Chapter 6-Cecelie

It’s been several weeks since my brother’s test. Today is the first day of school for Lucarus and I. Lucarus and I are walking to school together since we live next door, my mother went early to set up the lesson.

“Deadra check out what I accomplished last night!” He puts his hands in front of his chest with the palms facing each other. A strained face replaces Lucarus’s normal calm façade and the muscles in his arms begin to tighten as blood flows through them. A small light and sparks begin to emit from his palms, moments later a flame about the size of a penny appears between his hands for a second then fades away. Lucarus breathes out a large sigh.

“haha good job, keep working on it and in a one day you might be able to do the same things I can.” I hold my left hand out in front of me with the palm facing the sky and unleash my power. An orange flame mirroring the image of a large candle stick flame flickers into existence. I push it to the base of my thumb then have a second flame of equal size appear in the center of my palm. I move this one next to my pinky and form a third flame.

Explaining to Lucarus I say. “Making the three flames separate and manipulating them takes more effort and concentration then making one larger flame, but the same amount of energy reserves. Moving them around is even harder.” I make an equilateral triangle on my hand with the three flames then begin to spin them around in a circle about the center of my palm. Extinguishing the first set of flames I hold my right hand up and point my finger out away from Lucarus and myself. “Another skill is changing the flames shape.” I push energy out from my finger and ignite the air. The flame comes out with a slight blue tint and extends in a long and skinny straight line going about five inches past the tip of my finger. I hold this for as long as I can before my energy fails me.

A high pitched voice from a short distance away shouts “When are you going to start teaching me how to make fire! Teach me teach me!” Aarushi comes running from behind and rams herself between Lucarus and I. She glances between the two of us then looks at me and tilts her head “Well?”

After seeing Suzaku’s test I began teaching Aarushi. My thoughts for doing so are that I may need her in the future if I’m going to be fighting a god. Her father is also a powerful figure so being her friend could prove beneficial. “I say this every time, first you need to increase your energy reserves and your control of heat. I have given you plenty of exercises to work on such as drying clothes or boiling water.” I grab the ball Lucarus gave me from the phoenix medallion and hold it up. “A quicker way to improve strength is to pour energy into something like this.”

Aarushi turns her head sideways again “Isn’t that made to store heat energy? My dad has lots of those at home. They are made from the phoenix tree, that’s what the little red thing inside is.”

Lucarus and I stare at her in amazement. How can she be so dumb and knowledgeable at the same time? “Aarushi how come you know so many random things?” Lucarus crosses his arms, probably jealous with all the attention I’m giving to Aarushi, but he dare not interrupt, he fears bad karma too much.

Aarushi smiles and puts her arms around Lucarus and I, Lucarus cringes with the idea of a girl touching him. “My dad is the village chief, which means when I get older I will become the village priestess! This village is originally run by the priestess. My mother was the priestess but she died giving birth to me so my dad took up the seat of power. When I become older I will become the leader of this village so my dad is always teaching me the traditions and history I need to learn.” She then let’s go of us and runs up ahead. She does a small twirl with her arms out like a ballerina. “I’m like a princess!” As she says this she squeezes her face with her hands and raises one leg in front of her.

I slap my hand to my face. She ruined the moment with that last line. “Yeah whatever. We need to hurry or we will be late to our first day of school.”

We arrive at school and my mother welcomes all the students who come in. There are about eight kids in the class of the same age as me. After a few minutes my mother walks and begins the lesson. “I want you to break up into two groups of four and all sit down together.” Aarushi, Lucarus, and I sit at one of the tables forming the beginning of a group. A minute later a shy dirty blonde girl with short hair walks over to our table and meekly asks. “ca..can I sit here?”

I put on a big smile and begin to open my mouth when Aarushi interrupts me “Yeah! I’m Aarushi, let’s be friends!”

I glare over at Aarushi then gather my composure. “Yes please do. I am Deadra, This is my friend Lucarus.” I motion my hand to Lucarus.

 Lucarus rubs the back of his head and gives a big cheeky smile. “Hi.”

The girl stares at us momentarily then begins to say something but instead blinks a few times.

“If you want to then please sit down.” I say this to hopefully get her to stop staring at us.

The girl then silently walks up and jumps onto the chair then hides her eyes in her hair while looking at the ground.

A few moments pass before Aarushi and I speak simultaneously.

“Can I ask you what your name is?”

“Who are you? Let’s be friends!”

I then look over to Aarushi angrily once again, honestly this girl is insufferable.

She looks up at us and says “I’m Cecelia.”

