A Secian's Path to Psionics

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I was born in a small bustling town named Dalyan located near the coast of southern New Secia. My father Lian, a skilled gardener, tended the gardens in our humble but cozy home, as well as those of our town who employed his services. My mother Meliana, until her disappearance and presumed death, had been a priestess of Elindale. My father told me she would often sit in our garden, under the large acacia tree, with her tummy big, singing soft Secian lullabies to me in the womb. The spot under the acacia tree was her favorite place to spend her few moments of leisure. It offered a soothing shade at all times and breathed a sweet fragrance into the air that was rejuvenating. When I was born, my mother named me Acacia for her favorite tree. "The acacia blossom is a symbol of resurrection. Perhaps Acacia will serve well as a healer and priestess in the Temple Elindale," she told my father. It was her wish that I would someday follow in her foo! tsteps.

Not long after my birth however, they noticed something different about me. Often my head would glow on and off like a little light bulb. It did not seem to have any ill effect on me; rather they saw a calm and peaceful expression suffuse my face -- almost as if I were near to falling asleep. After consultation with the town elder, it was deemed that I may have a trace of what is known as the Psionic ability. No one in our town could definitively confirm this however, since no other had such an ability. My parents decided that if I did not grow out of this condition in a few years, they would travel from Secia to find someone who would be able to give them more insight into the ability.

Those next few years were a peaceful, joyful time. Being too young to start studying in the temple under my mother, I would instead toddle after my father among the flowers in our garden, and he would let me help with digging the soft earth, planting the seeds and watering the various flowers and shrubs. In those early days and in the days to follow, my father would forever instill in me a love of the wondrous beauty of flowers; they in some way seem more precious to me in their fragile life than even the sparkling gems of the earth.

As I grew from toddler to a young child, I became conscious of certain things which made me different from the other Secians around me. Apart from the strange glow which would appear whenever I concentrated or calmed my mind, I also became increasingly aware of the thoughts and feelings of others; and on occasion was plagued with the sounds of numerous voices clamoring through my head. When this would happen, I would suffer from pounding headaches which would keep me unhappily confined to my bed. My parents, growing worried about the possible dangers should I not learn to properly harness this strange power, resolved anew their intention to find guidance for me.

The spring following the start of my headaches, my father and I made preparations to leave our home in Dalyan. The plan was to sail to the great continent of Aradath and there seek a Teacher of Psionics among the towns populated with various races. After much discussion, my parents agreed that my mother, busy with her duties in the temple, would remain behind. When the day of departure arrived, I clung to her bosom, crying inconsolably for I knew I would miss her terribly. Little did I know that that would be the last I would see of her.

The sadness and gloom I felt at leaving my beautiful mother was soon swept away by the wonders I saw, felt, and breathed once we arrived in Aradath -- mountains and valleys, forests and deserts, all terrains both unfamiliar and terrifying, yet holding great beauty in their untamed element. Most of all, I was intrigued by the small villages and outposts we visited which were populated with peoples of the like I had never before encountered in my sheltered young life in Dalyan.

Seonry, a relatively quiet and serene village located near the foothills of a great blue-peaked mountain whose name I've now lost recall of, was where my father and I were directed to an elderly Psycian couple: Alim and his wife Meraessa. Alim and Meraessa did not reside within the village but had built their home a small distance away in the woods. They were quite content to spend their solitary days with only each other for company; and they would spend most hours complacently discussing the theorems and logistics of all that had to do with the mind. Thus when my father and I showed up at their doorstep, they accepted our intrusion into their haven with heavy reluctance. They were by no means bad natured people, I believe they just would sooner have been left alone rather than to spend their days with an inquisitive, spirited child as myself.

We spent a year in Seonry. My father took to working to beautify the villagers' gardens and their one small park. Each morning at sunrise he would take me through the woods to Alim and Meraessa's cottage and leave me there all day for instruction and tutorage. During that year, Alim and Meraessa spoke to me of the history of their race -- from their origin to the calamitous war with the Frontacians, and the subsequent destruction of their sacred isle. When my headaches would occur, which they did ever more frequently with each passing day, they would touch my mind and ease my pain. Alim in particular showed me how to meditate by stilling my mind and blocking those voices. My days were spent learning to harness and tame my flighty young mind which was so easily distracted by all around me. Indeed, even to this day I find it hard to contain my emotions -- being a Secian, I so love life and the inner joys and sorrows it brings, that to live wholly in my mind is a daily struggle.

Since I was still a very young child, the advancement of my studies was yet quite limited. Still, at the end of the year I was able to repel the headaches -- and that quiet state of peace which would bring a glow about my head came more easily to me. By that time, my father was eager to return home -- worried about his gardens, and missing his wife, my mother. I could not have been more happy at his decision for I too missed my mother dearly, though I had grown quite attached to my Psycian mentors; and I believe that attachment was reciprocated, for on the day we departed, their eyes seemed suspiciously misty in their composed faces. Or perhaps they were just joyful to be left in peace again!

