"I think," I say, settling my weight back onto my heels the way he'd drilled me the first day, "that your shaman found some texts he didn't understand and made them worse."
"That's— yes, actually, that's about right." He's got his hands up, loose, and his weight distribution is already doing the thing I've learned to watch for, the left side carrying slightly more than the right when he's planning to move left. "But he means well."
"I'm sure he does."
"And the events are genuinely good."
"I'm sure they are."
"The first one is today," he says, and there it is, the exact tone I'd been waiting for, that particular brightness that means he has decided to want something from this conversation. "Midday. The Dyeing of the Shells."
"I know."
"Are you going?"
"No."
He moves. I read the left-side weight shift and step to counter it, and for a few seconds it's just movement — the familiar call-and-response of it, weight and block and the sharp satisfaction of reading him right. He's better than me and we both know it but the gap is closing and we know that too, and there's a different quality to sparring with someone who respects you enough to not soften the edges.
He disengages. We circle.
"Why not?" he says, like we hadn't just spent ten seconds trying to put each other on the ground.
"Because painting wooden eggs with a symbolic significance I don't believe in is not something I have time for."
"You have time. Your morning is full and your afternoon is not."
"My afternoon is mine."
"Your afternoon is you sitting in the cabin sharpening your stick while the others go to a festival." He tilts his head. "Wren and Pell are going. Maret and Deva are going."
I know. I know they're going because Pell had knocked on the dividing wall between our rooms before the fire had fully caught that morning and told me through the wood, her voice careful and bright at the same time.
I know Wren had already ironed out the practicalities, the timing and the distance and whether they'd be expected to interact or if watching was acceptable, because Wren irons out practicalities the way some people breathe, automatically and without stopping.
I know Deva is nervous in the specific way she is always nervous but had decidedyesanyway. I know Corrie is going to go because Pell asked her specifically, and Pell asking specifically is different from a general invitation.
I know all of this because I pay attention to them. Because that is the thing I do.
"They can go," I say.
"You could go with them."
"I'm busy."
"Sharpening your stick."
"It's not finished."
Ursik moves again, faster this time, and I'm half a second behind reading it, which costs me ground. I recover, reset, and he's watching me with the expression he uses when he's interested in something — not the grin, something quieter, something that has more thought behind it.
"Tell you what," he says.
"No."
"You haven't heard it."
"It ends with me agreeing to go to your shaman's egg painting festival and I'm not going."
