Sect Year 3 · eighth month · day 15 · the Azure Stream spring, below the grave
Lin checked his water skin before the light had reached the pines. It was a habit he had carried down from the Wastes road and had never tried to break. He lifted the skin from its peg on the spring stone and weighed it in his hand, and he judged it half full, as he had judged it every dawn since the Qingliu fork.
The cave on the north ridge had a water jar of its own, but the jar’s lid stuck, and he preferred to fill the skin at the source. He knelt on the wet bank, uncorked it, and let the spring run in.
The water was so cold it made his knuckles ache. It came out of the rock in a clean thread and slid over the lip of the stone with a soft, unrushed sound. He held the skin under until it swelled, and corked it, and then he stayed on his knees with the water running past his wrists. He didn’t get up for some time.
When the light finally came over the rim behind the pines, it lay across the flat stone and the short marker above it, and it reached down into the shallows. There, the gravel showed through in a hundred pale shapes. Near the bank, standing on its end and sunk a little way into the bed, was the stone gauge.
