Abraham felt as if his hurried heart was about to explode out from his chest. There, in the middle of the mire - next to a skinned, gutted fish, he stood with his hands in hers. The long, delicate fingers thrumming with an almost divine power that he struggled to keep up with. He looked up from the hands to see her glistening, blue eyes bore deeply into his and a confident smile to match.
“C’mon, Aber… you can do it.” She spoke softly. He closed his eyes and wiped everything about Isaac away - everything he had learned up until that point. He followed the disturbances he could feel along her fingers to notice that it was unlike anything he had felt before - it was as if something in the air around her moved so quickly, so forcefully that it was tethering on the edge of combustion - of an explosion. Like looking down at a match held out towards a lantern, but only narrowly avoiding touching them.
He focused on his right index finger and likewise focused on exciting the air around his skin, swirling the atmospheric gasses in a circular fashion.
“That’s it - you’re doin’ it now. C’mon, keep going.” She urged. He continued to increase the speed faster, faster - so fast it had become fun.
From his finger, he felt how easily he could transfer that pattern to his hand, his arm, his chest - to every part of his body, which was exactly what he found himself doing a moment later.
“All right now, focus on the fingers - don’t do that, Aber.” She spoke, bringing his mind back down from the spiral he had briefly traversed.
He opened his eyes to see the air rippling around his right index finger. He was struck by an awe-inspiring thought that this was his doing. He had made his finger shimmer like the surface of a murky pool of water, not the Lord. He hadn’t prayed for his protection and he hadn’t asked for Bravelle to let him interact with the elements - he, himself, had done this.
“Now set it on fire - c’mon, you can do it.” He absolutely could - he felt it. The only reason he hadn’t was that he wanted to match her output, but at a slight whim, he increased the energy enough to finally combust the gathered gasses around his fingertip.
It wasn’t an impressive sight. It was brief - more like a flash than anything. But it had been enough - he had condensed the methane from the air, compressed it and excited the molecules enough to set them ablaze, only to fizzle out and burn away in a flash of his own glory.
“Good jawb, Aber!” She shouted into his ear and clapped his fur-clad shoulder, nearly knocking him backwards into the water.
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“Next, we’re gonna see how far away you can do that!” She informed. This time, Abraham was far more eager to display his abilities - especially if it meant they could move on to the next topics to repeat the hand-holding from earlier.
He looked around the mire, pausing briefly to return her hopeful grin before focusing on something in the air above one of the pool. That air - that strange, reeking taste in the air was far more potent over the pools of water and only seemed to increase with every expelled bubble from the depths. He took his place by the pool - staring into the brown waters before reaching a hand out to interact with the atmosphere.
As expected, the air felt… weird. Responsive. Flammable. This time, he felt a need to improvise - to do things his own way, if only to figure out what that meant.
Serah cocked her head and watched the fur-clad man reach his palm out into the air and just… stood there. For a solid minute, he was completely stationary, doing nothing in particular - at least until she saw the atmospheric irregularities.
The air above the pool was shifting, as if chaotic, highly localized winds were swirling atop the waters, collecting something from the air while discarding other, less vital constituents to the unmistakable sphere of calm air in the middle of the pool.
“Abe… whatchu doin’?” She questioned, but Abraham was too focused on his work to react to her voice.
From the outside, it looked like a ball of clean air had formed - about the size of someone’s head. The rippling disturbance was free of all humidity, nitrogen and smaller organic gasses, leaving only what Abraham knew to be a highly dangerous pocket of air.
Next, he attempted to increase the energy in the condensed sphere - making it smaller and smaller, but still nowhere near hot enough to initiate combustion.
“O-O-Aaall righty, Abraham, that’s a bit far away for a first-timer. You’ll wanna start a bit closer-” As if receiving it as a tip, the sphere moved closer to his fingers and just as she had promised, the energies were far more reactive the closer they got.
Finally, he reached the point of ignition and in a white-hot flash of heat, an explosive decompression erupted through the orb - containing the conflagration for long enough to set the whole ball on fire. In an instant, the white-hot gasses blew out to set the mire - and him alongside it - on fire.
“Gator’s balls!” Serah shouted from behind. Abraham hadn’t even processed the explosion before a powerful bolt of air knocked him forwards - as if he’d been kicked by a Bullhound. He crashed into the waters - immediately setting out the fire that had taken most of his hair, eyebrows, eyelashes and his pelted clothing.
When he finally found footing in the murky water, he rose to look up at the wide-eyed, grinning, impressed-and-bemused Serah whose attention was split between her mostly-hairless apprentice and the scorching remnants of the proximal mire.
“Well, I’ll be… Abe, you’re as crazy as you’re strong.” In turn, he glanced around the scorched fields to behold his destruction - destruction he’d never imagined himself capable of, but now that the evidence was right before his eyes, he didn’t know what to believe.
Fueled by the adrenaline of the preceding few seconds, he looked to verify that she was unharmed before spitting out a mouthful of mirewater to ask: “S-so… did I pass?” She demonstratively looked around before nodding.
“I’d say we’re about done for the day, yeah. I thought this’d take some time, but damn…”
He imagined he wasn’t the most handsome of men where he stood in the filthy waters. In fact, as far as appearances went, he imagined that the lingering scent of scorched hair had gone a long ways to drastically reduce his chances with this woman, but even so… he’d use this for what it was worth.
“I wouldn’t mind if you could show me that thing with the hands again..:”