Changing Prudence (EDITING - ON HOLD)

Chapter 8

She was so eager to practice her powers again she arrived a full hour before her granddad. She decided to make the clearing a little nicer, and what better way to do that by drying out the mud in the middle of the clearing and growing a few new trees in place of the old, rotting stumps that where currently surrounding the muddy clearing. She had just about finished growing the last tree when her granddad quietly walked up behind her.

‘Well, you have been busy.’ He complimented gesturing at her work. She looked around and saw the light patches of grass that had started to grow around the edge, the trees topped with deep green, grinning at the flecks of red, her personal favourite, the source of which, small clusters of mushrooms at the foot of every other new tree.

‘It needed a little brightening up. Don’t you think?’

‘Indeed, you have put your own personal stamp on the place.’ He had his serious face on. ‘But since right now anyone else can see the improvement, I think today I should teach you how to conceal your creation, and your visible effects of your ability from people you do not wish to see what we can do. So anyone who does not have the gene or activated the gene cannot see unusual things that could make them suspect us.’

She felt slightly deflated now that she realised it would be very few people that would be able to see this place now. It’s a great shame that it had to be hidden from view, left with the look of neglect. This was one lesson she didn’t want to learn. ‘So where do we start?’

‘You have to tap into your gene that allows you to do these things. Unfortunately you only have approximately an hour and a half to conceal what visible changes you make unless you conceal it while making the visible changes, so you will have to learn this fast.’ He looked her directly in the eye to get his point across.

‘Well what are we waiting for?’ Although she sounded nonchalant, inside she was feeling a little deflated.

Her granddad looked at her incredulously; he was expecting more of an argument over this topic. ‘Okay so when you have tapped into your gene you should be able to get into it and reverse the changes it has just made, sort of like rewinding time, although there is no movement through time involved. Then the code that you used to change things up, you need to be in control of it and think of how the clearing used to look and then make that view what is visible to the ordinary eye.’ He paused to give her chance to take it all in. ‘Got it?’

‘I think so.’ She repeated back to him the process.

‘I think you’re ready to give it a go. Though even though you have took to all other aspects of your abilities pretty quickly, I am expecting this to take some amount of attempts. It is less natural and takes the best people with our ability a few tries to master. You also have to be patient, it take longer for the effect to take place than anything else you have done so far.’ He gave her a stern look, because he knew she had little patience and got quite frustrated if she couldn’t do something.

It took Rue a few attempts to even find the right gene though trial and error and even then it took her at least five minutes to figure out how to reverse the actions of her gene. All the while her granddad was looking at her as if watching a strange science experiment. She attempted to modify the code that had made the transformation but in doing that she lost focus on the gene. She looked at her granddad with a frustrated expression.