Across Different Lifetimes and Different Realms to Find You

Island

Creatures from skies and seas came to visit, most of them sprites just like herself, and one special winged fox demon with cute fangs, brought forth stories outside from their island and from the neighboring islands. TaoHua felt that she had so much to learn and they gave her information about fantastic realms such as Heavens, Underworld, and mortal that her island peers hardly knew much about. It did not occur to her at that time that her so called 5 limbs was actually looking like those beings spoken about. Information and even gossips about the fairies and demons flowed, and also the human drama in plays, TaoHua listened to them voraciously and later wrote them on leaves with burned sticks. She wrote many books, made of leaves bound with twines. Her leafy books were popular and many came to borrow.

DaShu saw the increasing sprites and beings coming in and out of TaoHua's little leafy hut, he decided to make it comfortable for everyone and made table and chairs near their spot. There TaoHua held her lessons for the small ones to be able to read and for everyone to tell their stories to share around.

TaoHua then made pots and cups from hardened heated clay and by then she could make fire without DaShu screaming at her and put them within a safe pot. She experimented making a fire outside before she made a little fire camp that acted like their lamp sometimes in their clearing. She hollowed a piece of wood and found out that using pine resin and cloth made of cotton useful and the fire was even and not too big, burning for quite a long time after which, more resin and cloth had to be added again.

DaShu remained apprehensive about the fire near them but soon gotten used to it. She was able to make tea from collected from DaShu's leaves, dried them out in the sun and boiled them in the pot of dew. DaShu allowed TaoHua friends to play around the tables and chairs, which he named it as ChaGuan (茶馆) and the tea was self-served to those who wanted to try and once they did, they were hooked to the taste and not wanting to just drink water.

ChaGuan and TaoHua became popular and TaoHua had made a name for herself as a writer with her beautiful strokes, and her patience teaching other sprites and other creatures, words they did not understand. However, these leaves were fragile, she had to write new ones with her burnt sticks continuously as rain made the wordings disappear or that the leaf withered easily.

Her kind readers, wanting to borrow her books but had to wait as the book of leaves had to be replaced and rewritten, gathered and tried to find a solution. With the group of thoughts, they quickly had an idea, given by a helpful winged fox and they spread around whether by flight, swim, or exchanging favors, gave TaoHua a brush made of rabbit hair, ink from a pine tree, bound bamboo sticks covered with a hollow bamboo.

The readers also learned and managed to make some precious fragile papers, made of the bark of DaShu into fibers and pounded them into a sheet, for TaoHua to draw illustrations of the stories and they wrapped these papers in oiled paper. She also drew other sprites to their amazement on how they look without looking at their reflection on the water.

When TaoHua was presented with the crude brush, she was like a genius able to write with flourish with the new brush given, unlike the smaller and younger sprites who had to be taught to write and eat. TaoHua knew herself as a prodigy self-taught sprite and she tried to humbly acknowledge praises from her peers.

Generosity was another trait she was proud of when TaoHua found missing items like her tea, painting, but she did not mind and she just made more and gave them when her friends wanted them. TaoHua friends from the island and the newfound friends from outside knew TaoHua's uniqueness- her unheard-of writing and music, and her looking like the sun when she was excited, and smelling of the sweetest spring, DaShu also told them not to spread around news about the shiny peach as someone may want to covet her many talents and took her away and they would lose her and many happiness she brought to them.