Gifts and Mastery - 2

 
A Different Path
My life turns toward Flow, and becomes filled with object transformations and masks.
There are five hundred common masks to learn.

I know a little about energy masks.
Shazira once taught me how to shape a mask and float it on my energy body.
It covers the pattern body like a golden garment of light.

The mask doesn’t penetrate the energy body, but it binds to it.
When the mask takes hold, your physical body vanishes.

I remember the excitement when my body was replaced by the animal body of a twikul, a great hunter.
My thoughts weren’t directly affected, but I felt the emotions, sensations, and physical desires of the animal body.

Masks only work on beings that have a pattern body and a fire body, like the Jiku or Bizra.
And the effect is temporary.
If you don’t release the mask, it breaks down in a day or two, and your old form returns.

Most masters hold a mask for a brief time only.
The emotions and physical drives of an animal can easily twist our thoughts, and drive us to kill.

The transformation patterns are more powerful, more dangerous, and permanent.

A flow master transforms things, plants, and animals, but not herself.

There are an infinite number of transformation patterns, but only a few thousand that are studied by the guild.
The Bizra helped the early masters to select patterns for the guild.

It takes years of practice to become fluent with the patterns.
And much of that practice must be supervised by a master.

Shazira expects me to spend weeks practicing each group of patterns with her, before she’ll let me practice on my own.
“And I can’t move at your speed,” she says, “so you’ll have to slow down to practice with me.”

This is the traditional way, the safe way that an apprentice learns.
A distorted energy pattern can bring forth poison gas, acids, viscious animals, or countless other sources of death.
The master watches as the apprentice creates the pattern, and reshapes it, as needed.

But there’s no time to follow the regular guild path.

“Let me practice on my own,” I suggest.
“If something goes wrong, I can rebuild my Jiku body.”

“It’s wrong, Yagrin, to treat life so lightly.”
“If your body’s life means nothing to you, how will you fight to protect other lives?”
“All life is precious, a gift from the creator.”

“Perhaps, the next time your body dies, you may not be able to return to us.”
“And what about the world around you?”
“Your practice is dangerous to every living thing.”

“I’ll go far away, Shazira, so I can’t harm anyone.”
“Let me try it for a day, and see how it goes.”

“Go,” she says, clearly upset with me.

“It’s not you, Shazira.”
“I just have to do this quickly.”

“Go!”
“You’re not Jiku any more.”
“You don’t need any of us.”

“Go off by yourself and become a master.”
“But what kind of master will you be?”

She changes, and flies away before I can answer.
I take deep breaths to slow my heart and calm my emotions, so I can turn my attention to the training.

 
Masks and Memories
Patterns.
I must fill myself with the transformation patterns.
They are found in objects or living things.

Apprentices hold each object in their hands, and let our energy eyes fill with the patterns.
Then we practice, creating the pattern, over and over.

The guild libraries have large collections of pattern objects.
But many of the objects are too fragile to handle at Gen speed.

And not all of the patterns are found in the collections.

There are two hundred patterns that no one learns any more.
The Bizra called these hidden patterns, and said that they are the most important patterns of all.
But not why.

They were once found in rare plants.
But even in ancient times, the plants were nearly impossible to locate, found in dangerous, distant places.
Who knows if they still exist!

Someday, I will chase the hidden patterns.
But not today.
Now, I must train.

I focus on the Gen within me, and shift my awareness to operate a thousand times faster than a normal Jiku mind.

Then I reach into my memories.
Some of the old ones who shared their memories were flow masters.
And I have their memories of transformation patterns and masks.
Even a few of the hidden patterns.

But the shared memories are hazy, fragmented, the patterns within them unclear.
They feel like they’re stored in a slow place, far outside of me.

In ancient cubes, the masters speak of the far mind and near mind.
The far mind and the near mind are stored in the pattern body and physical body.
They also live an imprint on the fire body, that survives the death of the other two bodies.

The near mind is what we think of as our conscious mind, with our normal memory.
The far mind includes our unconscious, and a nearly unlimited memory.

There is also a fire mind, large and powerful, strange to our conscious mind.
When we die, the fire mind rules us.

