Free Moho (Part One: Rise of a Symbol) by Persadia Page B

dorm is the island furthest to the North. Maze Island, where we went to set up my CEBOS, connects the two areas. All the other departments are located on islands to the East and to the West and they are all somehow connected by land bridges. I could walk around Cosmo’s Islands without ever stepping into the ocean.
    I love the ocean, and while all Islanders do, going into the ocean is forbidden. On our way from the dorm to Element Islands this morning, I put my toes into the ocean which did not go over well with Maya. As it turns out, no one is allowed to touch the ocean or any other water that is not falling from the sky. According to Maya, a new Spring could appear in any ocean or lake at any time and there were periods when Persadia had more than one Spring. The only time a navee is allowed to touch the ocean is when the navee is created in The Spring. They also don’t call it water but ‘liquid of creation’. They do love creation.
    This morning I also learned how they use Element Islands and train to become Creators. Most islets are basically piles of a single material, many of them metals like copper, zinc, silver, gold or aluminum. Others, like the one we are waiting on, are more traditional. Ours, for instance, is just sand and a few perfectly round, small stones that glisten purple green.  I pick one up and play with it. It’s very light.
    Luna is still nowhere to be seen and I become impatient. Maya isn’t very patient herself and suggests we should just start without her. Fine with me.
    In a moment of uncharacteristic resoluteness, she takes the little stone out of my palm and stands up.
    “Get up and stretch out your arms towards me,” she commands me to and so I do. When my hands reach hers , she takes another step backwards so I can no longer reach her hand. “I want you to focus on the stone in my hand.” The stone rests on her open palm and I just look at it. “Do you have it?”
    “I guess so,” I say.
    She turns her palm with the stone in it around and the stone drops to the ground. “You said you had it,” she says.
    “I did look at the stone.”
    “You will have to do more than just look at it. You have to widen your essence and connect it with the stone in my hands so that you can control it.”
    “And how is that supposed to work?”
    “In the same way you move your body, with your essence. Your body is only a pile of atoms, just like the stone in my hand. The reason your body is moving and the stone is not is because your essence is connected to every single atom in your body. Just think of the stone as part of your body. Simply move it like you would move one of your limbs.”
    “That’s not the same," I point out.
    “What’s the difference?”
    “Well, for starters there are bones and muscles in my body. And I have a brain to tell them how to move.”
    “And who is telling your brain what to do?” she asks.
    “Well, I do, of course.”
    “And you are your essence,” she claims, but I’m not convinced. Her attempts at explaining the impossible don’t sound plausible to me at all. But she is persistent.
    “Moho, the only reason you are here is because Cosmo thinks you can do this. Remember the boy and the girl at the selection and how skilled they were? But they were not selected. Cosmo thinks you can do better. All you need to do is open yourself up for the possibility that it might work instead of believing in its impossibility. Nothing would move without an essence connected to it. That’s the difference between you and this stone in my hand. Simply widen your essence. Spread yourself around.”
    Big mistake on Cosmo's part. Picking one of the two contestants would have been a much wiser decision.
    Maya is barely recognizable in her role as tutor. She is unpleasantly clear in what she wants, she isn’t impacted by my skepticism at all and yet there is still something alluring in the way she dictates to me what to do. I don’t want to disappoint her and she is