No additional warnings for this scene.
Mei Changsu shifts and tries not to grimace, the frustration of it greater than the mountains framed by the open windows. It is a beautiful view befitting a king, really, and not the empty shell of a useless body who can do little more than wallow in pain. The scars that run in delicate lines over his whole body are still angry, raised, and red. Tugging against any of them results in a sharp pain that is too close to knives to let him sleep.
He tugs anyway, deserving the punishment. He reaches out for the small cup of tea that has gone cold waiting for him. He should not have let the servant pour it. He should be able to pour his own damn tea. He should be able to lift the full cup with his own hands.
The first time he held his father’s sword, it was longer than he was tall. Lin Shu had been complaining again about practicing with wooden swords, shorter and lighter than the real thing — how could he hope to learn to fight that way? Did his father not trust him?
His father, ever indulgent, offered the hilt to him without comment, simply holding the sheathed weapon for him to take.
It rested in its scabbard, his father’s large, calloused hands wrapped around it to hold it steady, waiting for his son to draw it. The trainers and soldiers who had been practicing around them stopped and stepped away respectfully.
Lin Shu studied his father. His lessons were, at times, inscrutable to the young boy, and while he was never set up to fail he had certainly failed anyway a few times. His father’s face was placid and calm, no longer fussing at him to stop begging and being childish. He simply waited.
Lin Shu wrapped both hands around the hilt of the sword and pulled. The drag was enough to slow him down, and by the time he had fully unsheathed it he had stepped backwards twice. Once free, the tip fell swiftly and dangerously toward the ground, the heavy weight of the powerful weapon overpowering Lin Shu’s childish hands. But he tightened his grip and growled and shifted his stance to rebalance them both together.
It was too big, and too heavy, and he could do no more than simply hold it aloft in a terrible mockery of a fighting stance, but he did it, and his father smiled.
Mei Changsu lets his hand fall.