I did my best to focus because Montadie was teaching us how to cultivate while we moved. It was even more difficult than trying to catch moonbeams with my paws, and the dawn arrived long before I had managed it for more than a second. It required more of the dreaded mental stillness. Perhaps only one time out of ten I could shut out all external influences, narrowing my focus inwards as I took the barest step forward. It was a delicate balance. Qi cycling, beautiful, perfect. One step and everything would shatter. Still, it was something to practise for next time.

Yawning, I bid my fellow students farewell and set off home.

The lesson had been less rowdy than usual, everyone a little disturbed by the soul-dead tree I had discovered. I looked closely at the trees as I passed, at the wisps, at the birds, wondering about their souls. Where did a tree keep its soul? What did a bumble-bee soul look like? Did it have one soul of its own, or did it share it with the hive?

What did my soul look like?

Disquiet chewed at my belly as I padded back through the marshes, and leapt River’s gushing form without barely a glance at her waters.

I was feeling …vulnerable. While my cultivation was coming along very nicely, I was well aware that I was at the mercy of the presence of light. The shadowy interior of that dead ash was yet another reminder. If something had burst out to attack me, I would have had no qi to assist me.

My affinity was powerful, and while I was at my cottage I usually had access to either the sun, the moon or a fire. Very, very occasionally I had neither, but so far I had coped by falling asleep right at the bottom of my Maud’s bed after biting her toes. Outside home it was a weakness.

I arrived home and sank into a cosy chair, deep in thought.

I did not want to be weak. The blustery clouds had nearly been my undoing even this night. Sooner or later the weather would work against me, the horrible, dreaded winter would come, and I would be forced to confess my shame in front of the entire glade. No light, no cultivation. I eyed the trees outside, which I could just see through the window. Their leaves looked a little sickly. Were they changing colour? Wuot had told me that was something to watch for.

Everyone kept reassuring me that the turn of the seasons was normal, that this happened every year, but this seemed completely unreasonable and unnecessary to me. Why could things not stay the same? I liked everything as it was. I had been suspicious of their stories at first, thinking that they were teasing me, but Mama assured me that it was true. It sounded horrid.

The leaves would turn orange, then fall to the ground. The days would grow shorter, the sunlight would fade, the nights would draw longer. Rain, and something even worse called ‘snow’, would fall almost constantly from the heavens. I shuddered in my chair. It was the stuff of nightmares.

Montadie said snow and ice qi was interesting, and had many applications, but it was made of water. I didn’t like the water. Not at all, and it didn’t like me.

Alas, that the the passage of time was currently beyond my ability to control. Still, there was time for me to adopt other varieties of qi. Shadow still seemed difficult, the antithesis of my natural affinity. Water was unthinkable, but I thought forest qi or earth qi would be something I could approach? Metal qi was just…metal. I had no feelings about it, and it, apparently, was neutral on the topic of small, gorgeous cats. Outside of Maud’s kitchen there was not much of it around anyway, so I dismissed that too, for now.

My mastery and understanding of sunlight qi was now almost absolute. Moon, fire and I were on excellent terms. Gathering star-light qi remained a challenge so I decided to focus my attention there for the meantime. I would ask Moon to introduce us.

She did - at least to those stars bright enough to withstand her radiance.

I waited for them on the roof, and at the tops of tall trees, and on grassy hills where I could see them clearly. The stars proved slippery companions. Faint. Bizarre. Alien. Each was an individual, their positions in the heavens constantly changing, their talk confusing and layered. They were difficult. They were aloof, and their attention was as fleeting as a sparkle on River’s rapids.

The stars did not care for my singing as the moon did, if they even noticed. I sat for nights staring at them, and at long last one or two of them noticed me. Their attention was like brushing through cobwebs. Some of them told me they were very tired. Their light was weak, unsure. Perhaps they were already dead, they whispered? I did not understand. How could they be dead if I was looking at them now? Their qi smelt… of cinders and cold things I did not recognise.