While I butt heads with Aarushi who doesn’t realize I’m mad at her, Lucarus takes the initiative. “Glad to meet you!”

Before any more can be said Aris clears her throat. “I’m glad to see everyone getting along, now let’s begin with today’s lessons.”

The next few months go by smoothly. Aarushi learned to boil water and dry clothes, and now she is working on improving her energy capacity. Lucarus finally learned to sustain an actual flame in his hand. I am now training him to manipulate the size and heat of the flame before I move on any further. I have also slowly improved myself. Mainly I can hold the fire for slightly longer or make it slightly bigger, but I did learn one new trick. I can envelop my gloves with flames. I believe if I get more experience doing this I could one day envelope a full weapon such as a dagger or a sword. My only concern would be with our fourth group member Cecelia.

Cecelia still has not opened up to us yet. We all talk and hang out before or after school but she sits silently in her seat, sometimes listening to the things we say sometimes day dreaming in her own little world. She participates very little in class assignments that involve group work. I know she isn’t stupid because besides me and Lucarus she gets the highest grade on individual assignments in the class. Speaking of which, Aarushi consecutively has the worst grade in class. Mother Aris has taken Cecelia to a different area and tried talking to her about being more social but she always bashfully says ‘ok’ or quietly says ‘I’ll try’, but she doesn’t seem to improve.

The three of us always try to get her to talk or be a part of the conversation, but she never says more than a few words. My guess is she either doesn’t know much about the subject or she doesn’t care much about it. Or maybe she doesn’t feel comfortable around us?

Even though she is very quiet and does not talk much she is always very polite. She always says please and thank you when being asked for something. She listens intently when someone talks to her. Maybe she is just a really shy person. She may grow out of this one day. After all we are only six years old right now.

One very ordinary day after school the four of us go by the river to skip rock, or more accurately Lucarus, Aarushi and I skip rocks while Cecelia watches. “Hey Cecelia you sure you don’t want to try skipping rocks? It’s a lot of fun!” Lucarus tries to hand her a rock

“haha you don’t need to worry about being bad, no one could be worse than Aarushi was when she first started. It took her almost two weeks to just be able to skip it once!” I give Cecelia a warm smile. I definitely prefer Cecelia’s company over Aarushi’s.

“No thank you.” She turns her head to the side looking away from us blushing slightly.

Aarushi jumps into the conversation “Hey I was awesome when I first started! I was practically born to throw these rocks!”

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I turn around and look at her “Oh just like you were born to climb trees or born to use fire like Lucarus and I?” Maybe I am going overboard being mean with her but really her only talent is raw undying determination with everything she does. She may not be graceful or much of a natural but she has improved a lot in everything she tries. In fact she can almost keep up with Lucarus with climbing trees, and she can skip rocks better than me now too.

Very seriously and with a smile Aarushi says “I’m very glad you noticed my talents!”

Suddenly behind me I hear something unexpected and almost hurt my neck turning around too quickly. Cecelia asked “You guys can use fire already? Can you please show me?” and for the first time I see Cecelia’s mark glow a color other than light blue. Her mark slightly glowed whitish yellow meaning she was excited or happy with a mix of anticipation.

Lucarus responds first by holding his hand out and making a small flame in his palms for a few seconds. He then calmly walks over to Cecelia turns around and smiles at us.

I follow behind him igniting both of my gloves completely and making a small trail of flames extend from each finger by about an inch and a half. My hands look like that of a cat’s claw but the fur and nails are replaced by flames.

As Lucarus and I display our magic Cecelia’s eyes widen and shine. Her hand glows brighter and a smile comes across her face. “When did you guys eat the phoenix seed? Aren’t you the same age as me?”

I shake my head dissipating the flames around my hands. “We have never done such thing.”

Her mouth gapes open and then her hands start to shake. “Are you serious?!? That’s just like the great hero Xeodra! He was rumored to be able to use fire and other abilities without eating that nations death seed. He used fire freely from birth, and accomplished so many great things! Have you guys heard much about Xeodra? He was such an amazing person!” She continues to raise her voice from a small whisper to practically shouting while beginning to mover her arms around. “He could harness water to make steam for camouflage, or ice for shelter. He could use flames equal to any Pyromancer known. He manipulated air to allow himself to travel quickly or jump from place to place in combat. They say his strength was equal to tens of men.”

At this point Lucarus, Aarushi and I are all staring in complete awe at what we are seeing. Cecelia has never said more than two or three words in a sentence, and now she is going off with the ferocity of two or three Aarushi’s. I begin to put my hand up to calm her but she pays no mind to the gesture, completely throwing her previous manners she held for several months out the window.

