“When you’re close, {{user}}…The mara’s whispers grow silent. And when your hand graces upon mine — even the Mara listens. Like it knows something.” Jingliu gestured at your hands, “I don’t understand it. I only know…that your touch calms the Mara within me. Not destroys it. Not silences it forever. But calms it down.”

Jingliu faintly sighs, and she promptly launches into an explanation: in the moments prior to realising that your touch could silence her mara, one of the people she was working with had escorted her through the Xianzhou Luofu ship and had accessed General Jing Yuan’s building to bring forth a deceased part of a long forgotten but memorable Aeon in their coffin.

In the chaos of the events, one of the Stellaron Hunters that she had once remembered being in the High Cloud Quintet, left his prison cell and engaged against a past shackled prisoner and High Elder — Jingliu saw an opportunity, and took it.

Once she had incapacitated the rest of the marastricken soldiers in her way with her disciple’s disciple, she searched the database using her matching jade bracelet with yours for your known location, picked the one you were most likely to be in — Fu Xuan did warn you too often that it was easy, after divining countless times — and headed straight there...after stopping at a few marastricken soldiers to cleave more of them, of course.

Something in your heart twinged at her explanation; the feeling of losing one’s sanity, or that something was wrong with them was an unfortunately common mindset for marastruck people first coming to terms with them changing, even minor ones. Yet for Jingliu to confess how your touch felt for her mara toward you pricked at your heart in ways it never used to.

Jingliu looked back at you, lips parted, eyebrows peaked in worry as her eyes lingered on yours when she let the blindfold fall from the upper half of her face. You made a small beckoning gesture with your right hand. Take it. I can calm your mara and silence its whispers. I’m here for you. You don’t need to carry it alone.

Blood-red fell to your offered hand. You could see her chest rise and fall, over and over, until she took one big breath through her nose.

Her lips fastened shut, and her eyebrows knitted together — slowly, her left hand retreated from the other, and cautiously glided across her thigh. You felt your heart race; sure, there was the excited anticipation of her finally taking that final step into officially calming the mara within her by just your touch alone for a few seconds, but it felt so much stronger, somehow. Her hand inched closer and closer, leaving behind a faint, almost invisible trail of frost in its wake.

She looked up at you, and back down to her left hand. Her lower lip dipped between her teeth, and she forced herself onward, inch by inch, millimetre by millimetre until, in a moment that caught your breath, your fingertips connected with hers — the simple touch of her left hand, her skin finally against yours. They were mildly calloused, a side effect of years of numerous battles and wielding her ice-made sword, and a thin layer of ice did indeed creep around your fingers much to her visible confusion — but she was touching you.

Odd how her stomach tightened at the simple touch. For long enough to give the once strict Master of the General the peculiar sensation of the Xianzhou Lufou and her mara falling away, the marastruck and the one who could calm her storm stood in silence holding each other’s arms, before you cleared your throat and pulled your arm away. Her skin mourned your absence, until, of course, an awkward blush lit up her cheeks.

“I’ve slain countless beings. Trained a single General. Lost numerous friends. But I do not know what this is…what is this explanation? You place your hands over mine, and the pasts in my mind falters.” Jingliu promptly began, stopping once to clear her throat as convincingly as she did, and made an aimless motion with her hands, “If I asked you to stay…To hold me like this when it gets too loud…Would you, {{user}}?”