In the Gen, the fire mind remains hidden.
We can call upon it for help, but we can’t experience it directly.

Shazira is right.
I’m not Jiku any more.
When I let the physical go and live as a fire body, my awareness is little changed.
The fire mind remains hidden.

The far mind stores the memories that I absorbed from the old ones.
I need to make a clear path to those memories, so I can use the patterns to practice flow.

I focus on the energy well tied to my heart.
It touches all three bodies.
I reach deep into the well, and ask for the hidden intelligence within me, the fire mind, to bring the other minds together, so I can see the patterns.

Energy spins within the well, and I see two pulsing stars.
These are energy structures that hold the two minds.
A river of energy spins between the stars, and weaves them together.
The patterns fall into my near mind, one by one.

Balshown taught me how to internalize the twelve mother energy patterns.
All energy patterns are combinations of these.
Balshown won’t say where he learned them, only that today’s masters have forgotten them.

As each transformation pattern enters my mind, I ask something within me to find the mother pattern within it.

The mother pattern lights up within the larger pattern.
And I wait for a feeling. a unique movement of energy.

This tells me that the pattern has settled into me.
After this, it’s easy to use it.

At Gen speed, I complete the recall and registering of transformation patterns in a few hours.

But learning the masks is more difficult.

It starts the same.
I call on the fire mind to bring each mask to me from the memories in the far mind.
But the masks don’t settle into me.
Unsure of what to do, I practice using each mask to change my shape.

I feel clumsy as I practice the masks.
I have to repeat each mask hundreds of times before it becomes fluent.
Even with Gen speed, this takes too long, almost fifteen minutes in the outside world.

After an hour of this, I’ve learned only four masks, and my energy and attention grow weak.
I search my memories for another way, until I find a learning trick from one of the old ones.

I pull the mask into my mind’s eye.
I imagine every energy flow in the mask a hundred times brighter and faster than normal.
Then, I see the mask covering my fire body thousands of time, like a mosaic.

The fire body is untouched by the thousands of identical masks.
But the mosaic causes the mask to spread deeply into my memory in a few moments.
Then the mask seems to race across my pattern body, and take hold.

After that I practice floating and releasing the mask ten to fifteen times, until I’m fluent in it.

Shortly after dark, I complete the practice with the masks and patterns.
I slow down to regular speed, and feel the physical exhaustion in my body.

 
Family
I come back to my parents’ old house.
Shazira, Tzina, and I are staying there now.

Shazira looks at me.
“Are you sick, Yagrin?”
“You look terrible!”

I laugh when I realize how foolish I’ve been.
I can reshape my physical body in a moment to any age, and any physical condition.

I restore my body to the way it was this morning, full of energy.
But I keep my new memories and skills.

“How do you do that, Yagrin?” she asks, as she sees me transform before her eyes.

“I reshape my body at will,” I tell her, “even to a younger age.”

“Can you do this for others?” she asks.
“Do you realize what this would do for healing?”

“I’ve never done it for others,” I answer.
“You were right,” I tell her.
“I’m not exactly Jiku any more.”
“What works for me, might kill a Jiku.”

She looks troubled.
“Shazira,” I tell her, “whatever I am, my heart is still bound to this family.”

She takes my hand, and squeezes it.
We eat a wonderful dinner with Tzina, as she excitedly tells us about her day.

All night I dream of masks and transformation patterns.

The next morning, after breakfast, I show Shazira what I’ve learned.
She seems upset with me.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“You spend a day to get skills that took me years to master!” she says.
“I shouldn’t resent you for it, but I do.”

“Think of it differently,” I suggest.
“The old ones gave me a gift.”
“They put themselves in a beautiful prison for a thousand years so they could pass on their knowledge to us.”

“They are like our parents, and brothers and sisters.”
“They left their families and lives behind, so they can protect us in times to come.”
“They have made us their family.”

“As I have made you my family,
“All that I am is yours.”
“And I will find a way soon, to share all my gifts with you.”

We hug for a long time, and a happy calm settles over both of us.
Two days later I pass the test for flow master, as Shazira watches and smiles, so proud of me.