He can understand and identify stalling quite well, and his people were never boring, thanks in no small part to his skill at humoring, actually. As to being chided for the perceived lack, this is just bird chirps to him, habitual and unactionable; humoring her is a substantial part of their bargain and she knows it. Di Feisheng does so with only the ghost of an eyeroll for her talking of kingdoms and knights and dark-eyed attention for everything else. It is probably just as well that she's reciting her story mostly to her tea and not inspecting his reactions too closely.
The humoring phase is much shorter than the interest phase, anyway. There's clearly more to it than nonsense, where she is taking pains to tell him the too-mutable function of time in it all and the identifying details. The pieces are easy to put together, and he appreciates that; maybe Li Lianhua would only have needed a poem or some tree sap smeared on the door or something, but he's bedridden by his own informational breadcrumbs and not here to gauge Di Feisheng's trail following abilities at this time.
It's the significance that he's caught up on. What he wouldn't mind some help with understanding is why this is such an ordeal for her, why it has to be a story at all, if she isn't having fun. Being cagey is one thing at which so much of their social ecosystem excels, is just common sense and an eye to self preservation. But maybe the gemstones of the soul (he can feel the eyeroll trapped in the muscles of his face even more strongly, thinking this) are easier to come by than he originally imagined and of just as little application as the real sort. Face-changing and identity-obscuring abilities could give poisons a run for their money, after all. He takes a moment to digest and sit with this knowledge while he works out how to feel about it besides the busy-ness of rewriting a few mental records. There isn't any scrutiny for her until he's done so, which may as well have come with a 'ding' of completion to go with looking her way expectantly.
"You made more sense, as a child." So she lives in some kind of disguise. He can only assume she prefers it now, or the dissolution would be too costly somehow. Or she hasn't any especial faith in the solidity of this realm's boundaries, which is very fair; he can't say he would either, if his circumstances hadn't been so thoroughly changed by his own hand. "Are you afraid of being recognized? Captured?"
no subject
The humoring phase is much shorter than the interest phase, anyway. There's clearly more to it than nonsense, where she is taking pains to tell him the too-mutable function of time in it all and the identifying details. The pieces are easy to put together, and he appreciates that; maybe Li Lianhua would only have needed a poem or some tree sap smeared on the door or something, but he's bedridden by his own informational breadcrumbs and not here to gauge Di Feisheng's trail following abilities at this time.
It's the significance that he's caught up on. What he wouldn't mind some help with understanding is why this is such an ordeal for her, why it has to be a story at all, if she isn't having fun. Being cagey is one thing at which so much of their social ecosystem excels, is just common sense and an eye to self preservation. But maybe the gemstones of the soul (he can feel the eyeroll trapped in the muscles of his face even more strongly, thinking this) are easier to come by than he originally imagined and of just as little application as the real sort. Face-changing and identity-obscuring abilities could give poisons a run for their money, after all. He takes a moment to digest and sit with this knowledge while he works out how to feel about it besides the busy-ness of rewriting a few mental records. There isn't any scrutiny for her until he's done so, which may as well have come with a 'ding' of completion to go with looking her way expectantly.
"You made more sense, as a child." So she lives in some kind of disguise. He can only assume she prefers it now, or the dissolution would be too costly somehow. Or she hasn't any especial faith in the solidity of this realm's boundaries, which is very fair; he can't say he would either, if his circumstances hadn't been so thoroughly changed by his own hand. "Are you afraid of being recognized? Captured?"