Painted Spirits and Blue Lords

He cuts through the water with ease, gliding across it without effort.

He cuts through the water like a knife as his will drives him along his river. To someone watching, it might resemble someone ice-skating, if ice-skaters threw up waves as tall as a man.

He's grinning, a grin that looks much more menacing in the moonlight, as he's winning the race.

He doesn't glance back, or to the side, even though the corner of his eye tracks a dark shadow trying to keep pace along the riverside. This is his river, his lands, and he will not be bested on home turf.

It will certainly make up for when she last bested him.

He's chuckling now, leaning more into the wind. They've never raced this far up the river, so she has no idea what's coming.

First, the almost ninety-degree bend in the river that tilts just so, and she's on the far side, the longer curve, and he gains seconds just from pure geography.

Second, the waterfall.

He laughs aloud as he twists into the spray, vanishing for a moment before he rockets to the top of the waterfall.

Now he stops and turns back to look at her, standing at the bottom of a nearly sheer cliff-face. She's glaring at him as she starts to pry her fingers into the cracks of the rocks.

Spirits they may be, but they are not the same. He is a spirit of the river, he is the river, while she is a martial spirit. Despite the fearsome visage of the theatrical mask, she cannot fly. Her paired dao rest crossed over her back as her arms bulge with the effort of pulling herself up.

"You set the terms!" he reminds her. "The finish line is the start of the river."

"No one told me there was a waterfall."

He shrugs and spreads his hands wide - a gesture wasted as her gaze is focused on the cliff - intoning, "You did not ask."

Before she can sputter out a protest, or curse him, he turns on his heels and speeds forth again.

She is fast, faster than the average mortal at least. She did practically keep pace with him until the severe river bend. He refuses to feel guilty, after all, they have managed to keep the score even between them for many eons, and she set the terms.

He'll make it up to her later.

As he draws closer and closer to his source, his heart sings more and more. This is what she cannot understand. She has a place of pain, a scar in the earth where she was unjustly struck down while defending innocents, crying out to Agni and La for justice with her last breath they answered her plea, of course they answered her plea, she was born of Fire but sailed the seas as instinctively as one of Water, and they cut down her slayer where he had turned towards the children and allowed her to run free in death as a spirit. So she doesn't really understand the homecoming.

He sinks into the source of his river and sighs.

It is not sad, oh no. It is the sigh of a weary, exhausted man who has just won a race sinking into a gloriously soft puddle of silk as if the weight of the world had been lifted off his shoulders.

He lies there for what could be years before his hat is ripped off and she drags him to the shore by his hair.

"You win, fine, good, now help with my blisters."

She goes to throw him to the earth, but he grabs her hands and pulls her down with him. She straddles him, theater mask glowing in the moonlight. She puts all her weight on him, but he takes it gladly as he pulls strings of water up to wrap around her hands and glow faintly with healing.

She leans into him. "Tell me again, who you were before the river, tell me the story."

"It was centuries ago-"

"Yeah," she whispers, flat out lying on him now, mask thrown aside.

"And the town on my river, well, it wasn't a river yet, just reserves of water that flooded down the mountain every rainy season. There was hardly anyplace to escape, and then it was only rocks. So the town were I must have lived built up their homes on stilts to minimize the damage.

"Then the raiders came. They threatened us with fire, swore to put the town to the torch if we would not pay exorbitant fines, funds we needed to maintain our homes and eat should the floods destroy everything."

"Keep talking," she murmurs, and if the paint on his skin was actual paint, she'd be as marked as he.

He takes in a quick breath as her cold hands spread out over his now bare torso. "You're making it difficult, but as you wish.

"My sensei thought up with a brilliant plan. I would bring the flood early when the raiders came to collect. When he flashed mirrors, I would set the waters free to run. He would be waiting in the town to split the waves and protect the town from destruction."

"And did it work?" she purrs, fingers cording through his hair."

He laughs, a quick bark. "I'm here, aren't I? I pulled too much out. The rocks tumbled out of the way under the pull of my bending, and then both I and the waves tumbled down the hill. I was losing consciousness and then felt what I thought was my sensei's reach."

"But it wasn't!"

"Am I telling this story or are you?" He puts his hands around her waist and flips her over. "So I reach out, but it's not my sensei. It was Tui, who had reached up through the spring to guide its birth into a river. And rivers need their own spirits to guard them and the people living on their shores-"

"Less talking more kissing."

"As the Blue Spirit commands."

She surges to wrap her hand around his neck. "Hush now, Painted Lord. Your lips are mine."