Powerful

8. I've Been Working on a Better Me

If someone had told Jord, less than a week ago, that she'd be spending every afternoon in Virgil's apartment learning how to control her telekinesis, she simply wouldn't have believed them. She told herself that she still wanted to keep her distance from him, mainly because there was so much going on in her life that she didn't have the first clue of how to handle. But she couldn't get Virg out of her head, and now that she was no longer afraid of him, she was afraid of what that meant. She could not force any distance between them, and despite her attempts to hold him at arms length, all it did was make Virgil even more determined to be there for her when she needed someone.

However, her practice was definitely paying off.

"You're getting so much better at that," said Virg one day, about a week later.

Jord was perched on the edge of the dining room table, where it was easy for her to concentrate, and he'd just watched her pick up six individual cups, stack them up, then open the cupboard, and place them on the top shelf. All with her mind, and almost without a sound.

"It feels a lot smoother as well," said Jord, focussing on a plate that had been left on the drying rack in the kitchen. Virg almost never ate in his apartment, preferring to join the rest of the faction in the dining hall, but lately he'd been spending more time there to keep Jordyn company.

"How's the control going?" He asked her. "I haven't noticed you exploding anything, so..."

"I've never exploded anything, as you put it," she stated haughtily, watching as the plate hovered in the air, whilst she hunted through the cupboards for a tea towel. "But yeah, it has been better. I've been letting it out of my skin a lot more, if that makes any sense at all. Instead of bottling it all up inside me I let it just sit in the air, and that seems to give me more room to express my emotions without anything bad happening. I swear it's got a mind of its own sometimes, though, so I can't do that so much when there's a lot of random objects close by."

"I've noticed that," Virg nodded. He'd been able to sense that her aura was there during training, which was new. He still couldn't read it, but it was definitely there now. "What are you looking for, by the way?"

"A tea towel," said Jord, frowning in concentration. "Do you not keep them in your kitchen?"

"You gonna do my dishes for me?" He chuckled, watching in amusement as his kitchen cupboards randomly opened and shut.

"I just figured I'd see if I could effectively use the tea towel or not," the blonde retorted, trying to hold back her smile.

"Cupboard on the far left should have one hanging inside the door," said Virg.

It turned out that Jord was more than capable of using a tea towel, but after Virg's earlier comment, she couldn't resist turning on the tap and dipping the dish back under the water, before stacking it neatly back on the drying rack. Virgil rolled his eyes.

"Should have seen that one coming."

"Does your power do things on its own without you telling it to?" Jord asked him, leaning back on her hands, and turning to look at him.

Virg smiled a little, feeling happy that she was so relaxed with him now. It had taken almost every ounce of his patience to get her to open up to him.

"It does," he said, moving to stand beside her, one hand resting on the table. "It comes directly from your own instincts though, so although it feels like it's an extra persona, it's actually just an extension of you. You've been letting it out so much in this room, I bet subconsciously you know every inch of it, and you would automatically use that to your advantage if you were threatened. That's how it works with me as well, but I don't have to learn a new room every time I enter a place I'm not familiar with. It's more learning different emotions. I got to know what a normal level of excitement is, for example, or what's a normal level of anger or hatred. If I want to dial it up or down, I can tell how much I can do it without it looking suspicious, and I can tell what level of emotion would make someone act on what they're feeling. But I couldn't tell you how I know that."