[center][h3][b][color=#00ff00]K A I - R O[/color][/b][/h3][sub][b][color=#00ff00]T A L E S   F R O M   T H E   G R E E N   L A N T E R N   C O R P S[/color][/b][/sub][hr][hr][sub][b][color=#b6d7a8]ACT I: AD ASTRA PER ASPERA[/color][/b]
[i]Part 1: “Kai-Ro”[/i][/sub][/center]
[b][color=#00ff00]T I B E T[/color][/b]
[sub]EARTH | SECTOR 2814[/sub]

[indent][color=silver]The call to prayer came before the dawn.

It would be several hours before the sun rose, in fact. Dawn in the Tibetan mountains would come around 7 a.m. in this time of year. Which would be about four hours from now.  

The boy woke atop a thin mat, laid out on the floor. The room was no more than a closet, with three children of similar age crowded into the shuttered space. As they stirred to wake, each picked up the red-orange cloth that had served as their sole bedding. Shifting and tucking it around their bodies revealed the reality that the sheet was, in fact, their clothing.

Bare feet padded from out of the cloistered confines, spilling out into a temple hall in which monks of varying ages had begun to mill about. The three boys made their way to the showers, to begin the day by first preparing their bodies. In times past, there would have been more of them. Child-monks, given to the monasteries by a cultural tradition in which one son of each Tibetan family was trained as a monk, but today they were less than a handful.

Banned. Prohibited, by the laws that had superimposed themselves on Tibet. As the boys made their way along the halls, the banners of China hung alongside images of Communist Party Leaders.

[color=#b6d7a8]“[i]Tayata om...[/i]”[/color]

The young monk paused. He was laboring at a churn, a traditional method of making the yak butter tea known in Tibet as [i]po cha[/i]. As children, monk initiates were required to have a sponsor, who guided their education and their place in the monastic order. In his case, that sponsor was Monk Lhakpa, who was also in charge of the monastery’s kitchens.

[color=#b6d7a8]“[i]Tayata om bekanze...[/i]”[/color] the boy began, re-starting the attempt at recitation. Monk Lhakpa had been teaching him a new mantra, to help guide the meditative exercise for this morning. After they had finished preparing breakfast for the monks, in any case. Looking up from his butter churn, the boy seemed to pose a question as he uttered, [color=#b6d7a8]“[i]...bekanze razha?[/i]”[/color]

A solitary finger was raised, over at where the aging monk was preparing a large pot of porridge. “[i]Bekanze maha, bekanze razha,[/i]” the elder monk stated, before adding the conclusion, “[i]Samudgate soha.[/i]”

[color=#b6d7a8]“[i]Tayata om bekanze maha bekanze razha samudgate soha,[/i]”[/color] the boy recited, completing the mantra. When he had finished, he looked up at his teacher, as though for affirmation.

“Good,” Monk Lhakpa stated, eliciting an immediate smile from the child. Then, the solitary finger again returned to the air as the monk asked, “Now, what does it mean?”

The smile fell. A look of confusion played out across the youth’s face, as it was plain to see that the child was wrestling with any manner of thoughts or emotions, before finally looking up and stating, [color=#b6d7a8]“But... you didn’t tell me what it means.”[/color]

“It’s not a recital, Kai-Ro,” the man quipped back, invoking the religious name that had been given to the boy when he had taken his first vows. As the man started to prepare the food to be served, he shifted his attention to the boy. Crossing over to the butter churn, the man began to decant the butter tea into a large kettle for service. As he did, he continued, “I didn’t ask what it means to me, I want to know what it means to [i]you[/i].”

The child’s head went back, his face betraying both irritation and surprise with such honesty that the monk couldn’t stop the laugh from reaching his lips.

“I don’t want you to answer [i]now[/i], but think on it,” Monk Lhakpa said, not bothering to suppress his own amusement at the boy’s theological quandary. Instead, pressing the heavy kettle into the boy’s spindly arms, the monk then touched the child’s head and commanded, “Go. Serve the tea. When you have finished, pray. Meditate on this mantra, then come back to me and give me your answer.” 

For his part, Kai-Ro was conflicted. On the one hand, he had the distinct impression that he was being laughed at. On the other, he rather appreciated the head pat from the fatherly monk. That duality of conflict was plain as day on his face, as he lifted the kettle and said, [color=#b6d7a8]“Yes, sir.”[/color]

With the large kettle in his arms, the boy shuffled barefoot from out of the kitchen. In the main hall of the temple, the monks had begun their prayers. Some meditating, a few reciting mantras aloud, while others prostrated themselves before the various iconography in the temple. Meditations upon mandalas, prayer wheels, or the different forms of the Buddha.

As he passed by, those who had their cups out were filled. Mostly, those were in groups that had begun their day with debate and discourse over the sacred and the profane. Mostly, the latter were talks of the Dalai Lama in exile and of the Chinese government’s reach into the monastic lives of Tibet’s cultural religion.

