Power Without Strength {Discontinued/Rewritten}

4

            I woke up to quiet voices, talking in the room. I pushed off the heavy duvet over me and sat up, noticing I was in my pj's then the clothes I came in with earlier today. Aren and Kulea stopped talking when they saw me move.

"Hey, sweetie, you're up. How are you feeling?" Kulea softly said as she walked over and sat next to me.

I focused on the sheets in front of me, not daring to look in anyone's eye. "I'm ok. I'm sorry about before, maybe I should, uh, go to bed. There's... still school tomorrow." I mumbled, feeling awkward and defeated.

I started to get out of bed, but she grabbed my shoulders and looked down at me with pleading eyes; her face flooding with sympathy and regret.

"Hey, Zeera, don't be like that." She said, rubbing my cheek with her thumb.

Things got quiet, and when I glanced up, Kulea was giving Aren a death glare while Aren was standing in the middle of the room, arms folded, staring at the wall. It seemed like he was intentionally ignoring her, and the whole room had a steaming aura of tension that ached to be soothed.

When Kulea saw that Aren wasn't going to say anything, she hissed at him. "Aren."

He snapped his head towards us. "What? You know she has to practice her weaknesses. Don't you look at me like I did something wrong."

Kulea looked as if she were about to murder something, and I could have sworn that I saw Aren falter a bit before sighing loudly. He grabbed chunks of his head hair frustrated and started to pace around.

"I know, I know, I'm sorry Zeera." His eyes grew somber as regret built its way onto his features. "I'm so, so sorry. There really is no excuse to how I treated you. I knew what you've been through, I knew you've only been here a few months and barely know the things that go on around here and don't care to try; which is probably a good thing right now. By the gods, you're only a child, and I pushed you over your limit just because I was pissed off..."

He continued to ramble like that until Kulea and I started to laugh. It wasn't a hard laugh, or even a funny one. It was just that; a laugh. A laugh that destroyed all the tension and unwanted feelings in the room.

"It's okay Aren, really. It's my fault anyway for being weak-" I said, nonchalantly. He cut off his own rambling and looked at me in disbelief.

"You? Weak? Now you're trying to make me laugh." He shook his head in denial. "Zeera, from the very moment I picked you up in my arms the day we met, I was drowning in the strength of the energy-waves you were giving off. I'm actually pretty shocked that you haven't graduated from your apprenticeship yet." He said as he walked over and sat with us.

I was a bit shocked and tried to hide my embarrassment by ogling over the squiggly design of the duvet. "You think so? I mean, I'm good at Stealth, Strike and Defense-I mean Strike, and doing spells, but I don't think I'm doing well in defense and enchanting."

Kulea adjusted herself to be more comfortable against the head of the bed, and dragged me into her lap. We both got under the covers as Aren started to take off some of his mission gear.

"You're having trouble in defense? What techniques are you having trouble with?" Aren asked.

I looked up at the ceiling in thought of how I would put my answer in words. "Well, it's not exactly the techniques, I can remember all of them, and I can do them just fine. It's really the act of me putting them into action; like, actually using them in a fight. When I'm in a fight, it seems like I forget everything at the last second and always fail."