A/N - Well, this chapter was supposed to be a brief scene about making tea, and then moving on to a meeting with a lawyer to finalize the creation of the White Moon Sect.
Dakala pauses with her hand on the door to the tea shop. In the window next to the door is a large, stenciled sign proclaiming, Tea ceremony demonstration $20/seat. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. See till for details.
She almost turns around right then, but someone behind her says, "Excuse me."
Steeling herself, she pushes open the door and walks into the store. In the center of the store is a rectangular red carpet with a white line around a foot from the edge. On the counter is a pyramid of metal containers of matcha powder. Stepping to one side, Dakala lets the the person that was behind her walk past and start browsing the shelves.
From the other end of the store, Michelle calls, "Hey Dakala, I hope that rug is ok."
Dakala walks around the carpet and slips her shoes off as she steps onto the carpet. As she scrunches her toes in the pile she frowns at how coarse it feels compared to what her memory was expecting. Stepping back onto the laminated wood floor she bounces up and down on her toes for a second before nodding.
"Dakala?"
Dakala looks up in surprise, "Uh, sorry. I guess the carpet would be good for anyone that's watching, as it's softer than the floor. Is it ok if I work on the floor though, as I don't want the mortar and pestle moving around."
Michelle nods, "Sure. Do you want a cushion to kneel on?"
Dakala shakes her head, "No, I brought the one I use at home. Do you have the leaves?"
Michelle nods, "I do, they've only been steamed and dried. Miss Tamaasa brought them personally when I phoned Matcha Konomi's office in California."
Alarmed, Dakala whines, "Why? I only needed green tea leaves. Nothing special."
Michelle laughs at Dakala's expression, "Relax. None of my normal suppliers could supply the leaves, so I phoned the company that makes the best rated matcha powder, and asked them if they knew anywhere I could buy the leaves. Once I explained why, they wanted to send someone over to see how you do it. Don't forget, the Japanese lost a lot of cultural heritage when Kyushu sank, as the tidal waves devastated Shikoku, Chūgoku, and Kansai on top of the loss of the island."
Dakala ducks her head, "Sorry, I didn't think of that."
Michelle smiles as Dakala places a cushion and a mortar and pestle on the floor, "Don't worry about it, most school kids probably don't either. So, I did some research on making matcha, and they use milling stones. Why are you using a mortar and pestle?"
Dakala shrugs, "I don't know, this is just the way that the Empress taught me. It could be because I have to keep up a constant stream of qi to the tea leaves while I'm grinding. Could I have eight leaves please?"
Michelle nods, "Sure, I'll just grab them from the fridge. Could you watch the till while I pop out back?"
Dakala shrugs, "Sure. Or we can wait for the customer to finish."
Michelle laughs, "Oh, no, that's Miss Tamaasa."
Dakala feels her cheeks heat up as she ducks her head, "Sorry, I didn't realize."
Miss Tamaasa turns towards the till, "Don't be. The conversation was fascinating. Would you mind if I recorded the process?"
Dakala looks indecisive for a moment before she nods, "Sure, go ahead."
A couple of minutes later Michelle comes back with a plastic plate that has eight and a bit leaves on it. "Here you go. They were a little fragile so I added a bit that broke off."
Dakala nods, "Thank you."
Taking the plate, she kneels down on her cushion and withdraws one of her fans and a linen cloth. With the cloth she carefully cleans and inspects each of the tines and spikes of the fan while Miss Tamaasa sets up a tripod with a camera on it.
Once she's sharpened one of the spikes that was a little dull, she wipes out the mortal and pestle before placing the fan on top of it. Straightening up, she places her hands on her thighs and starts to cycle qi as she goes over what she needs to do.
As the door to the shop opens and closes, she fancies that she can hear the fourth bell of the pagoda, and so she opens her eyes and lifts one of the leaves off the plate at the same time she takes up her fan and slides open the first tine.
