The winter tide had turned, and the first of the rains had come, washing the tiny reddened leaves down the channels of the dark mountains and into the wide river that meanders the plains.

Shen awoke around dawn, as he often did, with a damp chill about him. Nearby in the hut his father rested still, ever quiet in these winter mornings, and in this early autumn of his life. He regarded his father's mighty shape silently for a moment, the shape that defined his people, his home, and he took in the scents about him. He considered them for a moment, all the sensations of this place. The winter air was different this time, not in any discernable way, but in meaning. He thought upon the unshakable feeling he'd been given in parhen before the first rain: this winter would bring something different, something for him.

"Parhen vitan," he silently whispered to himself. There is no fear in what comes, so there ought be none now. So easy to whisper, he thought, so easy.

Silently, he made his way out of the woven hut, parting the thick grass mats that made the door, and went delicately through the trails amidst the bamboo to the riverside. The ground was wet beneath him, but the rains had abated for the moment, as they often did in the mornings of the early winter. He washed a bit, pulling the icy water to his face and arms, concentrating on the bite of its touch on his skin. Always the moment holds sweetness, he thought, sometimes most when harsh. He breathed a moment, crouched beside the river, listening to the few and distant sounds of the winter morning.

After a short while, he made his way up the trails to the fields above the bamboo to parhen. The sky was oddly a bit darker than he expected, and it seemed he'd risen a bit earlier than usual for a morning this time of year. Something seemed somehow different, too, as if the world were tilted just a bit from itself, and the sky invisibly fractured deep above him, like the untouchable cracks held clear within the purest ice. He slowed his pace a bit, but felt even more anxious to let himself fall away to parhen in the slightly unfamiliar morning.

Atop the first rise, on from where the plains rolled far and away to the distant mountains, he knelt wide upon the wet and rain-trodden grass, pressing heavily into the softened earth. He sat back upon his heels, and slowly stretched his hands down to the ground, pressing his palms against the floor. All the while, he held his back straight and head level, and narrowed his eyes into the slight morning wind. Into parhen he slipped, clearing his mind, relaxing his body into limber numbness, and listening. He listened with all his might.

The plain stretches wide beneath him, and under its damp soil he hears its heartbeat, low and slow, washing like waves of an earthen ocean hidden deep beneath the last of the autumn grasses. Upon it rides his minds eye, over immeasureable darkness, to the mighty crests of frozen waves far away, over which the hard rock of the mountains lays steadfast beneath a battery of the next wash of rains. Above it all moves the higher ocean of sky, slow but unwavering in this season, wet with the icy waters that somehow refresh the sleeping earth, filling the soil with life that will burst out with the return of the sun, and its warmer days. Through it all, though it seems as it all should be, there is something moving. Some huge and vanishing whirlwind, standing through both seas of sky and earth, slowly turns and fades, like the very last of smoke on a clear day, a thinning cloud of disturbed space settling back to rest. This is its second, and last, disturbance this day.

He sat deep in this sensation for a short time, feeling it settle around him, and his attention returned to his body. There was something nearby. Some remnant of the fractured sky, or part of it. Something physical.

He turned back toward the forest's edge, paused, and ducked down low into the shallow grasses with a smooth motion. He made his way across and back the field between the rise and bamboo, swiftly but quietly, searching for signs of something there, somewhere. In time, he found it, and froze.

A scent tinted the air low to the earth. It was an unfamiliar scent of something harsh and caustic, but not entirely unpleasant. He felt the shiver of life within the grasses nearby, just ahead of him.

He slowly rose to his feet, to find a strange man, darkly dressed in thick clothes, lying amidst the grasses, holding something odd aloft toward him. The awe and suspicion of the presence of destiny rapidly collapsed to mere confusion. Shen stood, frozen, until the man greeted him.

At first, the conversation was tense, unwieldly. The man was meditating, it seemed, and Shen had disturbed him, but the man soon seemed very accepting of it, and relaxed quickly. He was the epitome of a stranger, with heavy clothes made of tiny strands woven so tightly Shen could hardly see them, and of a race that was something clearly out of legend. His demeanor was simple, however, and remarkably warm, and there was something almost familiar about him. He was amidst vikanshen, he claimed, seeking, unsure of where his path was leading him.

Shen shook off the obvious questions. Focus on the moment, he thought, and on what he can offer this stranger in what must be a difficult time. The stranger wanted only some time, it seemed, and perhaps some help in finding his next steps. This Shen could offer, and he took peace in knowing that it would help him find his own peace from the nagging curiosities in his mind. Perhaps there would be time later to tend to them, if the spirits had brought this man for such reasons, but for now there was time to tend to him. His name, he had said, was Fletcher.