My father would always repeat the same thing to me after every review of the first movement, "Spend your childhood being a child". Then he would tell me to rush off and play with friends. He had reviewed me several times in the last month, and said that I was making progress. I wasn't sure what that meant. I could do the first move in my sleep at this point, but "I had more work to do", as he would say. I would listen to what he said, and I would run to the center of the village to find Arial.
Arial was the only child my age in the village. All of the others were either a few years older, or a few years younger, but Arial was born the very same month as I. She was smart, and had raven colored hair that was long and straight. As I think about her now, her eyes held an age that was far beyond her years. They would look troubled at times, lost in thought of another time and place. I could always find her sitting under a tree at the commons. She would be studying old scrolls that her father would lend her. He was the village healer. The scrolls would have diagrams of the body, and lists of herbs and plants that could aid in healing, and ways to best use them for the right effect.
"Hello Arial, what are you reading today? The best use for tree bark?"
"No, my father gave me one of his advanced scrolls today. It's going to tell me how to turn you into a toad."
"What? You can't really do that. Can you?"
"If I figure it out, you'll be the first to know."
That was another thing about Arial. I could never tell if she was speaking truth or jest. She was always calm, and her face would never show emotion.
"Did your father send you off to play again?"
"Aye, he said that I should spend my childhood being a child again."
"Right he is. Why do you spend all your time swinging that sword around when you could be studying like me?"
"Because swinging that sword around is more fun than reading dusty old scrolls."
"Well then, run along and play with the kiddies then. I have studying to do."
"You should spend your childhood being a child too, or have you already grown to adulthood? You are a whole 12 days older than me."
"Aye, and us adults don't have times for the likes of you pesky whelps."
We both burst out in laughter. This was our normal greeting to one another, and it was our way of picking fun at the elders that would sit in the commons gambling at dice. Whenever we would try to watch and learn the game, the would say something similar to us. Arial claimed to have already learned the game by watching from a far. She tried to teach me one day, but I could never get it. "You're smart, but you are so thickheaded", she would say to me. Learning was never my strong suit, and I didn't need to learn much about scrolls and kingdom history seeing how I was going to be a knight.
I explained that to Arial once, and she looked at me and shook her head. "Don't you mean you are going to be a blacksmith like your father?" She asked me. Her tone was the tone she would get when she was talking to someone she knew she was smarter than. "No, I'm going to be a knight". "Either way I don't need to learn all that other stuff." I added. I knew she would changer her tone to something a little more friendly when I would do that.
"What is the scroll about." I was curious this time. It seemed to be a much older and elaborate scroll than any she had read before.
"I already told you what it is. It's going to teach me how to turn you into a toad."
"No it's not. You're father wouldn't show you anything like that."
"Alright. It's not about that, but it is about developing a connection with the aether, so that you can use it to speed up the healing process in a person that is sick."
"The aether, what is that?"
"You don't know what the aether is? You really are thick sometimes. The aether is the substance that is found between the living realm and the dead realm."
"If you don't want to tell me, you don't have to make up a tale."
"That is what it is. Here look for yourself." She thrust the scroll at me to read. I was slow at reading but I knew how. I began to read and the title on the top of the scroll read, "Healing with the Aether". It was real, I had never heard of such a thing, but it was right there.
"How does it work?"
"It takes a lot of practice and concentration. It says that everyone has a connection to the aether, but you have to work on it to be able to use it. It's like you swinging that sword around day in and day out. I've watched you, you've gotten very good at it. This is like that, but its done by sitting quietly and concentrating until you feel a pull on the top of your head."
"Have you felt that pull?"
"No silly, I've only just started reading this today. My father wanted me to read this, it's more about the history of using it. There are many more scrolls that he had, that teaches you what you have to do to get to a relaxed state to make the connection pronounced in you."
"How many scrolls are there?"
"He told me that there were eight of them. Each one teaches you a specific mantra that you must say in order to get in a meditative state to reach out and tug at the aether."
"Mantra? What is that?"
"It's a series of words that you must say over and over until you attain a level of enlightenment."
"Enlightenment? This is too much for me to understand."
"Enlightenment is another word for understanding, but it's more than understanding. It is more like a whole body feeling. You understand it in you head, and you feel it in your body. Once you achieve that, you can do things you never thought you could."
I just couldn't understand what she was saying to me. I knew that you could learn things from scrolls, and you could feel things by doing, but not learn and feel by sitting and saying something.
"When my father gives me the first of the eight scrolls, I'll share it with you, so that you can learn as well. Who knows, maybe it will knock your brain around and you will want to learn more about things you find in scrolls."
"I doubt that, but I'll give anything a try."
"What could it hurt if a sat still and said something for a while. I was spending my childhood being a child."
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