She gives it to him. In fact, she had precisely this idea when she was younger. There was a tree near the edge of becoming ancestral high in the foothills of the mountains, but it was decades away.

He could find it again. There's a moderate chance it's advanced by now. Or he could find another. There very easily could be another.

He gets to looking. His mother doesn't remember exactly where, so he'll have to meticulously cover multiple square miles of ground up in the hills, half a day's walk away, examining each and every tree above a certain size.

His first trip out, he wanders through the forest for three days with barely anything eat, almost frantic to find the tree as fast as he can.

He doesn't find anything. He shouldn't be surprised. Multiple square miles of land is, uh. A rather large area.

It's weeks before he gets another chance to head out. The issue is that he needs days clear to search properly. 

This time he packs a lot more food, rather than just living off orus fruit. Nuts and dried meat should help supplement his diet. He finds the exact spot he left off searching last time and moves forward from there, meticulously surveying the land.

He's very lucky there isn't anything genuinely dangerous this close to the Wei clan.

A grumpy-looking girl his age appears, stalking through the trees. She's wearing black robes, with a blood-red rope tied around her waist like a belt in a complex bow, and a long sword sheathed at her waist. Her eyes flick cautiously around the valley as she walks, black hair cut blade-straight hanging about her face. Countless hair-thin scars littered her skin, across her face and hands. She seems to be focused on distant spirit beasts, but her eyes suddenly lock on Lindon as she comes closer.

"You're awfully big for a baby, and your elders have to be cracked if they're letting you out among all the spirit beasts."

Well, that's highly non-ideal. A non-clan sacred artist. One that looks dangerous. She might even be Iron. She probably won't risk hurting him, he's wearing Wei Clan colors, but it's not worth risking. He tries to duck behind a tree when he first spots her, but before he's even close to it she's talking.

"Uh. Baby? I've seen fourteen winters." He's never had people think he's younger than he actually is before.

She doesn't talk like anyone he's spoken to before. Maybe the wild sacred artists out at the edge of the valley speak like that?

She cocks an eyebrow and frowns at him. "You're Foundation. That's a baby by any count, even if you're old for a baby."

This is very confusing. Fifteen is incredibly slow for a clan child, but not for a wild sacred artist.

Wait. Also. Unless she's been following him around for a long time she knows that because she sensed his strength. Because she's a Jade. 

He is no longer so sure she can't simply kill him and get away with it. A wild Jade is not a normal wild sacred artist, presuming she's actually a wild sacred artist at all which is no longer seeming to be such a good presumption.

He bows at the waist and says, "This one apologizes for his lack of understanding. It is as the honoured Jade says."

Really? This crap? "Quit your bowing and scraping, I'm just a Jade. Rather rot than turn into one of those polished up idiots who thinks their rank means so much."

So, he was right when he thought she was a wild sacred artist after all. She's not a school elder, she's not somehow a member of the Li or Kazan clans, she's not even the brightest star of some backwater sect of sacred artists. She's just a girl. Who hit Jade. On her own. 

What the fuck.

Anyway, she's told him how to act. No bowing and scraping, so back to the respect he'd give to a higher ranked Sacred Artist not of his clan who was- visiting the Wei clan markets, or something.

This is a problem. That's also bowing and scraping. He's Unsouled. That's the proper way for him to interact with everyone. She's asked him to stop but she thinks he's a slow Foundation stage normal child, not Unsouled. She- might mean it anyway? Even if she knew?

He's so tempted to just not tell her. It would be so nice to have someone not look at him like that. His sister doesn't. She's- it. The list of people who look at him like he's a full person is one entry long.

What if she realizes later, though? Somehow? Perhaps it's better not to risk it. 

(He remembers the beatings he got for taking his badge off and trying to pretend to be normal with children from the other side of the Wei clan who didn't know his face.)

No. This is an opportunity. He needs to take those. He needs to take those. How else can he catch up to everyone else? How else can he make up for his weak spirit?

"Gratitude, honoured Jade," he says, tone different, the title said like it's just another pair of words used because he doesn't know her name and wants to be polite rather than something that makes a sacred artist innately above him. It does but he can act otherwise if that's what she prefers. That might still be too deferential but honestly he doesn't actually know what else to call her.