My Little Shifu

Stiff Lipped and Bow Legged

A far more subdued Mo Yuan returned to Kunlun Mountain which instantly put Die Feng on edge.  If his Shifu was not willing to even greet him, then something terrible must have happened, and though he was second in command and his most trusted, if Mo Yuan didn't want to talk, then there was nothing he could do, except keep his juniors under a tight rein and therefore out of the way.

Though for a moment,  he thought he had caught sight of his eyes.  They looked moist as if he had been crying, but after a little contemplation, Die Feng knew that wasn't right, because nothing in the world would reduce his Shifu to tears.  He cried for nothing and no one, not even them.  But saying nothing, he quietly bowed before retreating to the training field where his juniors were and leaving his quiet Shifu to the archives where he had disappeared to.

And it was to a rare painting that he found himself sitting before and lost to his thoughts.  He never knew what his mother looked like, but the simple pencil sketch his father had made of her playing in the low valleys was all he had of her.  Not a lot of detail was there as his father was not gifted with a clever hand, but it did give enough to show her lithe figure, her long hair that she wore in the old fashioned style and her smile which his father had focused on the most.

Her head was turned towards him and in her hands was a small posy of flowers and to Mo Yuans mind, this simple sketch not only simplified her greatness by making her normal and approachable, but there was something else his father had managed to capture.

The first time he had seen the sketch, he had spent hours dwelling on what manner of woman she had been, what her smile might have looked like had it been himself she was looking at instead of his father, and what that look in her eye was that had captured his young mind.  Only having been raised in the strict confines of his fathers school, he had never really figured it out.  Only the longer he stared at the sketch, and her eyes in particular, did it finally occur to him what had eluded him until now.

It was the exact same look on his little Shifus face whenever she took that silly hat off her head.  It wasn't exactly flirting, and nor was it entirely mischief but something far simpler and as his little Shifus face came to mind, the two faces slowly became one.   In both of their eyes was a look of pure innocence.  It was so plainly obvious to him now that his little Shifu had opened a part of him that had forgotten what it looked like.

And even then, it wasn't entirely, but it was more a look of wonder, as if she were seeing something for the first time and was utterly revelling in it.  The laughter was there, the amazement at just being there in that place and revelling in the joy of the moment.  His Little Shifu was not only a simple girl at heart just like his mother, but the innocence was even more so because she had no idea that she was.  

And very slowly the pencil sketch faded away in his mind until only his little Shifu remained.   In every single lesson to date, she had stripped away a little of his inner barrier to expose a part of himself that was seeing that innocent wonder as if through her eyes.  

Counting smiles.  No one in the entire world would have thought of doing that just to gain a little peace for oneself, in fact, the amount of smiles he had managed to gain, had actually left him feeling so invigorated that it had remained with him through the rest of the night and now that he thought about it, he realized he had slept so well that he hadn't dreamed.

But her abilty to use colours to force the inner child out in order to see things from a completely different perspective, was not only exceptionally clever, but in many ways, he felt far happier for it but what was even more astounding, was he really didn't think she even knew how effective her teaching methods were, because he didn't think it was actually her intention.  If anything, he had a very strong suspicion that she was merely acting out what was normal for her and in turn creating an atomosphere of normality for him and like a good little Disciple, he fell into his lessons so easily, that had Di Jun or Haode knew what was going on, they would think he was just as mad as she was.