Newborn Witch (1)
Having regained her body, Mi could only walk; she could no longer fly. She could climb trees, but only by gripping the branches with both hands and wrapping her legs tightly around the trunk like a monkey. She could no longer stand at the top of the tree because she always felt she would fall.
"How do you fly?" Mi asked, looking at Al and Joe standing in mid-air.
"You were walking perfectly fine before, what's wrong now?" Qiao didn't understand what was wrong with Mi.
“You need to walk with your mind. Right now, you can change your shape at will, and you have no weight. Do you understand?” El frowned as he looked at Mi. “Why don’t you try removing your legs?”
Mi looked down at her feet and said, "Take it away, take it away." Her feet seemed to melt, and then her legs merged into a pillar. Mi started walking forward, and then she fell down, her head hitting the grass. She lay face down on the ground, and as the grass that was about to poke her eyes hurriedly moved away from her head, Mi couldn't help but laugh.
El chuckled and squatted down: "I didn't expect that after you became a witch, you would revert to human habits."
Mi ignored her, began to straighten her body, and started spinning around trying to throw herself off. She flew out of the air, only to be caught by El in time. Joe stared in disbelief at El and Mi, El cradling Mi's head in his arms as Mi landed in a straight line into the misty forest.
After a long while, Mi finally rolled back like a small ball, her head nestled in El's arms as she said, "I can really get out now!"
El put her down, looked at the two balls in front of him, and said, "Do you know you'll get lost if you run out like this?"
“I have a guiding stone,” Mi said, pulling out her witch’s headband.
"Once you enter the Misty Forest, time in the outside world begins to pass. If you cannot return to Earth within three round trips, your body will become unusable."
"Once I'm out of the Witch Forest, can't I go wherever I want?"
“No, Mi.” El said somewhat awkwardly, “The guiding stone is your heart. Unless your heart has a strong desire, the guiding stone will not guide you. In your current state, you are lost in the Misty Forest, and the guiding stone will also get lost.”
“Yes, you’re a little witch now, you’ll get lost if you run around.” Joe emphasized from the side.
El and Mi looked at her together: "Don't scare her, she's not a child." "Don't scare me, I'm not a child."
Finally, El said, "At least you should learn to use your witch body instead of throwing yourself out there."
Mi began to flatten herself into a pancake, wriggling on the grass and tree bark. As she expanded, she began to envelop the entire Witch Forest, which responded gently to her; the dormant flowers were soft, and the mind trees were rough.
Mi stretched herself into a line, extending upwards. The gray clouds, like the sea, gently enveloped her, but no matter how hard she tried, she could never reach the seabed. For a moment, Mi felt as if she had become a drop of water in the ocean waves, drifting with the entire cloud layer. She had almost become a part of the sea of clouds, until El noticed that Mi's line was going further and further into the sky, and she quickly pulled Mi back.
"How did you end up in the Sea of Consciousness?" El asked seriously. "Once you're in the Sea of Consciousness, you can't come back."
For some reason, Mi thought of the scene she had seen at the beginning. The sea of consciousness and the sea before life appeared were so similar. She didn't know what the connection was.
"Is the sea of consciousness just chaos?" Mi asked.
“I know witches are born from chaos, but no new witch has ever appeared there,” El said seriously, as if a pair of hands had pulled the clouds away. “You’d better not try either, unless you want to give up becoming a witch, and of course you won’t be able to go back to Earth then.”
“Oh, okay.” Mi gathered her witch body. “Have you been to the Sea of Consciousness?” El shook his head.
“I’m telling you, the feeling my sea of consciousness gives me is exactly the same as the ocean before life appeared.” Mi thought for a moment, “Could it be that all life is born from the sea of consciousness?”
“I told you that the essence of shamanism is observation. Although a shaman may not see where the first life came from, the initial form of life is something that every shaman knows. What you are seeing is just common sense in shamanism.”
"Okay, I'll be careful." Mi bent over, wriggling like an earthworm. Mi was now a ball of grayish-black light, stirring the clouds in her sea of consciousness like a darker stick. She circled El many times, and El, standing inside the gray ball of light, looked more like a beautiful fairy.
Having regained her body, Mi frolicked freely in the forest, quickly mastering how to use it. Switching back and forth between the mist and her body, the ink droplets of the past finally returned, only now they were much smaller. Mi no longer spread out like a fishing net, but rather a fine veil of light, like a halo over a pearl, enveloping the entire Witch Forest.
In this moment, Mi forgot the canopy above the forest, the once turbulent clouds, and the blinding, knife-like lightning bolts. The texture of the forest grass changed once more; the soft blades were almost warm, the veins of the enormous leaves of the Mind Tree were visible, and the purple flowers played hide-and-seek with Mi, who had just acquired a body. Mi was as happy as a child, thriving in the Witch's Forest. In this moment, Mi understood a little of what El had been saying; it was as if she had returned to her mother's womb.
