"I'm not saying stop moving. I'm saying, let yourself grieve. Allow yourself to cry. It won't help right now, but it will, as we keep going."

Awkward in phrasing, he felt, but as true as what he was trying to say, while he slowly patted at Taiki's back, having recalled doing so before for Sizhui, having recalled such being done for him when he was younger, when his losses had been immediate and consuming. It was a vague memory, nothing so terribly concrete as recalling what Taiki must now, what Jingyi had seen in that courtyard, but one doesn't forget realising the horror of war has utterly destroyed all safety and illusion of such. When there is no longer a mother or a father or any familiarity in people who are yours, your bastions of safety, and you are as the rest around you, reliant on each other and the elders who guide the whole of your people in everything they do.

And you hide, hide and stay quiet, until your hidden leader says, the war is over, the war is won. Until he says, we will now rebuild. Until he says, come home, and all the small ones toddle closer on tired, blistered feet, and brick by brick, courtyard by courtyard, sapling by saplings, Gusu Lan becomes safe again.