A Touch Of Lightning (COMPLETED!)

Chapter 12 Broken Rules

       

Chapter 12 Broken Rules

Callin closed his eyes as he inhaled above his plate of cinnamon French toast. He still could hardly believe how magical it smelled. Warm and lazy, with complex undertones of butter and spice, it flooded through his mind like a gentle ray of light. There certainly had never been anything that smelled like that in the lab!

"Are you going to actually eat, or are you going just try to sniff your food up your nose?" Raina said, sitting across from him, watching him close his eyes in bliss as he inhaled.

Hearing the chuckles of others at the table, Callin opened his eyes and looked around. "Ah...well, they just smell so good that I wanted to enjoy it before I started chowing down." He was pleased with how calm he sounded, considering he felt like crawling out of his skin right then, now that mostly everybody at the table was looking at him.

"I can't really smell anything unless it's practically shoved up my nose, but I gotta agree with him, they do smell like little slices of magic." Kevin said, grabbing a forkful and shoving it in his mouth.

"Considering how fast you eat, I'm surprised you don't actually accidentally shove some up your nose." Levi said, neatly slicing off a small piece and popping it in his mouth.

Kevin leaned back, looking so affronted that everybody at the table laughed together. Callin felt himself relax a bit more, as he felt the tension at the table begin to ease a bit. Maybe humor and laughing together was a way for a group like this to learn how to accept each other? He had never sat at a table and ate breakfast with others his own age before, as far back as he could remember.

"Maybe I'll just shove some up your nose." Kevin said, leaning across the table, reaching towards Levi's face with a fork full of French toast.

Levi hurled himself back away, his expression disgusted and his eyes darkening in warning. "Watch it, you slob!"

Kevin pulled back and looked intently at the French toast on his fork. "Hm. I could swear this is just French toast. But by the way you reacted, you would think I just offered you a bite of dog crap."

"It touched your mouth. It's now far more foul than dog crap." Levi muttered.

Callin started eating, half listening to the chatter at the table. The other half of his focus was trying to keep his walls pulled high. He was sitting at a small table with Jace, Raina, Kevin, Levi, and Ahleena. That was simply too many people, in far too close proximity, for him to relax. His nose, although heavily inundated with the powerful scent of the breakfast foods swirling about, was still flooding his mind with information about the others.

Raina's scent was thorny, with rapidly shifting spikes, telling him she was also nervous and very tense. He could tell she was holding herself tight, like she had pulled up her own walls, and her body language was nearly mechanical as she ate in silence. When she had first come into the kitchen, and there hadn't been many people in there yet, she had seemed her usual, bubbly self.

Now, she seemed very withdrawn. He wondered what it was like for her, to sit in such close proximity to others, with her always-on empathic powers. Was her power forcing her to actually feel what everyone else was feeling? Did that mean she was aware of how uncomfortable and nervous he felt in this group setting, similar to her? Was she aware of the headache that Levi had, due to a sinus infection? He could scent Levi's sinus infection, and wondered if Levi even realized that he was going to need antibiotics soon.

Was Raina aware of the fact that Jace hadn't slept much last night, and now was irritable and exhausted? The scents in the room were so intense, so varied, that he suspected he may know more about everyone in the room than even Raina did, with her empathy. Over the last week or so, it had felt like his nose was slowly becoming more sensitive. It was not something he welcomed, as here, with so many other teenagers around, it was already more of a curse than he could really put to words.