Chapter 6 - Pt 2

      Seated on the padded mat in nothing but yoga pants and a crop top, I wonder why Steven dragged me here after we drove back from Amelia’s.

     Staring around the room I wonder if taking yoga classes is part of students curriculum, the lights in the room are all turned off except for the multi-coloured led lights hanging in the middle of the ceiling. It changes colours every couple of seconds, and I lean back on my hands as I close my eyes to the soft, hypnotizing sound of the ocean coming from the speakers.

      The doors of the practice room open and Steven steps in a loose grey tank and black shorts, pulling off his shoes he walks across the room and draws closer and I rise to my feet.

    “Sorry if I kept you waiting.”

     “Why are we here?” I ask, wanting to get straight to the point.

      Smiling, he stands before me and lets out a long sigh, while settling both hands on his waist. “We’re here because starting today, I’m going to train you on your abilities.”

     “Wait, what?” I stare at him in shock as he steps onto the long, purple mat I’m standing on and settles into a cross leg position. Looking up, he pats the padded mat expectantly, apparently waiting for me to follow suit. Staring at him as if he’s nuts, I start to say. “You know I can’t-”

      “Don’t worry,” He cuts me off. “We won’t be using any powers. Not yet anyway.” I don’t feel reassured, but decide to slowly settle down anyway.

     Keeping my eyes on him in suspicion, I waited for what he was going to do next and blink in surprise when he grabs both of my hands. I tried to draw them back immediately, uncomfortable with the sudden contact, but he tightens his hold with a soft squeeze.

     “Coral, I know you're not comfortable with any of this. But I need you to trust me, this meditation class is set up specifically for fire elemental students. Their powers sometimes have a way of affecting their emotions, so at least twice in a week they must attend meditation classes to find a way to centre all their aggressiveness and release it.”

    “Okay,” I nod, tilting my head when I ask. “Then, again, why are we here?”

    “We’re here because we would be doing the exact opposite. We have to find a way to get you comfortable with your powers before the next two weeks passes and school officially resumes. Your panic attacks come from fear, and in other to deal with that fear you need to completely conquer it.”

     “But how do we do that when I don’t even have my powers yet, I mean since getting my tattoo I haven’t conjured anything to even indicate that I’m an elemental?”

     “It isn’t that you don’t have them yet, it’s that you haven’t found a way to awaken them yet. When young elemental’s first come into their powers, they are always taught how to slowly summon and awaken their powers before they’re able to use them. With my help, you can awaken yours now.”

      “And if we do, you know I can’t look at the sight of-”

     “I know, which is why I have a backup plan.” I stare in puzzlement when he pulls out a blindfold from his shorts and leans away when he tries to place it over my face. “What did I ask you to do before?”

  “Hmm, trust you.”

     “Good, then instead of backing away.” he grasps my shoulders and draws me forward. “I need you to come forward.” Placing the blindfold over my eyes, he once again takes hold of my hands. 

      “Now what I want you to do is simple, I need you to close your eyes and stay focused. People easily get distracted when they meditate because their minds are restless, you don’t automatically feel calm just because you sit and meditate. I want you to let go of all your thoughts, even the one you're having now, and simply listen to the sound of my voice.”

      “You know, this is starting to sound like hypnotism-”

      “Coral hush up!" He snaps, his tone bordering on irritation. “When meditating there is only awareness or non-awareness, and you need to focus on one thing only. Your breathing. Pull yourself from your distracting thoughts, your mind should be centred on the in’s and out’s of your breathing, and the more you continue to do so the periods between awareness and distraction will get longer.”

       I do as he instructed and try to clear my mind, focusing on the intake and release of my breathing I centre my mind on that alone and feel like a weight has been dropped off my shoulders.

     Relaxing, I don’t even react even as I feel his hands slowly glide up to my wrist. He places a thumb upon my pulse and makes an approving noise beneath his throat. “This is good Coral, you're finally letting yourself be centred.”

