Starry night (p)

Trees like towers, and leaves like a canopy. A canopy of leafs which swirled up above ling like clouds of a perfect spring day. There she sat underneath the wonderful green sky which was the would of the forest and sat down just living for what was in front of her today. Yes I know what you’re all thinking isn’t ling the crazy, ling the lovable going to do something cray and unpredictable today? Well you needed to realize that our fair monkey monk has been honing in on her life the last couple of months. Really trying to figure out who she is and just where her happiness comes from. She’s even been feeling emotions. Yes she’s always her happy helpful self, but she’s also trying to expand off of that and become a real girl some day. A noble goal I think we can all agree. Right now she was just trying to hone in on her life and really find something concrete about herself that she wants to focus on. This her daily meditations were becoming a common site in Kono. After all ling is hardly one for subtly so it’s easy to spot her sitting down somewhere just communing with the universe and trying to find her place within it. Most rentei spend their lives in the search for true enlightenment through the use of genjutsu, and meditation. They had hundreds upon hundreds of techniques to help connect the user to the universe and allow them to really focus on the world. Illusions that you put on yourself help you realize the illusions that the world puts on you. All worlds are the same created or not, and this is just another such illusion. Lingqi surprisingly had come to this realization a long time ago, she knew like her emotions that his world was false. Though this doesn’t not mean she’s any less happy about her place in the universe. In fact she’s more at peace with life and the world. After all when a genjutsu ends you end up in the real world, so when life ends, you’ll surely end up somewhere else right? Whilst wandering through the forest as ling is want to do she came upon a meditating monkey. A large human sized black monkey. He was sitting on a rock, surrounded by similar smaller rocks. He was right under a large hickory tree with a rope tied around it. The forest smelled like a candle. Nice. The monkey was crossed legged, and had a hand on each knee with his fingers in a meditative state. Lingqi bit her lips and they almost rolled back into the back of her head with joy. She looked towards her own red furred monkey and started dancing around like crazy. This monkey looked like so much super much fun. God! She rubbed her hands together, and sthen started to roll on the ground in excitement. Like I said… Ling had been chasing enlightenment. So rather than tackle the monkey and ask him if he could play with her she did something very unlike ling. She waitied. Yes she did, yes she did indeed. She and Hiru sad down on a hickory stump and played magic the gathering for three days and nights. Hiru won every game. Don’t rub it in, it just happened. You just couldn’t beat his Dimir deck. It just milled and milled. Craziness. She couldn’t stop it, it was. Ling was. Ling came seriously close to loosing her cool let me tell you that. Yes they waited, feasted on fruit, played magic, for three days. After the third day, the monkey monk opened his eyes and let out a sigh. Both hiru and Ling craned their heads over to look at the monkey, look him in the eyes. When they looked into his eyes and he looked into theirs they knew, they knew that he knew. This was a monkey who… knew. Lingqi Rentei opened up her trap to speak to mr. Monkey monk, but he was swift. He jumped from his rock and flew upwards into the tree line, light lightning in a monkey suite. He jumped and ran off before lingqi could even smack her gobs to pronounce surprise. She furrowed her brown and stamped her foot, only after she actually stood to those feet. Well that was just no fair, it was no fair that she waited that whole time for that monkey to play with her and he just runs off? No fun. She went over to his candle smelling rock, and saw something which had not been. There was a black inky black cloak draped over a the rock which the monkey had been sitting on. With a curious gaze lingqi approached this cloak and gave it a weary gaze with her magnificent blue eyes. Two sapphire orbs looked upon the strange material the cloak was made with an they found that it was unlike anything she’d ever seen before. It was something wholly new. Which made it wholly interesting. Lingqi bent down and grabbed the material. She rubbed it between her fingers, as she examined what it was, and found once more that it had a feel unlike anything she’d ever had the pleasure of rubbing between her fingers before. It was kind of like silk, kind of like velvet. I t took less time than that monkey did for it to wrap her should and body up in this strange little coat and snuggle on down proper. She snuggled on down, tucked her head into the cloak and purred the most content purr a human snug bug could. She closed her eyes and sighed. Then it struck her. This was weird. A weird thing had just happened to her. This was the type of thing that you hear about in story books. This is exactly the type of thing a person should meditate on. Clearly there was some sort of deeper meaning to all of this. Deeper meaning which Ms. Lingqi would discover. The truth was out there Skully, and as long as ling and Hiru were out on the case, it wouldn’t remain out there for long… or it would. But, but it wouldn’t be hidden for long, it would still be there but it would be a well know truth. Listen the point was that ling was going to figure out what was going on here and that’s that.
