I wake up on a familiar couch. Hello there, Déjà vu. Henchman one is still holding up the doorframe, finger-drumming his thighs. Henchman two is buffing her nails by my feet, her pretty face disappointingly unmarred. Henchman three is sitting in a chair, a forlorn frown affixed to his lips.
“It’s alive,” Tally says dramatically, promptly returning to her beautification process.
I briefly contemplate stretching to kick her. Making it seem coincidental would take too much effort, so I opt out.
“How are you feeling?” Ryan’s concern pours from his ocean-hued eyes like a broken dam. It nearly drowns me.
Lying won’t do me any good. “Like someone lit me on fire after dousing me in gasoline.”
“Huh, I guessed a century minimum before we agreed on anything,” Tally quips.
“Is pretending nothing happened on the table?” Burning her could’ve been a hallucination, but it was clearly a shared one. The science enthusiast in me wants to explore. The terrified teenager wants to run.
“We don’t have to discuss anything you aren’t comfortable with,” Ryan assures me. His compassion rolls off him in waves. It’s nice, albeit unfamiliar territory for me.
“Why aren’t you surprised by what happened?”
When he smiles, I clench my jaw to keep from mimicking the contagious display. “Your reaction was normal considering your nature.”
“He means what you are,” Tally clarifies.
“I mean who you are,” Ryan corrects her.
“So, who or what am I, exactly?”
“A Solathair,” he states proudly.
“A what?”
“A Solathair,” Declan repeats. “You have an innate ability to use elemental energy.”
“You’re a fire freak,” Tally muses.
“She’s not a freak,” Ryan scolds her, glancing warily at Declan. “Leave it alone.”
Undeterred, Declan holds up his left hand, slowly closing his index finger and thumb. Tally starts writhing on the couch, attempting to peel her lips apart. Her emerald eyes lighten to white before she splits in two. Declan counters her move by bringing up his right hand, completing the same finger-to-thumb closure. His gray eyes are opal clouds now, too. As Tally splits a third time, huffing from either exertion or annoyance, I wonder what he’ll do to silence her with no free resources. She evidently wonders the same thing since her hands are perched on her hips in a challenging stance.
“Bring it, Marionette Man,” Tally3 taunts him.
Declan releases Tally2 in favor of Tally3 before clapping his hands, which brings Tally1 and Tally3 crashing into Tally2, merging them all back together. Tally rubs her head, eyes narrowed at her brother.
“How did you—” I draw my fists into tight little balls and silently count to ten as if it’ll all go away.
“You’re not helping,” Ryan discourages them. “Go outside if you want to play.”
Play. It isn’t light-hearted sibling rivalry. Are they even related? Zero percent chance of them being twins. That much, I’m sure of.
“Sorry, Sheyla,” Ryan apologizes. “They forget their age.”
“Uncomfortable,” I grumble. Everyone falls silent. Mercy of all mercies, I’ve found my safe word, and I plan to hold onto it for dear life.
“How’s your temperature?” Ryan checks.
You better buy stock in thermometers, Superego points out unhelpfully.
“I’m cool.”
“Let’s start again,” he offers. “This time without interruptions. We all have the same goal here, right?”
Both sides are silent, though they’ve sandwiched me between them on the couch like I’m still a flight risk. I am. I really, really am.
“You’re a Solathair,” Ryan says for the third time. “You have an innate ability to utilize the element of fire, which I believe you’ve always been aware of. Are you with me so far?”
I nod. The whole fire concept isn’t hot news, but I’d chalked up previous flame-induced misfortunes to an overactive imagination.
“You’re not the only one of your kind. Our kind,” Ryan continues. “We’re elementals. I’m of water, Tally’s of earth, and Declan’s of air.”
Declan winks at me. “Happy to give you more demonstrations if you want.”
I’m game, Superego whoops. Let’s go!
When I cringe, Ryan buffers, “Not yet.”
“No, I get it. Wind is powerful enough to force movement. Given enough practice, you could coerce the element into physically manipulating singular objects, ergo telekinesis.”
