When I walked into Mr. Whitaker’s Intro to Aether class, there was something on my desk. Actually, everyone had one on their desk, though a couple of the kids had picked their’s up and were examining it closely. It was fairly small, about the size of a baseball. It had a bunch of sides, similar to the thing I touched that brought me here the first time. Each side formed a triangle. What was it called, kip- something? But this one was much smaller and looked like it was made from polished light gray stone.
I picked up the one on my desk, but it felt much lighter than it appeared. Maybe it was hollow? Some of the sides were glowing slightly, and a few of them were blinking randomly. Looking closer, I could see a different symbol on each side.
I hope we don’t have to memorize a new language. I’m horrible with languages. I learned that when I took Spanish class last year.
“Welcome students,” the teacher said. “I’m sure you have all noticed the device on your desk. It is called a Kip’it Doon’i. This is yours to keep while you are a student here. Please take good care of it. Don’t lose it, or show it to anyone who shouldn’t see it. It is NOT a toy, and you do not use it for role playing games.”
I wonder what he means by that? The teacher was looking pointedly at Kevlin, who was grinning. Maybe I’ll ask Kevlin later?
“It has several uses, but the first one is that it detects local changes in the aether. Who can tell me why this might be useful to you?”
“Can it tell us if we are being attacked, or something?”
“Good guess, Leif, but no. It is probably too crude to be used for that. Anyone else?”
I raised my hand. “Will it help us to practice?”
“Yes, exactly, Keyva. In this class we are going to learn the basics of working with and manipulating the aether. On your own, especially at first, it is going to be very difficult to know if you are making any progress or not. Using the Kip’it Doon’i you will be able to see your progress visually.
“There are 20 sides, one for each aspect of aether. When it detects a nearby perturbation of a specific type, the corresponding side will light up. And the brightness will increase according to the strength of the change. So, why do you think some of the sides are already lit up?”
“Are we making changes in the aether now?”
“Good, Binda. Yes, you are. Just by living, breathing, thinking, feeling and moving around, you make small changes in the aether constantly.”
“Then, how can we tell the difference between living and doing something else with the aether?”
“Very good question, Olivia. Let’s talk about that. The Kip’it Doon’i is designed to be extremely sensitive at close range, in order to help students learn. Each of you is unique, so you are going to affect it in slightly different ways. What we need to do today is to attune it. That way, it will remain dark until you actually make big enough changes to the aether beyond the normal for them to be detected.” He picked up a marker and started drawing some symbols on the white board.
“Everyone pick up your Doon’i, and look around it for these three symbols.” He indicated the symbols on the board. “I will walk around and help those of you who may be struggling.”
After he had helped everyone find them, he walked back to the front of the room. “Now, place a finger or thumb on each of them but only these three. Once you have done that, hold still for 30 seconds. Once you are successful, you should see the Doon’i flash 3 times and then go dark.”
I watched mine closely until it started flashing. I yelped and almost dropped it. It was much brighter than I was expecting.
He had to help two of the others, who had their fingers placed incorrectly. Eventually, we all got our’s attuned.
“Now that you have attuned your Doon’i, it will no longer work for anyone else. Even though we instruct students to be very careful with them, they do occasionally get misplaced or even stolen. If that happens we have ways we can find and recover them, as long as it hasn’t been destroyed. But for anyone but you, it will just be a big 20 sided gray stone with symbols.
“As I said at the beginning, each of the symbols on the Doon’i correspond to a different aspect of aether manipulation. They all have names, though I will use their English names for now. Eventually, you’ll need to learn them all.
“But first, let’s test them and see how they work.” He came around the desk and stood just in front of our desks, holding the marker which he had used to write on the board. “Please watch your Doon’i while I do this.”
He held out his right hand flat in front of him, palm up, with the marker on it. As we all stared, the marker rose up, a few inches above his hand. My eyes went wide, and I heard a few gasps.
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“While you were looking at your Doon’i, what did you see? Or, did you forget to look?”
“I saw four, no three sides, light up,” Jett said. “I think another one was on at first, but then went off.”
“Correct. Why do you think that one apparent action would affect more than one side of the Doon’i?”
“It must take more than one type of change to do that,” I said.
“Very good, Keyva. I am (1) lowering its effective mass, (2) reversing the pull of gravity, and (3) operating on an object at a distance. As I lifted it, I also (4) added a small force, but I don’t need to maintain that now that it’s not moving.” He held up a finger as he said each of them.