"Why do you have colors?" Mi was once again troubled by the gray mist rising from her. If she tried to condense it, she would eventually get a drop of black ink.
“I don’t know either. There’s no reason why each witch manifests, or perhaps we don’t know the reason,” El said. “Now you’d better learn some survival skills. Whether you go back directly or go to the outside world, you have to cross the River of Lost Paths and get out of the Misty Forest.”
"What's there?" Mi looked beyond the river, where a larger forest lay. "Is it the Misty Forest outside? Which is more dangerous?"
“Well, it’s hard to say. You can’t be considered to have left the Witch Forest until you’ve left the Misty Forest. The Misty Forest is the outer perimeter of the Witch Forest, and outsiders can enter. No one can predict what you’ll encounter there. The Witch Forest is hidden within the Misty Forest. Outsiders only see the ever-flowing river deep within the Misty Forest; they won’t enter this central area surrounded by the river,” El explained. “The Misty Forest has everything—animals, plants, and all sorts of creatures. In most cases, they won’t attack you unless provoked, but it’s not certain they won’t. Perhaps they’re just testing you. Either way, a witch with no defenses is in danger wherever she goes.”
What should I learn?
"Hunting? No, fighting." El thought for a moment. "And some basic survival skills, too. In the Misty Forest, you don't have to worry about food and water. Unless you encounter humans, you can go without food and water. But," El looked down at Mi's feet, "shoes. You need to learn to make shoes or boots. If you reach the border of the Misty Forest, it's best to have some prey so you don't look so, well, so 'controversial'."
"I see."
Mi began practicing with his sword, sometimes even practicing horse stance. El watched with great interest, discussing with Joe, "What is this? Have you ever seen it before?"
“Yes, this is called kung fu,” Joe explained to El. “In my hometown, there are many schools and various martial arts traditions. I never imagined that a young lady like Mi could practice swordsmanship so well.” Joe recited to El the poem “Watching Gongsun Da Niang’s Disciple Perform the Sword Dance,” beginning, “Once there was a beautiful woman named Gongsun, whose sword dance moved all directions…”
“Wow,” El’s eyes lit up. “Joe, I want to go see Earth.”
"Wait a little longer, just a little longer," Joe pleaded, looking at El. "El, please wait a little longer."
Since Mi began practicing swordsmanship, she discovered that her control had increased. She could direct her thoughts at will, and she could easily perform actions that were impossible on Earth. She seemed to have become a martial arts master, flying everywhere. The Consciousness Flower and the Mind Tree would dodge her sword, and the entire forest would twist and deform under her sword.
Mi used the ever-present grass in the forest to weave himself a pair of straw sandals. At first, he could only weave the soles, but slowly the basic shape of the shoes became visible. When Mi put on his first pair of straw sandals, there were six failed shoes lined up on the ground: "Very good. Newton had a third stool, and I have a seventh pair of straw sandals. That's how big the difference is between people."
Mi happily put on her new straw sandals, but when she lifted her foot, the sandals remained on the grass; she couldn't put them on. Aside from being able to take something from the witch's headband, she was like a cloud of light, able to surround the sandals, but unable to wear them. Only then did she realize that she wasn't actually weaving the sandals, but rather imagining how they would be woven in her mind, the grass forming all sorts of strange and wonderful shoes according to her will.
Al and Joe burst into laughter as they watched her, while Mi turned and glared at them, saying, "You guys lied to me?!"
Joe, feeling embarrassed, hid behind El and whispered a reminder: "Your clothes were your own idea, and so were your shoes." Joe secretly stretched out her feet to show her how her embroidered shoes had transformed into multi-layered soles and then into pointed leather shoes.
Mi ignored the two people who were watching her make a fool of herself. She stared at her feet inside the shoes, watching the skin gradually extend from the insteps, a layer of almost transparent light enveloping the entire straw sandal, then winding back from the sole, as if an extra layer of skin had grown on the outside of the shoe. Mi could finally stroll around freely with her straw sandals. El and Joe both smiled silently at Mi's act of wearing shoes on her feet.
El watched as Mi proudly showed off her new way of dressing and praised her: "You've discovered a new use for your senses."
"Senses?"
“The Witch Body is the body you use to perceive everything. Not only do you have hearing, touch, smell, and sight, but you can also see thoughts and consciousness, and then perceive all of this.” A wisp of blue light extended from El’s fingertip, circling around the trees of thought and the dormant flowers before arriving in front of Mi. Mi slapped away the ball of light, proudly raising his head. Blue dots of light surrounded Mi, like observing eyes.
With a body now in her own, Mi was finally able to step into the Valley of Fallen Leaves. The air outside the valley smelled of fermenting animal dung and withered leaves, a sour, rotten stench that almost made Mi, who was entering the valley for the first time and was ready to take a deep breath of free air, vomit. She immediately curled up into a small black ball and rolled back into the Witch Forest, her face contorted in a grimace. This witch body was covered in noses, and she stank from head to toe.
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