Bryce McQuaid already hates the fact that he's deathly afraid of water and forests, but now he has to deal with not having his powers yet. Everyone received their powers at 14, but two years later, he has yet to find out what they are. After changin...
For the next week, rather than having lessons with the guys, I went out every night to learn from Nanners. Don't get me wrong, I would never blow off the guys, but they cancelled training this week because of midterms. This honestly couldn't have worked out better, considering that now I could have an excuse that I was just studying if I somehow got caught. The only thing I really needed to hide now was Ellie's necklace, seeing as if the guys found out, I'd have to think of a lie, and fast. The only other problem was the lack of sleep that was building up, and it was beginning to show. I hid it the best I could, but I knew they would catch on eventually. Thankfully though, they hadn't figured it out quite yet.
"Hey Nanners, can I ask you something?" I said, walking up to the lake. Midterms were finally over, and this meant that I would have to do much more to hide this from the guys. I had already gotten a lot more comfortable with the water after some help from Adam, and I was now able to stand by it, and occasionally get in as well. We had gone over mainly water things, as he said he had a friend that he would bring next time that could help me with earth more than he could.
Nanners looked up from his spot by the trees before answering, "Sure, what do you need Bryce?" I prepared myself before asking.
"Why did you say to not trust the Millennium Assembly in your journal?" I heard Adam inhale sharply, so I looked up to see that he had stiffened. His eyes were glaring furiously at something that didn't seem to be there. I quickly became concerned, realizing that I probably shouldn't have brought it up.
"Hey, you don't have to answer, I'm sorry I asked. I was just thinking about it, so I thought I'd ask." I said, trying to diffuse whatever had caused him to be tense. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before he turned to me with a weak smile.
"No, no it's alright. I figured you would ask at some point, I guess you just caught me off guard. To answer your question, I'm not going to go into detail about it. However, I will say that they have done some horrible things to people. People that I know and care about. To put it briefly, they're more like scientists than they are anything else. They capture people and run tests on them, leaving them to be nothing more than lab rats." He cut off after that, not wanting to say anymore. I was surprised, to say the least. How could people do that? How were people so selfish that they had to hurt others for their own purposes?
"Do you know why they do that? What on earth could cause people to be so cruel?" I asked him. He let out a small, sad chuckle.
"A multitude of reasons I suppose. I don't really feel like talking about this right now, I think there are some more entries in the journal." I nodded, not wanting to push it any further.
"So, now that you're pretty comfortable with water, are you ready to meet my friend?" Adam said.
"Sure, I guess." I said. Adam gave me a smile.
"Don't worry, he doesn't bite or anything. Come on out." Adam said the last part while turning to face the forest. A man appeared from behind the trees, and walked up next to Adam. The man had dark brown almost black hair and dark brown eyes. On his forearm was a tattoo of a boulder. He gave me a small nod as a form of greeting which led to Adam speaking up.
"Bryce, this is my friend, Mr. M, a.k.a Gassy Mexican or Max. Max this is Bryce, the new elemental I found." Gassy extended his arm for a handshake that I grabbed quickly.
"It's nice to meet you Bryce," he said, pulling his hand back.
"Same to you, are you sure you're okay with teaching me?" I asked. He didn't really look like he wanted to be there. He gave a small chuckle and moved to stand next to me.
"Of course. After all, I was once in your position," he said. With a slight nod, I decided I wouldn't ask any more quesions. The guy seemed nice enough, but I didn't want to push him either.
"Alright, are you ready to begin?" He asked.
"I'm ready," I replied. He made a slight hum of approval.
"Alright, so I'm assuming you learned most of the techniques while you were training with Adam, correct?" I nodded, "Good, so we can skip that. It's pretty much the same with every elemental; you're just learning different powers. Since it seems like you've gotten the hang of water, earth won't take you that long to work with. What is the biggest thing you're afraid of when it comes to earth? There's so much that earth is made of, so what is it that scares you the most?"
I was stunned by that question. I'd never really thought about it before, and now that I was asked, I wasn't really sure.
"Um, I guess because it's the forest that I'm scared of, I would say trees," I wasn't really sure how to answer the question, so I just went with the thing that had caused me to be scared of water in the first place. Max nodded, seeming to think for a second.
"Alright, just to make it easier to teach you, I'm gonna chalk that up to flora. Plants, trees, etc, you get the gist. Now, kneel down and place your hand on the ground, palm facing down." I followed his orders, placing my hand in the grass. The soft blades tickled my skin as a soft breeze blew by.
"Now, remembering to keep your eyes open, I want you to think of a flower. Any flower, I don't really care," he said. The first thing that came to mind was a rose. A purple rose to be exact.
"And once you have that flower, I want you to slowly raise your hand from the ground, keeping your palm facing down, and envision that flower blooming from the ground." With a deep breath, I began to raise my hand picturing the rose. I watched in wonder as a small green stem began to make its way out of the ground, slowly getting taller, until it finally stopped. Then, I watched as bright purple petals began to unfurl from the top of the stem, until finally there was a beautiful purple rose where my hand once was.
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I looked over to see Max giving a small smile.
"Nice job Bryce. You'll be great at this in no time. And soon enough, you'll be able to do this," he paused, picking up a handful of dirt in one hand. With the other, he quickly raised his hand and instantly there was a red tulip in his hand, "with little to no thought."
----------------------------------------------------------- I KNOW I'M SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG I feel really bad that I didn't get this our sooner. Yall are too nice, I swear. It's weird cause most of my irl friends are assholes, but still, I wanna thank you guys for reading, commenting, and voting on this story. Speaking of, 5k reads! That's ridiculous, and it honestly makes me really happy. I don't have anyone that I know irl that I can talk to about my stories and such, so it's great that you guys enjoy it. I've been really caught up in other stuff, so it's been hard to really just sit down and write. My friends are being dicks, I've had a lot to do with school, and I've been trying to write for the NaNo program as well, so things have been a bit all over the place. Anyways, sorry for ranting, I'll leave you guys for now. I have you guys enjoyed and I'll see you in the next chapter.
