The Elements

Chapter 6 - The Cottage

I was glad I hadn't dropped all my tinder and kindling. The fire was now burning with smoke fuming out like a chimney. The smoke signal. I read about it somewhere in one of the few books in the orphanage once, I think. About the ancient Chinese using them as signals to warn others of approaching enemies. Well, this time it was more like trying to contact my friends. I hoped Olivia had read the same book and known it was me, not some random fire that somehow started up in the forest.

I sat by the fire, warming my hands. I sure was glad I had come up with this idea. It was late into the night, and the star-dotted sky twinkled at me in a friendly manner that certainly would not have matched the cold here, should I not have had the fire. I guess we all had to thank Olivia. Olivia. It sent a new burst of questions through my mind. What was this "Olivia-Halley" ordeal in the first place? I knew Olivia as, well, Olivia, but Aura and the rest knew her as Halley. And then there was the weird memory-recalling, the fact that she felt the pull of the water at the same time as me in the orphanage... I felt like the more answers I got, the more questions I had as well.

"Pearl? Pearl, is that you?" Olivia's voice came out from somewhere. I looked around, expecting to see her running out from one of the trees, but all stayed the same. Then it came again. "Pearl?"

I tried to trace the source of her voice, but it felt like it was coming from me, instead of from one of the trees. And her voice crackled a bit, as if it was coming from a phone, or a digital device of some sort. But I didn't have any devices with me. Did I?

I fished out the device from my pocket. "Hello?" I whispered to it.

"Pearl!" Well, it looked like Olivia's power was still working. She somehow managed to talk to me through that thing. "We saw a smoke signal," she continued, "Is it you?"

"Yeah, it is me. I got lost, I guess."

"Okay. We'll come over. Oh, and, we all suddenly got our powers back. So, I guess we can go back now." Really? That meant that I had my element back too! I waited for the familiar pull in my gut, but it felt empty, like what had happened previously. My hopes fell a little — why were they the only ones who got their powers back? But I would worry about that later. Now, I just had to find them first. One problem at a time.

A loud thud and a groan alerted me that someone was there. It wasn't the girls, because I knew they would have used their powers to get here — no falling down or anything. I cautiously walked over to the sound, and lo and behold — it actually was them.

"Huh?" I asked, "What happened?" Emerald glared at Aura.

"Well, someone decided that her powers worked well enough and took us for a little fall from the sky. It was so fun."

Aura pretended she didn't hear it (but I saw her glare back from the corner of her eye!) and was already snapping her fingers again. "For some reason, my power doesn't work again!" Then the same thing happened. All of us tried, and failed.

"Argh! I thought we would get back right after this!" Amber groaned.

"Wait," Olivia said, "I was able to communicate with Pearl through a device. I don't think it was a phone or anything. Maybe we should take a look at it." I fished out the device from my pocket.

"This looks weird..."

"Yeah. I found it when I was looking for the firewood."

"Wait. There's a sign on it," Amber observed, "Two swirling lines, I guess."

"I know! Wait... They changed a bit. It's not the sentence anymore," I said.

"What sentence?" Amber asked.