GxG 3
Feeling the sun on my face, I thought back on the last 2 years.
I had my third birthday a few days ago. It went by without anything of note happening. My parents invited some of their friends who also have kids around my age, as well as a few of my dad's work friends. It was a nice party all things considered, and I liked the chocolate cake.
Over the last roughly 30 months my motes have caused massive changes to my body, even if most of them aren't that visible. My senses are beyond anything I could have imagined in my past life. Colors pop more. Outside smells like life. Hearing all the distinct layers in music takes it to a whole new level.
I am thankful I diverted training time to control though, the first time I ate boiled brussel sprouts was not fun. I probably would have thrown up if not for immediately dialing down my taste and smell. That was just proof my direction in training wasn't a mistake.
My Breathing and Body motes are something I am thankful for every day. I always feel like a million dollars. Being able to run and play without any joint pain and burning lungs is worth more than you can ever think of. In my last life I wasn't even sick or anything, but the comparison between the wear and tear a normal twenty-ish body has and a divinely crafted child is literally the difference between Heaven and Earth.
I have also decided to follow a more xianxia archetype, at least very loosely. I'm clearly in a modern world, and unless I'm in some weird American urban fantasy genre I don't think I'm going to be seeing any cultivators any time soon. It's more of a general direction for me to follow, and I mostly just do it for fun.
You should have seen the face my mother made when two year old me hit her with a very regal "This young master demands uppies". I thought she was going to have a stroke she was laughing so hard.
It hasn't been entirely sunshine though. I'm getting real sick of kids my age. It's not even like I hate their personalities or something. I understand they are kids and all that. Its the never ending drool and snot they spread like paint on everything they touch. Enhanced senses means I notice it all the more and its gross.
There was also a close call when we went for my routine doctors checkup. Our doctor was getting a little too excited about how healthy I was. He was muttering something about me being a perfect case study for healthy children and hitting every milestone and marker he knows, which is not something I wanted. Being under observation by a bunch of doctors would have shown very clearly my body is not quite normal. Thankfully a well timed tantrum got us out of the doctor's office and I managed to convince my mother that I don't like doctors so she denied any follow up.
Still I have never regretted my choices. Forwards is the only direction for me.
Back to the present, I had managed to convince my mother to take me to the local park. It was not particularly hard, as the weather was nice and she was done with all her chores.
I have come to know we live in an older suburban area. Lots of large trees that are not present in new neighborhoods. The park near our house must be paid for directly by someone because it is very well maintained and I always see one or two gardeners whenever we visit. It has walking paths through more forested areas and even a stream cutting through the center of the park.
It's a real classy place, and right now it is perfect for what I want to test.
See, recently during my nightly meditation I have been feeling weird. At first I thought our house might have a carbon monoxide problem because I was sensing vague wisps of something. It took some playing around, but I figured out I only sensed the wisps when I synced my breathing with what I could only describe as the flow of my body. Matching my breathing to my heartrate while deep in meditation caused those wisps to appear at the edge of my senses, but after a few weeks of trying different things I was not able to really do anything with them.
My current plan is to try a different location than my room, and my only option is the park as I don't go to daycare.
Arriving at the park, I turned to my mother. "I'm going to the play structure!"
"Alright, just don't go where I can't see you" she gently chided before walking over to the other parents near the benches, who were all watching their own kids and talking.
Quickly taking that for the permission it was, I scampered to the part of the play structure that was both on the ground and enclosed, mimicking a little house with little windows and a door. Making sure there were no kids close to where I was, I sat down and entered a meditative state while adjusting my breathing.
The difference was immediate. What had been a few wisps at the edge of my senses was now an ever present mist. Taking a moment to observe how the mist rolled, flowed and folded in on itself was mesmerizing. I spent probably 10 minutes just observing it all with my minds eye.
It took a while to notice, but the mist was almost certainly metaphysical in nature. My reasoning for that is how it interacted with the material world. Opening and closing my eyes to compare my vision to the mist revealed it definitely interacted with physicals objects, but was not bound by them. I could see the mist clearly flowing through the ground and while it was clearly disrupted by the nearby trees, it flowed by them all the same.
Spending a moment to sense the mist directly instead of trying to sense all the mist in the area caused me to have an epiphany what it could possibly be.
It was nature.
I had two reasons for thinking that. The first is how much denser the mist was in the park versus deeper in the suburbs where our house was. The second, more important reason was how it felt. It felt like grass. It felt like rain. It felt like rotting leaves. It felt like an ant crawling across my han-
Nope, that was just an actual ant. Taking a moment to wipe it off and making sure there were not any other critters near me, I got ready to try my next experiment. I was going to try and interact with the mist, using the universal method of exerting your will upon it.
aka thinking REALLY hard at it.
It took a moment for anything to happen, but I eventually dragged a single wisp out of the mist and brought it to myself. Just doing that had brought me over the moon, but much like Icarus, I flew too close to the sun.
Wanting to see what happens if I touch a wisp, I brought it closer to me until it was almost touching my skin where it was suddenly absorbed in an instant.
I was wrong. The mist wasn't a happy nature. This world raged. It hateshatehaTEGENOCIDEMURDERDESTROYRAGERAGERA-
[LINE BREAK]
"Nate baby, it is time to go home." I heard a voice, but I was too out of it to care.
"Oh my god Nathan are you ok? You look terrible!" ah, that was my mother. I must have passed out after absorbing that wisp.
"water please." wow, everything hurts. With the upgrades to my body I have not been sick yet in this life, and it's like its all hitting me at once to make up for that. My mother quickly took a water bottle out of her bag and I gulped down a few mouthfuls. While I was doing so, my mother pressed the back of her hand to my forehead.
"Oh baby you're burning up. lets get home and put you to bed"
"Yes please, mom." I couldn't agree more. I wanted nothing more than to sleep right now.
[LINE BREAK]
We ended up rushing home, I guess I really worried her. To be fair I have not been sick once before and I don't think she knew how to deal with it.
After getting me another cup of water, my mother took my temperature and then tucked me into my bed. I had graduated from my crib a while ago.
Before I went to sleep though, I want to meditate for a moment to check my body. While I don't have anything like a cultivator's divine sense to check every cell, my enhanced senses combined with my deep meditation would at least let me find anything too abnormal.
Abnormal it was. I noticed it as soon as I started looking. I had talked about a flow in my body before, but that was more like a vague metaphor. Not this though.
It was like a fire had been lit. All through my body this heat flowed, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. It was pervasive, everywhere within my being.
Much more importantly, the moment I noticed the heat I felt a new mote click into place.
Ki
Oh boy, this was going to be fun.