Into the woods

Chapter 7

The next morning when I wake up, I go find my mother sitting out on the front steps.

"How long have you been awake?" I ask.

"I no longer need as much sleep as a normal human, Aelfrun. After being trained, neither will you. But since you asked, I did not sleep last night. I kept a look out in case anyone came through the barrier."

I sit down on the steps new to her. "I thought people couldn't see us. How exactly does this camouflage stuff work?"

"I have surrounded the cabin and a small area around it with a giant dome, which shifts reality in people's eyes, but only if they are outside the dome. However, it will not stop them from slipping in the dome since it is just a light trick."

"Does the light affect our vision too?" I ask, stretching my legs out in front of me.

"No, we can see everything that is going on inside and outside the dome." She points to the sky. "See that little shimmer? That how you can tell if there's a dome. You can see it from the outside too."

The shimmer kind of looked like when you're standing next to something letting off steam, and the things behind the steam look like their moving, or how light reflects on a bubble, making a little rainbow inside.

My mom stands up and holds out a hand to me. "Are you ready to start your training?" she asks. I smile and nod my head as I grab her hand. She pulls me to my feet and walks off the steps.

She walks to the edge of the dome and waits for me to catch up. "Where are we going?" I ask.

"You'll see," she says, and steps through the dome. It almost looks like she walked through a bubble, and when she gets out she turns around and waits for me to walk through as well. I put my hand out to feel the dome, and it even feels like a bubble. I take a step through, and it almost feels like water surrounding and absorbing me. It kind of tickles.

My mother starts down the path, oppisite from where the house is, and if I remember correctly, this is the way to the river.

I was right, and it took us about five minutes to get down here. The cabin is near a cliff, and it only took us a minute to get to the edge. However, the decent down took us a while. The cliff's edge is very steep, and we have to climb down backwards on some rock steps that were shoved into the dirt a long time ago, and who knows how well it was done. It may have seemed safe to me as a young kid, but definitly not now.

When we get to the bottom and I look back up at the cliff. It had to be at least fifty feet high. It's going to be impossible to get back up, that's for sure.

The soft roar of the flowing water calms me. My mom walks over to two circle rocks about three feet off of the shore. "This is where my mother trained me," she says, her voice muffled by the river. I'm not entirely sure if she is talking to me or the rocks. "Come sit, Aelfrun." I walk over and sit cross-legged on the oppisite rock my mom is sitting on.

"One of the basic key to mastering your ability is meditation. I want you to sit here for five minutes and focus on clearing your mind. Find your balance." This can't be too hard. I've sat for days in silence before.

I stay still, but I find it is actually very hard to clear my head. My mind is bombarded with thoughts. I try closing my eyes, focusing on the sond of the rushing water, focusing on the rock I'm sitting on, but it doesn't seem to be working.

"Keep trying Aelfrun, you'll get there. I believe in you," my mom says.

Instead of trying to block everything out at once this time, I try smething different. I imagine my mind as a browser. Each thought of mine is an open tab, and I imagine closing each and every one. Only one at a time, slowly finding peace and solitude within my mind.

"Incredible," my mom says, but her voice is so muffled by my solitude I can barely make out what she said. "She has more control than I thought." She must be talking to herself again. "Okay Aelfrun, you can be done now," She says, and now I can hear her. I open my eyes, and I find myself hovering above the rock. It surprises me and I lose control over my focus, sending me crashing down onto the rock, almost falling into the water, but my mother catches me in time.

"Careful," she says, smiling as she pulls me back up on my rock. "You did very well Aelfrun, I'm proud of you."

"Am I strong enough to learn how to control the water now?" I ask, giddy with excitement at the thought of it.

"It's possible you may be strong enough, but you aren't ready quite yet. We can maybe try tomorrow, depending on how the rest of today goes," she says, and I feel a little disapointed, but determined to do my best.

She gives me more exersises to do, like lifting a pebble with my mind, and making a dome of camouflage around a small rock. By the time we're done, the sun has started to set over the trees.

"For your last challenge of today, you will levitate yourself to the top of the cliff," She says. "You were hovering over that rock for twenty minutes today, Aelfrun, I know you can do it."

"But... I thought we only did that exersise for five minutes?" It didn't even feel like five minutes, more like five seconds, from what I remember.

"Time is a funny thing, Aelfrun. It works diferently in our minds when they are completely clear. And if you can hover for twenty minutes, you can for sure levitate for thirty seconds. Just consentrate and clear you mind like you did earlier."

My mom starts to levitate, making it up to the top of the cliff in twenty seconds. I'd deffinitly rather go this route that spend five agonizing minutes climbing up that dreadful rock staircase again.

I focus on my mind, and clear all of my inner thoughts, and I push up with my feet, as if i was jumping, but instead of returning back on the ground, I keep going up until I reach the top of the cliff. I land kind of rough, but when I gain my balence, I'm all right, and barely worn out at all. Unlike if I had walked up, then I would have had barely enough energy to walk the 25 meters back to the cabin.

My mom looks so proud of me and she wraps me in aa tight hug. "I knew you could do it," she says, and I smile into her shoulder. We walk back to the cabin quickly since the sun has almost set. I walk up the step but my mom doesn't follow me.

"Aren't you going to get some rest tonight mom? Since you stayed up all night last night?" I'm worried about her.

"Don't worry about me darling, I once went two weeks without a drop of sleep. This is nothing to me, I'll stay up and keep watch again," she says, sitting down on the steps.

"But don't you think the police are gone now mom? We haven't seen or heard them all day," I say, still concerned.

"It's not exactly the police I'm worried about anymore, darling. Now go get some sleep. We have more to work on tomorrow."