“Why is it all bluish?” I
questioned before realizing I had a different question I wanted an answer to
more. “How can I even see it?”
“Well, we’re both connected
directly to the air. To you, air appears bluish. I always saw it purplish,
though lately it’s been more pinkish, but yeah,” she stopped herself from
rambling on. “When you open your mind to it, the air will show you everything
that pushes it aside. Of course, whatever color you see the air as is what
everything else looks like, so don’t take any bets on what colors the person in
the next room is wearing. Unless you get really good. When I was younger, I
heard rumors of elementals who could eliminate the bias in their minds and have
the air show them whatever color was disrupting them. But that’s just rumor. Never
met anyone who could. I tried, though. I think if I keep trying I’ll be able to
do it one of these days. Wouldn’t that just be great? To tell what the colors
around the world are?”
I laughed. “Around the world is a
little ambitious, don’t you think?”
“Nothing is ambitious. Once, when I
was really bored, I mapped a cocktail party where they spoke a funny language; they
all wore beautiful clothing, even though they were all purplish and everything;
and they sounded like chipmunks kind of. It was really entertaining to watch. The
better you get the more you can learn, like sounds. Sounds don’t come for a
long time, though. When they do, you can hear everything said wherever you’re
mapping.”
“What about sending? How does that
work?” I pressed, genuinely interested.
“Oh, that’s tricky,” she said, her
eyes wide but a note of seriousness still visible. “Both people have to be
open, one to send it and the other to receive it. Once they’re both open, the
person sending has to convince the air to share in the first place. It takes
more time to learn. There’s a lot of sweet talking and even some promises not
to abuse it for a while—air is very picky and needs lots of flattering. One day
it wouldn't let me at all because the person I was sending to had hurt it
really badly recently, so yeah. Okay, I'll get back to it,” she said slightly
exasperated. “Anyway, so after you convince the air to allow that kind of
transfer of information, all you have to do is will the information or image or
whatever it is over to the other person. Of course if you're showing them
something at the same time then you have to know how to split your focus so you
can do what you want and still send, but that goes without saying.”
“Are you going to teach me that
too?”
“Well,” she mused, looking off to
the side. “It isn't so easy to teach. For everyone it's different, and it
heavily depends on your relationship with the air. I would think the air really
likes you; it didn't give me much fuss at all. But you know how now; you'll
have to figure the rest out on your own.”
There were more questions, but I
could tell her concentration was wearing thin the more she forced herself to
stay focused. My questions could wait until later, when she wasn't as worn.
“How many people are in the cell
next to ours?” she inquired, her eyes lighting up as though it was a game to
her, making it more apparent how quickly I was losing her.
“Which direction?” I asked; I
nodded as she pointed to the wall adjacent to the cushioned corner.
Doing as she had shown me, I draped
a thin layer of air over the room and then tucked it around the bluish bumps to
give them more shape. The room was as bare as ours. A cushioned corner, a
barred window, a toilet like thing, and a door. There were three people in the
room, one smaller than the others and curled on the cushions in the corner. From
all that I could tell, it was a girl and she was asleep, but it might have also
been a guy. I didn't want to tuck too close. The other two were adults, a
skinny person and the other was heavyset, both may have been either man or
woman from my tucking.
“Three people,” I replied.
“Confident enough to figure out
their sexes?”
Opening my eyes, I told her
honestly, “No. I don't want to be intrusive.”
She enveloped me in her arms. “At
least you know how if you need to.”
“If I tucked the air closer, would
they be able to tell?” I queried, curious.
“Yes, Sweetie. While mapping itself
isn't harmful, it leads to one way you can kill people from a distance. You
tuck too close around the head and they choke on the air; there's too much
going in and not enough coming out—don't use it to kill, Abriel. Promise me.”
“I promise,” I said, thinking I
would never need to. I had no interest in hurting other people, especially not
to that extreme. But it didn't matter this advice may never apply to me. It
only mattered that for the first time, she was sane enough to give advice. She
was okay. Sort of.
“Air gives life and takes it away—like
people kind of—but once you abuse your gift to choose for yourself which it is,
air never works the same for you again. It holds it against you until you
either die or you completely forsake your gifts; don't let it come to that,
Abriel, sweetie.”
“I won't, Mom. I promise,” I
assured her.
She pulled away from me then,
jumping to her feet and skipping around the room, her goofy smile and wide cerulean
eyes back. A song dripped from her lips, joyous and childish.
The sudden change left me feeling
numb. We had been closer than ever before—reminiscent of a real mother and
daughter—and now she was back to how she had been. If anything, I was more
upset with myself for forgetting it would end.
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