Chapter 52: Waterworks

The basketball hit the grass with a dull whump, far short of the tree I was aiming for.

Lena said, “Nice shot?”

Normally, I would have expected her to have meant it sarcastically, but with her sports knowledge, or lack thereof, I couldn’t be sure.

I’m not saying I was going to drain a clutch three if left to my own devices. Or a clutch free throw. Or literally any action requiring accuracy with a ball of any kind. I hadn’t so much as tried to play since high school.

But I could’ve taken a better shot than that if I didn’t have to hold my phone in one hand. The ball having real weight and more than an imagined tactile feel might have helped, too.

The fact that the ball existed – exclusively in Third Eye – was a testament to what Water could do. Albeit, with an assist from Earth.

“It seems like it’s hard to use most of these with just Water,” I said.

Erin nodded. “The effects look really cool, but so far they haven’t seemed very practical. Of course, I just got my Water, so I have a lot more learning to do, too.”

The conversation about Albie had not put me in the best mindset to master my new, much desired Reactant. If it had just been Erin and I, I might have bagged the whole expedition. A quiet morning hunting Materials, by which I mean brooding, would’ve suited me better.

Lena wouldn’t have it.

She acted utterly convinced that Albie wouldn’t do the things that Erin had told us about her. When Lena acted that certain, I knew the person she was trying to sell on something was herself.

But she’d managed to sell me, too. Even Erin seemed swept up in her wake.

So we’d walked over to the park and begun practicing for the video.

What I’d learned from my experiments, and what Erin had showed me, was this:

We could change the color, texture, and, seemingly, the fundamental makeup of a manifested object. The fake basketball I’d tried to shoot was the right color for the ones I’d been forced to use in high school PE, all orange, although it lacked regulation black stripes. It looked like it had the rubbery, nubby surface I expected from a basketball. Since I couldn’t actually feel it, I couldn’t say for sure if it had the right resistance, but I needed to use about the right amount of force to throw it, so its weight checked out.

I could duplicate all of that by matching Erin’s movements, although it took me several tries to get orange rather than red or pink. I don’t think I ever managed something quite the right shade to pass for a real basketball. The texture on mine looked fine, as far as I could tell, but I didn’t know sports equipment well enough to be sure.

Especially when I had to apply color and texture to a sheet of Plastic, rather than a ball of about the right size, like the one Erin handed me.

Similarly, we could both change the color of Glass, but she could first form it into the shape she wanted, something like a blown glass sculpture, and then tint it. I just ended up with a pane of stained glass. We could change the type of glass as well as the color; my discarded test pane was as dull and thick as the plexiglass at the old aquarium.

Iron was where it got more interesting.

“I said it before,” Lena said. She kicked a discarded test piece and Third Eye’s incredible sound design supplied a credible impression of a bronze gong. “They should just call this Metal.”

“It really doesn’t look like Iron anymore,” Erin said.

We’d changed panels of supposed Iron into something that looked more like bronze, then silver, then even gold, which was, according to the store and at least some wiki entries from around the world, its own separate resource in Third Eye.

Then, with the combination of Water and Earth, Erin had shaped her metal into the wide, curving bowl or shield Lena had kicked.

Mine, despite its changed properties, had remained an undifferentiated sheet as I cycled through different metals. I’d discovered one trick, though, and it had let me make at least as perfect a sphere as the one Erin had shaped with Earth. That would be one of the wow moments when I did it in the video.

“I think you should do Iron last in this video,” Erin said. “Or Wood?”

“Definitely Wood,” I said.

Skip over Stone, the most boring yet again – we could turn it into granite, or marble, or obsidian, or a few types of rock I didn’t recognize but which didn’t seem super interesting – and you had one last Material.

Wood was by far the most interesting to use with Water.

Because Water brought it to life.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The tree I’d aimed the basketball at was Erin’s creation. She’d used Earth to form it into a rough dowel rod shape, but with Water, she’d made that blossom into something that looked like a living tree. It grew bark and branches and leaves until it was about the size of some of the saplings that were staked for the winter along the path. Aside from lowering my phone, my only way of telling them apart was to see which one had flowers and leaves instead of seasonably appropriate bare branches.

I couldn’t start with a rod, so the plant that grew from my Wood looked a lot weirder at first, but unless you’d watched it grow, or paid close attention to how all the stalks grew together at the base, you could mistake it for a perfectly ordinary hedge.

“Yeah,” Lena said. “Wood plus Water is probably the coolest thing I’ve seen in Third Eye yet.”

Erin swept her phone in Lena’s direction, up to her wings. Her eyebrow raised. She didn’t ask, but I knew what she had to be thinking.

Lena must have, too, because she clapped and said, “We ready to get this show on the road?”

