Willow hated moving.

  Scratch that, she quite liked the act of moving most times. It produced a joy in her like no other. Running, jumping, and doing cartwheels were some of her favorite activities.

  What she hated was travelling to a new home.

  The need to pack up her belongings. Sorting between what would and would not be kept.

  The loss of familiarity.

  “Cheer up, child.” An ephemeral voice called from the internal space linked to the crown of her head.

  “If you are to join the group known as the Wanderers then you will have to get used to such travels, yes?”

  Willow sighed.

  “I suppose you’re right.” She sent back to Harmony, one of seven spirits that were bound inside of her.

  “Not sure why you wanna join them in the first place.” Harmony’s brother, Change, complained from his space between Willow’s brows.

  “I still don’t trust that Mu woman. Something about her is off.” He continued to grumble.

  “She’s a little odd, but so am I, so it'll be fine.” She sent back to her friend.

  Scholar Mu was the wanderer that wound up answering her community's petition for aid with a demon that had been terrorizing them.

  And she had made an offer of apprenticeship to Willow.

  One that the girl had accepted with little thought.

  From what she had been told, Wanderers were largely considered heroes by the people of the Allied Clan Territories. They were able and willing to deal with problems that the clans largely couldn’t be bothered with so they were well loved by the common folk.

  It sounded like exactly the kind of organization Willow wanted to be a part of if at all possible.

  A place where she could learn how to help people and be a hero like the ones from her mother’s stories.

  She looked around at the makeshift caravan trundling through the great forest, following in the path of Scholar Mu’s great snake spirit beast.

  The trees themselves shifted and moved from the serpent's path, not felled by the beast’s strength, but instead controlled by their will.

  It was a frankly fascinating display of power and finesse that Willow was consistently mesmerised by. The way the wood qi swirled and writhed like the serpent it came from, each tendril commanding a stationary plant to get up and move from their path, it was almost breathtaking. Though it also seemed a tad rude to the plants if she was honest. They were here first after all.

  She wondered if she’d be able to do something like that some day.

  Willow pulled out her newest friend, Andrea, from their space bound in her throat.

  They were a floating little poppy flower, and they liked to dance and spin in the palm of her hand. Honestly the story Willow had used to give her a name didn’t fit the little wood sprite at all, but it had seemed appropriate to the way she had gotten them.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  In the story, Andrea bound a powerful serpent beast as part of her quest for revenge.

  Whereas her new friend was born from the great snake currently clearing a path.

  All she had to do was agree to a little poking and prodding from Scholar Mu as she studied what happened when someone bound a spirit of every element. Something that the wanderer claimed had never been done to her knowledge, and she claims to know a whole lot.

  Willow felt that what had happened when she bound Andrea was actually pretty neat!

  Even now she felt the currents of energy flowing between the internal spaces of five of her friends. The flow followed the cycle of elemental creation that Willow had been taught. Fire to earth, earth to metal, metal to water, water to wood, and wood to fire.

  With each cycle the current grew just a little stronger, and the spirits within each space grew with it.

  Harmony and Change had started the process with minimal warning once the wood sprite was bound, but since then it had continued without stopping.

  Willow trusted the twin spirits of yin and yang when they claimed the cycling of energies within her was perfectly safe.

  They were her friends after all.

  A large and calloused hand rested on the top of Willow’s head, interrupting her mental musings.

  “Been staring and sighing at your new spirit an awful lot. Something on your mind?” Rumbled the voice of her father from his space next to her.

  Rowan was a large and well muscled bear of a man with a big bushy beard and storm grey eyes. Though lately whenever Willow saw him her gaze would inevitably drift to the stump of his recently lost right leg.

  A casualty of the demon attack.

  “Don’t wanna move.” She grumbled to her Da.

  Her petulance just caused a flash of a smile and a hearty chuckle from him.

  “Can’t say I’m a fan of the process either, but it’s a necessary evil.”

  The girl pondered the new expression, and found she didn’t like it.

  “No evil is necessary.” She confidently told her father, which just made him chuckle more.

  “It just means that some tasks need to be done, even if we find them unpleasant, sprout.”

  “Ah, like chores.” She nodded sagely at the revelation.

  Which just got a full belly laugh from Rowan. “Yes, Willow, like your chores. You have to do them even if you don’t like to. This move is necessary, even though most of us don’t want it to be.”

  The fact the spirit beast that had guarded their small settlement had shifted into a demon of rot meant there wasn’t anything that could protect them from the many beasts and spirits that inhabited their little valley.

  He tousled her mop of curly hair and the two of them continued gazing at the passing scenery for a few moments, the swaying steps of her father’s spirit beast comforting her as they moved among the shifting trees.

  “Gonna miss everyone.” Willow eventually confided to him.

  She didn’t want to leave her family behind as they settled in a new home, in a strange and unfamiliar place.

  But she was apprenticed to a wanderer and so she had to follow her master in her wandering.

  “You can always wander back home for a bit of rest, our door will always be open to you.”

  That made her feel a little better, even if it still didn’t fix the core problem.

  “Did I do the right thing? Didn’t even talk to anyone before I said yes to being her apprentice.”

  Her father was silent as he processed his youngest’s question before eventually responding.

  “Well you know my stance on it. It’s safest for you to be with them, rather than staying with us. Your aunt will come around eventually.”

  Her aunt Jieun had not taken the news particularly well when Willow said she’d accepted the wanderer’s proposal. Said it was foolish and dangerous to tie herself to a group like the Wanderers. Especially when she was only eight winters old.

  Her father had taken Jieun aside and told her something that seemed to only make her more mad, but she hadn’t tried to talk Willow out of her decision after that incident.

  She worried about her aunt’s emotional state. She had recently lost two friends to the demon, and had only just begun to heal when Willow dropped this on her. Plus with everyone almost constantly on the go she couldn’t find a good opportunity to spend time with her.

  Willow really hated that they had to move.