The Force In Your Hands

Training

"This is so much cooler than what we had planned!" Alex jumped up and down next to me which looked pretty weird. We were on our way to 16 Urlaine Street which was in the old factory quarter. The quarter hadn't been used for a long time and just occasionally, some apartments were rented here. Yet our city had often thought about tearing down the quarter to build something new and prettier, but they hadn't come to a conclusion yet.
"Alex, calm down. It might be cool, but we actually don't know Jeff. What if he doesn't really exist? Or what if he's just a criminal?" I said.
"Then you'll have me by your side and I'll defend you," he answered with an excessively dramatic voice which made me laugh.
"Hey, are you making fun of me?"
"No. Of course not." I tried to hold back my laughter.
"Well. What do you think are we gonna do? Maybe we'll fight with swords? Or with other crazy stuff? Like in the movies?"
"I don't think he's gonna let us fight with weapons already today. It's our first training, he'll want to get to know us first. Maybe he won't even do anything with us today," I replied which made Alex stop jumping. Instead, he now walked next to me with his head held down.
"Oh come on, don't be such a pessimist!" he pouted.
"I am completely in the mood. And not at all a pessimist!" I replied indignantly and slightly punched against his shoulder. He staggered a bit because he wasn't prepared for it. "After all, I've done a great step forward by meeting him in the awake world. If he really exists."
"We'll see. And if he doesn't exist, we'll just go home again and you'll have to handle me declaring you insane for a while. Does Claire know where you are?"
"No, I just told her I'm meeting you. In general, she doesn't know yet that I had those dreams. Although Julia said she knew about all of it."
Alex nodded and interrupted the silence when he stopped in front of a big old red brick row house, "here we are. 16 Urlaine Street."
The house actually still looked fine. Here and there graffiti was sprayed on the walls but the windows were all intact and the house itself didn't seem run-down at all. With Alex, I took the five stairs up towards the door and rang the only bell that was there. A shrilling sound banged through the inside of the house and we could hear steps walking towards the door from inside. Then the door opened and a man opened who - on the second look - was Jeff. "There you are, finally. I thought you would be here earlier," he greeted us, a bit unfriendly, but Alex apologized promptly, "Mrs. Ners exceeded the lesson. But we're here now." Jeff nodded and let us come in. During that, Alex whispered, 'congrats, you're not crazy or insane'. We entered a long hallway where we should take off our shoes and jackets which we did promptly.
We walked through the hallway and through a door behind which there was the room from my dreams. The training equipment was packed away, probably because we wouldn't need them, instead, there were lines of white chalk painted on the floor. At first, it looked as if they had been painted there randomly, but as I took a closer look, I could see a pattern and in the middle of the room, there was a big star.
"What's that?" Alex asked and pointed towards the lines.
"Those are chantisms. The signs of the chanters. Together, they build a star that stands for the universe. In its center, there are the signs of the elements, they help to control and to learn power. I've painted them so that in the beginning there wouldn't be too much going wrong. Different chantisms have different effects. Those here ensure that the power used inside the lines won't have any impact outside of the lines," he explained.
"And when do we start?" Alex asked anxiously.
"Right now."