There’s Graphics, and animations, and parodies, of course.

  How can you tell a story without audiovisual?

  With words alone?

  That’ll never work.

  - Sibsil Creed, Stories of Shurwinn, (2772)

  Dream Journal

  All was dark except for the candle floating just out of reach in front of me. It was thin and long as my forearm, cream colored and warm and lit with a gently flickering flame. The light was a soft glow, and I wanted to reach out to it.

  I stretched towards it, but I was floating too. And then I fell forward, face down. Falling, falling, falling through fire.

  There was fire all around, and everything burned. It was scorching, and I needed to get away. I had to reach. I reached out and tried to grab. What could I hold on to? I was falling through fire and reaching, stretching.

  Then there was an arm around my waist, pulling my back against something cool. I was cool, and there was no fire.

  I was safe.

  And the arm around my waist felt so good. So good. I was safe, and it felt good. I leaned back, then I was awake.

  I jerked awake in my new bed at Media Monastery, my heart racing, and my breaths slowed as I came alert. There was no fire; I was safe. I closed my eyes, remembering the arm around my waist and how good it had felt.

  So comfortable. So familiar. Like I belonged to someone and was home. I reached for my Dream Journal.

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  Just before sunrise, I made my way to the large dojo behind the kitchens of the monastery wearing my usual black tights that came to mid-calf and a tight tank.

  I'd braided my long wavy hair in the Shurwinn fashion rather than my customary twist, and I wondered what it would be like to be in a dojo where no one knew my martial art.

  My first morning at the monastery was sunny and bright. The night before, I'd arrived to my residence just before dark having resigned from my Garden Apprentice job in town and settled into my new lodgings.

  My Work Acceptance had several months before it expired, and residency at the monastery counted as employment because we were expected to do odd jobs around the campus, even though we weren't paid a salary.

  It cost almost nothing to live here, and the meals were included, but I'd brought plenty of fresh produce with me and stored it in the kitchen in case their meals weren’t like mine. No one had minded that I stocked the fridge with personal bags.

  Arriving at the dojo, I found people forming into lines. I didn’t see a master or leader, but at some unspoken signal, everyone began moving in unison.

  I tried to follow from the back row, clumsy and awkward, but I wasn’t the only person out of my depths.

  The students directly in front of me stumbled a lot too, but the people towards the front and to the left were confident and capable.

  Breathing through the series of postures, I tried my best, but it was completely unfamiliar. It felt less martial and more dance. Or acrobatic.

  We were on the floor a lot more than I was used to, but as I watched the more adept students, I saw how beautiful it was.

  At a certain point in the flow, most of the students in the eastern part of the room filed out, but the others—“the adepts,” I called them in my mind—continued into a more difficult series of forms. Or “flow," as Glorian had called it.

  They moved through all kinds of difficult balancing postures, and it was a sight to behold. I tried to copy with them since I was very limber and flexible, and I had strength from my own training, but balancing and twisting myself into pretzel forms was too new.

  As the practice came to an end, I saw a kid I recognized mixed in with the adepts. It was the boy whose thoughts had been completely closed to me when I’d walked home to my casita with that basket of berries!

  He saw me looking at him and waggled his eyebrows, so I shook my head at him and rolled my eyes. I wanted to talk to him, but he winked at me and ducked out the door.

  Greeting the sun had been decidedly awkward, but it was a fascinating flow, and I wasn’t going to give up. Even if I looked really stupid and out of place and there was no one to guide me into what to do, I'd go back.

  I’d keep going every morning until I was among the adepts.

  And maybe, just maybe, I'd see the kid with the silent mind again too.