 There in the woods she sat for seventy seven days surviving off the nutritiousness of the universe. The air was her food, and the rain was her water, and the air was also her air. So so we’re clear, she did still breath. But yeah she sat where that monkey sat for the next seventy sevent days just meditation on what it all meant. Which is probably why people don’t see ling all that much because she’s honestly just out doing stuff like this most of the time. Or getting trapped in the land of fairy flowers or something like that. Long time readers will remember that adventure. Oh the fun we have. Any almost eighty days passed with ling under that tree. A good two months, before she finally opened up her eyes. Hiru had given up after three hours and run off somewhere, the little tramp. Now it was just ling, her cloak, a rock, the smell of candles, and a few birds sitting on top of her. You know, to show how in one with nature she was.  It was upon that seventy seventh day that Ling was granted a vision of the moon, and was awoken from her meditation by the black cloak transforming into pure water and soaking her cloths. She grunted and shivered, because like all things the cloak had to be ice cold. Her nips almost shredded her outfit off of her body. Well if that was supposed to be some sort of message from the universe telling her how to live her life clearly she failed it. She arose to her feet and tried to shake off as much water as she could. In the most dog like fashion that she could. Her mind drifted back to visions of the moon which she had seen. Felt like kind of a rip off. Out of all those times that she was in a genjutsu and looking at the moon the one time she does some irl meditation and this is what she gets? A soaked shirt, and an image of the moon? Cloaks, waters, and the moon. Hmm. Ling returned to her tree fort. A wonderfully tiny little house up in a hickory tree inside of the village. It was there she a monkey, and a fairy princess were roommates. First thing she needed to do was take a tree shower and then she’d consider what happened to her during her meditation. Now as we all know, the shower is where a person can really get some insight into how the universe functions. Surrounded by water, and suds Ling played around with the universal insight, and considered what the vision of the moon meant. Eventually she came to the conclusion that the moons acts upon the tides of the world, and as such this is why the cloak turned to water. She of course came to this conclusion as water cascaded over her body. She could feel it coming in over her in pulses from the shower head. Then she got to thinking, that like she shower head rain comes from the moon. No that’s not right, but the moon does have some control over water. Bingo! With nearly eighty days of meditation under her belt the rest just filled in pretty quickly. jA small bit of enlightenment having flooded into lings consciousness. With the moon above it pulls and tugs upon water. Ling nodded her head in understand thanking the monkey silently for her contribution to her water techniques. She just had to become a little bit more in sync with the moon in order to perfect this new fledgling technique. The only question was… how does one do this?
Three weeks. Lingqi Rentei thought with panting gasps. Three weeks is how long she'd been in there. She'd forgotten what the sun looked like by now. She'd been going in a perfectly straight line for a few days, but at some point a curve formed in her tunneling and now she couldn't see the entrance of the tunnel anymore. Heavily her back slammed against the carved out surface of the tunnel walls. She slid down it and didn't bother wincing in pain as the jagged rocks sliced up the skin of her back as she slouched to the ground. Heavily on each of her arms rested her cute little furry brown arm warmers. They were both heavily covered in dust and sut. Gravel and rocks kind of make the fur matted and yucky. It was a fashion disaster. They'd been strong. Survived all this time. They'd even out last her. She'd run out of food and water days ago. She was supposed to be finished days ago. She didn't know what happened. Wasn't strong enough it looked like. She'd failed the monkey, the moon, and herself it had seemed. Her strength of will was mighty that much was for sure, but not strong enough. It's funny. She though. Her blind eyes moved around the surface of the obsidian walls. She couldn't see anything. Sun light by now just seemed like something she'd made up by this point. When hiru became her best friend in the whole world and had come to her he claimed that he'd chosen Ling to be her partner because ling had a will that could not be dominated. Will of a mountain. Well that wasn't all it was cracked up to be it would seem. If she had less of a will she would have given up when she hand enough time left.
 
