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 Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 3:58 pm
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Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 3:13 pm
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[ Solo Entry - A Mountaintop Encounter ]
One moment, his life and his world lay in shambles as he threw all his defenses open, all out of a soul-deep, aching love that compelled one final desperate sacrifice. But even that wasn't enough, when the end came. In the next heartbeat, a sort of release came to him. He found himself floating free and high above the ruins: all his woes, all his pride, all his cares, all the bonds and burdens that came with the endless entangling of love and duty.
He welcomed the freedom from his body and all the particular cares that came with its material trappings and social resources. Pride he could release. In all honesty, he could not recognize anything to be proud of, and soon he could no longer remember that pride anyway. Only the double-edged sword of love and duty he could not and would not relinquish, and that he carried with him into a different world with fresh possibilities, with no guilty memories to dog his decisions.
Alone on a high and secluded mountainside, Yuelin paused in her careful excavation of a valuable root to look up and blink warily into the surrounding mists. White, as was to be expected. The swirl of color she saw out of the corner of her eye was probably just a hallucination brought on by the thin air in these high altitudes. Yes, that's it. Making a face at her grimy fingers, the young woman rubbed at her eyes with the still-clean back of her right wrist, for what little improvement it might bring to her faulty vision. Returning to her digging, she made a mental resolution to eat something more filling the next time she set off on such a hike.
Plants could gain a certain degree of potency--even sentience, some claimed--if they grew in high altitudes and drank of the qi life-force from the cloud vapors. Of the countless legends and rumors surrounding the mountains, Yuelin knew that much, at least. Why else would she be spending all this time trekking up and down the tallest mountains she could find if not to harvest the finest, rarest herbs? But that didn't really explain why a wisp of cloud had detached itself from the ambient fog, and it most certainly didn't explain why that wisp was following her with such doggedness since who knew when.
Having extracted a satisfactory number of lucrative roots for the day, Yuelin welcomed a break. Large brown eyes narrowed briefly in a thoughtful squint at the cloud.
"Don't you try any tricks with me, little cloud or mountain spirit or whatever you are," Yuelin warned the wisp, her voice low but amused just the same. That said, she sped up her rigorous pace. When she looked back a handful of seconds later, the cloud had already vanished. With its vanishing went her bewilderment, though she felt a tinge of regret. Once she returned to the hustle and bustle of more populated areas, a certain ambitious anticipation for her up and coming projects in herbalry took over. There was much work to be done now and little time to spend fretting about mountaintop visions.
Staying close to the ambient mist, the small colorful cloud that housed a growing sentience made slower, stealthier progress behind her. He was weak still, so he lagged often, but there was hope born of having found the woman who called him back into life and wakefulness. This hope taught him patience and fueled his persistence.
For this insubstantial being of emotion and sensation, there were no more maneuverings and no more manipulations, no more privileges and no more resources, at least not of the material sort. He registered the lack; perversely enough, the adversity encouraged him with the challenge it posed.
Now that he had seen Yuelin and seen in her a vision of possibilities, he liked to think (though, to be quite honest, he was only pulling this expectation out of thin air by now) that he could become somebody, even if he did not know his own name, nor did have any achievements or even means by which to achieve something. He could not even hold a train of thought against the pull of emotion or instinct any more than a cloud can hold against the north wind.
Now he was simply nobody and would remain so--or worse--if he could not catch up to his guardian. He accepted that; he would not try to change what he had no power to change. But he was still himself, whatever that truly meant, even if he could not understand entirely. Thus he knew he could and would stay the course and seek life until consciousness gave way to oblivion.
So that was exactly what he proceeded to do, without thought, without fear of oblivion.
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Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 12:13 am
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Like so many waking dragons, steam uncoiled from the clay pot and stretched high into the shadows of the ceiling as Yuelin lifted off the lid to squint and sniff delicately at the boiling contents. Maybe a moment longer on the fire, the young aspiring apothecarist thought, unable to resist a wide smile of satisfaction at how well her latest herbal experiment seemed to be coming along.
As she replaced the lid, a dab of faint, oddly familiar color amidst the smoke caught her eye. The lid clattered to rested lopsidedly on the pot rim as her frowning attention went to the smoke, scanning for the source of color. Must have been her imagination, she decided a few moments of fruitless blinking through the rising vapors. Turning down the fire, she adjusted the lid so that less steam would escape.
The air cleared, as Yuelin had expected. What she hadn't expected was that left in the wake of the steam would be a small round cloud streaked with sunset colors. Large brown eyes widened some more, and the young woman squeaked with surprise. But even surprise didn't stop her from taking action. With reflexive speed her slender fingers closed around a metal ribbed fan concealed in the folds of a voluminous sleeve.
