Chapter 8 — Meditation

For now, the only chores that needed doing were refilling the kitchen’s firewood rack and refilling the clean water buckets from the well. Washing her laundry would have been nice to get done, but her arms were hurting enough already, so she gave up on that. While gathering the firewood from the shed, she also took care of any business requiring the outhouse.

Ria wasn’t planning on doing anything special for dinner, instead she prepared a few scoops of grains in a clay pot to cook using tonight’s fire. That way they could have a nice porridge for breakfast in the morning.

With everything prepared, Ria took her books and staff up to her room and changed.

She settled on a nice pale-green sleeveless summer dress. One of the advantages of having a mother who makes clothes for a living was that she always had pretty clothes to dress up in if she wanted.

Thinking about her mom made her feel depressed, so she pushed those thoughts away.

It was time to learn more about magic!

She skipped her way over to her desk, finishing with a twirl, and plopped excitedly into her chair.

The first real chapter of the book!

She started reading, and her enthusiasm ran up against walls of words describing the various esoteric forms of meditation and how each might be useful to a mage. Ugh.

So, the first three approaches were inwardly focused meditation, outwardly focused meditation, and active meditation using repetitive movements such as martial arts patterns to focus the mind.

The third one seemed weird, but after thinking about it, Ria was pretty sure she had reached that state once when helping her mom with a really tedious stitching task. She just kept mindlessly stitching stitch after stitch until she started losing track of time. Hmm, that might work with crossbow practice, too.

The room was getting progressively darker, so she set out the glowstone to create light for her to read by.

When Ria got to the end of the chapter she was depressed to find out that these exercises were only basic meditation, and that the advanced meditation techniques (the ones that are actually useful for mages) required the ability to control magical energy. That meant she had to learn meditation, to learn how to sense magical energy, to learn how to control magical energy, all just so she could learn how to properly meditate…

Well, no need to worry about something so far away. She needed to focus on learning the step that was in front of her right now: The Inwardly Focused Meditation exercise.

The inward meditation was recommended first because it was the easiest of the three basic exercises, and because the magical energy within one’s own body was the easiest to sense.

Ria read over the technique and advice until she was sure she had all the important points memorized, then moved to her bed to give it a try.

She hiked up her skirt enough that she could comfortably sit in the cross-legged position shown in the diagram. She pulled the staff onto her lap and pressed her hands together like she was praying. Sitting up straight, Ria took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

Several deep breaths later, her mind was clearing nicely, but the sounds and calls of the insects greeting the evening were distracting Ria from focusing inward. She decided to try one of the suggested techniques for deepening the meditation.

Focusing on just breathing, she counted her heartbeats, making each breath last a set number of heartbeats. As she continued to calm her mind, her heart rate slowed and her breathing slowed to match. Soon the sounds of insects had faded away from her conscious notice.

The sound of her heartbeat filled her ears, and from the flow of her blood, to her stomach gurgling, to the moving of her muscles, all of it could be heard. She had never really taken the time to notice the different noises and activities going on within her body before. It was interesting… and unsettling.

Ria was fairly certain that she was deep enough into the meditation, so she began searching for the flows of magic energy. She started with the meridian points mentioned in the text, checking each one in turn and following where the flows were supposed to be, but there wasn’t anything obvious to notice.

Next, she focused in on the sore muscles in her arms. Her arm muscles were still protesting the abuse she had put them through today. Even mostly relaxed as they were now, she could still sense occasional tiny tremors. The feeling of blood pulsing through the sore muscles was clearer than other places. Maybe because it hurt?

That gave her another idea. What about her sunburns on her face and hands? She focused her attention on those spots.

There was a noticeable warmth in the area of her sunburns, hmm… but burns always felt warmer, so she wasn’t sure if she was actually sensing magical energy. Focusing on the burnt areas did take longer to get a clearer mental image than focusing on her heart or other areas. The burned areas seemed to slightly disrupt her ability to focus on them in some way. Maybe the flow was damaged there? Or there’s a foreign magical energy present?