That had been her mission. To test her will of a mountain against an actual mountain. She was supposed to dig her way with nothing but her watery water monk abilities through a mountain. Now at first that hadn't sounded all that difficult. It's just a mountain. The mountain is just earth. Earth was her elements like natural opposite. She could totes take on a mountain when she had the vastness of an ocean on her posse. She could spit so hard that it would split a boulder in half. As if carving through a mile of stone was going to be difficult.
 
Yeah right. If it'd been that easy she'd be done by now wouldn't she? She'd be sipping down some nice cold lemonade rather than dying in a musty hole in a mountain. She'd sweated so much that she wasn't even wet anymore. Her skin was all tried out, and all that remained was a salty shell that cracked every time she moved. Which wouldn't be much more if you just give him a few more minutes. She could feel the extreme of exhaustion climbing up on her. It was like a fog that was climbing up the back of her head. She could feel it crawling up her body and shutting everything down. Up her brain numbing her thought. Once it reached her eyes she'd close them and never open them back up. And that would be the tale of lingqi the lady who couldn’t actually master the technique she was going for. The princess who'd killed the lord of the gargoyle castle would now fall victim to her own hubris and pride. If only she'd live past this she'd be able to learn something from it. Add it to her collection of fairy tale adventures and come out on top. At least learn how to use the stupid moon to her advantage during a darn fight. I mean come on. It’s like that monkey wanted to make this whole thing as hard on her as possible. Why didn’t he just tell her what was up… wait a second.
 
At this moment in time it felt like the only thing that was keeping her awake was the blood that was tricking from her back. Once that pain receded or she bleed out then she could finally rest. Though she didn't close her eyes she could feel himself go to rest. Her body and mind only slightly aware of what was going on around him. She supposed that the pain wasn't the only thing keeping him from dying. There was one other thing in her life that kept him holding on for survival.
 
Can you guess it?
 
You're right! It was her mom. Her mother, her over bearing mother, and her biggest obstacle in the world as far as personal joy could be concerned. she was everything that was good about this rotten world, and Lings mom just couldn’t see that. No matter how much ling pushed herself nothing. It was so frustrating. All lings mom wanted ling to do with her life was be a pampered little angel. Which was fine, ling lived up in a tree she now longed for the days of the mansion, but still. She had so much to offer and her mommy just couldn’t ling as anything other than a child. At this very moment she was fresh air and wide open spaces, but that may have just been her claustrophobia kicking in. A few weeks inside of a tunnel will do that to you if you're not careful. It'd been over a year since she'd seen her last. It felt like a life time, it may have been, she felt so close to the end of her that it very well may have been. She wondered how dad was handling her. She knew she could be a handful some times. Not because she was bad or anything she was just so energetic and excited about everything. She was free willed like the ocean. She wondered what sort of mischief she'd gotten into in the last month, without him. She wondered how much mischief she'd get into for the rest of her life... without him.
 
Despite all the fluids from her body being pretty much gone ling managed to let loose some tears as she considered never seeing her mom be proud of her. She was supposed to impress her eventually. And now... now nothing!
 
She promised that she’d become the greatest Rentei to ever walk the earth!
 