But even as she did so, Yuelin couldn't suppress a mental giggle at herself. Of course it would go straight through the metal tines of her fan, anyway. She released the ad-hoc weapon (albeit with some reluctance), replaced them, and leveled a baleful glare on the colored cloud. "You had better stay right there. Or else," she snapped, grimly poker-faced despite her bemused awareness that her remark was nowhere near the height of witty repartee.
Indifferent to her demand, the cloud drifted a few feet behind her as Yuelin turned and leaped up gracefully to seat herself on one of the cobwebbed rafters. Sneezing as her movements sent dust, webs, and the occasional spider flying, she untied an octagonal ornament from its hanging place within sight of the doorway. With a silken sleeve, she dusted off the wooden bagua trigrams and buffed the inset mirror to a high shine before simply letting her sleeve drape over the silver plane.
"You know what this is, little jin-yun?" she asked, her voice sing-song as she named the mystery tag-along as a colorful, patterned cloud in the language of her homeland. No points for creativity, really, but then again, who's keeping score? She smiled, sweet as saccharin, when she saw the newly-christened 'little jin-yun' twitch as if in indignation. Yuelin: 1, mysterious tag-along cloud from the mountains: 0. Or so she hoped. "This charm will reveal your true shape in the mirror and banish you." As if the cloud wouldn't find out once that happened. She wasn't as sure of the charm's efficacy as her manner might suggest, and it was showing. The realization hit both the human, who frowned, and the Illusionary. "So there's not much point pretending to be harmless, ghostie, because I'm calling your bluff." The cloud twitched again, this time with impatience, and Yuelin pouted when the cloud stood its ground did not even draw back in fear. Enough said. Warning given, she tilted the mirror to catch the light and turned the mirror to face the cloud.
If Yuelin had been hoping for magical fireworks (which she had), she would be (and was) sorely disappointed. The cloud paused before the mirror. Then it inched forward, only stopping a finger's width away from the glass surface. After another few seconds, it rotated experimentally in front of the mirror. "Oh, stop preening!" Yuelin said, stifling a laugh behind one sleeve in a feeble attempt to maintain some composure. "You haven't even got eyes, you vain, silly thing." Aside from disappointment that her magical charm had failed and had done so in such an anticlimactic way, she really didn't mind the mute company of the cloud. She should have realized when she had chosen exorcism and conversation, rather than more qualified methods, to rid the place of the "unwelcome" intruder. And a distraction from the tedium of running a shop and the dead-ends of her research was always quite welcome.
"Since you're probably Gaian, you were probably looking for something more along the lines of..." She pitched her voice to be bullfrog-deep, "Begone, foul shade!" Another pause, shorter than even the last brief pause, and she shrugged a shoulder, her voice returning to normal as she continued, "But really, exorcism has never and will never be my forte, so if you'd just agree neither to make any trouble for me, you might as well stay."
Yuelin didn't really wait for an answer--she thought she would be unlikely to receive one, anyhow, and she was right--before jumping down from her perch on the rafters for a graceful landing and made her way back to the pot on the fire. The cloud tagged along after her, darting at the bubbling brew as the healer murmured a chatty explanation of the different ingredients within.
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Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 12:21 am
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[ Guardian Journal Entry - Yuelin ]
It is so hard to believe that it has already been a handful of months since I first settled in this curious land, where people appear in all shades of the rainbow and where gold rewards emerge spontaneously for no reason more than sightseeing in the forums or window-shopping in the marketplace. Even with the language chip implanted in one of the dimensions en route to Gaia, I still find so many things downright incomprehensible. Language isn't the only barrier here.
Gaia is a generous land in the strangest ways. For all its latest immigrants, Gaia grants a free house, provided that you don't mind owning a house that looks like a third of the other Gaian citizens'. There's also a free shop front, a policy that doesn't seem terribly financially sound to me, but I suppose they think they can earn enough from the foot traffic of tourists and a two percent sales tax. Gaia's financial soundness aside, I've taken advantage of the shop offer to open up an apothecary, where I'm doing a surprisingly brisk trade in salves (especially for flame wars, which seem to break out a fair bit), cheap all-natural hair dyes, and children's medicines. Speaking of which, there are so very many children around that Gaia seems like a nation of babies, especially in certain parts of Gaia. Not quite what I was expecting, but as long as the money's coming in, I'm getting the last laugh.
