"In order to mask yourself you must understand the breadth of your qi and how far it extends. You must make it work for you. It is a part of you,"

The Moon trainer of the day yelled at me as he flung pebbles at me. First I was to train to understand when they were coming. Then I would have to do so with my eyes closed. There was another issue.

My control was absolute dog shit. I wasn't able to dodge even the slowest of the thrown pebbles. Complete softballs just about bowled me over, all due to the strength of the thrower. Behind him, Moon Lee laughed. She knew my predicament well. In her best training whites she would every so often lob a larger pebble at me. Those I would be able to avoid.

In other words, in the world's worst game of dodgeball, I was the best game in town. It took all morning for me to get to a place where I felt confident in my ability to even sense the pebble. By then I was tired for the first time since coming here. My little Moon Spirit Min, had been cheering on my trainer trying to goad him to speed up.

"He can take it, he is a real man!" She said popping out to laugh at me for what had to be the thirtieth time.

"He does look that," Moon Lee said, her voice a caramelized version of its previous form,"It's quite unfortunate, given the circumstances. I mean he only just got through puberty and all of that."

My sparring partner from across the way chuckled at that.

"Truly?"

"No, I did not just go through a second puberty. This is not something that I regularly do, either," I said, trying to cut off her next joke.

She pouted. An immortal moon dream spirit with a penchant for snarky jokes pouted.

I could accept that.

The moment was over and I was once again in the middle of it. My form was okay if I'm to be honest, but my opponent was a speedy guy. I spent more time moving to keep him in view than I did defending myself. One could call facing the opponent a big part of the defense, but I was drowning in his jabs.

"Keep up," she said.

"Roger," I replied.

"Who is roger?"

I would have given her a look, or some sass but I was fighting for my life. Or well, it was non lethal blows, but they still stung.

"There are few men so slow and stubborn as you are, are you sure that you're not my ex husband?"

"Do moon spirits even have husbands?" I said,"Or just one night stands?"

"Oh, you wound me good sir! At least, I last all night!"

"Seriously," my partner said, "Do you two need a minute?"

"No," I said.

"Yes," She replied.

"Do you want to take a short break?" I asked the moon clan cultivator.

"Sure," he replied, "Allow me to go center myself. The two of you fight more than the players at the plays the Taoists put on."

I drew in a deep breath, attempting to center myself.

"Alright, you've got my full attention now."

"If you'll look closely here," she said, her form flickering to a view from outside the courtyard, "You'll see that there have been interlopers coming by every so often to check. They're probably looking for you."

"You say probably, but what makes you think that they are..." I trailed off.

She zoomed in on the upper lip of a female cultivator. There, briefly and in a flash of inspiration, a red fang popped up. It shone like a spotlight was place upon the brightest student of the class.

I weighed my response here. Going after this person would probably end up with more people being sent after me. Given what I already knew about the cultivators who worked for the Red Fang sect, I was highly ambivalent.

On one hand, the few people that I had met so far had been a terrible mix of competent and completely incompetent. It would only take one of them to harass me in the wrong way and then I'd be eaten by a demonic cultivator or something. I wasn't entirely certain how it worked, being new but I'd met a fair share of MLM-loving moms during my time as a competitive co-parent with my ex wife.

"You know already," I said, "and I'm not going to discount how or why you know. I don't know if we need to go after them personally, or..."

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I was trying to think up a way out of the situation. I was boxed in with the totems keeping higher realm spiritual beasts out and humanity in the walls. I would need to pay a lot of coin to pick up and go. I had my crew now, or at least we would see how it worked out but it would be something that we could or had to fix.

"Oh wait, the moon clan has asked them to leave. Just like a teenager, you're letting daddy moon solve your problems."

I spread my hands out in the universal gesture of displeasure. Well, universal back on Earth. Here, it just made people confused.

Min finally kept quiet for long enough that I was able to catch my breath. I then immediately went into hurriedly repelling the monk, pushing him back. I was completely ready for the next attack, circling to brush it aside. So long as he kept an even pace, I would be able to stick with him.

Then he sped up.

I cursed under my breath.

I found myself once again with the speed at just slightly faster than I could move. I might have reached the second realm, but he sat upon it. He was one of the few men that I really envied since I'd arrived here. With the ability to run away from any potential enemy, he could avoid conflict like a middle child.

