Druidic Cultivation | Ten

Lots of build up and future plot points, yay exposition. That's xianxia for you though, huh?

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“Hello, my little bird.” Feng Jiao had the widest grin that anyone had ever seen him with displayed upon his face at that moment. A warm feeling spread from below his navel all the way to his head, tingling his scalp and bringing tears of joy to his eyes. “I’ve missed you so much.” Tears began to fall from the young boy’s eyes.

“Hey there, little perch. Or should I call you Jiao’er now?” A young woman stood before Feng Jiao with mirth thick within her eyes. “I missed you too, even if I was within your spiritual sea all along.” She stood only five feet tall almost an entire head shorter than Feng Jiao and wore a long trailing red dress that was split at the waist on both sides, revealing slender pink legs. Her skin tone did not match the inhabitants of this world that Jiao had seen so far, closer to rose colored than the rest, and it reminded him of the first human he’d ever seen, the one who’d died near where he sprouted.

With a cute little button nose and thick red lips, she was extraordinarily good looking. She had wide hips and a large backside, a trait that humans seemed to appreciate, but had little going in the way of chest size, as flat as Feng Jiao was. Her hair had several yellow and orange feathers weaved in and was the color of freshly bloomed azaleas, held up in a ponytail that cascaded down her back and stopped right above her waist like a flowing river of lava. She noticed Feng Jiao staring at her body at the same time he realized his absent mindedness had cause a lapse in the conversation. Her pouty red lips tugged at the corners and parted, revealing two rows of shark-like teeth.

“I take it you enjoy my new look?” The firebird-turned-humanoid gave Feng Jiao a big twirl, causing her trailing crimson dress to flutter around her legs like a fire dancing through the campfire. Feng Jiao caught more than a bare glimpse of bare legs and backside.

“Yeah, I like it. If you were a human you’d make a great mate with such wide hips. Speaking of which, why do you look so much like a human? Last time I checked you were a little falcon, but you look a bit different, you know with the arms and all.” Feng Jiao decided that his martial spirit was marvelously cute. Apart from her child bearing hips, she had a very childish figure with a sweet face, apart from the spearhead teeth that was. All in all, she made a very pleasant image.

“Hmm, not sure!” She put a finger to her cheek and then giggled out a nonresponse. “You know, even if you hadn’t done your little ritual, I would have visited you tonight in your sleep. I guess I am so marvelous that you couldn’t bear to wait a second to see me, huh?” The terrifying grin reappeared, looking a bit different than what the bird thought it did. She struck an enticing figure as she walked over to Feng Jiao and put her petite hand on his cheek.

Not one to be punked, Feng Jiao raised his left hand to hold the one on his face and put his other arm around her waist. He swept her off her feet and leaned down toward her face, stopping with his nose a mere inch from hers. Just the look of shock on her face alone was worth the joke and Feng Jiao returned her shit-eating smirk.

“Of course, I couldn't bear to be apart from you for even a second longer. For ten very, very, long years, I’ve dreamed about you, my little bird. Even in my dreams you didn’t look so edible.” He made a biting motion to hint her in that he was just joking around. The little red-head’s face scrunched up and Feng Jiao stood her up before releasing her. She hugged her sides and stuck her tongue out at the young boy. 

“Little bird, my little bird…” Feng Jiao kept getting lost in her vermillion eyes, finding it harder to think. It wasn’t lust or love like he’d heard about, there was no reason to lust after somebody who was an unviable mate anyways, but he felt something. There was an inexplicable link between the two of them, a charged tension like the friction between clouds. He didn’t feel this way toward anyone else, not even his mother or father. It was a connection formed with life and death sacrifices and countless months of living as one. They’d both sworn a vow against the heavens, to either live as one or not at all.

Or it was just how everybody felt about their martial spirit, honestly Feng Jiao didn’t know. But it was reassuring to know that there was a being who synergized with him on a base level. A literal soul mate who had shared every fiber of their being with him.

Then he had a thought, “Do you have a name? Or maybe know what your race is? The ceremony overseer didn’t seem to know what you were.” 

“Pretty sure my name is Little Bird, no?” A tittering giggle set Feng Jiao’s heart racing again, “As for my race, it isn’t one of this planet, I think. In my past life I was an ember hawk, a close relative of the western Firebird which was, in turn, a descendant of the phoenix. Not the phoenix of this world though, or at least I don’t think. That little crane’s bloodline felt more like a competitor than family. Thank you for that by the way.” 

“Your name isn’t Little Bird, that’s just my pet name for you, silly.”

“I’m not a pet.”

“And that’s not the point.”

“Then what is the point, my little perch?” The impish girl squinted at Feng Jiao, obviously enjoying the word play. He assumed he’d probably enjoy chatting as well, had he been trapped as a spectator for ten years with no way to communicate with the outside world.

“I guess there isn’t really a point. I just wanted to know how other people would refer to you. You’re my little bird and nobody else’s, they’re going to need to figure something else out.” Feng Jiao sounded like he was joking around but was very serious. She was his little bird and nobody else’s. “I guess I’ll have to name you them, huh.” 

Feng Jiao put a lot of thought into a name for the fiery young lad. He considered Ember for a moment, but it felt too much like a pet’s name. Perhaps if she hadn’t appeared before him in a humanoid form he would have gone with it, but it felt wrong now. Xiao Jin was an option, little flame, but that sounded wrong as well. As he gazed into those deep red, glowing eyes, he felt a name come to mind.

“Aideen. Your name is Aideen and you are my little bird, little bird. Now what did you mean when you said you’d have to thank me?” Feng Jiao had known the name Aideen as long as he could remember but had no clue why. It was a name that had always brought with it a warm affection, even while he existed as an ash tree, and obviously had some significance.