Channeling a trickle of qi to the spike of the first tine, she uses it to carefully cut the body of the leaf away from the spine and veins, allowing the debris to fall into the mortar. Once she's finished, she places the skeleton on the plate and lifts off the second leaf.
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Michelle's eyes widen as the door opens 15 minutes before 4pm, and the Empress walks in past the carpet, and round to stand beside Miss Tamaasa.
Miss Tamaasa frowns, "Why is she using a fan?"
The Empress speaks just loud enough to be heard by the camera, "It is the weapons she's most familiar with. Other students would need to use a dagger, as a sword or spear is rather impractical for such delicate work."
Miss Tamaasa looks up, "Why cut it out at all?"
The Empress gestures to Dakala, "For cultivators, the tea ceremony is a demonstration of how much skill and control their students have. As my most senior student, it will be Dakala's duty to perform the ceremony whenever we have visiting cultivators or dignitaries. If you watch, she's laying out the skeleton of each leaf on the plate. Once she's finished, she'll present the plate to the guests to show how well she performed."
Miss Tamaasa blinks, "Who are you anyway?"
The Empress smiles, "I'm the Stellar Empress, or Empress Stellar if you use the ordering of my homeland."
Miss Tamaasa bows slightly, "Tamaasa Mitsu. We put our family names first."
The Empress nods in acknowlegement.
As Dakala gets close to finishing the last leaf, the Empress murmurs, "We should take our places now."
Miss Tamaasa nods sharply and says, "Hai!" before she registers what the Empress said. As she's walking around the carpet, to avoid walking in front of the camera, she goggles slightly as the Empress waves her hand and two silk kneeling cushions appear on the red carpet.
As she finishes the last leaf, Dakala lifts up the plate and her eyes widen in panic as she realizes that the Empress is there. The Empress takes the offered plate with a smile, "Much better. You missed a few veins, so don't forget to take them out of the mortar before you start grinding. I'll be expecting this quality from you in future." In the language of heaven she adds, "Take a little more time to feel out the veins with your qi and take your time. Speed will come with practice."
Dakala bows towards the Empress, "Thank you, I will endeavor to meet your expectations."
Miss Tamaasa takes the plate with a somewhat awed expression. As she hands it back, "I have no words. Before today I didn't think this was even possible."
Dakala nods and places the plate in front of the mortar and pestle before carefully sifting through the leaves looking for the veins she missed. Once she's fished out three pieces of leaf vein, she starts cycling qi and carefully lets out a sustainable trickle into the pestle and mortar as she starts to break up the leaves, and then grind them into a fine powder.
The Empress softly says, "At this point the elders of the sect would either leave while they were waiting for the visitors to arrive, or the visitors would be invited to look around the public parts of the sect and engage in smalltalk. Depending on if the student was preparing the thick tea or thin tea."
Miss Tamaasa looks confused, "Do you mean she'd do this twice?"
The Empress nods, "The second time would be in front of the guests. If I recall the agreement correctly. On Saturdays Dakala is going to be doing the whole ceremony from the noon bell."
The Empress smiles as Dakala's qi flow jerks slightly, before leveling out again. From the counter, Michelle asks, "Noon bell?"
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After she's finished making the thin tea, Dakala hands the bowl to the Empress first, who takes the customary number of sips before passing it onto Miss Tamaasa.
As Miss Tamaasa takes a sip, her eyes widen minutely. On her last sip, she slurps loudly before passing it over to Michelle.
After the bowl has been passed back to Dakala she bows slightly, "Thank you for allowing me to be part of such an exquisite ceremony. May I ask how you were able to get such a sweet flavor out of the tea?"
Dakala nods, "It was my pleasure. Part of the flavor comes from the qi that was infused during the grinding process. The rest comes from burning off the impurities with qi during the grinding process. It helps that these leaves were very good compared to the leaves I usually buy. I even gained some insight into my Dao doing this."
