Feng's Fierce Focus

Feng’s normally fiery gaze was a laser beam, cutting through the shimmering, disorienting haze that the sprite had conjured. Lin, bless her easily-offended heart, was already sputtering, her face a magnificent shade of puce, convinced that a particularly fluffy cloud had insulted her lineage. But Feng, for once, was utterly still, her quick temper a tightly coiled spring rather than an exploding nebula. She had seen this before, not in this particular magical concoction, but in the way Sheng’s eyes would gleam just before she’d pull a prank, or in the way a particularly stubborn knot in her embroidery thread would seem to shift and change shape when she wasn’t looking. This was the sprite’s trickery, pure and simple.

“Lin, stop trying to wrestle the sky,” Feng said, her voice low and steady, a stark contrast to the usual high-pitched squeaks that accompanied their collective outrage. “It’s not real. It’s just… sparkly nonsense.”

Lin paused, one hand raised as if to swat a particularly insolent wisp of pink mist. Her brow furrowed, a formidable landscape of indignant wrinkles. “Sparkly nonsense that’s making me itchy!” she declared, scratching her arm with exaggerated vigor. “And that little green menace is *laughing* at us. I can hear him, even through this… this cotton candy fog!”