116 Faith (2/2)

”Are you sure?” said the woman as she eyed Li. ”He's foreign, ain't around here, never seen the likes o' him before.”

”It is fine, Ada. Your daughter is doing fine. Take her and leave,” said Iona, her tone calm and didactic, as if she were talking to a pair of children.

Ada nodded before leaving, continuing to give Li a suspicious eye as she stepped around him in the narrow hallway, like he was irradiated or something.

”Now, what was that about?” said Li as he heard Ada and her daughter leave the building.

”I perform some healing when I have time,” said Iona as she continued to peek at Li through the crook of the door.

”How generous of you. Here I thought you didn't care much about mortals.”

”I condemn their actions as a collective, but I understand that they are still comprised of precious individual lives.”

”I see. Now then, I'm sorry to be barging in on your house without warning, but I had something to discuss with you. Mind if I come in?”

Iona paused as her eyes flitted away from Li's. ”This filthy place is not fit for one such as you.”

”I don't care about that kind of small stuff.” Li pushed his hand on the door, applying enough pressure to let her know he was coming in whether she wanted to protest or not, and she yielded, letting him step into her room.

”Not too bad, all things considered,” said Li as he scanned his surroundings. Iona's flat was essentially the size of a large room. There was a small lantern atop a wooden table that emitted a faint light not nearly strong enough to illuminate the whole place. A couple of blankets sprawled around one edge of the room indicated a bed.

A set of herbalist equipment with racks of vials, droppers, beakers, and the like were neatly stacked and arranged atop the table. Aside from that, though, the room was very bare, though there were a couple of books stacked beside her blankets. New books, it seemed from their shining leather.

Li had lived in similar conditions when he was a broke student struggling to stay afloat while studying and working all day, so he did not think much of these living arrangements. He took a seat by the table and motioned for her to sit.

When she did, he pointed to the blankets and said, ”I didn't know you had to sleep.”

”I have some mortal needs from consuming their souls,” she said with a sigh. ”I can survive off of sunlight alone, but I have come to need some sleep as well. I consider these needs an apt punishment for my foolishness.”

”And a need to drink as well?” Li tilted his head forwards, motioning beside her bed where several empty bottles lay haphazardly on their sides.

Iona glanced at the bottles with a cringe. ”Those…are from times best forgotten. As my being has taken in human souls, gaining more of their physical traits, needs, and their powerful emotions, I felt ever more strongly how my existence held no meaning. Hunted down with none of my kind left and my way of life, the reasons for which I was created, destroyed.

I saw that humans could drown their worries away so easily with drink, and I wished the same for myself.”

She shook her head and changed the topic, her voice becoming stronger and calmer. ”But that is before I met you, when I felt there was no reason for my existence as a forest spirit. But with you here, my life and being is in order, you need not doubt that.

Now, please tell me what you wished to talk about, for I am certain that I can be of assistance.”

Li also felt that it was best to move on from the matter of her drinking, evident as it was that it was part of a troubled past.

”I'm here to get your guidance on something somewhat drastic I wanted to do.”

”Oh?”

”I'm going to try and expand my farm to grow a lot more crop, not to mention different types of it, and for that, I'm going to get all the farmers back to work on their fields under me.”

Iona cocked her head. ”The dispossessed farmers? They are all city dwellers now. Many years it has been since their hands have held a plow.”

”Right,” Li nodded. ”But it doesn't matter that they're rusty at farming. Skills can fade. But faith is far more resistant to time. People can hold onto it for the rest of their years, hell, they can entirely entrust their lives to it. They just need someone to rekindle their faith to get back farming, something to believe in.

And that's going to be me.”