The Elements

Chapter 3 - Water

The first thing I noticed was the water. Dripping wet, every surface before me was filled with water. In absolute bewilderment, I slowly stood up. My foot wasn't hurting — that was the good news. And then there was the weird news. My clothes weren't damp — not at all. A circle of dry had formed around me amongst all the wet. And finally, there was the bad news: Olivia was nowhere to be seen.

"Olivia? Olivia! Where are you?" I shouted. Then a terrifying thought struck me. What if, for some reason, whatever I did just now had hurt her? What if she was — no. She couldn't. There had to be another reason. Right?

While looking around for Olivia, I suddenly saw something peeking out from where I had hit my foot. I slowly pushed the dirt away and I found it, lying right in my hands!

The box was every bit as I had remembered it to be. At the back of my mind, I knew I still had to find Olivia. But the excitement of finding the box had defeated that fear an eternity ago. I put the box down on the ground and took a deep breath to calm my racing nerves. Then I opened the box.

White. It was all I could see as blinding light spilled out from the box. Then my body just disintegrated. All I could do was float around, a bodiless soul in the vast open space. I tried to shout for help, but no sound came out. Suddenly, a force pushed me right out, and I landed on something soft. Then the world went black.

"Pearl. Pearl. Pearl!" A distant voice called. Then it sharpened and the world came into focus. I found myself sitting on someone's bed. Then I traced the voice to a girl. She had black eyes and long blonde hair. But the most noticeable thing about her was her dress. The white, wispy dress swirled around her, floating in mid-air, as if it was held there by some force.

I tried to sit up. I failed. Miserably. "Don't strain yourself. It was a hard trip," the girl said. That was when I realised what was so wrong about all this.

"How did you know my name? Who are you? Where am I?" A barricade of questions came tumbling out from my mouth.

"Calm down," the girl said, "My name's Aura. Do you know how you came here?" How did I come here? I strained my memory. And it all came rushing back to me, hitting me like a tidal wave.

"The box," I said, "The box. And... Olivia! Where's Olivia!" Aura looked at me with a puzzled look on her face.

"Sorry," I said, "I mean, I opened a box and it sucked me in. And I had a friend with me, Olivia, but now I have no idea where she went." Aura looked amazed. She — well, she just kept looking at me like she was trying to solve a puzzle. I could practically hear the gears turning in her mind.

"Maybe... No! It can't be! Can it?" I heard her repeatedly muttering to herself. Finally, she took a deep breath, and, instead of telling me what she had figured out, Aura calmly walked out of the room.

I flopped down on the blankets, trying to find out what she was up to. Outside the room, I could hear a conversation going on. Aura was talking to two other girls. Something about "water", "elements", and a whole lot of "impossible"'s were the only words I could hear. I tried to sit up again, only to find my efforts in vain. I groaned. Twice. Anger was eating me up alive. How dare they not tell me what was going on! It spread through my whole body, until I could have exploded. Of course, that would have been better than what happened next. All my tangled emotions just sort of poured right out of me, and an arm shot out as if by instinct. The next few seconds was a blur.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself floating mid-air — or was that mid-water? Well, maybe a mix. It looked like it was water, but I was breathing perfectly fine. I lay there for a few seconds, trying to figure out what had just happened. Then, voices broke my train of thought.

"Is she okay?" Aura's voice echoed.

"If she really is water, that means she should be okay, right?"

"If she really is water, that means she started it in the first place, so she should be hurt."

"Amber!"

Anyway, I saw a group of people coming. I recognised Aura, and the other two were probably who she was talking to just now. Then something weird caught my eye. They were floating towards me in an air bubble — like, literally inside a bubble! Before I had time to think about that, Aura walked (floated) towards me.

"Pearl? Are you okay?" she asked, her voice concerned. I nodded, but I couldn't explain why. So I hit her back with a question.

"Where am I?"

"Well... You may find it hard to believe, but you're inside water right now." Aura was right. It was hard to believe.

"You are insane," I told her, "Nobody can breathe in water."

"Yes, that's why we're all in this bubble." Aura gestured to the other two girls. That was when I took a closer look at them. One of them had blonde hair tied in a not-so-fancy ponytail and was wearing a simple gardening dress with faded remnants of soil. The other had dark black hair and was wearing a short red skirt.

"Question number one. What about me? Question number two. How do you even make the bubble in the first place?" That was when the girl with the gardening dress spoke. (By the way, the other girl, presumably Amber, was ignoring me — and she looked like she was having a hard time trying to do so.)

"I am Emerald. You are not what you think you are, Pearl. You are one of us. You have an element." Emerald's voice had a smooth texture.

"What is an element?"

"It is a special power in air, earth or fire. And..." Emerald looked at Aura nervously. I saw Aura give a tiny nod before she said, "And water. But that was a long time ago."

"Right," I snorted. If she refused to be sane I would too. "So... You expect me to have one of these powers? It's either you're crazy or you've got the wrong person, 'cuz I've never had anything in my life to do with air, earth or fire before. So bye-bye." And I swam up to the water surface, trying to get away from the bunch of weird girls. And the weird still-ignoring me Amber.

The water, weirdly, pushed me up like it knew where I was going. I went shooting up into the sky, and I landed on a soft bed of water. But then I heard shouts again. I looked down, and I saw the girls floating towards me on a cloud. How much weirder could they be? And so I tried to go underground.

I jumped off from the bed, hoping I wouldn't die, and I didn't (thankfully!). I landed on a flow of water that let me just slip into a crack in the earth. I half-expected the girls to pop out in front of me again, but this time they didn't. Instead, they popped out behind me, through the stem of a small plant.

"Argh! What do you want with me! I'm not the person you're looking for!" I had well believed them about the elements thing already, seeing what they could do. One of them was probably air and the other earth, so that was how they could follow me. But I had nothing to do with air, earth or fire, so there was no point in this anyway.

"You didn't let me finish. You are not air, fire or earth, but you are water. Yes, it has been gone a long time ago, and we have no idea how you have it, but the truth is, you have it, Pearl." Emerald said. Now that made a little sense — not that I would let them have the satisfaction of knowing that.

"But... It's just that things related to water keep happening to me, but that doesn't mean I have the element, does it?"

"Amber...?" Both Emerald and Aura looked at Amber. Then she groaned. And finally, she looked at me!

"Only because these annoying girls forced me to. But I would like to see how strong your power is anyway." She lifted her hands. I wondered if she was gonna ask me to chase her across the sky or something, but she didn't say anything. And the next second the whole world was lit up in a series of flames.

I thrust my hand forward, this time not by instinct but because I wanted to see whether I really could control the water or not. I threw my emotions out again. Anger. Too much anger. At Amber. And water shot out of my palm. It extinguished all the flames, but then started collecting into a ball — a gigantic ball. And it just hit Amber, drenching her all over. I was absolutely bewildered at this sudden burst. Before I could react, all the energy it took for me to make that ball of water caught up with me and the world went black.