The journal of █████, of the Under, possibly A72-E56-84 “thread the needle”, recovered from the ruins of █████ during the 1029 expedition, funded by Houses ██████ and ████. The paper quality indicates and carbon-12 dating confirms that the journal is pre-war of origin. Much of the pages are illegible due to extensive water damage prior to their acquisition by the Archives, but segments containing their arrival and training remains mostly intact.
Segment 42-B
[…] was appalled to learn this. Had I come all this way East in vain? Alizeh must have seen the look of despair on my face as she told me that even if there were a master shaper of the Under, there was little to teach me. Obviously, this confused me greatly—was █████ not the greatest school of shaping? She was kind enough not to laugh at me, though explained with much amusement that it was… concluded that each shaper must carve their own path, which meant I had to teach me.
She queried me what I did to shape for the first time. I told her, as I told so many others, that I had simply been scrubbing sheets of old linen. My exact thoughts at the time are lost to me, but, or it could be better said because it was of mundane things—the stuff of… and warm bread loaves—and most certainly nothing of the sort that could provoke the sudden rumble of the stones beneath my feet and the burst of green. My dear mama, may her soul rest well in the land beneath the water, was near when it happened and ran towards the sound of my screams with the old axe we used for firewood. She hacked down the vines that held me up like a wretched doll, crying. It was hard to believe that this monstrous power was mine or that I was somehow to command it to my will…
The master of the Above told me, in the level voice of one who had had many variations of this same conversation, that shaping required absolute calm…
It was a formidable room carved of a vitreous stone I later learnt was obsidian… my hands over five scratch marks. I shuddered at the thought of what or who could have left such scars on the dark glass.
[…] after the first few sessions, I found it much easier to sit still, concentrate on my breathing and only that. It was my fifth session that I shaped. Not intentionally, of course, and it stopped almost as soon as I took notice. I felt something long and thin brush against my shoulder which I assumed to be my hair or perhaps dust, but upon reaching up to sort out my hair, I felt delicate, springing stalks. I could feel them curl around my ears and around my temples like a crown. Green buds stretched out, elongating and turning dark of colour until my vision was filled with blooms of fire-red flowers. learn to not shape…
Segment 43
Today, for the first time, I was able to shape at will. I don't think I can put the feelings down on paper if there are even words to describe them. It requires a certain cast of mind which I know now was not shutting off all emotions, but rather letting it all pass through you. You do something in your mind and something in the pit of your stomach and then you are everything. That's not strictly true. It is more like being a spider at the centre of its web, feeling every movement of every thread as each gyre threatened to disentangle you. But that isn't quite right a description either. I didn't think about the grass when it grew from the stone floor, rather I felt them out. Curiously, focusing on anything, such as giving your actions too much thought, kills your power.
It could not have lasted more than half a minute but in the end, I was soaked with sweat and filled with exhilarant joy. My entire body shook as though it was the coldest of nights despite the hot draft that came through the open window. All around me, I could see little orbs of dancing light though if I looked directly at them, they would vanish like those optical illusions. I tried to touch them but they floated through my hand as though I was not there at all, merely a spectre watching from a place apart from the that which I had come from. Indeed I felt as though I had entered a new world.
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