I waited, glancing from one person to the next, especially watching the
doubters, hoping someone would speak up. My eyes wouldn’t beg anyone for a
question, but I knew they were out there; just watching their faces, there were
questions.
“How do we know you’re not making this all up?” Nick asked, filling the
silence that no one else would breach, ending the anxiety and annoyance it had
begun to instill in me. A good deal of attention was shifted to him for a
moment before returning to me, many mumbles consenting with this question.
“Because I’m an air elemental. I grew up without my mother, another air
elemental who was found and taken away by the governmental detail we refer to
as bounty hunters. Because this is not something I would joke about.”
“Prove it,” a woman shouted from one of the picnic blankets.
I had spent the night thinking about what I would do and had determined a
few ways, starting with the less showy. The woman who asked was named Dolores,
which I found out from her friend who was somewhat embarrassed she had spoken
up. Dolores—a tall brunette, curvy, and middle-aged—was thinking about her kids
and the teenaged babysitter she left them with, whom she didn’t trust not to
invite over her boyfriend or friends.
“Dolores, would you tell your friend with you…” I was saying, a trick to
make her think her friend’s name for me, “…Joanie, that she shouldn’t be
embarrassed you spoke up. This is an open forum because I don’t want any of you
to believe me just because I say you should.” The women exchanged a confused
look and there was some murmuring from the people gathered. “Because I don’t
want you to feel uncomfortable,” I added, one hand on my chest, one hand
reaching out toward her as if I could pat her hand, which I did do with the
air, “I won’t ask for your address, but I think you should trust your
babysitter. She probably has the kids playing a game or something.”
Dolores started talking excitedly to Joanie, first demanding if she had
spoken to me at all and how I could know all of that. I withheld a smile, proud
of myself, though I knew most people wouldn’t believe either of them.
“So how long have you known Dolores and Joanie?” a guy, standing
relatively close to Nick, demanded, crossing his arms.
“I’ve never met them before,” I replied, “but you won’t believe me. And
that’s okay.”
“Do something else?” a little black haired boy requested, his mother
quickly shushing him though he waved her off.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked him, crouching down as he was in one
of the lawn chairs near the gazebo steps.
He leaned forward excitedly, his rich brown eyes wide and glistening.
“Can you fly?” he half-whispered.
Smiling, I stood again. “I can do something like flying,” I admitted,
facing the skeptic near Nick.
“You probably know him, too,” he quipped, sneering. Some people just had no
manners.
“She doesn’t,” the boy’s mother insisted, holding his head to her chest
before he pushed her away, waiting eagerly to see his request fulfilled.
“Then you wanted someone to say that. There’s probably wires,” he
reasoned, and while a few people agreed with him, more of them were tired of
his doubting, even if they still weren’t convinced.
“So choose someone, anyone here, to check for wires,” I invited, opening
my arms to encompass the entire company. “I won’t object.”
Thus, everyone started talking, automatically eliminating anyone who said
they believed me and ruling out the skeptic for being too skeptical. Dolores,
Joanie, and the boy and his family were also ruled out. Eventually they decided
on a farmer type who was torn between believing God would allow a phenomena
like this to happen and that elementals were spawns of the devil and therefore
unnatural. He was, however, hesitant to do much more than swipe his hand above
my head and arms should the latter be the truth. When other men in the crowd
cheered him to check elsewhere on my person, he was very respectful and his
cheeks burned red.
When he cleared me as wire-free, I asked him to step to the side,
starting up my cycle of moving strings where he had been standing. Stepping
onto my strings, it took me a moment to find my balance, not having done this
for a while. Once I found it, though, I was good to go, slowly weaving through
the crowd where there was enough space, eventually flying to the top of the
gazebo and sitting down on a now solid block of air. The little boy was out of
his seat staring open-mouthed up at me. Everyone was staring open-mouthed, even
Nick who—I had forgotten—had never seen me do anything but little tricks.
As I sat above them, I properly read the crowd. For the most part, they
were convinced. Quite a few had questions, but I could take those individually.
Floating slowly back down, I felt it was time to improvise an ending since I
had pretty much improvised everything else.
“Elementals exist,” I started, smiling at how many people were nodding in
consent, in belief. Even the gentleman who had checked for wires. “Through us,
small miracles still happen, our existence becomes less of a burden on the
environment, and people are helped. But it won’t last if we let the government
have its way. We exist; we’re people, human; we deserve our rights, too. But
it’s the efforts of everyone together that’s going to make a change possible,”
I finished, looking around again. I couldn’t seem to remember why I had ever
been nervous to begin with. “I’ll be here for a while yet, so feel free to ask
questions.”
Nick was the last one I looked at before thanking the crowd and going to
sit on one of the benches in the gazebo. He had been smiling, silently clapping
for me. Seeing that made me feel so warm inside.
And the feeling didn’t stop there, either. Most of the people who came up
to talk to me introduced themselves and commented on how I had been, or how
amazing it was to see me fly, or tell me how they wanted to help in any way they
could. Every time they asked my name, I answered with “Leirba,” staying true to
Drei’s instructions.
Though the original speech was meant to awe and inspire and be longer and
better organized, among other things, I felt I had found my niche. Caroline
worked well with a prepared script; she liked to talk at people and have them
listen. Me? Well, it seemed improvising with facts readily available afterwards
was more my speed. I liked to talk to people, and connect in that fashion. If
the feedback was any indication, that was how I was going to succeed.
