7. Reflection

With the Xian delegation out of the way, I could finally relax a bit. I used water techniques to clean out and then heat up the expansive baths in the sect, the same one that I had had my first full-body soak in when I’d first arrived. I was still luxuriating when Hien Ro arrived, flying over the compound looking for me. I flared my Qi to announce my presence, and he arrived a moment later.

Without a word, he joined me in the bath, and we relaxed together in quiet companionship.

Finally, however, he broke the truce.

“How did things go with the offworlders?” he asked.

“I have five invitations, and I must send either an avatar or a representative to five members of the Emerald Court. While they are phrased most politely, it’s clear that refusing any one of them will result in an enmity or a perceived insult on behalf of the snubbed party,” I said. “How bad are things elsewhere?”

“You know that better than I,” he said. “You’re the one who can be everywhere and see everything.”

“I stretched myself too thin preparing for the night when the stars went black,” I said, shaking my head. “I could barely pull myself back together. If I hadn’t saved Adan when I did and found my true self, I might have been lost.”

“As you say, Master,” Brother Ro said. He sighed and stretched in the hot water. “I forgot how pleasant these baths were. It is so hot down south that you don’t appreciate the hot water the same way as you do in the north.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “How was the battle with Mioji?”

“He was strong, but we were expecting that. We couldn’t win, and we withdrew once we recognized that. He found that objectionable, but was polite enough not to smite us out of spite,” Hien Ro reported. “How much longer are you going to stay up north? I don’t understand why you’re here in the first place.”

“For the fresh peaches,” I answered.

He blinked at me. “What? You mean that tree in the forest? I thought it was chopped down.”

“I planted a new one. It will blossom soon, and in five years the fruit will be ripe. It’s already a spiritual tree. A second generation spiritual peach tree. It’s seeds are quite valuable. I wonder if the guests will ever realize just what sort of fortune they choked down their gullets.”

Hien Ro blinked. “They ate the pits?”

I nodded.

He laughed.

We continued to soak for a while, then got dressed. With nothing left to occupy my interest in the north, I flew south, towards the rebuilt city of Resh Fali, where the refugees of the north had finally stopped fleeing from the undead five years ago. The line in the sand, the place where Di Ram and his followers had said ‘not one more step.’ The place where the Ko Ren had fallen, and the place where I and Atla had arisen.

My new home.

~~~~~

Colors. Images. Blood. Death and birth, hunger and satiation. That was what it was to be Atla. A million sensations from a million minds and souls all at once. But one soul stronger than any other, and one soul linked to the center of the developing ego that was constantly bombarded by all of those other things.

They were not good things, the linked one had said. And they were not bad things. Sometimes good things happened and sometimes bad things happened. It was not for Atla to judge the things that happened, for that was up to the forces of heaven. It was up to Atla to make things grow, and to give them a chance to live their lives.

When things died of old age, that was good. When things died to feed other things, that was good too. When the plants were eaten that was good, and when the things that ate the plants were eaten that was good too.

It was not good when men killed other men, but it wasn’t Atla’s place to interfere with that. That was a heavenly duty and Atla should simply turn a blind eye. It was hard, but Atla tried to follow their father’s advice.

But secretly Atla did things to people that they didn’t like. She cut off the Qi flows to their meridians, stunting their growth and making them weak. It did not stop them from hurting other people, but as everyone who was good grew stronger and stronger now that Atla was awake and half of Atla’s Qi wasn’t being siphoned away, the evil people were growing weaker and weaker.

Atla hoped that their father wouldn’t mind that they did that. He told them not to worry too much about what people did, that they should focus on growing their Qi big and strong so that everyone could prosper. But Atla was able to see many things at once. Atla was able to be many places at once. It wasn’t taxing to curse the bad people and bless the good ones, and so that is what Atla did.

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And Atla also loved their father very much. He was a very wise man, for all that he joked that he was not, and he was teaching Atla to be a very wise world.

But something had been bothering Atla recently, and it was something that was not easy for them to put into words.

