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I wasn't sure I'd ever write something like this, but my LaoShi asked me to share a little of myself, so here it is. I was born in Buya, though I don't remember much of my earliest years there. What I do have is more like a dream than a memory, sitting quietly beside a woman I believe was my mother, watching the wind move through the trees. I've never been certain if it truly happened, or if it's simply something I've held onto because I needed it to be real. Either way, it's the only piece of my past that feels like mine. Growing up, I never had much of a plan. I apprenticed as a tailor for a time, learning to work with my hands, measuring and cutting and stitching things into shape. It suited me well enough, but something about it always felt too rigid, too fixed. Cloth doesn't bend the way I wanted my life to. Eventually I left that trade behind and became an apprentice scribe instead. I liked the quiet of it, the patience it demanded, the way words could hold onto thoughts I didn't know how to say out loud. It was during those quiet hours of scribing that I started noticing things I hadn't before. I'd watch the wind curl around a doorway, or feel how still a room could feel compared to how alive a meadow felt with a breeze moving through it. I didn't have words for it then. I just knew some places made me feel steady, and others made me feel unsettled, and I wanted to understand why. I found my answer, or at least the beginning of one, in the wilderness between Buya and Kugnae. There's an open field there where sheep graze peacefully, and the first time I stood in it, I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time, calm, whole, like I wasn't just passing through the world but actually part of it. That feeling is what led me to the Geomancers. I didn't come looking for power. I came because I was tired of only skimming the surface of things, and I wanted to understand what moved beneath it. Since becoming a Xuesheng, I've been learning to put words to what I always sensed but never understood, Qi, balance, neutrality, the elements. My LaoShi taught me that neutrality isn't simply standing still or refusing to choose a side. It's restraint, not passivity, knowing when to hold back and when balance truly calls for action. That lesson changed how I see everything, including myself. I used to think stillness was the goal. Now I think it's only half of it. I don't know everything about my past, and I may never know for certain. But I've stopped needing that certainty the way I once did. What I do know is where I want to go from here, deeper into this path, learning to read the world the way the earth reads itself, and maybe, someday, helping someone else find their own footing the way this path is helping me find mine. I'm still early in this journey. But for the first time in a long while, I feel like I'm walking toward something instead of just wandering. <3 Sevenofnine <3 | |