Mistletoe

She shakes her head. "No, we usually leave it till around the fourth." She then looks up at the roof of the porch. "Mistletoes. My parents put that there so they could be all romantic with each other."

I look up and see the familiar-looking plant. No, not a plant but a plastic recreation of it. When I look back down, I spot Cassandra looking at me with a weird expression. "What?" I ask, curious about what got her looking at me like that.

"You know," she says with a strange smile, "mistletoes have a particular custom attached to them."

Something about her voice immediately sends my heart galloping. As she spoke, her voice lowered. I don't know how to describe it more than that. It lowered in an obvious, yet subtle way and something about it just set me off. One moment I am perfectly normal, the next I am suddenly out of breath while my heart struggles desperately to leave my chest. At the same time, a certain song about mistletoes popped into my head.

"Yeah-h-" my voice dies out as she takes a step closer.

The world goes silent, and in that moment she is all I can see. She looks into my eyes and opens her mouth to speak when we are interrupted by a loud crash coming from the living room. Cassandra's eyes widen as she rushes into the house, leaving me all alone.

I stood petrified for a few moments before a cool breeze brings me back to myself. I shoot a quick glance at the door as I ask myself one simple question, what the hell just happened? She hadn't said, or even done much but something about her voice, the way it had deepened almost imperceptibly had sent shivers down my spine. Just thinking about it makes me flush.

Closing my eyes I take a very deep breath. Settle down you hormonal bastard, I think derisively to myself. For all I know I could be reading too much into nothing. Either way, I decided to wait outside. If there was actually something going on she should come back out, right?

I am unsure of my deduction, but still I decide to wait. A minute passed, then two… three…. The door opens and I turn around expectantly, only to see Emily coming out to meet me. It is a difficult struggle for me to hide my disappointment.

"Let's start going home." She says.

"Now?"

She nods. "Yes, now. Before the streets become empty."

A quick look confirms that the streets are still very lively, though that is because at least half of its population is clearly drunk. Still, some part of me is resistant to leaving until I have seen Cassandra again. Reluctantly, I suppress that part of me. Emily is right, now is the best time to go home - if we don't want our mom to make a fuss. She thinks we'll be safe the more people there are outside, which is the only reason she agreed to let us stay out so late. Never mind that barring someone armed with a gun, no normal person could ever hope to harm me.

"All right, let me just say goodbye to Cassandra."

Emily grabs my arm and begins pulling me forward. "Don't worry about that, I've already told her we're leaving so let's go."

We get home pretty quickly and I wordlessly make my way up to my room before flopping on my bed, my mind still on the moment with Cassandra. Am I overthinking things? Probably, but I just can't seem to stop.

I should have said goodbye. That is the last thought on my mind before I drift off to sleep.

* * * * * *

Two days later, I am in the main building of the True Body Court. I am having my regular lesson with Justin, and as we normally do on Fridays, we are practicing speed casting. Unlike normal lessons, however, my attention is not fully on Justin. Today, a small group of True Body users decided to use the training centers to spar. They were in the quadrangle of the training centers, and since I am currently on the first floor of the main building I could catch glimpses of their fight every now and then. To say it is distracting would be an understatement.

A loud snap forces my attention back to Justin. "Sorry," I say, shaking my head a bit so I could focus.

"Alright," Justin says while placing a rubber ball on the table. "I want you to blow this up by increasing the air pressure within it."

Increasing air pressure…. With a little bit of thought, I recognize that there are only two ways to do this. The first way would involve reducing the volume of the ball, while the second way would be through finding a way to heat up the air within the ball. The first method can only be accomplished by squeezing the ball, but I doubt that's what Justin had in mind, so the second method it is.

So I could try absorbing the surrounding heat- no. I would freeze the room, and the ball, if I did that. So I need to create heat, but how? After a few moments, I come up with an answer, friction. But I would need to use telekinesis for that. Could that work?

To test my hypothesis I create a prototype noer and activate it. The air in front of me begins churning really fast, stirring up some wind in the room. Full of doubts I deactivate the noer, and the results were unexpectedly expected. I should have realized that stirring up the air like that would obviously create wind, along with whatever minuscule heat air molecules slamming against each other will produce. I am about to ditch the noer when I realize something. The whole point of me trying to create heat was to speed up the air molecules within the ball. The faster the air is, the greater the air pressure. But if I have a noer that can speed up air just by churning it around then there is no need for heat.

Now I only have one problem. How to get the noer within the ball. Again I think for a moment before coming up with an unsure solution. I haven't tried anything like this before, so I have no idea if it will work, but I might as well give it a shot. I gently release my Uua, allowing it to spread slowly within the room. After around thirty seconds of this, I activate the sensitivity noer and try to feel if any of my Uua has gotten within the ball. Surprisingly, I feel some of my Uua within it. It is dissipating fast, and only very little managed to penetrate the ball, but it is enough. I take control of the Uua, using it to form a telekinetic noer that burst out with force in all directions. The force agitates the air within the ball, and a moment later a loud satisfying pop sounds as a tear appears on the ball.

Justin nods his head. "Not bad. I'm guessing your main problem was finding a way to get your Uua into the ball?"

I nod. "Yeah. I'm surprised what I did worked. But my method doesn't seem too efficient, I mean compared to what I released, the amount of Uua that entered the ball seems pitiful. Is there a better way?"

"There is, but it requires the third eye. If you have the third eye, within your domain, you can turn all Eani to Uua. Apart from that, the only method available is what you just did, pour out your Uua and hope some of it gets into whatever you want. I'm surprised you managed to think of it though. In my time I couldn't figure out a solution."

"Oh." The third eye once again. So many of the high-level Laen techniques seem to rely on it.

"By the way, what did you learn from this?"

"Uhhh… I'm not sure?"

Justin shakes his head. "Uua dispersed into the surroundings can seep into things before it is fully dissipated by the Eani. If you're ever in an environment chock full of Uua, focus yours to protect yourself. Else, if enough of the foreign Uua gets into you, then you are screwed. If the owner of the Uua is evil, then they could mess you up from within. Even if they aren't around, remember that Uua is destructive to everyone except its owner, so it can still mess you up."

"Understood. But wait, shouldn't my Uua have affected the ball, instead of just seeping into it? Because of its destructive nature?"

"Who said it didn't?" Justin pulls out another ball from thin air, before picking up the deflated ball and handing both to me. I collect both and immediately feel the difference. It's almost unnoticeable, but the deflated ball seems softer than normal. My Uua must have weakened it on the way in.

I'm still in the process of feeling the balls when I hear the door of the room open. I turn around, wondering who it was that was interrupting my lessons. Then I freeze. It is my mentor, Grand Master Zarel.

A second later I am on my feet as I give him the customary greeting. "Karenatha Zimear!"