“Now watch what happens as I move away.” He walked back to the other side of the table at the front of the room, leaving the marker floating in the middle of the room.
“One side got brighter!” Jett shouted.
“Thank you, Jett. Which aspect do you think I had to increase in order to walk away and not drop it?”
“Is it harder to cancel gravity when you are further away?” Aislin asked.
“Slightly, but that is not the answer I’m looking for.”
“Action at a distance.”
“Yes, Olivia. As I move further away from the object I’m affecting, everything gets a little more difficult, but action at a distance is the most affected.” He held up his hand as the marker was quickly pulled into it, while everyone’s Doon’i flashed and then went dark.
“So extra!” Jett exclaimed. “How do we do that?”
“Before you will be able to do that, you have a lot to learn and practice. But how quickly you learn is up to each of you.
“That is the end of my demonstration today. You may put your Doon’i away in your bag or backpack. I don’t want you to be distracted for the rest of our discussion. Though, please bring it with you each time you come to class, because you will use it often.”
“Now let’s discuss each aspect of aether manipulation.” He covered the basics of each of them for the rest of the class. The 20 aspects are arranged into 3 main groups: Life, Physical, and Meta. Life group includes body, senses, mind, emotion, knowledge and spirit. Physical includes nature, electricity, magnetism, heat, light, sound, and matter. And Meta includes: distance, leverage, inertia, ward, time, rule, and process. He talked a little about each, but the meta ones were ones I really didn’t understand.
Just before the end of class that day, he asked, “Now, can someone explain what an aura is?”
No one raised their hand at first, so I decided to. “Isn’t it a kind of glow around people, one that only a few people can see, supposedly?”
“Yes, Keyva. Every living thing has an aura which surrounds it. For humans, it's by a foot or more. We’ll call it a spiritual glow, since cameras can’t pick them up, most people don’t either. You can learn to see them, however, but it takes practice. The reason I mention auras is because when someone manipulates something with the aether, their aura reforms to attach to and surround the thing. And the color will change based on what aspects of the aether they are affecting.
“Once you learn to see auras you will start to see these manipulations, whether you are doing it or someone else is. If you get proficient at seeing auras, you should eventually no longer need your Doon’i, because seeing aura changes will tell you more than the Doon’i could. For the rest of this week you will be practicing seeing auras. Feel free to practice at home also. If you want to start tonight, seeing auras is something you can easily look up on the internet.”
My head hurt as I left the academy that day.
When Mom and I got home from school, I went up to my room to work on homework before dinner. I honestly tried, but I couldn’t concentrate, thinking of everything I had seen and learned. Eventually, I used my phone to look up auras and how to see them. Then I started practicing, but I didn't succeed in seeing them on my own body. Maybe the lighting was wrong or the background? I guess I will be learning more in class tomorrow.
I pulled out my Doon’i and looked at it for a while. I didn’t see any of the sides glowing or light up, but the symbols looked pretty interesting. I decided to take some time to see if I could copy them into my notebook. While doing that, I had an idea, so I asked Pawg if it could tell me what each symbol was. It was happy to answer my questions, so I wrote the actual and English names next to each symbol, as I carefully copied them.
Just before I was going to put it away in my bag I saw one of the sides flash. As I wondered what caused that, I realized that I knew mom was coming and would soon open my door. So I quickly put the Doon’i in my backpack, right as Mom knocked on my door and opened it.
“Honey, could you please watch Gemi while I finish dinner? She keeps getting into the pan cabinet and hurting herself.”
“Sure Mom.” She set her on the floor in my room. Gemi’s face was red, and I could tell she had been crying.
“Gemi! My favorite niece.” I clapped my hands, got down on the floor to give her a big hug. Mom turned to leave and closed the door. “How about we read a book?”
After reading a book to her, I realized that I still hadn’t finished my homework. So I got some toys from Henny’s room and placed them by her. Then I started on my homework, for real this time. Luckily, it wasn’t hard so I finished before Mom called us down for dinner.
I brought her down with me and placed her in her high chair, then sat down to eat dinner with Mom. Dad was on duty at the fire station, and Henny was at work, so it was just us three. Mom had cooked spaghetti, which was delicious.
For Gemi, Mom chopped the noodles finely and added only a little sauce, without any meat. Gemi was to the stage where she was trying to learn to feed herself, but mostly it just went all over her face and down in her lap. She was going to need a bath after dinner, but that was pretty normal.
While Mom was bathing Gemi, I fell asleep. At least I had taken a little time to get ready for bed, but it’s going to take a while to get used to my extended school day schedule.