~~~~~

Di Sana sensed her son returning home and quietly put on a pot of tea. Her eldest son, not the younger one. Her younger son walked the bronze path, despite being only thirteen years old. But that was not the accomplishment that might have once been. Instead, it put him as merely average for his age in this new and crazy world that she lived in.

Di Sana, formerly Po Sana before her marriage to Di Ram, was the mother of Little Bug, or Po Guah. That wasn’t his real name. She smiled. His real name hadn’t been spoken in years, she thought, and she wondered if he would even remember it if she called him by it. But he liked Little Bug. It ‘reminded him who he was.’ She had been ashamed when she had let the nickname take root when he was small, but it had turned into a kernel of his identity, so she could not keep blaming herself for that failure forever.

“Momma, Momma, big brother is coming,” her little one said. Her youngest daughter, who was only six years old. Her last daughter by her first husband, before he was killed in a senseless act of brutality by a cultivator.

She turned away from that line of thinking and began making the tea. She timed it just right so that it had finished steeping when Little Bug and Hien Ro entered the house. Her little one ran over to her big brother and was rewarded by being swung up into the air and swirled around like a bird. She shrieked with laughter.

“Now let’s take a look at you,” Little Bug said, setting the girl down and examining her with his other senses. “You have entered the energy gathering realm since the last time I saw you. That’s very good. Has someone shown you the Peach Blossom Dream yet?”

“Yes, brother, but it makes me dizzy when I try it,” she said.

“It’s very difficult for a little one like you, but keep trying. You’ll grow into it with time. Do not rush cultivation too much, little sister, because some things are meant to happen in their own time,” Little Bug said.

Di Sana shook her head. This young man was so different from the quiet and withdrawn boy that she remembered, but yet he had her husband’s jaw and her eyes, and she felt his love for her when he smiled at her. A smile that she remembered from when he was small, even if he did not.

“Mother, mother, I dreamed I was a fish,” a small voice from the past whispered. “I got very big and the villagers speared me and gutted me.”

She shook her head. There was nothing that she could do to give advice to her past self on how to deal with a child who had grown up, so she should instead focus on the man that he had become. So she poured the tea, and they sat as a family, with Hien Ro acting as a favored family friend.

“How was the guest you entertained?” Little Bug asked her.

“Delightful once Elder Sister Tonilla got her speaking of poetry,” Di Sana admitted. “Before that I sensed her sensing me quite invasively when it was admitted that I am your mother. It was rather rude, but I tolerated it in silence.”

“I apologize for that, Mother.”

“It wasn’t you who was scanning my colon,” she said, shrugging. “I am grateful that she didn’t cause more of a fuss than she did. I heard that one of the merchants in the streets has closed his stall, and now I don’t know where to buy starfruit. It’s quite inconvenient.”

“Tell me, mother. What is holding you back from stepping on the golden path? You have reached the point where it isn’t power. Is there anything I can do to help you step forward?” Little Bug asked.

Di Sana swallowed. She shook her head. “I fear that I lack the insight to take that step in this lifetime, beloved son,” she said. “I hope that my eventual death will not weigh too heavily on your soul once I leave you behind.”

Little Bug was silent for a moment. “I will love you forever and always, Mother. I thought once that I would be able to sever karma with you, and I see now how foolish I was as a child. But when death parts us, know that it is with joy that I will look upon the memories of our days together.”

He laughed. “Do you remember the night when I broke the merchant’s light stone, and you scolded me for bathing in filth?”

She laughed at the memory, and for a while they spoke of happy days gone by.

~~~~

That was it!

Watching Father speak of things with his family, while the little girl that was Father’s kin played nearby, sparked something in Atla’s growing mind. That was what they was lacking.

Atla had a body. The body was large and rocky and hot in the middle and full of Qi and covered with plants and animals. But that wasn’t how Atla saw themself.

Atla saw themself. as…

They couldn’t form the picture.

Slowly, it put all of its mind towards the problem, but it quickly realized that it needed help.

So it reached out to the voice that always answered back.

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