After a brief exchange which didn’t make a lot of sense to either of the two males, Satoshi found himself back where he woke up. The little girl, oblivious to all the commotion that just took place, continued drawing closeby.
(So is he not going to take her away? What if I want to sleep?)
Smirnie sat in the room with his eyes closed and arms folded. The bulging muscles on his arms almost seeming intentional to Satoshi.
(It’s not that I mind. He seems like a reasonable man. If I tell him I want to sleep, he’ll take her away.)
Satoshi had wondered how to get the girl to leave only because he was certain that she would lead to his demise. Now that it appeared that he had somewhat of an approval to play with her, he was more than happy to oblige. Though, he would have preferred to play with that power of his..
“Maybe I can.”, he said looking at Smirnie, at which the man in question opened one of his eyes. As their gazes matched, Satoshi diverted his look to the girl, though not in any explicit haste. At that Smirnie closed his eye back, returning to his original disposition.
Satoshi took a deep breath and felt for the air around him. He could feel the movement of air into the lungs of the three people in the room. He chose Smirnie and slowly and steadily tried to reduce the air flow into his lungs and not 2 minutes later, he started yawning, a clear indication that his trick was working. He continued for a while watching the little girl draw what seemed to be a weird looking alien with especially round ears. And not another minute later, he could hear snoring sounds from his victim.
“I’ll continue maintaining his low-oxygen state so he doesn’t wake up anytime soon.”, he said to the little girl with a smile, at which she looked at him and just tilted her head. He found the action simply adorable and patted her head at which she also smiled.
“So you like me patting your head, don’t you? Will you finally let this amazing human touch your cute dog ears too?”
As soon as he tried to focus his touch on her ears, she made a displeased face and backed off. She held her two ears with her two hands in a protective manner and shook her head.
“So, uh, I guess the ears are off-limits..”
He turned his gaze back to the slate. Her drawing was clearly of him and it was certainly very amusing. The round ears were an undeniable indication to his conclusion, though an issue of the ears spanning a size bigger than his head did make him reconsider for a moment. The rest of the face was also ill-drawn as expected from a 3 year old, but the attempt was certainly praiseworthy.
“What if I show you more interesting?”, he said to the girl raising his palm to the girl so that she could look upon it.
While still keeping his influence on Smirnie, he tried to recreate the phenomena from the jungle.
“Whoooaaa..”
A mini-tornado appeared over his palm evoking a sound of wonder from the girl. He rotated his hand in a similar manner as he had earlier did in the forest, keeping the tornado upright with it finally coming to rest on his index finger.
The little girl looked at the rotating whirl of wind with wide eyes. And as instinctual to all toddlers her age, felt an urge to touch it. She brought her tiny hand near to his, hovering it around the alluring matter, as if waiting for the right time. And as if the right time had indeed come, she closed her fist stealing the thing away from the human. She brought her fist enclosed closer to her face and peeked inside to find only darkness. As she fully opened her palm, she found the toy to be arrogantly missing. She briefly looked around if it had dropped before landing her view back to the big hand that hadn’t moved an inch, harboring the spinning delight. She made another similar attempt and failing, moved on to poking and eyeing it to somehow discern its mechanics. Meanwhile, Satoshi was making his own discoveries.
(So it’s not possible to maintain it with an obstacle in the way. Also, it is interesting how I’m able to see it.)
He ignored the girl's antics and tried to control the speed of rotation of the mini-tornado. The slower he made it, the more transparent it became.
“Ohhhh! So we can see it only because I have been subconsciously making it rotate at a very high speed!” He said to the little girl for the lack of another person in his vicinity. Well, Smirnie was certainly there but he was asleep.
The little girl disregarded his passionate exclamation as background noise and proceeded to do the last thing in her arsenal to attempt a successful retrieval of the amazing object. She chomped down on it, including his finger holding it.
“Oi! Oi! Are you crazy!? Don’t bite off people’s fingers!”
Satoshi just managed to save his finger from annihilation and reprimanded the girl in a harsh tone. Instinctively understanding that she had done something bad, she lowered her head and became even smaller than she already was.
“Faami.”
She said something with her shoulders drooping and head lowered. It was unmistakably an apology in her language.
“Ah okay, whatever. I don’t really mind so let’s try something else.”
