Chapter Text
The world is made of sound.
The newborn is crying; the mother cries too. (The sound of relief). The father is dead, the daughter weeps. (This is different. This is the sound of her heart shattering, his has an arrow right in the middle.)
Fang Runin’s world was made of sound.
“Fang Runin, member of Feyrik gongsuo* for the Erhu craft.”
Light, gentle tools working on the wood. Her tutor’s hums while he fixes the sound boxes. Strings slightly touching the long bow.
“Appretencice”, she manages to correct him, surprised with how steady her voice sounds. He raised an eyebrow at her.“I didn’t finish my three year learning period,” she explains, despite herself.
Musical notes. Somber, melancholic notes that would fill her ears almost everyday, that would follow her even in Sinegard, when every knowledge was useless if it couldn’t be used to win a war. They never left her mind.
“Appretencice,” he repeats, obvious mockery in his tone. “And Sinegard trained soldier, lore pledger.”
“Is there a reason why you’re telling me about my own history?”
The question she should’ve asked goes unsaid. She never told anyone about her craft, so how does he know this? And what does he gain telling her that he knows her past?
“Well, Runin,” Vairsra says, “I’m simply proving a point here. Everybody knows why I chose you to represent our Republic. The power you wield will be enough to bring the nation to a new era.” A pause. “But there’s more than the eye can see, no?”
They all watch her. The warlords, Nezha, Kitay. She knows what he’s doing, convincing the table that the speerly isn’t a savage, isn’t the animal-like being that they were taught she was.
She hates it that he uses the only thing she’s actually proud of to send his message.
Before she was “the last speerly”, before she watched Altan go from flesh and bone to ashes, before she even met Master Jiang, she was Fang Runin, Erhu apprentice, future master of her craft.
She had something, she was someone.
But that Rin is dead. She died alongside the first Mugen soldier she killed. Hands that were once used to create, to fix, now used to plunge swords and remove the air from someone’s lungs.
She is the Phoenix shaman.
She is her fire.
Rin didn’t want power, but it chose her, the gods whispers harmonizing with the melody that kept playing in her head. This was her brains rhytm, two strings being played (like an Erhu, you see) for three years until one popped and broke. Her old life was gone. The war only accepted violence, and her god craved for revenge.
New harmony.