"Okay then," he sighed. "Well, um, I have a little sister called Mei, I guess she's about fifteen, sixteen years old now. Oh, she was a little darling, really she was - sweet, affectionate, caring, funny... you'd like her. We were totally inseparable, we did everything together - school, play, even fight... most of those moves you saw me do in Cloud Tower, I learnt them from her. We lived in a little village called An-Chuan, standing next to a river at the foot of Panda Mountain in China."
"What mountain?"
"Panda... you've seen a panda, right? It's an earth creature... cute little things, they are. Anyway, we lived with Mei's grandmother."
"Mei's grandmother? But... what about your parents?"
"Well, Mei's parents were killed some time ago. I don't know how or when, I never asked. Besides, our gran did an excellent job of looking after us on her own. She's quite a fighter too, not as quick as she used to be though."
"Wait, I'm getting confused. Mei's parents aren't your parents?"
"My family aren't my birth family - I have no idea who or where my birth parents are cos I lost them when I was very young - judging by my name, I guess they're British. Even when I was a toddler, I still managed to get lost easily, and that's how I lost them - when I was around two or three, I was playing outside and I wandered off somewhere, and when I tried to get home... well, I couldn't. I walked for days, weeks, trying to get home but I couldn't. Eventually, I ended up somewhere where I couldn't understand what people were saying... France, I think it was. I was adopted by another family, but I soon lost them too. And that kept going on and on and on for years - I just kept losing old families and finding new ones, and I never got close to any of them... except one, my last family."
"Wow, that sucks. So how did you manage to find your family then?"
"It all started around seven or eight years ago. I'd given up on family life, so I spent my time wandering, seeing the world. I was on my travels, trying to get somewhere where I wasn't as usual. I think I was trying to get to India, but somehow I ended in the mountains of central China instead, which I guess is pretty close by my standards. So there I was, walking along beside a river when I heard people screaming and yelling. I followed the noise and I could see a gang of men, bandits I think they were, attacking a young girl. She can't have been older than seven, maybe eight, but the funny thing was she doing a real good job of kicking their butts. I tell ya, some of her moves were amazing - lightning quick. But she was outnumbered and while she was busy flooring two of these guys, she didn't see another one creeping up behind her with a knife. I knew I had to stop him so I grabbed my frying pan from my backpack, ran up to him yelling as loud as I could and smacked him one across the head. Those cowards soon ran away."
Musa laughed. "You hit him with a frying pan? Man, that's so funny!"
"Yeah, Mei thought it was funny too! As I was packing my things away, she came up to me and said 'I am very thanks to you kind mister.'... her English wasn't so good back then, but it's improved a lot now. Anyway, she took me back to her village and introduced me to her gran, and they somehow persuaded me to stay. I guess I was thankful to be staying in one place... mind you, I did get lost the very next day. I was checking the village out... it's only a small village, but it took me a whole day to find my way back. Since then, Mei never let me out of her sight... until one day five years later. We were going down to the stream to get some water and we somehow got separated. I didn't know this until I realised that I'd been walking for half a day to a river that should've been a couple of minutes walk. I tried so hard to find my way back, but I couldn't. When I reached the Gobi Desert, it hit me that I'd lost them. I cried for days, I did."
A tear came to his eye as he recounted his sad story.
"I tried so hard to get back to An-Chuan, I asked thousands of people for directions but no-one had heard of it. And the more I tried to find it, the more I got lost."
"But... surely we could find it now, couldn't we?"
"No chance... An-Chuan's so small and remote, it won't be on any maps." He closed his eyes and clenched his fists as he spoke, trying hard not to let the tide of sadness overwhelm him. "I really miss Mei, but... I've lost them... I've lost my only real family, and there's no way I'll ever see them again."
"That's not quite true" said Musa as she placed the holo-image gently into his hands. "My family are your family now."
Tegryn sighed. "I wish I could do the same thing for you."
'Don't worry' Musa thought. 'You will soon, I promise...'