“Very good, Sheyla. How about Tally?” Ryan encourages me.
“Earth. Living things. She can replicate herself because she can grow living things.”
“Excellent,” he compliments me.
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It’s good to be right, even if my rightness is wrong on so many levels.
“And me?” he pushes.
“Well, you’re a doctor, you work at the hospital, and you control water.” My thumbs circle the tips of my fingers, as they tend to do when I’m concentrating. “The body is made up of sixty percent water on average. If you could manipulate that, you could reduce pain or improve healing.”
“You’re a bright bulb, aren’t you?” he claims enthusiastically.
“You controlled the element itself. You put her out. My clothes aren’t even damp. Why aren’t we soaking wet?”
“Blow Dry sorted it,” Tally informs me.
“You just innately produce whatever your element is?”
“We restrict production but can easily manipulate what already exists,” Ryan explains.
“Why do you restrict production?”
“We’ll run out of gas,” Tally deadpans.
“Why don’t we just drain my gas tank, then we can go back to how things were? What happens if we run out of gas?”
“We go poof.” She flutters her lashes. “Each in our own privately painful way.”
“You’d die?” I frown. “I’d die?” I’ve spent loads of time contemplating my end, relatively content with the concept of finality, but having it this close gives me anxiety.
“No,” Ryan shoots her down. “We can’t really die.”
“Ever?”
“Not really,” he confirms. “If you transition, your life won’t be the same, but you’ll continue to exist.”
“Transition?” If my element is fire, a transition probably equals an explosion. I can’t imagine surviving that.
“If she transitions?” Tally scoffs. “You think she’s stopping it? None of us could, and we weren’t fighting fire.”
“Sheyla, we discovered what we are post-transition.” Ryan ignores Tally. “You’re in a unique position to hold onto your humanity. You asked if you’d die. The answer is your spirit won’t die, but your body will be destroyed.”
As far as I can tell, the three of them are perfectly ordinary humans. If they hadn’t told me otherwise, I wouldn’t have suspected they were something else. “You all have bodies,” I reason. “Obviously, you got your bodies back.”
Declan flinches. Okay, scratch that. I don’t want to learn how they got their bodies back. Not yet. Maybe, with their help, I won’t need to stress over that part.
“If we can teach you how to channel your energy, perhaps you won’t transition.” Ryan sounds hopeful. “We can keep the spark inside you from igniting into a full-blown flame.”
“You’re wasting your time trying to stop her implosion. It would be better spent building a bomb shelter,” Tally snarks.
“Will you survive my transition?” Blowing up might not be so bad if I take her out with me.
“Sure we will,” Tally tuts, “but most of North America won’t.”
I crinkle my nose. “That’s a fairly big explosion.”
Declan pats me soundly on the back. “Strap in, Kid. If you use it, the fire could overpower you, and if you don’t...”
“We should get moving on that shelter. If nothing else, you could lock me in when the time comes.”
“Way to take one for the team, Sheyla!” Tally cheers. “There’s a bright side here. If she’s in the shelter, it won’t take so long for Humpty Dumpty to put herself back together.”
I rub my temples. “Put me back together?”
Declan whistles sharply in warning.
Tally smirks but keeps her mouth shut.
“Your abilities,” I redirect from my imminent implosion. “Did you have them before you changed?”
“My change was long ago. I remember wanting to help people.” Ryan smiles warmly. “Healing was a logical progression.”
“How old are you?”
“I’ve been around for nearly a millennium. You stop keeping track after a while. A year could pass in the blink of an eye. Ten years, a hundred, it’s all the same.”
His experience alone should account for some blind faith in whether he can help me. Can I afford not to let him try? No one’s ever, myself included, been able to reason away my incendiary disposition. I make good and sure to keep my distance from people because my defect tends to afflict only the people I care for, but it hasn’t been a legitimate requirement. “It wasn’t a fluke you found me, was it?”
“Nope,” Tally spits. “Lucky for us, you aren’t very blendy.”
