There's a two hour moratorium before voting begins
Look at this boy! Establishing formality to assert official and formal respect in order to meet Ling Qi at her level by dropping formality and demonstrating intimacy with a pronoun change!"Lady Ling," he repeated, and the emphasis brought her up short. "One wishes to present their suit. This place is inappropriate, the official request to be made at the right time, but… You have said that I do not need to be reticent."
She didn't answer immediately.
"With you, one feels like the horizon is not so far away. With you, one feels as if his eyes gaze upon a bright night, to inspire song and poetry. One… I do not wish to be a coward any longer."
That's such a weird thing to say. I mean, it kinda fits with the propaganda and public knowledge of the Empire, but with how Great Spirits have to work around each other and even then only affect their areas of influence, instead of the whole world...That was the trouble with multitudes. It was admitting your power was limited, your reach finite, that your will would never be absolute… and that was a contradiction toward the nature of Sovereignty.
Ling Qi will never have a time where there will be no more conflict. That is not her way. And what better than a shield for the perpetually endangered?[ ] Ask him to craft something for the peace that came after
Something for the war might save our life but after the war it would be put on a shelf as an admired trinket that is slowly forgotten. Something for the peace will start in a shelf but will be actively looked at and longed for, and when the peace arrives we will gladly pick it up and use it for as long as we can.
I think believing that after the war is eternal peace is naive in this world. Ling qi might want peace but the world might differ on that opinion.Something for the war might save our life but after the war it would be put on a shelf as an admired trinket that is slowly forgotten. Something for the peace will start in a shelf but will be actively looked at and longed for, and when the peace arrives we will gladly pick it up and use it for as long as we can.
"What you want will always find its way to be the most logical thing, should you be inclined to that sort of argument," Ling Qi said wryly. "...Look at how the support changed, in the course of a month. The Clans which hardly cared for my summit saw the profit in it, and suddenly Lady Cai and eye are wise prodigies, guiding the course of the southern Emerald Seas. And the arguments they construct to convince those that doubt… as they use them again and again, they come to believe them, even if it is cynical now."
That was another take away from negotiations. Rhetoric was a dangerous thing. It is difficult to argue a thing well and not come to believe it by inches.
She wondered how much of what they knew about the Weilu, about Tsu, came to them that way.
"I think of that sometimes and it frightens me a little. Once you've put your words out there, you have so little control of how they spread, how they're heard, how they're used…"
"It is a good problem to have, to be so widely heard," Xuan Shi chuckled. They stopped by a bend in shore, looking back now on the town rising on the other side of the falls.
"I suppose it is," Ling Qi said, shaking her head. "..>Well I say it frightens me, but I don't think it's a bad thing really. I don't think that a world where everyone's thoughts repeat mine would be better either."
You didn't get all the lightbulbs Alectai! Lemme fix that!Excuse me.
*Cough Cough*
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I wonder if they can get satisfaction on their own failure and tragedy? The nightmare spirit that keeps failing.If Xuan Shi marries Ling Qi Kongyou may be driven to drink. They've already had their craving for failure get denied with the spectacular success of the summit. Turtle Lad succeeding in courting Qi instead of getting rejected might well break something in them![]()
Same goes for peace quite frankly. The unique part here is who is making our doohickey. And turtle boy does some of the best doohickeys!I feel like if we want something for war we can just commission it, if this is a courting gift it should be for peace.