Series: Traveling Home — 4: Healing «

Bound to Life

The Living and the Dead I wake alone in the round, soft bed, surrounded by my childhood home. I’ve slept here for the last few days. It’s so strange and familiar at the same time.

Sleep slides away. I walk out onto the porch, and fill my lungs will the cool morning air. I [...]

Away The city fades, and the weight of the world falls away – wars, schedules, and questions. Shazira, Tzina, and I escape it all for three days, hiding from an uncertain future. Talking, traveling, and laughing together.

We open our hearts to each other, trying to forget a long year apart. Our time together [...]

Gifts and Mastery – 2

A Different Path My life turns toward Flow, and becomes filled with masks and transformations. 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 [...]

Listening and Healing

Listening My whole life, I’ve circled around a dream of healing, hiding from a voice that whispers: “You are born to heal.”

I’ve always been an outsider, looking through a window, at a clear, bright world, never finding my place, never reaching for the door. I am Yagrin now. There’s no more time for [...]

Storms and Voices

Voice of the Storm I sit quietly on an island and watch the waves and the clouds in the distance. My perch is a ring of small hills, covered in green and flowers. I learned of the island from the old ones. It reminds me of the sacred hills in Tshuan, though the hills [...]

Lessons and Betrayal

Twin Visions The brief contact with the Jiku sphere of mirrors takes my strength. I feel the smooth stone under my Jiku body, as my awareness returns to the marketplace, but only for a moment, just before I collapse. I sleep, but without peace. A vision comes and takes me.

I fly quickly through [...]

Healing the Watchtower

The Curse of Moonwatch The full moon comes every six weeks, too soon for the guardians of the Watchtower.

The tower shines every night and drives away the Krale. The full moon saps the strength of the tower, leaves the sky unprotected, and gives birth to the night we call moonwatch. Two guardians, a [...]

Thunder Voice

Stone The world feels broken today, as I wake, but what does it mean? Usually, I love greeting the sun, but now I have to push my way through it. I eat almost nothing for breakfast.

“Are you sick, Yagrin?” asks Shazira. “You barely eat, and your smile is gone.”

I scan my body [...]

Golden Eyes

Guild Circles Two days after moonwatch, Shazira sends me out of the Watchtower. “The guilds will never follow you, Yagrin, unless they know you.” “Go meet them.”

I spend two days in the city, in the marketplace, the parks, and the guild halls. I’ve spent time with the healers, teaching the thunder voice, but [...]

Dream Schools

Artists The artist’s guild has one leader, one name, and pretends to be one guild, but it’s not. The guild binds together many familiar visual and performance arts: painting, drawing, sculpture, pottery, digital imagery, story, theater, song, music, and dance. One art remains that only energy masters can perform. FlowSong, an art form built [...]