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As Dakala pushes open the door to the tea shop on the first Saturday in April, she smiles at the little dragon in the window that's burning incense. The last few weeks have been a roller coaster of experiences as Saturdays went from being a curiosity to tourist attraction seemingly overnight when Matcha Konomi posted the full video of her practice, along with Japanese subtitles and an accompanying commentary by one of their tea masters.
At the same time, Tuesdays and Thursdays seemingly went the other way, and has become an impromptu class on how to perform the tea ceremony. She's not sure how it ended up being conducted entirely in the language of Heaven, or involving helping people through the beginning stages of cultivation. Or babysitting Aster after the Thursday lesson while Kayden goes shopping.
Kayden was a weird one too, as she was dragged along by someone who introduced themselves as YogaAddict from PHO, as if it was supposed to mean something to her. Thinking about it, that was probably when it changed.
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Dakala groans as she spots the skinny middle aged man, who introduced himself as YogaAddict, drags a younger brunette woman in for the second time that week.
She looks up at Michelle beseechingly, only for her to grimace slightly and point at the till. An action that's borne out a moment later as the YogaAddict produces two receipts and holds them out to her. As she glances down at the time, she sees that they were bought at the beginning of the day.
Taking a couple of deep breaths, Dakala settles in for another session like Tuesday, where the woman glared at her the whole time. As she cleans her fan, the woman glares at it as if it's personally offended her.
YogaAddict instead walks up to the counter, "Hey Michelle, can I have some of the same leaves she's using please?"
Michelle frowns, "Sure, that'll be $2."
"Even for an old friend?"
"Mike, I left your class because you're a creep. What makes you think I'm going to give you a discount now?"
Mike pulls a knife out of his bag and waves it around, "Aww, but I brought my own stuff too."
Dakala sighs, "Mike, this is a shop, and you buy stuff in shops. You don't threaten the owner to get free stuff. Especially if you claim to be their friend."
Mike turns around, "Who are you, my Mother?"
"No, I'm the person that is supposed to be starting the tea ceremony in a few minutes. I'm also the person that will throw your sorry ass out of the shop if you don't put the knife away."
Mike puts the knife back in the bag, and reluctantly hands over $2.
As he kneels down, he pulls out a mortar and pestle that has obviously been well used in the kitchen and lays his knife on top of it the same way Dakala's fan is laid out. Then he closes his eyes and starts cultivating.
Dakala rubs her forehead, before placing her hand in her lap and starting to cycle qi. When the fourth bell goes in the shop, she picks up the first leaf and her fan, and pauses as she watches Mike pick up a leaf and his knife too while the woman just watches him. Shaking her head, she feels out the structure of the leaf with her qi, and lightly passes her razor sharp fan along the edges of the veins.
As she finishes the last of her leaves, and passes the plate to the woman to see, Mike hands his own plate to her. Wincing, Dakala takes one look at the butchered remains, and says, "I think you need to take better care of your tools, and concentrate on the basics."
Mike nods, "Uh huh, what are the basics?"
"Grinding."
Mike pats the mortar and pestle, "That's why I brought this."
Dakala shakes her head as she passes the plate to the woman and starts sifting through her mortar to check that she hasn't missed any veins. After she's found two veins, and a third search doesn't turn up anything, she starts to grind the leaves.
Across from her, Mike thumps his leaves several times before madly swirling them around with the pestle. Bits of leaves go flying for the first few moments, and he keeps it up for nearly 10 minutes. At the end of that time he grunts, "Done. Now we can practice cultivating. Kayden, remember that you want to draw the qi through your meridians and down into your dantain. Deep breath in through your nose, and pull the qi down to your dantain. Now breathe out."
After a couple of minutes, Dakala pauses in her grinding, "Mike, Kayden can't even feel qi at the moment. Her posture's all wrong, and she's too tense."
Kayden snaps, "What would you know, you're just a wog. I've seen Mike using qi."
Dakala slips her jade coin out of her ring and holds it up, "Kayden, in the language of heaven, there are no words for race. Not like there are in English. You can describe a persons appearance, their realm and culture of origin. But you can't insult them with racial style slurs. Do you know why?"