Others were turbulent, enraged, impassioned. I listened to each carefully, and did my best to console them. One by one the stars whispered their dreams and thoughts to me and I told them mine. I was not completely sure what they were, not that it mattered. In the end I decided they were ancient fire-folk, cold burning fae, or perhaps lost gods, seated in the air, far from home.

Together we philosophised, and I cultivated, moving my body bit by bit. After days of work I could take some steps without losing my concentration. Weak though the star’s energy was, it was still something to sustain me when all other lights faded, in the deep darkness of Moon’s monthly absence. And the preciousness of it made it feel special to practise with. They liked that, when I told them.

I thought, perhaps I would grow to understand them better as I grew in power and wisdom? Mama tells me it is inevitable, Wuot says she is not so sure, but she was a very rude goose. Still, I sat happily amongst the stars on cool nights and dreamed of flying and chasing and hunting and I was content.

Come daylight I would train some more, specifically concentrating qi in specific areas of my body while moving. I wanted to be able to harden a claw, or my teeth, or my leg muscles. If I could not do it in motion then it would not be particularly useful. With the sun’s help I was soon able to do it while walking, although I bumped into more than one tree at first. Even a step had been enough to jolt me out of my concentration. Then, slowly, I could pick up the pace, and run. It was all very difficult.

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It was impossible, I declared to Mama, who merely smirked.

“What is impossible to a cat?” She had said, before continuing to wash her whiskers.

After several days of intense practice I could take two steps while cultivating. Then three, then a dozen. I had to train a small piece of my mind to do it, cycling qi through my energy pathways while the rest of me was occupied with other matters. Still, it was progress.

My first summer was now gone, passed in a warm haze. I had loved the sun well, and the sun loved me. It continued to love me, but I could feel its rays weakening. I meditated, I cultivated, I trained. Now, if I was very, very careful I could catch a bird while cultivating. As long as I did not have to do anything too unexpected along the way.

I lost another life, or two, in the usual manner of felines - falling out of a tree, once falling into a bog. The bog experience did nothing to dispel my distaste of water, or of mud. The tree was…a misstep. I climbed too high, too fast, and misjudged a leap.

Flight could not come too soon for me, but it was fine, I still had six lives. Six lives was plenty. Mama told me cats need so many lives so that we can play - the trick is to learn from the experience, and I was certainly learning.

Losing a life is a curious thing. To most living, breathing creatures, death is usually the end. Only the lucky few are born as cats. If you are even luckier you are born a black cat with nine lives, like me, so even by cat standards I have had more than my fair share. They have all been excellent. Even the first - but as I was saying, losing a life is a curious thing. There is a wrench, like an upset stomach and briefly the world flickers from shade to light and back again. That is all. Somewhere a tiny silver bell rings and you are renewed.

Since cultivation ultimately leads to immortality, and even the lower levels grant increased lifespans, I decided not to worry overmuch about losing the odd life here or there. As long as they were well spent. This is probably why I was already more advanced than my fellow students. They had to be cautious where I could be bold.

I would have pitied them but I had better things to do, like chasing butterflies. And exploring. With my cottage at the heart, my territory now stretched out in an ever growing circle encompassing forest, and hill, and dale and marsh. All of it mine. All of it interesting. The bulk of my kingdom was wild woods, big enough to hide monsters and cultivators alike.

I could not spend all my time cultivating. The cooling nights filled me with wanderlust and I stepped far and wide with only the stars for company. I explored every inch of my land in a widening arc, climbing all the trees, nosing my way through each and every cluster of ferns and every bush.

It felt important to know everything. Most of the woods were filled with animals, Small Folk, and the occasional two legger. A few monsters lived far to the south, where the land grew steep and craggy. Monsters were animals that had gotten interesting in ways I did not fully understand. Some of them were cultivators, most did not belong to a sect. Some were full of madness and rage, these ones I gave a wide berth. Giant mutated bears, or wolves that had followed an unnatural path, I mostly left them to themselves, merely noting their presence for future sparring purposes.