He took up the chalk that the girl was using for drawing and put it on his palm, again for the girl to see. Now this was something he was trying for the first time so he closed his eyes and focused.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
(Feel the air around the chalk.)
He focused all his attention on the small white cylindrical object and forced the air surrounding it to obey. Immediately, the chalk moved a little, now floating about half an inch above his palm, though wobbly.
“It’s a little hard to maintain the balance.”, He gave his evaluation as he opened his eyes to perceive his results.
The girl was watching again at his tricks with wide eyes but refrained from doing anything, most definitely a result of the earlier scolding. And Satoshi was thankful for that, because he wasn’t done yet.
Keeping the chalk in place, he lowered his hand. Now the chalk was really just floating in their midst with nothing perceivable to describe how its state came to be. And slowly but steadily, he tried to get the chalk to rotate. It started off bad, as making the small object spin on the spot using just air pressure was no easy task. The chalk wobbled and fell out of the spot, forcing him to stop his attempt and focus only on holding it steady once again. As he re-initiated his attempt, he started to understand the underlying principles of the task at hand. The way the air flowed was very fluid and unrestricted. It was best to describe it as free. The air tried to part and make way for the heavy object and Satoshi had to do the opposite. He forced air to the bottom of the chalk and removed from the top creating simultaneous high and low-pressure zones above and below the chalk. But these were stationary zones. To make the chalk rotate, the two zones would need to be moved in conjunction with the chalk. Visually it was just not possible to do. He could not decide where to create the two zones of high and low pressure around the chalk to rotate it in its next position, based on what his eyes were seeing. That is where his attempts at feeling objects with the air around his came to the rescue.
He again closed his eyes and got a feel for the chalk in the air. Then he tried to tilt the pressured zones at each end of the chalk piece, in opposite directions. The tilt was minuscule, and slowly but surely the chalk was rotating. Satoshi made his tilt a little steeper causing the chalk to imbalance. But he didn't stop. He kept the pace, though faster than earlier, but still incredibly slow and managed to get used to it. Similarly, he increased the tilt a little more, making the chalk accelerate and disbalance and got it right and maintained it and repeated. It took a long time, certainly over an hour before he was somewhat satisfied. The speed was quite enough that someone watching it could claim it was definitely spinning well. But they wouldn't call it fast. It was at a point where your eyes could make out the outline of the chalk if you concentrated hard. What he was more impressed by, was the little girl who had sat quiet and focused on him over the entire time he was experimenting. He never assumed toddlers could be so patient. He had a general perception of them that they would leave if they don't find something interesting. And a man trying to rotate a chalk might be what you call interesting, but over the course of an hour improving at the pace of a snail? Hell no. Well, what did he know about the kids in this world? Maybe they were different. Or maybe the people in this region raised them differently. Either way, he decided he would entertain the little girl for a while, as a reward for impressing him.
He concentrated hard again on the chalk and nothing else. He moved the chalk that was still spinning towards the girl and brought it close to her slowly. The girl just looked at the chalk and didn't move, probably because of the earlier scolding. The chalk went around the girl in wavy fashions making her happy, steadily getting faster and faster but nothing too hard for the eyes to follow. Suddenly, it came to a stop in front of the girl's face, motionless. It was pointing at the girl as if challenging her. It slowly came closer and closer to her, but she didn't show any movements still. Suddenly it disappeared at a very fast speed and poked her on the cheek. As she instinctively tried to grab it, the small object easily slipped out of her equally small hands and proceeded to poke her in the tummy, eliciting a small giggle and another attempt to grab it. But it didn't seem the chalk had any intention of being caught. It easily dodged her tiny reaches and poked her on the other side of the tummy eliciting another laugh. She stood on the bed for a more versatile manoeuvrability, but the piece of chalk alluded her every attempt. Her body of a three year old was still too undeveloped to succeed in catching the chalk. Not only the chalk easily escaped her grabs, but attacked in returned poking her in her tummy, on her small butt, in her armpits and everywhere the girl could have been ticklish. The little girl jumped and reached and turned and ducked while laughing, enjoying the endorphins coursing through her body.
As for Satoshi, it was good practice in his goal to effectively control his power. Once he thought he had had enough, he started to make the chalk move in ways as to make the girl more tired, while still minding that she doesn't fall off the bed. He would rise the chalk higher needing her to jump or constantly move it around her and poke on her butt to make her turn. Though sometimes she would trip and fall over on the bed, she would get back up again instantly, laughing.
