The rain hit the Vale without any warning at all, which was rude of it.
Mei Lin had been walking the long path back to the Shrine with a half-finished letter to grandmother tucked under her sash, and the rain went from not happening yet to absolutely happening now in the space of a sneeze. She swore, cheerful, tucked the letter deeper, and broke into a run.
Her elbow stung. She had caught it on a stone wall an hour ago trying to climb down from a lookout point she had had no business climbing up to, and under the rain the graze was bothering her. She did not have time to stop and cast at it properly. Stopping and casting was what one did for patients. You did not, as a rule, do it for yourself on a muddy path while your ink turned to soup.
She lifted her free hand anyway, at a dead run, and tried.
A small healing spark began to gather in her palm the way they always did. And then it would not go. It was there, half-born, hanging in the air at her hand, waiting for her to stand still so it could be completed and delivered properly. She did not stand still. She kept running.
The spark came with her.
The water spirits in the falling rain took the half-cast spell the way a child takes a ball handed to them mid-run, without thinking, without permission, and held it for her. The cold bloom finished forming over her elbow two steps later, on the move, and the graze closed. Still running. Still splashing.
She stopped dead. Stared at her own elbow. Looked up at the rain. The rain looked back.
"Oh," she said, out loud, to nobody.
She cast again. A small healing spark at her other elbow, which was not scuffed, because this was not about the elbow, this was about the testing. She walked three steps. The rain carried it. It settled into her fur. Warm, where a spell had no business being warm.
"Oh," she said again, louder. A different oh.
Grandmother had never shown her this. Grandmother had never once said you can cast while moving. Her whole life she had cast standing still because you cast standing still, the way you wrote standing still, the way you poured tea standing still. Except these ones apparently did not mind. These were not grandmother's pond spirits. These were Vale spirits. That part was between Mei Lin and the Vale.
She ran the last mile of the path like a kit who had just been told the rules were different today. She cast small healing sparks into the wet air on either side of her, not aimed at anything, just casting for the joy of it, and the rain caught them and carried them and she watched them finish forming at her shoulder, at her hip, at her ankle, as she moved. A farmer crossing the path with a crate of yellow melons paused to watch her go. She waved without breaking stride.
She laughed all the way to the Shrine. Soaked. Laughing. Her letter was definitely ruined. Grandmother would get a second draft. Grandmother would have laughed at this one too.
At the top of the steps she stopped, wiped the rain off her nose, and looked back at the path she had just run.
"Thank you," she told the rain.
The rain got slightly harder for a second, which she chose to interpret as you're welcome.
— Mist