The regular sounds of the New York City traffic has become part of Li Hua's meditation; just another thing to filter out, honking, roaring, the trundling of buses and the shouts of pedestrians dulling until there was just the hum of the lights and the creak of the floorboards from the women in the house dulling until there was just her breath a regular stream in her nostrils and the pounding of her heart dulling until there was nothing. Sitting cross legged in the grey room, eyes just slitted open but blind, Li Hua allowed her mind to clear and come back into balance from the turbulent dreams and constantly pushing forces shoving their way through this town. She could feel the realignment come to itself, slowly but surely, and--
Her eyes opened, incrementally, rolling to take in the suspiciously unchanged room, everything still in its place and betraying nothing that may have caused that disruption in her energy. That was when, just at the edge of her vision, she noticed her own hands. In the dark, they looked black, as if they were stained from calligraphy. Bringing them up to her face, she found the colour ran all the way up her arms and, pulling her shirt away from her chest, down her body. She settled again, taking a slow breath, eyelids drooping and finding her balance before exhaling and pushing herself to her feet. The curtain was tugged open as she passed it, letting the sunlight in to illuminate her alien reflection in the mirror she approached. Whatever stained her skin was a rich blue, her hair once pridefully glossy black now cherry red and her eyes the flat yellow of a demon. She touched her fingers delicately to her face, her coveted features still the same under the inexplicable colouring, and with the same amount of arms and toes accounted for. What kind of vision was this?
"Tiger--" a woman gasped from the door where she had peaked in, and found herself unable to restrain her shock.
Li Hua's head whipped round to her sharply, and as it did she could see her image in the mirror change out of the corner of her eye; her skin going pale again, and her hair going dark. She was compelled back to the mirror, leaning against the desk it hung above to peer close to the glass. "What did you see?" she asked the woman at the door, voice slow and unreadable.
"It was just the light--"
"No," Li Hua stopped her, bringing a hand up again to watch as she coaxed the blue to run over her fingers again. "I do not know to whom I should direct my thanks for this gift, but it is not just light." The blue retreated and the skin of her hand wrinkled and shrank around bony knuckles to become that of a wizened old woman, then plumped and grew heavy and masculine. "We all have more to learn about the balance of all things."