“Lucky for us, she keeps herself on such a tight leash,” Declan defends me.
Something flashes in Ryan’s expression. Guilt?
“How many people like us are there?”
“Unknown,” Ryan admits. “We can’t create a social network for members. Actually, speaking of—”
“Don’t fret, Super Soaker,” Tally cuts him off. “She doesn’t have any friends to secret share with.”
“Your discretion is paramount,” Ryan insists.
“I can only imagine what would happen if the world found out,” I concede. “They’d lock you up to study you. For your own good, of course.”
“Careful,” Tally warns him. “She fancies herself one of them. We could end up caged rats, regardless.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” I promise. “If I’m volunteering myself to science, I’d rather be the one looking into the microscope than the one in the Petri dish.”
“Not even your father,” Ryan reiterates.
“No problem there,” I note. “We aren’t close.”
Ryan frowns, the corners of his mouth trembling pitifully. “I’m sorry to hear that.” He truly is sorry. I feel him wanting to wrap me in his arms, but he won’t. I feel his refrain just as keenly.
“Honestly, I get it.” I straighten my shoulders where they were caving in. “It’s dangerous for people to find out what or who we are.”
“Public exposure is the minor of the concerns,” Declan declares.
I sigh wearily. My biggest fear isn’t how anyone can hurt me. It’s how I’ll hurt them if I lose control. “I’m inclined to agree. We could—I could—seriously hurt people.”
Tally rolls her eyes. “That’s the last thing you need to agonize over.”
“I shouldn’t agonize over blowing everyone up?” Heat rushes through me in my anger. “I’m a ticking time bomb!”
“People are temporary. A blip. They don’t matter,” Tally elaborates.
“They do matter,” Ryan argues. “We wouldn’t see any harm come to humans.”
“Now isn’t the time to feed your superiority complex, Tally,” Declan complains.
“Why not? Why not explain to the halfling here how small they are in the grand scheme? How pathetic, weak, and oblivious they are,” Tally rants. “We’re much more evolved.”
Instead of stoking it, her words fizzle out my fire. I see beyond her bitter front. Tally doesn’t hate humans. She’s envious of us. She wants to be human, but as powerful and beautiful as she is, she can’t go back. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
She stares at me like I’ve lost the plot.
You need a cooldown on the fear-mongering, Superego recommends.
“Can we save the rest for later?” I rub slow circles over my temples. “I need to process some of this.”
“Typical human,” she spews.
“I agree, and I’m hoping to stay one. The floor is open for how to make that happen.”
“We need to help you burn off the excess without lighting up everything in proximity,” Declan suggests.
“I’ll be my own science experiment.”
“Precisely.” Ryan stops my nervous toe-tapping by placing a hand on my knee. “This will work.”
Tally rolls her eyes again. “Are we all done playing catch up? I’d like to properly welcome Sheyla to the family.”
When Declan whistles appreciatively, I’m curious what she has in mind. Something tells me it’ll involve rough play, and outdoors will be a requirement.
Several questions have been asked, but the most important one has no easy answer. What am I supposed to do with the energy I’m producing? If I’m the fuel, a Solathair as they call it, how can I expel the fuel in a way that keeps everyone safe? Maintaining emotional control is critical. It isn’t just a shed or football field I’ll destroy. It’s millions of living, breathing humans. Fuel is meant to be used. It’s irrational for something to exist serving no purpose other than destruction.
“Hey, Supernova.” Tally grins. “Come watch me knock the air out of Blow Boy.”
“In your dreams,” Declan claps back.
“Dreams,” I murmur. “Like the one I’m having now.”
“Enjoy that while you can, Firefly. Once you transition, you won’t ever do it again,” she advises.
“You don’t sleep?”
Ryan calls after me, ever supportive, “You won’t have to worry about that.”
He wants to be right so badly I almost believe him. Hopefully, I won’t let either of us down. If I do, well, the alternative isn’t pretty. I’m a Molotov cocktail, and getting myself disassembled requires external support. How steady are their hands?