I held the white sheet of mist in my eyes for as long as it lasted. Eventually, it dissipated on its own, leaving me staring at empty space like an idiot, the brush in my hand having dissipated long ago.

‘Hahh damn that was awesome.’ And it was very honestly awesome. How cool was creating things out of nothing!? Very much!

I passed my hand through the spot and I felt nothing. Not the least bit of nausea, nor any lightheadedness; sickness on exposure to magic a thing of the past for me.

‘May god bless Father Ajak’s soul for telling me about the path. This is just amazing. It directly cuts down years in getting used to the magic and it even feels naturally amazing!’ I exclaimed internally as I passed along a prayer for Ajak.

‘This is almost like metamorphosis. I feel like a new butterfly.’ I honestly couldn’t stop praising this method enough. It was just god sent.

I again focused, eyes closed, the shape of a brush coming almost naturally to me. The way it felt. The texture of the soft plastic handle, the new metal cold touch of the ferrule, the soft bristles on your face. It all formed in my head, and almost immediately I felt something soft touch my fingers. It felt so ethereal, so light. I thought I would never get tired of this brush. I thought I would never let go of this brush.

This time I had focused on creating a round brush, one with a tip. I tried again, feeling the mist within me and how it applied to the brush. I saw the mist move towards my hand holding the brush, and slowly diffuse into it.

Looking at the bristles, I can see it had darkened a little. I could feel a misty presence within the brush, and I knew it would work like the last time. But this time I didn’t wanna mindlessly follow through with creating random strokes of mist.

I focused on the bristles again, and although my senses weren’t that brilliant, I could still feel that all the mist I’d poured inside had settled in the bristles and would dissipate as I let it go. That was not what I wished for.

This time I tried to control that mist back inside, leaving only a single drop at the tip. The mist, although a little reluctant, followed my wishes, and receded a little. But then another issue arrived. I can’t take it back inside of me.

No matter how much I tried, it wouldn’t come back and I was stuck there wondering what to do now. I looked at the brush in my hand, my feet tapping to the rhythm of a song in my head, and I wondered if I could store it all in the handle?

‘The bristles are the main conductor of the paint to the world, and the ferrule is for holding it, so maybe?’

I commanded the mist to settle in the handle and it refused. Mist has a natural tendency to disperse, to spread out. So I let it spread. A little. I let go of my hold of a small portion of the mist, and it moved to escape. It’s life legitimately on the line, as it tried to go through the ethereal brush.

But it couldn’t! It was in the hands of the evil dictator called magic, and as it shrieked to the world for escape, it was eventually captured and engulfed by the edges of the brush. Silenced forever and ever.

“Gotcha! MIST was caught!” And sparks of sand flew out of the brush as my new ‘pokeball’ stopped shaking. I let out a small chuckle as I got off that train of thought.

I discovered that what the handle basically did was store my mist around its walls. How it did that, and why, I had no idea. But as if I was gonna hate a good thing.

Left with but a drop of mist on the tips of my brush now, I tried one of the techniques I used to like. It was a dry brush technique, but it kinda felt off. I had no canvas to paint on. That texture was missing.

I tried to go through it anyway, keeping the strokes brisk yet firm, I made single lines of mist in the air. And although it looked fantastic and bizarre, it also felt lacking.

It felt restrictive!

My mood dampened a little. It was amazing, mysterious, and even downright supernatural; but it lacked the effective nature of drawing. The feeling of drawing on a board, a canvas, a pallet of colors at my disposal.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

There was so less here.

‘Hahh I guess that’s why it’s only the first step. I have a long way to go before I can reach the point of creating moons in the sky.’ I sighed and rubbed my temples. It gave me a clue of what the future might look like, but the future still was too far away and far too uncertain.

‘Only if I could read the future. There has to be someone who can, right?’ Once again I grieved at my lack of soothsaying skills.

Anyway, it was around 1 am now, and I wondered if I ought to practice my powers more or get a good night’s sleep. The responsible adult within me urged me to hit the bed as it was way past bedtime, but then there was the fact that I don’t easily tire anymore, and having slept a lot earlier, I was more than energized to practice a bit more.

