The Millet Uncooked

Lu Sheng opened his eyes.

He was lying on the bench by the roadside inn. The old Taoist was still sitting across from him, calm as before, leaning upon his thornwood staff. The other travelers were warming their hands at the fire. And the pot — the pot of millet — was still over the flames, not yet cooked.

He stared. He lifted his hands. They were young hands, smooth and unlined, without the scars of the dikes, without the trembling of old age. He felt his back. He was thirty years old again, or thereabouts, and the road was the same road, and the robe was the same coarse robe.