Wei joined me a few minutes later. As if he knew we were done talking about him.

  It was evening, so I kindled a fire — small and domestic, the kind the settlement's houses shared with the night, orange and crackling, the warmth of controlled combustion that turned proximity into comfort and comfort into the illusion that proximity was the point.

  Wei sat cross-legged on the porch in the posture of someone who was about to perform a narrative. The telling posture, the storyteller's arrangement, which in Wei's case meant leaning forward, hands active, voice set to the register that preceded embellishment.

  "So the lynx came out of NOWHERE—"

  "He was territorial," I said. "You'd been training in his—"

  "Out of NOWHERE," Wei repeated. Louder. The volume that said: your correction is noted and rejected and the rejection is because my version is better and better is the metric and the metric is: does the story work. "And it was HUGE. Like..." He spread his arms. The wingspan of something significantly larger than a rock lynx.

  "It was wolf-height," I said. "Wolf-height isn't—"

  "BIGGER than wolf-height. At least... look, the important thing is—"

  "You rolled."

  He stopped. The stop of someone whose narrative had been interrupted at the wrong moment by the wrong detail with the wrong truth.

  "I dodged first."

  "You rolled."

  "I dodged THEN rolled. You were there!"

  He was right. He had dodged first. I was just teasing him because it annoyed him and that was entertaining.

  "You rolled first."

  A pause. He recalibrated. The adjustment of a storyteller whose fact-checker was sitting right there.

  "Okay you dodged first."

  He grinned. The grin of a victory: his facts, my facts, the grin sitting on his face.

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  "And when I hit it with my qi-strike. Full power. It—"

  "Staggered."

  "FLEW."

  "It staggered, then retreated."

  "It flew BACKWARD and CRASHED into the bushes."

  I looked at him. He looked at me. The exchange that was the negotiation: his version (operatic, large, impressive) versus mine (accurate, clinical, smaller). The negotiation that always produced the same result: his version for public consumption, mine for the historical record, the historical record being read by nobody yet still being the truth.

  Almost a smile. The involuntary response to his exaggeration, the way he inflated every detail by roughly the same amount, yet consistent enough that I'd been tracking the ratio. Which had become its own quiet entertainment.

  "And then," Wei said, leaning further forward, eyes bright with the brightness of enthusiasm and also the other brightness, the one I was counting. "Then I just STOOD there. In the middle. Blood everywhere..."

  "Primarily on your left arm."

  "Blood EVERYWHERE. And I looked at it. And it looked at me. And I said..."

  "You screamed."

  "I said, very calmly..."

  "You screamed once, then stopped."

  He looked at me. The look that said: you are the worst audience.

  "I said. Very. CALMLY. 'I can do this.' And I DID."

  That part was true. He had. He'd said it, to himself, not calmly, but he'd said it and he'd done it. The doing was the truth underneath the embellishment. That was what made it tolerable.

  He continued. The story grew. The lynx became larger with each telling; this was the third retelling and it had reached the size of a small horse. His hand gestures now described teeth that suggested tusks, which suggested a different animal entirely, one that existed only in the narrative he was building. His narrative. His victory.

  I listened — not just to the story, but also to him. The Wei-frequencies beneath the performance. His voice was strong and present, the vocal quality of health and energy. His qi humming, post-combat elevated, running warm. His core was there behind the performance, behind the grin, behind the enthusiasm that was the surface.

  Four times per minute.

  I counted while he talked, while he spread his arms and described attacks that hadn't happened in the geometry he was describing, while his face was bright and his voice was loud and his story was growing and the growing was the joy.

  Four times per minute, his core twitched — behind his sternum, behind his shirt, behind the grin.

  He couldn't feel it. He couldn't see me counting it. He couldn't know that while he was constructing the narrative of his victory — the narrative that was true in its essence and false in its details — I was constructing a different narrative. One that was true in its details and terrifying in its essence.

  "—and then it just RAN," he concluded. Triumphant. Fifteen minutes of telling for forty-five seconds of actual combat. The ratio measured how much it mattered to him.

  "You rolled," I said.

  He threw a twig at me.

  Almost a smile. The same almost, the same permission, the same involuntary response to the same boy performing the same joy.

  But behind the almost: the count. Four. And the count's trajectory. And the trajectory's endpoint. And the endpoint's—

  He's different. He has to be.

  The fire crackled. The night continued. He told the story a fourth time. The lynx was now the size of a bear.

  I listened, counted and held the almost-smile and the number in the same space — too small for both, containing both anyway.