Just as Ria thought she might be onto something, a hand pressed against her shoulder and her eyes snapped open.

“Ria! Are you okay?” Jarrel called out worriedly and shook her. “I’ve been calling you for a while now!”

Ria’s heart was pounding with the shock of there being someone in her room suddenly, but she took a deep breath and stretched. “I’m fine. Was working on my Inwardly Focused Meditation exercise.”

Jarrel gave her an odd look then said, “Maybe you shouldn’t do that with a light showing from your window.”

She looked over at the glowstone sitting on her desk, providing light to the room. Ah, that was a problem, but the whole point was to use it so she could read at night. Would she have to do her studies at night in the cellar? With the rats?

With a sigh at her displeased look, Jarrel suggested, “Maybe you could use the bed covers to hide the light.”

Ria had to suppress a giggle. Silly Jarrel, reading under the covers was for naughty books! Or at least, that’s what Susanne said she did when she found one of her mom’s naughty books and didn’t want to get found out. A smile slipped out at the memory.

Of course, using a glowstone was a lot safer than putting a blanket over a lantern, so it wasn’t a bad idea, even if she would feel a bit silly reading under the covers.

She nodded. “Alright, I’ll be more careful.”

Seeing that she was fine, Jarrel started to leave her alone then turned back. “I caught a fox, by the way. Why don’t you prepare the fire while I take it out back and skin it? There’s not a lot of meat but it should make a good soup stock. We can use the pelt to make some warmer clothing or sell it to peddlers.”

“Okay. I’ll take care of it.”

After he was gone, Ria put the glowstone in a sock and tied it to the waist sash on her dress. The dimmer light seemed like it would be much less noticeable and would save her from having to use candles or lanterns.

Feeling proud of herself for thinking up such a creative idea, Ria was in good spirits as she skipped along down to the kitchen.

Ria giggled. She was such a goody-goody, studying at night under the covers.

Dinner was uneventful. There was still another day’s worth of the vegetable and venison soup, and plenty of the cut ham and cheese left.

They still had a few empty pots, and Ria used one to cook the fox down to stock. She used a strainer to separate out the bones, and scooped off the scum that collected at the top. She wasn’t familiar with how best to season fox soup, so that was something she’d need to think about after doing some herb foraging.

The breakfast porridge also turned out well and would be a welcome change. To help with the soreness she was expecting in the morning, she worked the fox stock and some of the fox meat into the porridge.

Jarrel was going to sleep on the floor again, but Ria insisted he start using her brothers’ room. For some reason, that seemed less strange to her than having him stay in her parents’ room. He was reluctant at first but eventually gave in.

With Jarrel settled, she could finally get back to her magic studies, and hidden under her bed cover with her staff beside, she read the chapter on magic sensing.

There were a lot of different opinions on how to develop the ability to sense magic but no proven methods that guaranteed success. Whether sensing magical energies was an inborn talent needing to be awakened or a skill that was learned was a matter of great debate, and there were no definite answers.

The author warned that this step was where most aspiring mage apprentices failed and were forced to give up. He also counseled that persistence was important for those who were not naturally gifted.

The easiest of the practical exercises was to place a magical item nearby and try to determine its location in one’s mind by sensing the magical energies.

The exercise had several variations to improve one’s skill. Starting with being blindfolded but already knowing the location, to having the object placed after blindfolding, to having the object moved periodically, etc. The advanced levels included ideas such as identifying different types of magical energy between several different magic items and following a person carrying a magic item while navigating a busy street.

Ria was excited, because this was an exercise that she could try right away. She was using a glowstone to read the book after all!

Closing her eyes, Ria cleared her mind and slowed her breathing. She didn’t listen to her heart this time but instead tried to picture the location of the glowstone.

The bluish color of the glowstone was still visible through her eyelids, so she wasn’t sure if she was sensing anything. Maybe a glowstone wasn’t the best choice.

Placing the stone under her book, she tried again, picturing the location in her mind then later just letting her mind blank and trying to sense anything. Whether she was successful, she didn’t know. Eventually, she drifted off to sleep.