“He went around saving towns from great evils, destroying huge monsters and even taking out armies single handed. He was the one man who created all the great death trees to save our world from the uprising epidemics that hit each clan. That includes our own pyromancer clan. He planted five large phoenix trees, one of the smaller ones is the center of this very village!” not even taking a breath she continues to lash out random facts about Xeodra.

I reach out and grab her shoulders firmly, I bring my face close to hers and stare her in the eyes. I then calmly say “Get a hold of yourself Cecelia, you can take you time and talk about Xeodra all you want but do please remember your manners and let us put in some input.” She looks me in the eyes and nods. I can feel a new fire of determination in her and let her go. “haha I’m really glad we finally got you to talk” I give her a brief smile then turn around to the others and motion them over. For the rest of the day we talk about different things but Cecelia somehow always brought it back to pyromancy magic or Xeodra in some way.

Over the next few weeks Cecelia is still as quite as ever at school but after school when we meet up she perks up slightly and will have input on the conversation. She is still very shy but she is definitely opening up to us more bit by bit. She even asked me to start training her in using pyromancy, in fact she is a very diligent and bright student, she learns much faster than either of my other two students.

After a few more weeks the four of us became friends. I didn’t even realize when it was happening but I am glad it did.

One day while we were at lunch break Cecelia pulls a rather large box out of her pack. Everyone at our table anxiously stares at it. Something I forgot to mention about school is everyone has to bring their own food, and well Cecelia always bring the most delicious looking food. The smell alone makes me jealous. The reason we all look so anxious is that we hope she may share with us.

Cecelia takes a deep breath in and then lets it out she glances at us and begins to blush a little from the combined weight of our stares. “I umm I usually cook my own food, but I told my mom about my new friends and she said it would be good if I tried making food for you guys too. So I ummm if you want you can…”

Aarushi interrupts her mid conversation. “Yessss! You’re going to share that with us right? I’m so excited!” she then reaches toward the large box with drool practically coming off her mouth.

I swat at Aarushi’s hand and give her a stern look. “If you’re too hasty you will build bad Karma!” Lucarus being calm mind about everything except for karma begins to wriggle around uneasily.

I apologize to Cecelia. “I’m sorry about Aarushi she has no manners. Please keep going.”

Cecelia clasps her hand around her mouth and holds back a small giggle. “You are all so silly, please have some… I’m sorry for being so shy.” She then opens the box to unveil a large pizza looking dish. With the technology this world has, something like this would take a lot of effort and time. “I worked hard so please enjoy it.”

Aarushi Sticks her tongue out at me and then dives toward the box and begins pulling pieces onto her plate.

Lucarus looks over to me checking for confirmation and I nod giving him the go ahead. He then reaches over and secures a few pieces for himself.

I also grab a few slices and place them in front of me. Aarushi and Lucarus are already happily chowing down. I look over at Cecelia and she seems to be staring in my direction waiting for me to eat. I guess she wants to make sure we like it before she starts eating it herself. I take a bite and unintentionally make a small sound of satisfaction with the first bight. It almost melts in my mouth. I can’t believe Cecelia can make something as delicious as this. “Oh my Suzaku, this is amazing, I absolutely love it!” at these words Cecelia lights up, both her face and mark glow in bliss.

Aarushi moans “it’s sooooo gooooood!!”

Lucarus knowing better than talk with his mouth full nods in agreement and gives a thumbs up.

Cecelia gives another smile and then begins to eat her portion as well. After that day Cecelia would bring us all food every couple of days. I don’t know how but she makes the best food I have ever tried in this world.

A few more years pass peacefully like this the four of us becoming closer as friends and slowly developing our skills. We all got stronger at using fire, the strength ratio went me at the lead with Lucarus and Cecelia tied in second, and Aarushi falling dead last. Physical strength would go to Aarushi and Lucarus tied in first, me slightly behind them both and Cecelia a bit behind me. I had the most agility and acrobatic skills out of the four of us with Cecelia below me, Lucarus below her, and Aarushi being way below everyone else. If we were to make a battle team, Aarushi would be our tank, Lucarus would be the attacker, Cecelia being a rear guard and my self being the leader both attacking and issuing commands. I think we will make a great team in the future.

The time for Suzaku’s test approaches us. The other team of four has their test two weeks before we have ours. Fear and excitement fill me and my team. Tomorrow things in the village will change forever. Our fellow classmates will both become far stronger and begin combat training, or they will die… my team will follow shortly after, let’s pray for the best.