The monsters who were not lost in their madness tended to cluster away from two-legger settlements, which was only sensible. This I could respect. Too many two-leggers was icky. They made everywhere smell funny and built buildings everywhere. They also seemed to take great glee in hunting monsters, so it was important for them to hide. Most of them were Awake.

The majority didn’t spot me as I slipped through the shadows, a mere slip of a cat on a dark night, practising my stealth. This was probably for the best as I was not yet a monster myself. I did, however, come alarmingly close to losing my fourth life, one chilly, windy day, when I accidentally disturbed a nesting gryphon high on a craggy bluff.

Determined to reach the top of the cliff, I was practising my climbing skills, and watching the air qi swirl in interesting little eddies around me. We were not friends yet, but we knew each other were there. From this height I could see for miles and miles, the forest outstretched and green in all directions, the branches below undulating with the autumnal breezes like stalks of grass.

I plopped down onto the nice sunny ledge without realising it was occupied, exhausted from my climb. Suddenly my vision was filled with cruel, hooked beak and piercing golden eyes. The gryphon’s head was bigger than my entire body. She was beautiful, and very proud, despite having a bird head.

“Is there any particular reason I should not eat you?” the gryphon said lazily, “or throw you from the cliff?”

Peeking around her I could see her nest, littered with bones. To my delight I realised the gryphon’s body was feline. It was most becoming, golden, tawny and powerfully muscled, even if the feathered head was off putting. This gave me courage. We were kin.

“You would regret eating such an interesting creature,” I said, stoutly. “It would be a waste, and I would have to come back when I am grown and teach you a lesson.”

“And how would you do that?”

I explained to her about my lives.

The gryphon started to laugh, a weird, rasping sound even worse than Montadie’s jovial utterances. She told me she was bored, waiting for her young to hatch. She seemed interested in me, and I was certainly interested in her.

Once I was reasonably sure she wasn’t going to eat me, I settled on the edge of her nest to soak up the sun and ask questions. After spending so much time chatting to stars the gryphon was delightfully earthy. I told her of my dreams of flight. We had a nice chat about patience, and about aerial hunting methods. She offered to give me some flying lessons once I acquired wings. This was accompanied by more of her rasping hilarity but Montadie had said I must search for a master. Even if the gryphon was only half feline, I think she would be a good choice.

Other monsters in the vicinity were less welcoming: fire lizards, shrieking harpies, all of which I successfully gave a wide berth. I also discovered some rather foul smelling ruins which I left alone, and a really good squeaker hunting patch next to a nice pond. I spent some days there sharpening my hunting skills. Mental stillness needed repetition after all.

After I had finished hunting the local population of squeakers to extinction I roamed east where I found more trees, and a few isolated two-legger dwellings. Dotted here and there - they were stone shacks clustered together with ordered gardens - as if the neat rows of carrots would keep the wild of the forest at bay. None of these gardens were as interesting as mine, but I inspected them all diligently, and dug a few aesthetic holes.

Like the monsters, the majority of the two-leggers did not see me pass. I was not sure if they were Awake, but I did not really care.

To the west of my cottage, River flowed wild and fierce, forming a natural barrier to the lands beyond. The water carved a steep gully out of the rock at the spirit’s passage. The two-leggers here had built a bridge to ease their passage and I used it as well.

Across the bridge the land changed. It became… domesticated.

Though I disliked the word it was fitting. The land was flat and bordered with fencing or walls or hedges. The animals were all chickens or cows or sheep. The occasional fox slunk between the hedgerows but there were no bears or wolves. The trees and crops were arranged in neat rows, the houses bunched up together.

Two-leggers were everywhere. So many. They seem to like living like this, I began to understand a little of the mean toads’ disdain. Not that I would ever admit it to them. There were some interesting smells though. I kept exploring further and further, my curiosity insatiable.

Around this time I made two interesting discoveries.