I just couldn't avoid him.

It was good training though and by the time we were done, I was ready for a long bath, shower or soak in the tub.

"Thank you for the instruction," I said.

"You are most welcome," he replied.

We bowed at the same time. Bluey was still watching. I was hoping that she would have something better to do, but she just showed up and then stayed. I would have been okay with her not staying.

The eastern inspired architecture of the Moon clan courtyard drew my attention. All the little holes at about head height had gone from dark to bright.

I strode over to the wall, seeing that another moon cultivator was watching me through the gap. He probably hadn't been the only one, in any rate. Dozens of shuffling feet made it apparent that the other side of the foot thick wall was busy. It could have been several people or just two guys with extra feet, but they cleared out fast. By the way that prints lay ... I couldn't tell much. I looked at my budding moon spirit.

"They cleared out fast. Faster than you clear out after tea."

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Bluey got me a nice hooded robe to wear. The comfortable kind that was a cross between sooth sayer and snuggie. In order to get back without drawing too much attention, I feel into step behind her as we walked back to the safehouse.

The second floor of the tea brokers union local number forty five had been paid for by Moon Xiru. As his cousin, Moon Lee had made certain that the formation arrays inside were up to what we needed.

Or it was what she could have been doing while I was training, but instead she just waited until I was done to go with me.

"The tea brokers union either has a fourth realm cultivator in their debt, or they have paid a lot of Waan for this formation. It's one of the more thorough ones I've seen," she said as her moon shaped forging sickle examined the area.

"That's wonderful, I think?"

To my chagrin, while Min spoke volumes about me, her Spirit had either decided to take a vow of silence, or never speak. It didn't matter to me. I would pet it either way.

The squirmy moon spirit was slightly more three dimensional as I pet it. I was concerned about if it would be tangible or intangible, but my hand rested easily enough on it. Min was generally intangible and incontinent. It wasn't such a problem as I had no designs on petting her.

The blue heeler dog spirit sat contentedly on my laps, becoming just the right size. She was a good dog.

"It's good," she said before her eyes drew to her spirit," you know that I can feel everything that she feels, right?"

"I did not," I said, continuing to aggressively scritch behind her ears.

We locked eyes. She extended her aura, causing the dog to whimper. Min backed away.

"Who's a good girl?" I said in baby talk as I rubbed her belly.

Moon Lee couldn't help laughing as her aura immediately dropped back to a minimum. I laughed, she laughed, our spirits both looked at each other perplexed and shrugged.

"You don't get a lot of time to cut loose, do you?" I said, extending a hand to her so she could get up, "I have known a lot of strong women that have trouble taking time for themselves. You might not ... are you doing okay?"

She wrapped her arm in mine, steadying herself as she got up.

"I'm... doing well."

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"These people at the hospital they are the worst."

"Tell me about it."

"They're all, 'You got to believe' and the worst ones are like 'Everything happens for a reason'."

"Those are the worst!"

Ms. Kay has come to me as a referral. She was going through metastatic breast cancer and she had asked for therapy from someone outside of the normal referrals. Two calls later, and she had ended up in my office. There had been a lot of tears that first day, but we wanted to focus on the positive. She was relatively young, married but childless and her husband was supportive.

When her cancer took a turn, they recommended a few therapists that specialized in cancer. They were all either too 'woo-woo' or they just cried the whole time. Truth be told, I wanted to cry. She was only slightly younger than me and she had done all of this work thinking that she would be able to have a comfortable life and retire early. Now, she was writing her will and last testament and on her last series of chemo. If this didn't take, we would be hard pressed to go through her issues.

"Well," I said between sobs, "If anyone tells you that everything happens for a reason, you have every right to deck them. Tell them your therapist said that it's part of your care plan."

I doubted that she would. The woman was a kind soul. She was the sort that adults would have called an old soul when she was young, mostly because she had to basically raise her siblings. She'd spent the entirety of her twenties childless by choice because she hadn't wanted the commitment. In a way I was envious of her.

"I think that I might just do that," she said, showing her first genuine smile of the session. This has been incredibly difficult for me because people assume the worst always and.."

I let her sit with the silence there for a long minute. For the first few sessions we just yelled at the people that came up to her with well meaning, but displaced thought processes. But for today, we just connected on the musings of a woman punching out the people that dared to tell her that her cancer was all part of Gods plan.