Erin’s shoulders sank. “Just let me get out of the way. I can try filming some from the bench, like in your first video.”

“You sure you don’t want to join the shoot?” I asked. “Even if you skip the Earth you’re still better with Water than me. I’m sure people would be happy if you guest starred.”

“Absolutely not!” Erin covered her mouth. She retreated to the bench and huddled there. “Sorry. But, no. I don’t want to be on camera.”

I spread my hands. “I wasn’t going to force you.”

She bobbed her head. “I know.”

Something about the way she said it irked me.

I trusted Erin to more or less have our best interests at heart, but it seemed like every time I talked to her, something came up to make me question her methods, if not her motives.

Take her confidence just now. She wasn’t saying she knew I wouldn’t force her because that would be rude.

She was saying she knew I wouldn’t force her because if it came down to Lena and I against her, she fully expected to win.

Which was probably true. She was the only one of us who had an inherently destructive Reactant. It wasn’t like Lena and I could really team up, either, when she didn’t have any Reactants at all. Erin wasn’t supposed to know that, though I’m not sure how well Lena had kept her secret. On the other hand, Erin probably didn’t know about my overhealed resources.

Right or not, though, it annoyed me.

Lena caught it, too. Her eyes narrowed and she didn’t so much shake her head as flick it. Subtle reactions. I could notice them, but I wasn’t sure anyone else would.

Outside of Third Eye.

In it, her wings practically attacked the air, and little flames dripped from her hands and sizzled on the grass as she stalked over to take her place for the video shoot.

I didn’t think either of us would’ve minded if we hadn’t already been at least a little annoyed.

Okay, Lena probably would’ve minded.

“Heya, Third Eye community! It’s ya girl, Ashbird, back with another introduction to a Reactant.” She cocked her head and grinned at my camera. The framing wasn’t quite right, I thought. I wanted to hold my phone at a lower angle so that, despite her height, Lena could sort of look down her nose at it. That would suit the expression she’d settled on for this intro. “I know what you’re thinking. Is she really going to do it this time? Do we get to see the master at work?”

I rolled my eyes. “How hard are you going to push that?”

Her eyes flashed. Literally, though my camera. “Hard enough to keep them clicking back for a new video. Way to ruin the take, by the way.”

“We always try a couple of takes of the intro,” I said. “That way, LikeItsNinetyNine and DU_Goldie have more footage to work with.”

“We could still try to nail it first try.”

“Sorry.” I waved for her to go again.

She did. This time, I got her from a lower angle, but she pushed her annoyance away and delivered her line with the peppy energy she’d opened the last video with.

We’d get a take where it all worked eventually.

I flipped to selfie mode. “Sorry, distinguished guests, but you’re stuck with me again for this one. Today, I’m going to show you what you can do with Water.”

“Everybody thank my lovely assistant, OldCampaigner, for covering all this boring stuff so we can save the best for last.”

“Don’t tell our audience that what I’m doing is boring, they’ll click away.”

“No chance,” Lena said. “You provide way too much eye candy.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Erin grinning, which seemed like a pretty good indication that this back-and-forth would work for at least some of the audience.

Would the rest of the video work, though?

The whole wiki team had pitched in to help us sketch out the first one, writing parts as a script and parts as a guideline. Between the news about Albie, and our desire to keep pumping videos out while people seemed interested, and the need to spread the advice to group up, we’d rushed in without the same level of planning.

What was more, Water, for as much as I’d ached to find it, didn’t offer the same kind of visual appeal that Air had.

End on Wood, of course, and everyone who watched that far would be enthralled.

Open on Iron? I hadn’t found Glass or Plastic tricks as visually interesting as what I’d done with what should’ve been called Metal. Stone, I almost wanted to skip, but I’d go through it for thoroughness’s sake.

Yeah. Iron felt right to me.

We’d succeeded the first time with a plan that went a little deeper than doing what felt right in the moment.

And I was taking too long to decide. Lena made little finger twirls to hurry me on, more frantic with every minute I hesitated.

Open with Water and Iron. But, I thought, don’t stop there. I nodded to myself.

“We’re going to change up the format a little for this one, because Water is... weird, compared to Air.” I settled into the idea that this would just be a rehearsal and prompted Lena. “Give them something about the verbs.”

“Air ‘moves,’” she said. “Water ‘changes.’”

I nodded. “By now most of you probably know that much from reading the wiki. But, especially if you don’t have these Reactants yourself, you might not have a good sense for what it means.”

I tapped Water and Iron. The usual Third Eye metal plate appeared in the air between Lena and I. I made a few of the gestures I’d practiced with Erin. As the metal shifted forms, its color, thickness, and even texture altered. I wasn’t sure how well it would show up on video.

Then I formed my open hand into a sort of cup, index and pinky fingers tilted to the side, and the metal plate began to melt.