There's even a free car that travels faster than the most fleet-footed of desert horses. Despite the speed and convenience, I still prefer the exhausting freedom of walking to sitting strapped into a purring metal cage. In a car, I always feel like I've been swallowed whole by a giant tiger.
Strangest of all is the free journal. "Something for you to share your life with your friends," said the clerk who handed it to me. I can't claim to understand. At any rate, the paper was so flimsy that the black ink from my brush stained a whole swatch of pages, and the way the faint rules lines run horizontally -- a snippy little voice in me thinks the stripes are definitely making the paper look overweight -- distracts me as I try to collect and compose my thoughts to clear my thoughts for meditation and martial arts practice. I'm writing now on paper I brought with me from my homeland, but the supply won't last forever. Something to remember as I wander the endless shop lanes.
On second thought, even the public journal is not half so strange as a little tag-along cloud, stained in the colors of an everlasting sunset. It drifts around the house and around the apothecary as I go about the business of life, and not a single apothecary customer in the diverse bunch thus far are able to see it, much less offer an explanation. First the alleged scroll of immortality, now a tag-along cloud--it's raining mysteries!
At least the cloud isn't tempting more people to waylay me--yet. Thinking back to those last days back home, I don't know if I was more disappointed that the would-be robbers hadn't been competent enough to give me a good fight, or that they all had cliched demands and threats that they couldn't back up.
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Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 3:48 pm
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[ Guardian Journal Entry - Yuelin ]
What makes a person, well, a person anyway?
I must concede (in strict confidence), I really am as terrible at philosophical discussions as my older brothers teased. It's still difficult to believe that they are now worlds apart from me. Months ago, I kept catching myself starting at some familiar words, only to remember the language implant and register that it was truly my native language that I was hearing filter through my mind.
But what I wanted to say was simply that, even if it really is only the loneliness driving me to think so, I believe that there's a sentience within the colorful little jin-yun. Well, here I go with the anthropomorphism. It's as if he's enjoying all the hustle and bustle of city life. The energy of people coming and going seems to have sparked some more liveliness into him. The first day he was here, he simply coasted after me, but lately he's grown a lot more curious, edging so close to the apothecary customers that I wondered how they remained ignorant of his presence.
With me, he no longer remains at arm's length but permits me to wrap my fingers around him. All I feel is mist, though the mist seems to be getting heavier, somehow without leaving condensation behind. (Which is for the better, I'm sure, because I've no idea how this new friend--good grief, I really am company-starved--will survive losing his already meager substance at each contact.)
I haven't entirely given up hope of finding out answers to this mysterious wispy presence yet, but thus far asking around circumspectly enough not to get myself locked up in some hermitage for the delusional hasn't been netting me any satisfying answers. The ones I've asked have rambled on about "evolving items" (which is puzzling, because Mr. Darwin's theory of evolution acts on populations and not individuals, I think) and "breedable and changing pets." Well, thus far, there have been no outbreaks of baby mystery clouds--how would you tell a cloud's gender, anyway?--and there has been no change in my tag-along's appearance. Plus, a cloud isn't exactly the archetypal pet. So specifics about what (or who) the cloud is will just have to wait.
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Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 11:34 pm
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[ Transition - From Reverie to Oracle ]
[ Harmonizing Qi, Jin's Way ]
He always got a little restless in the afternoons, when the steady trickle of apothecary customers thinned. Recognizing this problem never managed to diminish the restlessness; mind over matter, whatever his guardian said, did not always apply to rainbow-colored wisps, he concluded. This helplessness chafed at him even more today, so he zigzagged jerkily around and across the room in mute frustration and poorly contained energy.
The fidgeting escalated when Yuelin turned over the shop sign to read "Closed" and barred the doors for the night, because then he knew she'd read from that dusty scroll he didn't much like, then go on to meditation and balancing the qi within. And during meditation, there had been no way to follow her, to share what she was experiencing. He tried earnestly to listen, earlier, during the slow hours in the shop, to her explanation about what went on inside when she cleared her mind to let breath and energy course along the instructed paths through her body.
He had no body, he knew, but he was feeling contrary and oddly energetic today, so he wasn't inclined to accept that limitation. His head could just be this half of him, on the top, closer to the sun back in his mountaintop days, and his body could be the rest. Arms and legs and everything else could be figured out later.
It turned out to be harder to breathe in for the first time than he had anticipated from watching Yuelin breathe, but he succeeded in gathering into a denser core of himself. It seemed that that was the right thing to do, because then the tide of change rose and closed over him in earnest. And arms and legs and everything else bodily were indeed figured out, rather sooner than he had expected.
