"The right size to keep by the bed."
"Then it'll need watering every day."
"You water it."
Su Li measured out a copper sheet, muttering that it was more trouble than keeping a cat, while the hammer in his hand had already begun to strike.
From then on, the first thing Su Li did every morning after waking was water the golden sapling and adjust the aether concentration along the inner walls of its cultivation chamber. One hundred days, two hundred days—not a single day missed.
On the morning they left the island, a sea breeze blew in from the west.
Elonore paused while coiling the sail ropes on deck.
"Su Li."
"Yeah?"
"Come look."
Su Li walked over to the cultivation chamber. The sapling had grown another stretch taller since half a month ago. Its fourth leaf was unfurling from the terminal bud.
The veins on its surface were crystal clear.
Fan-shaped. Five main veins. Spread out symmetrically.
Exactly like a ginkgo leaf.
The harbor of the small city on the East Sea was not large, with only some twenty berths. The Acorn was docked in the innermost corner, its hull covered in six or seven layers of patched paint, dark in some places and pale in others, like it was covered head to toe in patches.
Su Li came out of the harbor office with the mooring slip clenched in his hand. He had written that day's date in the date field and left the age field blank.
"The one hundred and fiftieth year of my long voyage." He folded the slip, tucked it into his pocket, and muttered to himself.
Back on the ship, Elonore was crouching beside the propulsion core, holding a copper plate and welding tongs. She was patching a flake that had oxidized and