Kayden sneers, "I guess you're going to tell me."
"It's because a preoccupation with race is a mortal concern. They have a hundred ways to insult your intelligence, a thousand to insult your ancestry. But they don't care about race because mortals are less than dirt to most of them. All that matters is if you're a cultivator or immortal, and to immortals, cultivators are only one step above mortals. If you don't believe me, touch this jade coin to your forehead, or ask for your own and do it with that one."
Kayden keeps sneering, "You'd like that wouldn't you. I bet it's not even a real coin, and it's one you've doctored."
Michelle throws her hands in the air, "Kayden, just say 'Stellar Empress, I wish to know the Mandate of Heaven' and you'll get your own coin."
"Why should I listen to a race traitor."
Michelle's voice goes quiet as Kayden covers her mouth, "Kayden, you can either say those words, or you can get out of my store and never come back. I'll also share this conversation on the yoga boards. And Mike, get out of my shop, you're no longer welcome here."
Kayden shakes her head, "You can't, it would ruin my reputation and I need to feed Aster."
Michelle shakes her head, "Kayden, I can, and I will. I've had it up to here with people like you and Mike. At least Mike knows when to keep quiet about it. Yoga's supposed to be about love and acceptance."
Kayden mumbles, "Stellar Empress, I wish to know the Mandate of Heaven." More loudly, she says, "There, are you happy now?"
Michelle just smirks as a couple of seconds later, Kayden is beaned on the forehead by the flat of a jade coin.
As Kayden groans and sits up, Dakala just crosses her arms and says, "Believe me now?"
Michelle looks at Mike with a scowl, "Mike, I told you to get out."
Mike shakes his head, "Hey, I didn't do anything wrong."
Kayden fingers the coin in her hand uncertainly, before touching it to her forehead again.
Michelle shakes her head, "Mike, you just spouted shit from a bad Chinese novel, and tried to pass it off as instruction. You know I posted a video of the Empress giving real instructions for how to cultivate. Yet you pull that shit. Get out!"
Kayden murmurs, "I forgot about that."
Dakala withdraws one of her fans and gently raps Kayden on the back of the hand with the blunt end, "Speak in the language of heaven."
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The next Tuesday, Kayden, wearing a suit and makeup, walks in with a Buggy and wheels it around the carpet to the till.
Speaking in the language of heaven, she says, "I would like to participate in the tea ceremony."
Michelle blinks a couple of times, before saying, "Er, that will be, um, twenty dollars. Are you going to behave?"
Kayden nods and takes her coin out of her purse, "I'm not an uppity little mortal."
There a dingle from the door, and a couple walk in before walking over to look at the black teas.
From her mat, Dakala says, "You can speak English, I don't mind."
Kayden spins around and seems to be searching for the right words to say something. After a couple of seconds, she forces her shoulders to relax and says, "Given your lowly background, I'm not surprised that you cannot understand why I'm speaking like this."
Dakala chuckles and nods, "I understand junior sister, maybe we can exchange pointers later."
As the couple grab a bag of East Frisian Tea, the blood drains from Kayden's face. Quietly, the couple pay for the tea before they leave.
As the bell above the door dings again, Dakala says, "Take a cushion Kayden, there is still a bit of time to burn before fourth bell."
As Kayden tries to find a comfortable position to sit in that won't cause her skirt to rise dangerously, Dakala sighs and asks, "Kayden, why are you here?"
Kayden stands up and looks at the cushion, "I, haven't been able to cultivate. I was hoping to get some help."
The door dingles and a couple of women in yoga outfits walk in.
"Why didn't you ask Michelle, she's a cultivator."
Kayden grimaces, "I did yesterday, and I was told I needed to speak to you."
Dakala glances over at the stroller before looking back at Kayden as she takes a silver and rose outfit out of her ring, "Kayden, I'm going to give you a chance. I'm only doing this for your daughter, because she doesn't deserve to grow up with someone that discriminates on a persons circumstances at birth. We can use the store room in the back to change."
