In the West, spring arrives in measured triumph: Persephone returns from the underworld, Demeter's grief lifts, the earth blooms again. Life stirs predictably, like a clock restarted.
But in the East, spring is a reckoning, a force that cannot be scheduled, a spirit that leaps across the mountains and rivers with a will of its own.
He was Goumang, green-feathered god of life, the first breath of leaves and the pulse beneath every seed. When the frost of winter loosened, he rose from the mists of the southern mountains, wings brushing clouds, talons carving wind, eyes bright as emerald lightning. Wherever he landed, buds split, streams quickened, and the scent of growth spilled into the valleys.
One year, a mortal boy named Lei wandered into the highlands. He had lost his village to famine and frost, his hands empty, his heart hollow. When he stumbled upon a grove trembling with life — every branch, every petal alive with sunlight and dew — he whispered a prayer to whatever gods still lingered in the world.
Goumang heard him. He did not descend in mercy, nor in grace, but in storming, impossible vitality. He flung wind and pollen, and the boy fell to the earth, laughing as leaves spun around him like green flames. "Why do you bring me life when I am so broken?" Lei shouted.
The spirit's eyes glimmered. "Because life is not yours to command," he said, voice like the rush of rivers. "It is mine to scatter, mine to awaken, mine to reclaim even from despair."
For three days and nights, Lei followed Goumang through forests and mountains. Rivers churned; petals fell like rain. Every step of the spirit reshaped the land — hills trembled, trees bent to his will, and yet the boy realized the lesson hidden in the wonder: growth is not gentle, nor linear, nor ever fully understood. It is relentless, chaotic, magnificent.
When spring waned, Goumang vanished into a horizon of morning mist, leaving the boy at the edge of a river brimming with new life. From that river, sprouts emerged where none had been. Villages rebuilt along its banks, unaware of the god who had passed through their valley.
Yet in the wind, Lei sometimes felt the brush of green feathers, and in his heart the echo of a lesson older than time: life endures not for the comfort of mortals, but for the persistent, unyielding rhythm of the world itself.
And so each spring, when the first leaves stir and the rivers awaken, Goumang flies unseen, scattering green fire across the land — a reminder that growth is miracle, discipline, and fury all at once, and that even the smallest soul may witness the vast pulse of creation.