Satoshi looked at the man who was sleeping through all this commotion.
(I hope he's not dead.)
Even with the complex handling of the small object, he had been maintaining his influence on Smirnie and so he knew the wolf man was very much alive, taking constricted breaths under his influence. It could be considered much more interesting a success than that of his finer control over the small cylindrical object.
After about half an hour had passed playing with the girl, he noticed the girl’s movements getting extremely sluggish, he decided it was time to end it. As he made the chalk move a bit slower with each passing second and finally let her grab it, giving her the illusion that it was done by her own efforts.
Finally having overcome her big challenge, the girl plopped down on the bed holding the chalk to her chest in both her tiny arms, while still laughing in between her ragged breathing. She sprawled on the bed in her victory.
Satoshi grabbed her, lifted her a little and dragged her lower body gently and placed her head on his left leg. He flinched a little as he was reminded of his grave injury but disregarded it. He patted the girl and made a light breeze blow around her and though her clothes, evaporating the sweat. The cold from the evaporation right after her exercise made her sleepy and within the minute she was sleeping on his lap with a satisfied expression on her face.
Satoshi didn’t really feel a great deal about this turn of events. He discerned the reason for that to be the extra air he was breathing because of his power causing his brain to be able to consciously keep his emotions in check. This was probably the greatest thing about the power that he had discovered. The human mind was limited in its functionality but even more so due to the unneeded thing called 'emotions' clouding their judgements. By forcing air into his lungs, he was making his brain work better. Everything from when he had woken up, keeping his head straight in the midst of alien people, not losing to the depression from the loss of his leg, maintaining a conscious control over his bladder, and most of all, multitasking. He had never known that he could possibly do so much at the same time. He was controlling his own breathing, and Smirnie’s breathing and the complex movements of the chalk at the same time. Though now his head was almost throbbing in pain, he knew it was simply because he wasn’t used to this. And he would definitely get used to this.
He looked back at the girl, who unknowingly helped him out in his practice on his control. She had had genuine fun at the physical game and was now dried of the sweat and peacefully sleeping with her head on his lap. She was the first to accept him, an outsider, in this new world, so he considered this his reward to her.
Again, he looked at Smirnie. The father was sleeping in a similar manner to the girl, oblivious they were both in this state as a result of his actions. He considered waking him up and getting him to take the girl away but he had just one last thing to do.
He reached for the girl’s ears. As he touched them, she didn’t make any attempt to pull away, sound asleep. He did not feel any guilt towards his actions. It was nothing sexual in his mind, simply a matter of curiosity. There was no way he was going to imagine anything weird towards a girl of 3 or 4.
He felt the girl’s ears and they felt completely natural, just driving in home the fact that this was most likely another world. There was no difference he could discern from her ears to those of the dogs he had felt in the previous world. They were well connected to her scalp, hair growing all around the base of it hid the transition from skin to grey. He checked at the side of her head where a human ear would have been, and it was filled with hair growth, giving the illusion that the ear may be hidden behind the hair. And for that reason, their facial structure looked very natural to him, at least visually.
Having sated his curiosity, he forced air into Smirnie’s lungs jolting him awake. The wolf man immediately stood up and looked around for any abnormality. His gaze landed onto the scene of his precious little girl in the human’s lap with his hand on her head and looking at him. As their gazes matched, Smirnie made a complicated expression. His ears twitched a little as he could distinctly make out the cute breathing of his daughter and her chest unmistakably moving in conjunction with the sound of her breathing. He felt genuinely happy at the scene and at that the human seemed harmless. The complicated expression he made was at his incomprehensibility as to how he could have fallen asleep, and how he woke up all of a sudden to find this scene in front of him.
He made his way over to the human and wordlessly picked up his daughter. He gave a nod to the human, which Satoshi interpreted as some kind of recognition, and made his way out finally leaving him with some peace and quiet.
As much as he wished to continue experimenting with his power, he could no longer ignore the accumulated fatigue. He was not physically tired due to his injury, but now also mentally tired from making his brain function so much more than it was used to. So he decided to take a break, and limited the oxygen supply to his lungs, and just as it happened with Smirnie, he was asleep in a couple of minutes.