Once the changes had stopped, he was no longer one with the rainbow cloud but a separate individual within it. Everything was as it should be, so he deserved a rest.
***
Yuelin had heard the phrase 'a disturbance in the force' bantered around liberally as a Gaian joke, but it was no empty joke that had roused her from her meditative training.
Her rainbow cloud was swirling as wildly as a hurricane, but like a hurricane, gradually an eye of calm emerged at the center. Eventually the calm spread to admit a vision of a small boy, eyes closed in weariness, who sat down with dignity and curled up to rest against the inner curve of the colorful cloud.
"So I /had/ been too quick to dismiss the claims that Gaian babies arrive out of nowhere." Brown eyes studied the translucent rainbow cloud. "Babies have come out of stranger places, I suppose," Yuelin said at last, an undercurrent of helpless laughter flowing strong under her resigned words. "As long as you don't turn out like the Monkey King, I'm sure I'll manage somehow."
More conversationally, she added, "I've always wanted a younger brother."
Through the rainbow mist, he listened to the words and the ones that followed with his newly formed ears and took them to heart, even if he suspected that he wasn't understanding everything. Even if he did understand the literal meaning, he also thinks that she might be teasing, somehow. She does that quite a lot. Something to investigate. If only he could reach across the mist; for as long as he could remember, the mist had served as womb and home but now seemed more like a gilded prison. It would have to wait for a day when he was not so very tired, but surely the day would come soon. It had to, he could feel it!
Eyes fluttering open with excitement, he smiled, radiant with optimism. He was warmed in turn by an answering grin from Yuelin before she settled down again to continue her interrupted meditations.
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Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2009 11:50 pm
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[ Solo Entry (Jin) || Through an Oracle's Eyes ]
[ In which an Oracle reflects ]
There was so much to learn and discover that exploration held at bay the loneliness the newly manifested Oracle remembered as a drifting Reverie. He stretched out his limbs to their very limits, until young hands and feet pressed against the invisible barrier. Those heavy lids even cooperated to lift and let him catch a foggy glimpse of the world outside and the people there.
The boy realized after some time that only the young woman who had drawn him from the very beginning and who had smiled so warmly when he first came to be in this form was a constant presence. He was glad that She should be the one to always be around. He remembered the warmth of her presence at the very beginning and the radiance of her smile. Nonetheless, that she was the only constant still proved a matter of some disappointment for him, or at least his curiosity, for he did want to follow those other faces and see for himself how they lived.
He yearned to take another look at the clouds he had experienced one sunset, so distant from him and yet somehow so familiar that they filled his heart with a rootless nostalgia. Another night, when She was in a mood for astronomy, the stars seemed to sing out to him. The wordless song drew him to his feet, leaning against the round walls of his residence and straining against the confines to reach toward them.
For now, though, he simply resigned himself to the instinct and love that tethered him to the young woman. Just for now, he promised himself. There would be time for further exploration later. After all, She was able to walk around, free as She pleased, and perhaps he could too, one day.
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Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 12:11 am
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[ Solo Entry (Jin) | Prospects of Friendship ]
[ In which Jin encounters a spirit companion ]
When he had exhausted the repertoire of physical activity, he came to the most exciting realization -- that he was not entirely alone in his misty world. The realization came in a flood of relief. He was naively glad not to be alone, even if he did not know anything, for good or ill, about this other presence in his space (and of course it was his space, and his presence).
The first clue came after he had understood that either physics or his own will could control his body. A few times, however, the atmosphere shifted in the wake of some motion contrary to his own. When he looked up, there was a swirl of color near the topmost limits of his spherical confines. When the Other drifted down slowly into reach, he tried to pounce it, only to have it exhibit a surprising turn of speed and zoom right back up out of reach again.
While the winged orb hovered overhead, the boy crossed his arms over his chest and curled up again in the wake of this failure. He tried to preoccupy himself by staring at the parade of unfamiliar faces, but always his head would tilt back to regard the aloof orb, that enigma hovering so close, yet so far away.
His crossed arms hugged his chest more tightly whenever he could feel his hands twitch toward the Other. It would not do to scare the Other off again. Some things could not be rushed, and apparently relationships were one of these. He wasn't sure if he was a patient being, but in this moment, helpless against the Other's evasion, he resolved to be one. Disappointed but not much daunted, he committed to patience, contenting himself with studying the winged orb from a distance for as long as the orb would keep this up.
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Posted: Sat May 09, 2009 8:25 pm
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