Cags Khorlo is the sensitive, poetic son of a foreman in the Woodcutters' Guild. From the age of thirteen, he had been hopelessly enamored with the guildmaster's lovely and enchanting daughter who, unfortunately, remained largely oblivious to his very existence. Cags was painfully shy, and the pages upon pages of verse extolling his beloved's virtues were regularly consigned to the hearth or the Tourondel river in fits of melancholic despair.
The final straw fell almost two years ago, at the annual harvest festival, when the guildmaster's daughter and the handsome, barrel-chested son of his right-hand man announced their betrothal. His romantic illusions shattered by reality, Cags slipped away toward the outskirts of town, intending to do some inconsolable sobbing. Stepping off the bridge toward the northern palisade, however, he noticed, as though for the first time, the reclusive foreigner, Ilimara Oniri, in her yard practicing the elegant motions of a meditative kata. He stood entranced for several minutes until, never looking in his direction or missing a beat in her fluid pattern of postures, Ilimara spoke. "Suffering arises in clinging to impermanence," she said with a final flourish, turned, and walked back inside her house without another word.
From that day forward, Cags has been her disciple, jumping into the lifestyle of the contemplative renunciate with both feet. Realizing the essential emptiness of the subjective self and all of phenomenal reality has - oddly, perhaps - greatly improved his confidence, as well as unlocking his heretofore undreamed-of physical potential. He still writes poetry, albeit now mostly cryptic koans attempting to put transconceptual insight into words.
