Stiffened by fear for just a moment her eyes locked with the approaching dog - as her instincts kicked in, she jumped to the side narrowly avoiding the maw full of teeth, the dog was just as shocked about her avoiding it as she herself. She crashed face first into the ground while the animal had the fortune to land in the river.

Her face hurt, her heart was beating fast but she felt oddly calm right now, quickly standing up with her bruised face, facing the animal, now wet with the fur sticking to its body she could see just how thin the dog was, just like herself he probably had to fight for every scrap of meat - but she had no sympathy for him - the animal's eyes made it quite clear, it saw her as a meal and it was going to be it or her. Having no confidence in being able to outrun it she gripped the rock she had picked up as she stood.

It was about a handful, something you commonly found at rivers, people would laugh at her for using this as a weapon but as of now, it was her best shot!

The dog pounced once more its maw wide open as if it wanted to swallow her whole, she sidestepped once more avoiding the teeth but the dog was prepared for that now, halting its charge, quickly turning around - but was immediately met with the rock she had thrown with all her might, it hit the dog right on the head, she had thought that it would be enough to disorient the animal to charge it. However, their little fight came to a quick end as the stone simply crushed the animal's head - she wanted to chase it off with this or get a chance to get more rocks to throw, she did not at all think that this would be enough to kill the animal.

With her mouth opened wide she fell down on her butt, her face twitching slightly, she just had killed something.. tears welled up for just a moment before she suppressed all such feelings, that thing wanted to eat her first, so it had just had met its end instead of her, but still…! She quickly stood up, her eyes watering and ran away, as fast as she could, leaving the corpse and what she just did behind - she did not react to anything on the way home she just ran and ran, not even realizing how she got surprised and even fearful looks from people she passed - she was way faster then a child of her size logically could be, the way that took her almost 2 hours before was now cut down to just about half an hour.

She also didn’t realize how people on the streets looked confused after her as she dashed through the streets, but she quickly vanished into the dark and maze-like slums so anyone that tried to follow was quickly shaken off. Arriving at her home she quickly dove into her bed head first and started sobbing - she had just killed something for the first time, it was not some ant or rodent it was a dog - a dog that probably lived a life quite similar to hers, fighting each and every day for food, it felt horrible inside of her home, she did not have to hold back and she cried herself into sleep.

Waking up later she was welcomed by the calming noise of rain hitting the tarp. Dongzhou was far in the north, it had snowy winters and rainy summers, days without clouds were rare here so it did not surprise her whatsoever, still the comforting sound helped her calm down her emotions before they bubbled up again, she sniffed and threw off her dirty clothes, switching once more into the warmer and comfortable robes she stole, having to spend her time here until it stopped raining anyway she might as well be comfortable.

Hours passed and she was bored out of her mind already, she had eaten 2 small pieces of jerky and some bread - while licking her lips her eyes darted back to the books, picking up the one that taught her the breathing technique she started to flip through a few more pages - and while she had no problem understanding the first instructions everything else seemed confusing to her at best. “I wonder what this did…It did good things to my body, so I should just continue, maybe I'll get even better that way.”

And so she started once more, crosslegged her back straight - breathing in and out according to the technique, slowly she fell back into that meditative state, she felt the small condensed ball of energy inside of her, but it felt a bit less right now - and she could clearly feel how the energy she slowly absorbed while breathing trickled all the way to that ball, flowing inside and slowly filling it up again.

It felt different where; she had a seemingly endless void to fill before, what she felt now felt like a clearly limited space, and so after a few hours of meditation she completely restored it, with her eyes snapping open she examined her body - all still the same, nothing changed - aside from slightly prickling skin everything was alright, and judging from the darkness - it was already way past her usual sleeping hours.

She still left her box and took a look up to the sky - a large full moon shone down on her gently, tilting her head slightly to the side she made her way back inside the box - rummaging around her belongings until she found a few sticks of incense and a few matches, lighting the sticks she looked up to the moon - closing her eyes in prayer.

She would do this whenever she saw the full moon, having seen a couple of rough men burning incense while drawing a large white moon on a wall had stuck in her mind, she had later found out that one of the moon's aspects was the guardian of thieves and beggars - and so she started to thank the moon whenever she was not too tired to do so, stealing the incense for that was a bit hard from time to time, but she would rather be on the good side of something that could make grown men pray to it.

And while she copied the men as well as she could she didn’t quite know what to say and simply started to mumble about her life, how she got a few copper coins somewhere - or how she stole from the market, it was a ritual for her - telling someone that would not judge her about everything.

“There was this important looking kid with really fancy robes, he even had a guard with him - but still dropped his backpack while watching a sugarpainter, so I snatched the bag - but the guard saw me and chased me a long time! I felt I would drop dead from exhaustion at that time, but somebody crashed into him and I got away, usually, I’m good enough at running away that nobody can catch me but he was really fast, I got 2 books, and while I don’t understand the words - I understood the pictures and the meaning of the pictures somehow! Really weird things happened and now I feel a lot better and stronger.” Her constant mumbling was interrupted by a yawn, she felt sleepy after meditating for so long. “Uwh…I hope you can continue to watch over me, I’ll burn more sticks for you next time.” with those words she extinguished the sticks and made her way back inside.