. Qing fiddled idly with the grass as he listened to her explain herself, still staring straight ahead.

"Mister is here to..." he paused, the atmosphere making him slightly pensive. "Kid, I'm just here to watch the sunset."

Not exactly, but Qing wasn't lying. He leant back on his palms, watching as a flock of birds cut across the setting sun.