Cleric Chih and their bird Amazing Brilliant are back, traveling to collect stories. In this tale, they’ve ventured into the Riverlands, where they encounter two young women travelling, and decide to join forces. They’re ambushed, which is when Chih discovers that one of the young women is a martial arts master. It’s at this point too that an older couple joins the party, and together, they all venture further into the Riverlands.
This story ends up being a meditation on memory, and how people might chose to be remembered rather than how their story happened. Like the last two novellas, the author packs a ton into such a short story – I’m always impressed how atmospheric these stories are.