The reason why there were so few child-monks now was the fact that the practice was forbidden, as was education in Tibetan language. Kai-Ro had been smuggled into the temple and made criminal alongside the language that he spoke, and the teachings of his people that only existed in these walls and in the halls of those who had escaped from Tibet to live as exiles.

It was a topic that the boy would not claim to have any knowledge of. China had come to Tibet long before he had been born. And his earliest memories were of the monastery, making this criminal existence the only one that he had ever known.

“I’ve heard that the local party has finally appointed a loyalty director for the monastery.”

They were five monks around the table. All just of age to have taken their second set of vows. Twenty, or so, from what Kai-Ro knew. They spoke in conspiratorial whispers, even as the boy poured the tea for them. 

“A permanent presence? Here?” another monk asked. In truth, China had begun planting permanent Communist Party overseers in the monasteries over the last several years. Theirs was one of the increasingly few that had remained under relatively lax monitoring. “How would we keep the...”

A third raised a hand, stopping the man short before he could finish his statement. Looking up, Kai-Ro was suddenly uncomfortable at the realization that everyone at the table was looking at him.

“...the Dalai Lama’s picture a secret?” the monk uttered finally.

It was a lie. They weren’t talking about his Holiness at all.

The first monk who had spoken reached over, lifting the tea kettle from out of the child’s hands and inspecting it. Handing it back, the monk said “Fetch more tea for us, Kai-Ro.”

Cradling the kettle in his arms, the boy stepped back even as he gave a respectful bow toward the table. Uncertainty gripped him as he started to wind his way back toward the kitchens. If the Chinese had a permanent Party representative in the temple, then where would he and the other child-monks go? How could they continue to live here.

As he crossed from out of the main temple structure and into the courtyard, he heard a sharp cry. The first rays of dawn had just started to appear in the sky, the fading twilight still dark enough that it was dim. Still, there was light enough to see the indistinct shapes of two men. And a third, smaller, that seemed to be struggling against them.

Bhuti cleaned the courtyard each morning, before dawn, so that he wasn’t seen. 

A gasp froze in Kai-Ro’s throat. Grabbing the hem of his robe, the monk took off in a run toward the kitchens. Shadows in the window told him something was wrong before he made it there. A glimpse in the light of a blue-gray cloth. 

The color of the police uniforms.

Dropping the kettle to the ground, the boy turned and sprinted back to the temple. Bursting through the door, the breathless child was met with confusion and aghast looks at the sudden interruption during the prayers. [color=#b6d7a8]“P-police!”[/color] the child managed, between gulps of air.

In a moment, everyone snapped into motion. The picture of the Panchen Lama was put away, swapped instead for the image of the Chinese proxy installed as the Panchem Lama after the abduction of the child-monk that the Dalai Lama had ordained. A small image of the Dalai Lama was pressed into Kai-Ro’s hands, along with one of the Tibetan language texts that they used for study, as the child-monk was ushered along as the monks began preparing for the raid.

“You should be safe in your room,” one of the monks said, grabbing Kai-Ro by the shoulders and pressing him toward that wing of the monastery. “Go there now!”

Struggling to hold the hem of his robe, the texts, and the image of his Holiness, the boy stumbled as he tried to run through the temple. As he neared the steps that would take him up to the closet-like room, menacing shadows told him that the police had already entered on that side. Instead, the boy took a sharp turn, and found himself bolting out of the temple in an effort to avoid them.

Instead, he found himself on the temple steps.

And, below, on the landing was a row of police officers armored in riot gear.

His chest was tight, pain lancing through his lungs as he seemed to forget to breathe. Instead, he stood there. A boy in a saffron robe, holding an image of the Dalai Lama. A rebel and a seditious traitor in both being and appearance. As the police started up the steps, the boy found himself rooted in place.

He was done running away. 

And he was done being afraid.

He was Tibetan. He was Buddhist. And the Dalai Lama was his [i]guru[/i]. The language of Tibet was his language. If he was to be punished for this, then so be it.

It would not change [b]who he was[/b].

Holding onto the picture of the Dalai Lama, the texts written in the forbidden script of his culture shifting around in his arms, the young child-monk raised his head up high to regard the riot-armored police who advanced upon the child.

He could not change his fate, any more than he could change the Chinese control of Tibet. But he [i]could[/i] choose to face it with eyes wide open.

That was when the light grabbed him.

It was an experience like none that the boy could have described. A sudden burst of green light. Penetrating him. Surrounding him. Before he was even aware of what was happening, the boy saw the advancing pair of police officers become small.

That was when he realized that he had, in fact, been catapulted into the air. He tried to keep his grip on the sacred texts and the image of his Holiness, but some slipped from his arms as he tried to maintain any sense of bearing.

It was then that the small jade object floated into view. A jade ring, emblazoned on the crest with the likeness of a lantern.[/color][/indent]

[center][b][color=#00ff00]“KAI-RO OF EARTH, YOU HAVE THE ABILITY TO OVERCOME GREAT FEAR.”[/color][/b][/center]