Character Fiction/Moving In

Written by Xathanon Released on March 15th, 2020 Moving In As Spring began, the first came around, and enough was enough. Mei had been arguing with her mother for plenty of time - Guang’s daily rituals for the Feng Shui of the old abandoned warehouse couldn’t be properly tolerated - whatever she did made it impossible for Mei’s own magic to work, despite their shared tradition. The mana barriers were disturbing her own sense of the elements that they were both trying to master - as every magician of the Wuxing tradition is trying to master. Mei for her part was leaving parts everywhere as far as Guang was concerned - pieces of decks and commlinks that were just getting in the way of the flow. They agreed that it was time to split up. The new place wasn’t so bad. A little bit cramped - she barely had what amounted to an indoor bike rack for her Scoot™, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a living area in between with a pseudo-kitchen and a couch. But despite the lack of a mana line like before, Mei’s mojo was already working better in this more empty environment. The bedroom wasn’t large enough for the lodge, but the living area would work. The housing contract had been specifically negotiated to let her place the Bagua where necessary - and with the door oriented to the East, the place was perfect for channeling the Azure Dragon energy - the eastern flow, from the sky. With the standard polarity line dividing the apartment on a line of symmetry, the lodge was easier than ever to set up. The last box unpacked rather fast - Mei doesn’t have all that many things, but before even minutes had passed after she opened the last box, she was already in the Matrix, a small pile of electronics already spread out in an ‘ordered mess’ around her armchair. Soaring through the virtual world in a safely AR experience, she found her mother’s icon with ease in the calligraphic interface. The 妈 character had been highlighted since she got her first commlink. She sent her mother an image of the now-set-up apartment, captioned, ‘Told you my searches would find a good place.’ Something was floating around in the edge of her virtual vision. She concentrated - calling upon her teacher’s power to see the truth, she dipped her soul into truly seeing the elements of the world, and slid up the visor that gave her AR feed to see a flickering astral form standing before her. The night was going to get more complicated already, she knew, and a spiritual pair of ornate, horn-rim glasses faded into visibility on her eyes, accompanied with a 目 character over her head. The avatar spirit led her outside, where, from her lowly apartment in Renton, she couldn’t see much of anything except the eternal rain thudding against her jacket, the street, and the rooftops… and then she realized why. With the language of her mother on her lips, she drew elemental magic into the most complex spell she could access. “Never Deal with a Dragon.” More than any other advice, that phrase had been drilled into Mei’s head while training with Guang. She didn’t really know why it was so focused on, but she was told never to deal with a dragon, never to associate with dragons or dragon-related people in any way, and to stay away even from organizations with dragon-like names - like the Red Dragon triad - and affiliations that were run by dragons, such as Saeder-Krupp. And then she had been taught to call forth the special traces left by dragon magic to her spiritual senses… The spell concluded, and the feedback from the focusing act hit her like a sack of bricks - so much energy needed to be channeled into the spell, just for peace of mind. There was nothing in her apartment that had a trace of dragon magic. Nor above it. Nor below it. Nor even nearby. No dragons. An unconscious weight was lifted from her mind, despite the hefty force impelling her to nap and sleep off the spiritual drain inflicted by the spell. So she did; “safe” in her home… for now.