“I meant thank you for protecting me, preserving me. I remember the hell just as clearly as I am sure that you do.” Suddenly the joking gleam vanished from her eyes, she was speaking to him from the heart. “Both of us experienced countless deaths, countless lives, and never-ending suffering. Throughout it all, all you needed to do was release your memories and surrender to the samsara, but you didn’t. Not only did you not surrender, you held tightly to me.

“You didn’t even fight that hard to hold onto your memories from your first life, so thank you, my little perch. I had long since given up, given up to the cycle of reincarnation. But you didn’t let me go. With your will alone, you held my soul together and bound it to yourself. Now, we are here together and its entirely because of you.”

“I don’t understand, I retained all of my memories from our last lives…”

“Not that life, little perch. Your first one. I was there when your pack was slain. Not in the dream, but during your first life. I saw the golden men charge into your liar and cut down everyone you held dear. From the skies, I watched as they piled countless humans upon you and coaxed what should have been your funeral pyre into a massive blaze. Without knowing who you were, I cried for your clan that day. I shouted your injustice to the heavens, angry for the gods who allowed so much wanton carnage.

“Then a blackened and withered hand pushed its way through the pile of charcoal and ashes. I watched as the smallest human there slowly pulled itself from the fires and saw the look in your eyes. You had died that day, but you refused to rest in peace. You stopped only to collect a seed and then set off toward the wilderness. I was intrigued.

“I followed you through day and night, an entire week without sleep. You walked, and I stalked. Don’t mistake me for a carrion feeder though, I just wanted to know what you were doing. I watched you force your soul through torture for another ten days and nights before dying. Until we were reborn in this world, I thought that you’d died there. Now, however, I am inclined to believe that you were that ash tree that I lived in. You just didn’t fight for your memories, throwing away your humanity. But for me, you fought. Thank you.”

Feng Jiao’s entire world was thrown into disarray. Aideen had told him that he lived once before but he didn’t have any memories. The scene she described, however, was one he was intimately familiar with. 

“So that body I absorbed when I woke up, you’re saying that was me? Why do you think that was me?” Feng Jiao wasn’t denying that he’d been a human before. A lot of his inborn knowledge had been very strange, things like his ability to wield a quarterstaff or knowledge of vegetable stew recipes. Having been a human before, that would just fit into the puzzle too well.

“Your magic. I never noticed you catching any as a tree, but I’ve been with you for the last ten years. You matured too quickly, you are too knowledgeable on the human anatomy, and your rituals are like those of the humans in our home planet. I think that you reincarnated as a tree but retained your skills, losing your memories.”

“Okay, I’m sold. It makes sense. I must have learned how to harness the Qi in our home world as a human and that is why it came so naturally this time. So, I retained my magic and you retained your bloodline, neither of us belong to this world. I never thought I would be an invasive species, but what should we do with this knowledge?”

The little girl threw her arms forward and back as she gained a thoughtful expression. “Well, I’d like to purify my bloodline and I want you to get more powerful. As for how to do that, the second goal is easier and should lead to a solution for the first. We need to game this so called ‘cultivation system’ and power you up. With enough power, we can figure out how to make me stronger.”

“But, aren’t you a martial spirit now? How could we improve upon your bloodline if you’re just a spiritual construct?” Feng Jiao wanted nothing better than to help his little bird get more powerful but did not understand how to do so. Empowering one’s martial spirit was possible, of course, or martial artist would stagnate due to slow cultivation speeds, but evolving them into a new creature? He’d never heard of that.

“If you say so, but I say that I am not a martial spirit.” The smirk was back. That was all that she said, obviously leading Feng Jiao along on a game. She had something to say but wasn’t saying it, baiting him along for her own amusement. Had anyone else done this, Jiao would have been annoyed, but it was cute when Aideen did it. Like a little girl asking a rude question, perfectly innocent.

“You got me, if you aren’t my martial spirit then what are you?”

“Half. I am only half of your martial spirit, and you are the other. With most martial spirits, they exist as only a fraction of a consciousness that had once lived. A beast dies, their memories are removed from the soul which is put back into circulation, and the memories form a consciousness. The god of samsara then puts the consciousness, should it be strong enough to survive separation of the soul, into a young fetus’s soul space. It is given new memories pertaining to its occupation as a martial spirit and retains only its personality.

“You didn’t get one of those though. Your soul refused to release me under countless years of torture, so the god just got fed up with us. They pushed you out into a dying fetus only a moment from death and I was sent along as baggage. You were intended to reincarnate and die right away, with no good deeds to speak of. Your karmic debt would be reset as soon as you died in this new life and the god would have been free to not reincarnate you. You would have been put on a shelf and left there for eternity, forgotten. You cured the fetus who was never destined to survive pregnancy. You were born.

“Your soul and memories filled out the vessel of a little human boy, but your ash tree consciousness, your power and spirit from your last life, had to find a new slot to slip into. It became your martial spirit and I accompanied it. This doesn’t mean that you have two martial spirits, as that would be impossible, but I am only half of your martial spirit and the other half is that little seed I gave you. Sorry about that, by the way, I needed to burn it in order to take its place and communicate with you. I think that when you get powerful enough, you’ll find a way to separate our souls and I can reincarnate into the physical world with you.”

“About that, I might already have a running theory on how to help you out. I don’t know how to gain you a physical body or improve your bloodline, but I think I have another hat that you can wear. Of course, you burned my other martial spirit to the ground so I’ll need your assistance cultivating until I can grow it back from the seed. Have you ever heard of an arcane familiar?”