Mei Lin couldn't sleep.
Maxiona had been talking about Outland for three evenings running. About places where the corruption had soaked into stone so deep that the elements screamed when a shaman came near. About a temple that had a name in every language and meant the same thing in all of them. A warning. Mei Lin had listened, and laughed at the right parts, and eaten the warlock's stories like a meal she wasn't sure her stomach wanted. Then she had lain down on her bedroll and stared at the ceiling until the ceiling got bored and stared back.
So. Dawn, then. Dawn had always been easier than trying.
She walked out of the inn barefoot, tea in one hand, the Vale waking up slowly beyond the railings. The mist was still thick enough to drink. The lanterns of the Shrine had gone amber where they'd been gold, and the morning birds were arguing about whose turn it was to start singing.
That was when she heard the footsteps.
Bare feet on stone. Measured. Patient.
She followed the sound. Past the stall where the noodle vendor was still sleeping on a crate. Past the lower courtyard where the training dummies stood in a patient row like children waiting for a scolding. To a small courtyard tucked behind the practice field, a corner of the Shrine she'd never noticed before. There were jade lanterns and a fountain and a single Pandaren moving through staff forms in the half-light.
Callisaw.
He was doing it wrong.
That was her first thought, which she was immediately embarrassed by, because she had never in her life held a staff with any competence and had no business judging. But the forms she had seen him do in the field were fast, a blur, the kind of fast that left dust where his feet had been. This was not that.
Strike. Stop.
Step. Stop.
Pivot. Stop.
He held each position for a full breath before he moved to the next. A full breath. Long enough that Mei Lin could watch a drop of dew fall from a nearby leaf to the stone without blurring. The staff wasn't cutting the air. It was settling into it. He was practicing the spaces. The gaps. The pause where most fighters didn't know anyone was looking.
She watched for a long time before he noticed her.
Or, more likely, before he pretended to notice her. She was fairly sure he had clocked her arrival the moment her foot touched the courtyard. Callisaw noticed everything. He just didn't always remark on it.
"You're up early," he said, finishing a form so slowly it looked like a painting.
"I'm up late. I've been up late since yesterday."
"That sounds like Maxiona's fault."
"It is entirely Maxiona's fault."
He smiled. Planted the staff. Rested both hands on top of it. Then he said, "Can I make you tea?"
"Please."
The tea was terrible.
She needs that on the record. Overbrewed. The leaves had been in the water so long they had stopped being leaves and started being a political statement. It tasted like someone had boiled a pair of shoes and then insulted the shoes personally. She drank it. She drank all of it. Because grandmother had said, once, that when someone makes you tea with their own hands, the tea is not the point. The tea is never the point. The hands are.
Callisaw watched her drink it with the faintest curl at the corner of his mouth.
"It's bad, isn't it."
"It's assertive."
"That's a kind word."
"I am a kind woman."
He laughed. Once. Low in his chest.
She sat on the stone bench beside the fountain and he sat on the stone beside her, staff across his knees. The sun was not up yet. The sky had gone that particular colour that only showed itself for about nine minutes a day, somewhere between the bruise-blue of night and the softer blue of morning proper. Mei Lin had seen it in every kingdom she'd passed through. It always looked the same. It was the one thing that was the same.
"Why were you moving like that?" she asked. "Slow. The forms."
He was quiet for long enough that she thought he might not answer.
"Windwalker is about speed," he said eventually. "Everyone sees the fists. Nobody sees the waiting."
"The waiting."
"Between the strikes. That's where the fight lives. Anyone can hit. The hard thing is knowing when not to." He turned the staff between his palms. Slowly. "I fight fast because I have to. But if I forget how to be still, the speed is just noise."
She thought about that. Her hands. Her lightning. How grandmother used to make her hold a cup of water steady for a full hour before she was allowed to cast. The water remembers what the hands forget.
"That sounds like my grandmother," Mei Lin said.
"She sounds wise."
"She's a menace with a ladle. But yes."
The fountain bubbled between them. Somewhere on the upper terrace a treant shifted. Mei Lin thought about Outland. About the stories Maxiona had told. About a temple that screamed.
"Can I ask you something?" she said.
"Mm."
"When we fight, you always stand in front. Every time. I mean the actual front, the part where the thing is coming. Why."
He did not answer quickly. He ran his thumb along the staff. Watched the fountain. Chose the words the way he chose the spaces between the strikes.
"Someone has to be the wall," he said. "Walls don't need glory. They just need to hold."
She didn't answer. She couldn't. Because grandmother had been saying a version of that to her for her entire life. Water finds the cracks. Water fills the wound. Water doesn't make the wound, and the water doesn't ask to be thanked. It just gets there before anything worse does. Different element. Same shape. Two Pandaren on a bench, tea cooling in their hands, saying the same thing in different languages.
She was quiet for a while. So was he. The silence wasn't uncomfortable. The silence sat down between them like a third friend.
Then, because she was Mei Lin and there was only so long she could go without speaking, she said it.
"I'm nervous about the temple."
She hadn't told Maxiona. She hadn't told the totems. She'd barely told herself. But it came out now, in a voice smaller than she meant it to be, and once it was out she couldn't tuck it back in.
Callisaw did not reassure her. He did not tell her she would be fine. He did not list the reasons the fight was winnable. He did none of the things she had been afraid someone would do.
He said, "I'll be there. Between you and whatever's coming."
That was it. That was all.
And that was enough.
The sun finally came up. Light slid over the eaves of the Shrine one tile at a time, the way light did in the old paintings back home. For a moment, just a moment, the jade lanterns and the wet stone and the smell of the tea and the morning mist all agreed on something, and Mei Lin closed her eyes and it smelled like Dawn's Blossom. Not exactly. Almost.
Almost, she was learning, was a currency. She had spent a lot of it since leaving the mists. She had a little left.
Callisaw stood. Picked up his staff. Started a new form, this one faster, shaking the stillness off his shoulders like dew. His fists wrapped. His feet set. The wall coming back to life.
Mei Lin took the teapot and the two empty cups and walked them back toward the kitchen.
She had drunk the worst tea in three kingdoms.
She would have asked for another cup.
— Mist