TDR: Life as a Traveller

The Cost of Curiosity Part 1, Chapter 3

All things have a cost...

Part 1 — Learning

A year had passed since we each got our names. During that time, a lot happened.

It started just a month after we got our names, she let us come along with her, a sort of day trip. In it, she begun to teach us survival skills, the plants to avoid and what to do if we couldn't find any food in winter; turns out, the long grass's roots connected to a tuber underground. We each got to try one, and while didn't taste very good, they were apparently highly nutritious and filling. It was similar in texture to a carrot, but with the flavour of dirt. The next day trip rehashed some of the previous' and added to it with a few more plants to avoid.
And so... it continued for weeks. Each of us got time to put that knowledge in practice on random, a sort of pop-quiz, in a brutally practical sense.
She also taught us about those "blobs" that were in the forest. She called them "spirits", which sounded kinda strange at first, but after a while I got used to it. The way she explained it, it sounded something like they were "whimsical denizens" of the forest. They didn't particularly care for their surroundings, but occasionally they could get attached to something that piqued their interest. Sometimes they would attach themselves to trees, and those trees would never suffer from disease and live for as long as the very land it rooted, or for as long as that spirit remains. They even had complex emotions, like happiness, sadness, and jealousy. Not only that, as it was explained to me, they had a generational and social memory, like crows. Likewise, she warned us to never get them angry or let them gain an attachment to us. Should we do so, we would be almost entirely at their mercy and whims. Like that tree who was granted eternal life, it too can end in an instant due to the spirit's influence. A jealous/angry spirit can easily wish to destroy the object of jealousy/anger. The spirt might not be able to kill you, you will still be weakened for as long as it remains. As a result of the generational memory, she explained that the result of gaining their ire or interest was like a life-long curse or perhaps even a life-long blessing, it was best to avoid them entirely regardless.
It was all fine that she explained this, but the most important thing she said came at the very end: how one avoids them becoming attached. According to her, attachment can only happen if you acknowledge and accept their presence for a significant period of time.
It was then that it clicked in me that I had done that very thing before. It wasn't all that long in total, but I did spend a significant amount of my days interacting and playing with them. They didn't seem to have malicious intentions except for the one that indirectly paralyzed me that final day. Putting what she said together with hat I experienced it did start to make sense considering their actions in general. It made me wonder if, even though I was in a different body, they could still recognize me—and if they did, had they already become attached?

It was by chance, while on a trip to the forest with my brothers, sisters and mother, we also came across the place where I carved my figures while I was still human. I was pretty surprised to see how little the surroundings had changed. 
My bunny figure I carved was still where I left it, now covered in moss and stained green. Seeing it... it drew up a sickening nostalgic feeling. While those days were bitter and a struggle, it was also filled with warm nostalgic feelings—I strove to survive and I did with my own two hands. It wasn't the bitterness or the struggle that sickened me, it was that, if not for what caused me to possess this body, that would have been my end.
I felt sour thinking about it—the unfairness of it all. While I no longer hated my mother, it didn't mean I was entirely over what happened.

You could say it came down to a single question: was I someone who lingered on the immutable past, or moved forward and made a new future?
But if it could be enacted on as simply as it would be answered, I wouldn't feel the way I did...
I still lingered on the past, and I would still do so, that was just who I was. However, I also strove to make a future, one in which I never used the past as an excuse for the future I make.
Instead of seeing her as the monster that ended my life, I had to see her as she was—a mother with children to care for, and a creature trying to survive in this world, just like I was.
And now, I too was her child. Even if I lived a different life, it didn't change what I was now, and neither would it change what I would be in the future.