Five years earlier at the Great Tang Waterlily Garden (page 7)
The tiger Laohu, his young poet-swordsman master Li Bai, and Wilhelmina Wang and her fire fox Huohu sat or crouched by the pond at the Great Tang Waterlily Garden, and let their paws and feet dangle among the tadpoles playing hide and seek between their toes and claws.
Li Bai was the first to speak.
”I want to be a great man.”
”Define greatness,” asked the talking tiger Laohu in his serious, measured way.
”He thinks he’s better than everyone else just because he’s smarter than everyone else,” Wilhelmina answered for him, looking half admiringly, half teasingly at the proud boy. His black hair over his eyes in a profusion of carelessness. His high forehead pale and now wrinkled in defense.
“I don’t think I’m smarter than you three,” the young Li Bai said hotly, feeling guilty and inexplicably wounded.
Wilhelmina stood up and kicked at the surface of the water playfully, splashing her feline, ailurine, and human companions, “Oh come off it. You think you’re a genius and the rest of us are merely along for the ride. These rivers, these mountains,” she gestured, rather symbolically, for the garden was quite flat and mild, “are yours to conquer.”
“I do not!” Li Bai said quickly, “not the first part any way. I think you’re… I think you’re the greatest girl I ever—“
Here he stopped, and red as a Chang’an persimmon drying on hot loamy soil, he looked alway, because he is not one to ever look down.
”You think being smart equals being worthwhile,” the tiger said for him.
Li Bai, feeling backed into a corner, not completely understood, yet somewhat understood, said thoughtfully, “I don’t want to be ordinary. I want to do great things. I want to see beyond the Great Tang Empire. I want to go to Rom—”
“That has nothing to do with being great,” observed the tiger, “one can go anywhere without being superior or inferior.”
Li Bai went on, “We are only alive once. I want to do something really special before I die.”
“You still don’t have to be special to do something special,” said the tiger.
Li Bai turned to face his friends on this warm June morning in the Great Tang Waterlily Garden. He looked at Wilhelmina’s black shiny eyes, her equally gleaming hair, then at his beloved tiger Laohu’s intelligent, patient face, and was filled with inexpressible feeling.