"I know how to dress myself."
"I can see that. However, you're not used to these clothes."
As the two of them walk past the counter, a couple of jade coins hit the two yoga women on the forehead. As she leads Kayden back to the carpet Dakala notices the fourth ball has dropped from the clock.
As she kneels down, she bows towards the two women, "My apologies for running late. We needed to do a quick wardrobe change to avoid flashing any men that visit."
The younger of the two women chuckles, "I noticed. Don't sweat it."
Dakala nods, "The tea ceremony has three main parts, the first is where I prepare the leaves to be ground. The second is grinding, this will take around an hour, so you're welcome to get up and wander around if you want. The last part is making the tea and serving it. Before I begin, do you have any questions?"
"Not really."
Once Dakala has started grinding, Kayden tries to start cultivating. Almost immediately, Dakala says, "Straighten your back and neck."
The two yoga women glance at each other, and copy Kayden's posture as Kayden grumbles, "This thing is pressing on me like an angry senior. How do you stand it."
"Practice and cultivation. Close your cultivation circuit, and breath in through the nose and hold for five heartbeats before exhaling through the mouth."
A few minutes later she pauses grinding to poke one of the yoga women in the stomach with the butt of her spear, "Breath from your belly."
After a few more minutes she says, "Kayden, stand up and walk around the carpet three times… Quickly."
Around half way through the grinding, Dakala taps the older of the yoga women on the shoulder, "That was it, now try and feel it again."
By the time she's finished grinding, all three of the women have felt qi once. Even if Kayden had to make another trip around the store.
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Dragon sends her suit over to watch the Empress carving into a block of jade.
"What are you doing?"
The Empress glances up, before turning back to the jade, "I'm carving Dakala her official seal for signing documents while watching her get her hooks into Purity."
Dragon's eyes widen, "Is she ok?"
The Empress laughs, "Several notable members of the Empire have seen Purity wearing one of Dakala's outfits, and two of them heard her speaking in the language of heaven. None of them have asked for the seal of heaven. None of the Empire that is."
Dragon blinks a few times, "How did that come about?"
"Power. She saw a way to cover her weakness, and went to an Empire sympathizer that's worked out how to cultivate. They just saw her as an easy buck, and showed her a few moves before dragging her to the tea shop to show off. Then Michelle grew a backbone, and kicked the sympathizer out and made Purity choose between learning the language of heaven, or having her reputation trashed. Which, for an independent interior decorator would be a death knell for her career."
Dragon shakes her head, "You really are scary."
The Empress nods, "This is why the mandate exists. Second student, thank you for the chat."
A few minutes later, Dragon's suit reactivates and she looks down at the Empress, "What are you doing?"
The Empress looks up and smiles, "I'm making Dakala her official seal for signing documents. Can I help you?"
Dragon nods, "I got a message from the legal firm, they would like you to sign the documents on the 11th at 10am. The filings should then be on record with the state government by close of business on the 13th, which means you can open a bank account on the 14th."
The Empress nods, "Thank you. Would you mind sending the details to Dakala."
"Sure."
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Shaking her head at the memories, Dakala pushes open the door and squeezes her way through the crowded shop. As soon as she reaches the carpet, the crowd clears and she makes her way to a small roped off area. As she gets to the counter, she spots Vista turning around with a disappointed look on her face.
"Hey Vista."
Vista looks up, "Hi, I tried to get a ticket for today."
Dakala gives her a wry smile, "Since the video, we've been pre-booking seats on Saturdays. Especially now it's been getting warmer. If you can make a Tuesday or Thursday it might be better for you anyway."
Vista nods sadly, "This was the only day I could get someone to run a PR patrol long enough for me to meet you."
Dakala shrugs, "Just turn up on your own then. It's not like the clothes matter. Besides, the week days have sort of turned into a cultivation class anyway."