Running. Running is all I could think of. Put one leg in front of the other. If I can just keep going a little longer maybe I won’t… I won't… Fuck! Just keep running. My legs burned. My lungs felt as if someone was taking a razor to their insides. My head pounded. I don’t know how long I kept it up, but after an unknown time of mindless pure running, I was forced to stop as my foot caught in a root, twisting, throwing me forward to face plant in the dirt and fallen leaves. It was through a haze of exhaustion and pain that I tried to remember what I was running from, but before I could make any coherent thought, my mind too fled me and I was left unconscious in a tumble beneath a dead oak.

    It was a woodpecker that woke me. A consistent poking pain stirred my slumbering mind until I jerked awake with a start. The startled woodpecker flew off into the foliage with a trill, and I was left wondering why I was woken by the pecking of a bird. I sat there in confused silence for all of five seconds before the events of my night before caught up to me. The panic returned and I scrambled to get back up to continue my fervent escape when a shape pain in my leg prevented me from doing just that. I looked down and immediately felt nauseous. My foot was definitely not supposed to go that way. I slumped back down defeated. I wasn’t going to make it. I was going to be found by that thing or eaten by wolves. I was consumed by panic and lay shivering beneath that oak until a piece of my mind that was just a bit stronger or smarter than the rest sought solace in a teaching my master had taught me when I was young. Her words echoed in my head as clearly as the first time she’d spoken them. “My child, look around you and find anything that moves. A leaf, a speck of dust, a cloud, rodent. Look at it, follow its movement and let your mind capture it. Now find another, and, without losing track of the first, follow it. Continue finding and following the world of movement around you until your mind can do nothing else but follow in its movements.”

It had been years since I had practiced that particular teaching, and it was harder than I remembered. I started with one of the scant leaves left on the dead oak above me. I focused on it and tried to understand its movement. Time and again I felt close, as if I could almost follow its pattern in the wind, but never quite got it. It wasn’t until an hour passed that suddenly the fluttering of the leaf was not random, but had a design. The movements were simple, how could I have not understood them earlier? With a sigh, I looked for another. I sought higher and found a slow-moving cloud. Now maybe after the first, my progress would be swifter, but I was a fool to think anything my master taught me would be as simple as that. No, as soon I tried to follow the movement of the cloud, the leaf would escape me and I would begin again.

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    I could not tell you why I felt compelled to perform this strange technique my master had taught me, maybe I was in shock and simply leaning back on something familiar. Or maybe it was something else entirely.

    Over time I became better. I followed the leaf, then the cloud. Then I added another. Once I mastered three I added a fourth. I continued this pattern as the day rose and fell. Finally, it became too dark for me to follow the leaves or the clouds, but my master had never said there was any restriction to what patterns I could trace around me, so I did not hesitate to simply adjust and instead follow the stars. I continued my mindless pursuit, not thinking or feeling… simply observing. The next day I turned my eyes downward and followed the movement of the grass. Each movement was unique and beautiful. I was entranced by the steady growth of the grass and at the same its dance with the wind. I was awed by the connected movement of the ants around me. It was all so much and I could not get enough of it.

It was on the third day that my bliss was ended. There were two events of note that happened that day. The first occurred at first light. As I was observing the morning routine of my friend the woodpecker, who happened to live in the tree next to mine, suddenly I felt it. The connection. It seeped through everything. It was heat, it was light, it was movement, it was life, yet it was so much more. It burned to change and to cause change. It raged and billowed through every single thing and at the same time, it was everything. In that instant, I felt connected and whole. Part of something beautiful and grand. And in that same instant, my body finally gathered enough energy to protest my extreme lack of care for it and I was thrown out of bliss and into reality. Pain. Hunger. Thirst. Those were the all-consuming feelings hounding my body. I needed to find food and water. To do that, I needed to fix my ankle.

I was an elf, and like many others of my kind, I had found the connection. I could heal my ankle, I could work magic. There was only one problem. This was the first time I had ever connected to the source, and I had no training in healing whatsoever.