I mean c’mon, you can’t say no to super-powers for a few extra hours of sleep.

- - - * - - -

I woke up the next day with a small headache and drooping eyelids. To my chagrin, I had forgotten to get water by my bedside before going to sleep. And thus was stuck in this current conversation.

“You need to eat more dear. I understand hearing news about your family can be hard, but you have to stay strong. Okay?” The granny from the day earlier insisted as she held my hands and shook me.

‘Ugh, I’m gonna vomit.’ I groaned inwardly.

“Yes yes yes ma’am. I understand. I was just too shaken yesterday.” I tried to console her, but I don’t think my lazy expression helped my case.

“My grandson told me about it this morning. I was so worried about you when he told me how bad it hit you. Oh dear, if there’s anything I can do to help, please do say, okay?” She shook me even harder.

‘Damn, she’s strong.’ And she actually did have a strong grip.

“I’ll remember your care Miss Belousouva.”

“Oh, that’s not my name. I am a Mistral.” She said, finally leaving my arm.

“But you said Mr. Randeep was your grandson?” I asked my curiosity bursting through, and before I realized my mistake, it was too late already.

“Oh you know, how boys are young. They find a girl and all of a sudden they think she’s the one who cares for them the most. Forget your own parents even. I’m telling you Tolkia Stefan, boys these days don’t know how to respect their parents at all.

“So Randeep goes and gets this girl pregnant. Lit up quite a fire in the household. My son was so angry at him, he refused to talk to him for a year. But you know how mothers are, we always forgive. His mother too forgave him and accepted their relationship eventually. Reluctantly even.

“Then he goes around saying how he wants to marry this girl and who could even stop him at this point. And who knows what kinda of spell that witch put on him, he agreed to change his last name for her and became a Belousouva. Marries her and 4 months later comes a young girl in our house.

“We thought things were finally looking a bit better you know, even my son finally got rid of his anger. Girls are like that you know, they make even the toughest of men soft, especially babies.” The old lady finally takes a break to catch her breath.

“So where are his wife and daughter?” I asked, against my conscience, all for not sounding rude at this point.

“What else!? Two years! Just two years later she showed her real face when she divorced my poor grandson and took off with my granddaughter. At my age losing a grandchild, do you know how much that hurts Tolkia?

“But this lad is still hopeless. He refuses to change his name. Even still! Can you try talking to him?” She looked at me, pleadingly.

In my head, I knew I would agree to the request, but I also figured out how shameless old people really can be.

“I’ll try ma’am. Now if you must excuse me, I have to go to the washroom.” I finally excused myself and locked myself in the washroom for a while.

‘That was tiring.’ I sighed as I washed my face with splashes of water and gargled to wet my mouth a little.

I looked at my expression in the mirror, and beyond the half-red and half-blue of my face, I found my weariness recovering. A slight but good side effect of my regeneration I guessed.

I had stayed late in the night practicing my powers, as I tried to create more and more mist and see how far I could push it before I hit some sort of limit. I reached one not too far later.

It had felt hollow; like the entire basis of my being was eradicated off of me. I felt like I was gonna collapse right here and never ever wake up. That feeling had lasted for a whole minute before the faintest sniffs of mist recovered inside of me.

It took another 10 minutes before my mist levels reached a satisfactory level so that I could begin my practice once again. This time using much less mist, focusing on paintings with more finesse than brute color.

Streaks of light mist interwoven with each other to create stick figures. It was going fun, and my mist levels were leveled as well when I realized I had forgotten about the energy I was using to create the brush.

Turns out, not an infinite resource. Who would’ve thought?

I collapsed once again, just half an hour later, in a pool of my own sweat as I felt light-headed and lost consciousness soon after.

I had woken up an hour later, feeling a whiff of cold air running through my neck. I woke up and stirred as I looked around at the source of this stray current.

My door was open a crack. Someone was inside!