Mom found Mia before Mia found her.
That was the first thing.
Mia had been up since early — I knew because I heard her moving around before the settlement's fires were fully lit, the particular kind of restless that comes from someone who slept but didn't really rest. By the time I was sitting up and rubbing my face she was already gone from her corner of the room.
I found her outside ten minutes later standing near the eastern wall with her arms crossed and her eyes moving across the settlement like she was looking for something specific.
"She's not here yet," I said.
"I know," Mia said. "I'm just—"
"Looking."
"I'm just standing here."
I looked at her.
She looked at the wall.
We stood there for a moment in the early morning quiet — fires starting up across the settlement, someone somewhere making something that smelled like rice, two children already running between buildings like they had a very important appointment to get to.
Then Mom appeared.
Not from the direction of our building. From the other side of the settlement entirely — just walking, ordinary, cup already in hand, like she had been up for hours doing things that weren't anyone's business and had now decided to come this way.
She looked at Mia.
Mia straightened slightly. Not a bow — just the instinctive adjustment of someone who wanted to make a good impression and was trying not to make it obvious that they wanted to make a good impression.
Mom looked at me.
"Go somewhere else," she said pleasantly.
I went somewhere else.
I did not go far.
This was not eavesdropping. I was sitting against the wall of the building two corners away with a bowl of rice I'd found, which was a completely normal place to sit. The fact that I had a clear sightline to the corner Mom had chosen — walls on two sides, nothing behind them, the settlement's morning traffic moving well away from them — was purely incidental.
Ji Rui materialized beside me approximately three minutes later.
She sat down without saying anything. Looked at the corner where Mom and Mia were sitting across from each other on the ground.
I offered her some rice.
She took some.
We watched.
From where I was sitting I couldn't hear what Mom was saying. I could see Mia's face though. And Mia's face was doing the specific thing it did when Mia was receiving instructions she found insufficient — a kind of careful neutral that was covering the urge to ask fourteen follow-up questions.
Mom said something. Sat back. Went still.
Mia nodded. Put her hands on her knees. Closed her eyes.
Thirty seconds passed.
Mia's eyes opened and found me immediately.
I looked at my rice.
Ji Rui made a very small sound beside me that was not quite a laugh.
Mom had gone completely still across the courtyard. Not moving. Not speaking. Just — waiting. The particular stillness of someone with infinite patience and nowhere else to be.
Mia looked back at Mom.
Mom said nothing.
Mia closed her eyes again.
This happened four more times in the next twenty minutes.
Eyes closed. Trying. Eyes open — finding me, just for a second, just a glance — then back. Mom going still every time like a clock that had stopped. Waiting until Mia's attention came back before she started again.
No words. No correction. Just stillness that communicated everything.
I became very interested in the wall across from me. The stonework was actually quite detailed if you looked closely. Someone had put real effort into the mortar. I could look at that for a long time.
"She keeps looking at you," Ji Rui said quietly.
"I know."
"You're making it worse by being visible."
"I'm sitting against a wall eating rice."
"You're sitting against a wall eating rice in her direct sightline."
I looked at Ji Rui. "Where am I supposed to go."
Ji Rui looked at me with the expression she used when the answer was obvious and she was deciding whether I deserved to have it explained.
"Somewhere she can't see you," she said.
"Then I can't see what's happening."
"Correct," Ji Rui said.
I looked back at the corner.
Mom had said something. Brief. Mia was nodding with the energy of someone receiving new instructions and was going to execute them perfectly this time. Eyes closed again. Hands loose on her knees this time instead of pressed flat.
Fifteen seconds.
Her head tilted — just slightly, just the beginning of a turn in my direction —
Mom put two fingers on the back of Mia's hand.
Light. Just a touch. Mia's head stopped turning.
Mom took her fingers away.
Mia's shoulders dropped slightly. Something in her settled.
I looked at the wall.
The mortar really was quite good.
The session lasted maybe forty minutes total.
Not long. But I got the feeling that was the point — Mom had given Mia exactly as much as she could hold and not one drop more, and she knew precisely where that line was, and she stopped there.
She said something at the end. Mia listened. Nodded once, slower this time, less eager — the nod of someone who understood something rather than the nod of someone who wanted to seem like they understood something.
Mom stood up. Looked across the settlement in a general way that included the wall I was sitting against. Then she walked back toward the main building without looking at me.
Mia sat where she was for another moment.
Then she got up and walked over to me.
She sat down against the wall beside me. Said nothing. Took the last of my rice without asking.
I let her have it.
We sat there.
"So," I said.
"Don't."
"I'm just—"
"I know what you're just," she said. "Don't."
I looked at the settlement. A woman was hanging cloth between two posts across the way. The two children from earlier ran past in the opposite direction they'd been going before, equally urgent.
"She's not what I expected," Mia said after a while.
"What did you expect."
Mia thought about it. "Someone who would explain things."
I almost said something. Stopped.
"She taught me the same way," I said instead.
Mia looked at me.
"She sat there and said nothing?"
"For three days," I said. "Then something happened and I cried and she said — okay, now we can start."
Mia stared at me.
"That's the most horrifying thing you've ever told me."
"It really was," I agreed.
She was quiet for a moment. Processing. Mia processed things the same way she did everything — fast, thorough, filing and reorganizing until it made sense in a framework she could work with.
"She stopped every time I—" Mia started. Stopped.
"Yeah."
"I wasn't trying to."
"I know."
She looked at her hands. Turned them over once. "She put her hand on mine and I just — stopped. Like something got quieter." A pause. "What was that."
I thought about the times Mom had done similar things. The way a hand on a shoulder in the right moment could pull you back from somewhere you'd drifted without knowing you'd gone.
"That's just her," I said.
Mia absorbed this.
"What am I supposed to practice," I asked.
"Sitting," she said flatly. "She told me to sit somewhere quiet once a day and feel the air moving through my hands. That's it. That's all she said."
"That's not nothing."
"It feels like nothing."
"I know," I said. "It's not."
Mia looked at me with the expression she used when she was deciding whether to believe me or argue with me. It was a close decision. It usually was.
Then she looked at her hands again.
Turned them over. Palms up. Just sitting there for a moment with her hands open in her lap like she was trying to feel something.
I didn't say anything.
The settlement went on around us — fires and voices and cloth hanging between posts and children with urgent appointments. Normal morning. Normal people doing normal things.
Mia closed her eyes.
Didn't look at me.
Just sat there.
I looked at the wall.
The mortar was really very good.
Ji Rui found me near the main building an hour later.
"How much of that did you watch," I said.
"All of it," she said without any particular guilt. "Your mother is a very good teacher."
"She gave her almost nothing."
"Yes," Ji Rui said. "That's why she's a very good teacher."
I thought about that.
Ji Rui looked across the settlement to where Mia was still sitting against the eastern wall, hands in her lap, eyes closed. She'd been there since I'd left. Hadn't moved.
Something in Ji Rui's expression went quiet in a way I didn't have a name for.
"She'll get there," she said.
It wasn't said to me.
I looked at the wall again.
"The mortar on this building is really well done," I said.
Ji Rui looked at me.
"You've been looking at that wall all morning," she said.
"It's good mortar."
She looked at the wall. Then at me. Then she walked away without saying anything else.
I stood there in the morning light with the settlement going about its business around me and Mia sitting still against the eastern wall and the grandmother's window facing the courtyard from the capital just visible over the outer buildings and Liru somewhere in this city asking careful questions about me that everyone was very politely filing.
Normal morning.
Getting more interesting.