Not That Far

Chapter 27-Relinquish

  Two days later...

    I stood erect and still in a clump of trees a few meters behind Shay, watching to see if he'd try practicing his talent. He, with his back to me, faced a wall of snow that quite literally clung vertically to the side of a boulder. With one hand, he reached out a hesitantly touched the hardened snow. The affect of his touch was instantaneous.

    The fire that constantly writhed under his skin found an outlet in the frozen water and plunged into it readily, creating an almost perfect oval of melting snow around his burning finger. He drew his hand away with a sharp hiss and watched as the softened snow became ice in a few seconds; shiny and silky smooth.

   While he was doing this, I observed his feet and was pleased to see that the snow under his leather boots stayed in its frozen form rather than becoming a pool of steaming water like it usually did. He was finally making some headway.

    "You're getting better." I praised him quietly, coming out of hiding. He turned his head to regard me with mild interest. He didn't even flinch, much to my surprise and then pride. So he'd finally mastered not letting his guard down when wandering, something he'd had a problem with in the past.

    "I don't need you to babysit me, Teirin." He turned his back to me and stared stoically at his reflection in the mirror of ice he'd created.

    "Good, I'm not very skilled at it anyhow." I replied, stepping in his footprints that had broken through the thick crust on top of the snow as I crossed the stretch of ground that separated us.

    "How long have I been standing there?" I quizzed, trying to take his mind off the touchy subject of his talent before I eventually had to plunge in.

    "Less than a minute. You knocked an icicle off one of those trees while you were stalking me." I studied his face in the reflective ice circle. Had I?

    "Atta boy." I thumped him on the back anyhow. For a moment I had forgotten that he didn't like to be touched.

    "What do you want?" He shrugged my hand off his shoulder, making it very clear that he already had a good idea.

    "You're doing it again." I raked my gaze over his trembling fists at his side.

    If I wasn't mistaken, which I wished I was, he was using the control technic I'd shown him that first day to keep a handle on his talent. The only problem with that is if for some reason he wasn't able to preform the exercise, say if he were unconscious, then his talent would run rampant. I'd had to learn the hard way that it was best not to rely on conscious actions to keep a talent under wraps, it was simply too dangerous.

    "Doing what? I'm not doing anything." He sputtered hurriedly, stepping further away from me. I watched him catch his tail in between his thumb and index fingers and twist it, a habit I had come to recognize that meant he was very nervous.

    "You've been over using the control technic I showed you." I leveled an integrating gaze at him as I searched his face for a grain of truth in his lie, but on the inside I was mentally abusing myself. It was my own fault he didn't know any better. If I was just a better teacher...

    "Well what am I supposed to do with it if I can't use it!?" he blew up, glaring at me.

    "It's only for emergency, Shay. I told you that. You ought be learning how to channel it, but you aren't doing yourself any favors by avoiding me." I met his anger with a retaliation of my own. He his eyes met with mine in the mirror for a split second before he looked away, shame faced.

    "You thought I wouldn't notice?" I notched an eyebrow at the notion of this.

    "You're always talking to Zaruu in you head anyway." He accused halfheartedly, glancing from me to the ground a few times. "...I didn't think you would notice if I went off on my own."