Upside down Magic✔️

~The New Insight.

14.

It was yet another beautiful morning in Sage Academy, the birds were chirping and plants were blossoming, in otherwords, Mother Nature was awake. The UDMs were super excited to be letting go of their stupid classroom lectures that consisted of sums and algebra and narratives and puzzles to take real magic lessons to make do of whatever magic they had, whether it was stupid or wonky or weird. And so, as daylight came, they all quickly got ready and agile and made their ways to the forest that was their soon to be magic classroom, sort of.

They all assembled to the point they had the talk yesterday, with Skriff leading them, as soon as they got there, they got into it and Skriff instructed them to copy every single thing he does.

Without words, Skriff began to practice some weird hand Yoga, with a blank, pointed face and the kids, not knowing what to else to do, eventually tried to, and failed miserably and let out groans and deep breaths and sighs of exasperation.

Elliot was the first one to complain to a serious looking Skriff,"So, we have to turn ourselves to pretzels in order to sharpen our magic?".

"Well, Sort of,"Skriff eventually sighs and stops. "Here's the thing, I've been observing this school's training technique for years," He says, placing left his sole on his upper right thigh and then places his palms together, raising them above his head. "And It's fine for them but in my own noggin, I've been coming up with a counter-curriculum for UDMs and stuff like this is a big part of it," he explains.

Still groaning and battling with her own stretching exercises, Pepper snaps, "Why?".

To answer her, Skriff says bringing his face to face palms down to his chest slowly, "Because we gotta focus all that jiggety jagetty puberty energy you guys have", he said, separating his arms and forming a tee. "Control your bodies, control your powers," He exhales and inhales deeply, bending his knees and closing his eyes, his arms in front of his face as if he was saying a prayer.

"Focus on your power and picture it in your mind's eye, and picture it doing exactly what you want it to do," he says and opens his eyes, and the kids comply. Straightening up, Skriff walks towards Elliot and asks him, "Elliot what do you want your power to do?"

Creasing his eyebrows in shame, Elliot sighs and expresses his feelings,"I want it to be able to shoot fire like the other flares".

"Okay, well it can't," Skriff shrugs. "That's like asking an orange to be a pickup truck, it ain't gonna happen, right? But what do you want your power to do," Skriff explains further with a smile and Elliot sighs deeply, "I guess I wanna be able to control it, to make smoke go where I want it to go".

Happy that he gave a correct answer, Skriff smiles and claps his hands, "Yes, you see that fam!"

"Don't focus on want you can't do, focus on what you can do, and do it as well as you possibly can", he explains and skids happily to Pepper, standing directly in front of her face. "Pepper?"

Folding her arms, Pepper answers,"I wanna be able to push things away from me when I wanna", she says and Skriff nods. "Like you !", she points at his chest and he quickly backs away from her, "Right, Okay, you know what? That's perfect, we can do that," he nods. "Nory?", he turns to the said female.

Already decided, she quickly answers, "I wanna be able to choose what animal I flux into". Knowing she cannot succeed to flux into a particular animal, Skriff raises an eyebrow, "Come on! Animal?".
Realizing her mistake, she corrects herself and smiles, "Sorry, Animals." "Boom!", Skriff laughs in encouragement. "Andreas?"

When it took him a moment too long to answer, Skriff motivates him, "Come on my man".
"Well, I don't know", he shrugs, holding his brown cross bag tighter. "Okay well, you know what? Be with that for now, embrace the uncertainty, because I've got a plan for you, I promise," Skriff smiles and winks.