As whatever it was inside of her popped she could feel her chakra suddenly explode. She felt stronger than she'd ever been in her entire life! Her passion for her mother’s approval had awoken something inside of her! She definitely had mommy issues! With a mighty thrust she placed her hands together and spat out a lance of water which plowed through the comparatively soft mountain rock. They easily dug through the rock until they were deeply imbedded into it, soaking the stone and spraying ling with some much needed moisture. She was sure she was going to be coughing up pebbles for months to come. She smiled, and with a final push from her legs they went flying through the rubble, and on the other side? Was day light! With that final blow she'd finished her tunnel through the mountain. As well as her training. She smiled happily, before collapsing from complete exhaustion. Day quickly turned to night and the full moon rose. IT rose above ling as as ever ling felt like she was no closer to understanding it’s mystery. It’s as if all of that training was for naught! No fair! Putting yourself through extreme emotional stress was supposed to help you understand the universe! So dumb moon why wouldn’t you just telling ling what you’re hiding from her?
Of course ling fell asleep because she was exhausted. She woke up hourse later not fairing much better but just a little less dead. She still had a bit of life left in her and she was going to use that life to get this jutsu right. Not to far from the tunnel she’s managed to carve out was a forest and ling crawled her way into the forest. She just needed to eat a something before she could focus on becoming one with the universe again. To her surprise one she entered the wooded world of the forest the birds and animals of the woods began dropping off berries, and roots at her feet. So nice! Ling practically cried at the furry little woodland animals as she feasted on their gifts like a hog in heaven. None of the animals were doctors so they couldn’t patch up her wounds, but that was alright she was grateful all the same. Besides now that she had some energy back in her body she should be fine. Once her stomach settle she sat on her but, and meditated for a bit. Her seigan opened on up and over the course of an hour or so she was able to regain her missing chakra. Because after all all things in life were fluid to the Rentei. Chakra could flow inwards as easily as it flew outwards you simply had to let it happen. She allowed the Chakra to enter her and become one with her and in turn she became one with it. It was then she found herself sitting upon a rock much like the monkey had been. It was at this time was well that she had a notable absence of the cloak which had guided her in her meditation. On a lark she waved a few hand seals and formed a cloak of water over her body. She allowed it to snuggle over her like it a sleepy cat. She giggled as the water extended it’s own will upon the shape she was forming and curled around her like a happy little rob. She purred as she felt the fool fabric pull itself over her in the cool night air. As her breath went out it caught in the air as a mist and floated away gently and ling smiled. She felt at peace, under this robe and under the moon. The water feeling cool on her wounds, and her chakra and stomach full once more. Coco looked at her cloack and saw that it was the same quicksilver color as her normal attacks and was reflecting the stars up above. She sighed and closed her eyes. She neither tried to meditate nor sleep, she simply wanted to be with her eyes closed. For she wanted the cozy little water cloak to say around her, it’s happy little safe keeping her safe but not warm. It was then that ling felt it. Minute in a way almost beyond that which a simple human being like ling could perceive, but she felt it. Just barely. A slight tugging. A slight tugging on the water which flowed over her flesh like a second skin. Thus as there was a tug on the water there was a tug on her. She stayed in this no quite meditative stance for a full day. She felt the tug rotate around her body and the cloak until finally she felt it begin where it had been the day before. Tides. This was lingqi’s though when the day finally came to an end. The tides were effecting the cloak. How funny that the moon even effects such tiny bodies of water as the one that ling was holding onto. She giggled. Then she thought about what thath could mean. She was a body of water herself. Thus another day went by and with this cloak connected to her, and she felt it. The tiny pull of the moon on her own skin, on her insides, on her water. The stuff that made her up. Mother moon even had a pull on things such as that. Even had a pull on the chakra that floated within lings body. It gave in gentle waves and on tides, but coco knew the way only by the cloak she bore on her shoulders. She kind of giggled when she realized what she’d just discovered. Enlightenment wasn’t easy but she’d just made a good first step!

With a bit of joy she jumped from her rock no longer fearing that she’d upset her balance with the world, because now she was more in balance with it than anyone had been before her! So exciting. Yes yes yes! This was so cool. Now that she knew what she was doing, now that she knew how to move along wit the flow and the tide of the universe she could feel it. He body moved through the forest ith an unusual grace one might not always expect from bombastic ling. She giggled as she fluttered through the world like a bolt of liquid lighting. The moon shined above, and she danced with it through the night and back home. She laced her fingers together forming one last hand seal seeing if the final part of her enlightenment was correct. Yea verily it turns out that she was indeed enlightened to the way of the world. Out girl ling had just unlocked something she… possible wasn’t ready for? Because when she channeled her enhanced chakra into her jutsu a tidal wave of chakra and literal water flooded the forest and swept away many of its most ancient trees. Their far reaching roots were no match for the wave which ling had managed to dredge up with only the most minor of effort on her part. She giggle laughed her way through the flooded woods and headed back home. Her cloak, waters that reflected the heaven shone on her back. It’s surface rippling with the full image of the moon as she passed under it. Up until now ling had only ever walked under the moon, but on this night and forever more she would walk with it. 

(TWC 4009)
20 stats
Star Cloak learned

Paragraphs fam, please paragraphs. Also, be sure to link the jutsu you are learning. That said, this is approved.