      Sliding his hands back to grasps my finger, he squeezes softly, as if reassuring me, before spreading them out. He draws both hands together and angles them so they cupped, and places his beneath my spread palms.

      “Now I want you to imagine a string from your toes drawing up your spine to flow down to your hands, imagine this string is flowing with every intake and release of your breathing. Can you do that Coral?”

      I nod rather than respond and imagine a white, glowing string. In my mind, it’s flowing slowly up my spine as blood flows through a drip into a syringe, all the way down to the hands placed upon his. I continue to imagine the string until suddenly, the picture becomes very clear in my head. My brain feels heavy, my nose tingling with every breath, and my heart pulsing at a steady pace. As the string flows upward, I swallow and tense up when the sudden feeling of something crawling up my skin flows with it, I immediately wanted to pull my hands away and feel my back just to make sure something isn’t crawling up my back. But focus once again on the string in my mind, as it continues the trail up my spine so does the feeling until they flow down to my hands.

      Suddenly my biceps burn but not in a painful way, and in my mind, I can see that one by one the connected knots of my tattoo is moving down my skin in a snake-like crawl. I don’t know why Steven gasps and releases me, but I do not let his sudden reaction distract me. Like the string, they crawl down to my hands and suddenly not just the skin of my biceps, but the skin of my palms start to burn.

      Its almost as if Steven read my mind because just when I was about to open and eyes and see what’s happening to my hands, he grasps them once again. “Don’t stop what you're doing.” He commands, the sound of him swallowing audibly can be heard before he clears his throat.

      “Now I want you to imagine that with every breathes you release, a small flame is building slowly in the middle of your hands.”

      At the mention of fire, I immediately tense. The flashes from that night start to build up in my subconsciousness and the feeling of fear settles in the pit of my stomach.

     “Stop,” Steven’s curt voice breaks through my thoughts. “I don’t want you to think about what fire represents in your mind, or the feeling it brings. I just want you to imagine the flame itself, remember you blindfolded and you can’t see it. And since you can’t see it, it won’t pull you into your nightmares okay.” He instructs softly and I slowly nod, swallowing despite the lump forming in my throat.

     “Centre your thoughts once again on your breathing.”

    I do as he instructed and focus on my breaths, trying my hardest not to let my thoughts fall on my nightmares.

      “Now imagine that a small flame is growing in the middle of my hands. Imagine it growing from every breath, and every beat of your heart. Imagine it warming your skin as it flows through the strings flowing up your spine before slowly growing in the middle of your hands.”

      I do as he instructed, a little shaken on the thought of fire growing between my hands, but remembering that I couldn’t see it. And thus, the illusion that it would harm me doesn’t exist. As I release each breath I imagine a small flame growing in my mind, it starts shaky and dies out at first but I try again.

    This time, it ignites and forms into a small flaming bud. And with each breath, the bud slowly grows, almost as if one is blowing into a balloon, and as it grows in my mind my biceps burn along with my palms. The burn isn’t painful, but it feels just like it would when you put your hands close to the fire. The heat steams into my skin and makes it warm, and that warmth travels through every part of my body like the blood flowing in my veins, and it all flows back through the right atrium into my beating heart.

      And when it does something within me clicks, like a lock. My eyes fly open on their own accord as the burn on my bicep and palms grows with heat, my vision is encased in flames of red, and a wave of power flows through every part of my skin and causes a shiver to run up my spine.

      In nothing less than a second the feeling immediately goes away and I let out a breath I didn’t even know I held, my body is tensed, heart racing and breathing coming out in pants.

      Looking down at my hands, I can’t help it when my eyes widen at the sight of the triquetra knot symbols imprinted in the centre of my palms. I raise both hands to see if they moved from my biceps but they haven’t, they are exactly where they were before, only now it seems I have four tattoos imprinted on my skin.

     Raising my eyes to regard Steven in shock, I ask in bafflement. “What the hell just happened?"