Changing Prudence (EDITING - ON HOLD)

Chapter 5

Rue was getting ready for her first ‘extramundane’ training session with her granddad. She put on her coat and a pair of walking boots, shoved a bottle of water, her phone, money keys into her backpack and left the house. Her granddad had phoned up the day before telling her what to bring and where to meet him. They were going to the forest Rue and Cole go to, but they were going to a part of it that no one dared step foot in until it was looked after properly. Apparently that was where her granddad had trained though it didn’t matter if he had been spotted using his abilities; he liked it there for the quiet.

She walked down to the bus stop, and waited for the bus that took her to the forest. She was excited for her first lesson; she wanted to find out more about herself and what the extent of her abilities would be. That was probably why the bus journey seemed to take hours, when in reality it was only twenty minutes.

Her granddad was waiting for her at the bus stop, he must have been excited to because he was grinning like an eight year old on Christmas day.

‘Ready to go?’

‘Yes, I think I have brought everything you told me to.’ She said doubting herself now. They headed off to the bad part of the forest, her granddad in the lead.

‘I found this clearing when I was twenty one, I had no living relatives who had activated the gene until last week so I had to teach myself and research everything from scratch. At first I thought I was going insane. I was reserved enough to make sure no one else could notice the difference in me. Not even my mother noticed.’

They reached the clearing after a fifteen minute walk. It was surrounded by dead trees; half of them had toppled over. The ground was just dirt; a few mice scurried away when they heard their footsteps getting nearer. It wasn’t very attractive and needed a bit of TLC, but at least there was no one around.

She followed her granddad to the middle of the clearing and put her backpack on the ground.

‘I’m thinking we will be here for about three and a half hours, and then we can get the bus back to my house and have a bowl of that hotpot I promised you.’ He said delightedly. He knew how much she loved her grandmother’s hotpot. He clapped his hands together. ‘Right then let’s get started’ he pulled a lighter and a tea light out of his back pocket. ‘Let’s start with something interesting, I’m guessing you’ve been working on your water manipulation?’ he raised an eyebrow.

‘Of course, who wouldn’t, it’s so exciting being able to do something so unexplainable?’

He laughed at her answer. He had never seen someone so enthusiastic in his whole life. He lit the tea light and put the lighter down. ‘I want you to focus on this, get a feel of it, then try and shape it.’ He ordered. He was eager to see how powerful she was.

She did as she was told, focussing on the little flame she could feel its energy, she expanded her mind, in doing so, expanding the flame so that it was the size of a tennis ball. This would make it easier to work with. She started shaping the flame into a lion’s head, containing all of the energy into a tight ball, and then calving away at its features in her mind. She was better at this than either of them had expected it usually took time to master your abilities. As soon as she was done shaping the lion, it disappeared and was back to a small flickering flame once again. She had lost her concentration with the pride of having managed to manipulate the flame. She tried two more times until she managed to hold the shape of the flame for over ten minutes; she had even managed to make the lion’s jaw move, as if it was going to raw, but no sound came out. When she let this flame die down she turned to look back at her granddad, who was staring at the flame in utter disbelief. He had never heard of anyone taking so fast to their ability, in his research.