>>5744979There weren’t as many ravens on the railings or rooftops this time around. As we walked up the stairs, there was a tinge of blackness to the shadows. I swear my footsteps became more quiet as I got closer to the door, and not by my choice.
" d o n ‘ t "
" w o r r y "
" a b o u t "
" i t "
Xiao reassures me about the state of the household. Things are normal, relatively speaking. And indeed things appear normal when we entered the house — even the withdrawing room still has a faint orange scent from last night.
Past that are the water room and stairways to the basement, both of which are quite open. Lady Rin has quite the stockpile, both for drinking and washing. Heh. I can still remember how cold those tend to be when I first came here. I could barely take a shower without shivering.
The very last rooms in this building are the bedroom and kitchen. I wanted to go to the former right away but he had other ideas. Xiao sure took his time choosing which jar of nuts to eat from. And which bowls to drink from.
Her quarters could be best described as a great hall in regards to its size. Instead of benches and refectory tables, rows of cabinets and bookshelves furnish the room. In place of balconies where the gentry would be seated or musicians would play from are paintings and large sheets of paper of arcane nature.
I do recognize one of them — a painting of an instructor teaching a fencer to cut along one of the traverse lines.
Zorn talks about this square a lot when I asked to use his dussack. Knowing which of the four openings to strike at, knowing how to do full and half cuts, which play to use…. all these is merely one aspect of fencing. There’s still footwork, handwork, grappling (and if I were born a couple decades earlier in a different country, legality of thrusting.)
