An account on balance...

Relax. I'm only here to help. I figured you could use some advice, some small comfort amidst the myriad of disheartening features in your new life. Let me tell you how it started for me.

I was always a bright student when I was younger - cleverer than most of my classmates. Asians are supposed to be good at math, right? That was a joke. You are allowed to laugh, I'm not going to judge you for it...

As you can imagine, I suffered for being different, like most people do nowadays. Now that I look back and weigh it up, it was worth it. An education is nothing to take for granted, kid. I would be lying if I said the negative attention I gathered (for my race and intelligence, of all things) didn't have an effect on me. It left me gloomy, to say the least. I felt beaten down, and tired, and rather than do something creative with my intelligence, I decided it would be best to settle for a profitable career in accounting. Fortunately, I've always been good with numbers.

In fact, for a long time, numbers were better friends to me than people ever were. Numbers are honest, they can't lie or hold cruel intent. Easy to deal with, logical. It was not for some time before I would learn that they also lacked any real feeling or emotion. Finally free from the bullies of my youth, I was not one for social interaction. I kept to the library when I wasn't busy with my calculator. If only I were able to give my younger self some advice - or at least a good kick in the head. The real question is, would I have come to learn what I know now if I had not journeyed along the path before me?

I was successful, in that I made a lot of money, and had a nice house with a pool that never got used. Life was dull, like one big calculation. I eventually injected some excitement in the form of illegal operations. Money laundering, tax evasion, you name it. Everything fell into one big moral grey area by then. Sure, I was becoming a criminal, whilst helping established ones get away with it, but at least it added some colour to my life. I don't agree with what I did now, but I feel as though the experience helped me to grow. Don't worry, you're about to go through a whole lot of that.

Despite the excitement, it hardly made my life happy. There was something inhuman about it all, the way that my life could be compartmentalised, everything assigned a quantitative value. All of 'me' and my world equated and balanced. At times it felt as though the numbers were driving me insane, in contrast to their usual comfort. It was on one such night when it happened to me.

I sat at my desk, preparing a fraudulent statement of financial performance for one of my more interesting clients from those days. I'm sure you can appreciate the height my frustration grew to reach as I spent hour after hour trying to make everything balance. No matter what I did, my computer kept telling me that money was missing - and I knew for a fact that it wasn't. It was rare for me to get so very much riled up, so I stood from my desk and paced in an effort to calm down.

Naturally, it did little good. I returned to find myself once again unable to make it all balance. Something that I had been gifted with since I was a child was now quickly becoming a source of dementia. In anger, I hurled my laptop across the room, and attempted to work everything out by hand. Of course, my hands were shaking by this point, my writing unsteady. I strained my mind until it thumped with pain trying to make it all fit together, but it was to no avail. With a growl of outrage, I rose once again, stomping furiously about my home. I stopped in my tracks when I looked in the mirror.

The half moon hung almost delicately in the air behind me, and I could feel the precision of her position even as I watched her through the reflection. Suddenly, the numbers themselves didn't seem so important anymore. I knew that Luna was watching me (though I was hardly aware of her nature at the time), that the moon, so very far away, was keeping track of my own actions. I blinked once in astonishment.

"Time for a change, don't you think?" my reflection spoke to me. I jumped and glanced back, only to find myself staring into the eyes of a wolf. With a yelp, I turned to run (for what accountant would find a wolf in their house comforting?). It was of no use, for my body had already begun to change, shifting violently and inconsistently. I fell to the floor, hard, bones growing and twisting, fur appearing and receding. I spent brief moments in all our shapes, my respectable business shirt and pants no more than tattered wastes upon the floor.

Eventually, I emerged back in Hishu, panting, naked as the day I was born, and entirely shaken up by the experience. I admit, I was terrified, as I imagine you were too. Still, as I sat there, curled up in the foetal position, I looked out my window and up to the moon. I didn't sleep that night, I was lost within my thoughts, trying to come to some understanding as to what had just occurred. Naturally, I did not understand until some time after that night, but one thing did become clear to me as I performed the checks and balances that were so very familiar. Not everything is as it seems. There is a certain duality that permeates this world and the next - twin realms, of the material and the ephemeral. So and so it is in nature as it is in our own lives. There must be a balance in all things, you see. There was a moral imbalance in my life at that time, and I have worked diligently to correct it. Do not believe that we are cursed, young one, but do not believe that you may live a life inconsiderate either. The key to it all is knowing yourself. To finding balance. Harmony.

Do you know who you are?