As my father and I stood at the threshold of their cottage speaking our final words of gratitude for their help and also our regretful goodbyes, Alim produced a weathered map from within his robes. Unfolding it, he indicated to my father the location of a city he referred to as The Spur. When she is a bit older, the Academy in this city will gain her entrance into the Psion Guild there. She will be able to learn much more of her powers than we have been able to teach her thus far. So saying, Alim placed the weathered map into my father's tinier hand. That would be the last I see of Alim and Meraessa, for when I returned to their cottage many years later, I found it dilapidated and abandoned. Perhaps they found it too close to society after all and had moved on to a more secluded location away from prying villagers and wandering travelers such as myself.

Our homecoming was not to be the joyful one that my father and I had expected. Upon reaching Dalyan, we found our house had been empty for many moons. Where was my mother? Bewildered but not yet overly concerned, we walked to the temple expecting to find an explanation there. The clerics at the temple were equally surprised and distressed when we arrived seeking her, for they had expected her to return with us! Apparently she had left many moons ago with a select group of priests and priestesses on an expedition to purify an area on the Aradathian continent surrounding a particular shrine of Elindale which was being plagued by tormented spirits. After the mission was successfully completed, they prepared to return home when my mother announced that she wished to remain on the continent to visit my father and I in Seonry. Having received many letters from my father over the course of the year, she was eager to reunite with us and felt confident that she would have no ! trouble finding the remote village where we were staying. Still, realizing that it would not be wise for her to travel alone, two of my mother's closest friends, Thorne and Feather, decided to remain behind and accompany her. The remaining party had then returned to Secia where they had assumed my mother and her friends would return with my father and I.

Exhausted from our recent long journey, yet resolute, my father immediately set out once again to the continent, this time to find his wife. Leaving me crying and inconsolable in the hands of my Aunt Buttercup, he would be gone for many, many moons, only to return empty-handed -- a pale-faced, despairing and older version of the father I had once known. Not a trace had been found of my mother nor of her friends -- everyone feared that they must have met some terrible fate along their journey to Seonry.

Like most of the citizens of Dalyan, my father was an Elindalian, but my mother was the truly devout one. After her disappearance, my father seemed to distance himself from the Goddess -- perhaps he placed some responsibility on Her shoulders for my mother's fate, I do not know. But our daily pilgrimages to the temple altar and wooded shrine lapsed and soon seized altogether, and he spent greater amounts of his time in our garden under the acacia tree. He built a lovely memorial under the tree for my mother and would talk to her for hours there. Those were years of grieving for us, and I stayed ever close to his side giving and receiving comfort in turn.

When my eighteenth year approached, my father gazed upon me, his eyes again beginning to twinkle with the merriment I had seen so often before my mother had gone from us. "Ah, Acacia, I fear I have neglected you all these years. For truly you should be an initiate in the temple by now, as was your mother's wish, he sighed regretfully. So, thinking it my duty to my late mother, I spent a year in the temple studying with the other younger novitiates. I was not unhappy there, but I did not feel as though my heart was completely in it. In truth, I was more interested in learning the intricacies of the power residing in my mind. Throughout the years since my brief tutorage with Alim and Meraessa, I had never once neglected to do my meditations, and in doing so I could feel the power grow like a fiery little blossom blooming in the center of my mind. I had much more control over the thoughts I sent and received, and felt that there was so much more I could do, but at the same ! time was afraid of playing with the power irresponsibly and perhaps cause harm to others. Shamefully, and feeling a failure, I confessed my true feelings to my father, but he smiled as though it were as he had expected. Unlocking a drawer of the desk in his office, he produced that weathered map Alim had given him all those years ago and placed it within my palm.

Then this is for you, he smiled. "I will go with you to make sure you arrive at the Academy safely, but you will need it for when you return home to visit me. Be sure to keep to the main roads, and mind your surroundings for I know how you tend to dwell in your mind and get yourself lost", he continued teasingly.

Thus it was that in my twentieth year my father and I set off for the second time together to the Aradathian continent -- both with mixed feelings. On the way to The Spur we did stop by Seonry to pay our respects to Alim and Meraessa, but as I mentioned earlier, they had long since been gone from that village. My father and I parted at the gates of the Spurian Academy and it would be a few years until I would lay eyes upon him again. Though I found the city of Spur to be rampant with violence and corruption, it is also filled with many of those noble in heart and spirit. There I would meet a Dragon, Morolan, with whom I would forge a wondrous bond with, and feel a completion of the soul as I had never before imagined. My studies to this day are not complete, and I doubt they ever will be for I believe that we are capable of so much more than is taught to us in the classroom and scrolls. Our powers are ever evolving and growing -- who knows what discoveries of the mind lay! in wait for us tomorrow! Myself, I envision a day when we of the Psion Guild will hone our powers of utility to the benefit of others.

May your mind be your temple of peace and serenity.

~ Penned this the 11th day of the 7th month, in the year 319 by Acacia Blossom, Psion.

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