I open the door to see Apatite sitting near the window sill.
"Oh, it's you."
She has her feet dangling over both ends, swinging them freely, her face slightly red when she sees me.
"Yeah, I was just wondering if there was a way I could convince you to help me with control over my Soul Energy?"
Apatite looks out the window again and then back to me.
"I'm not sure… if I'm good enough for that."
I shake my head.
"No, I believe in you."
She squints her eyes at me.
"And how do you even believe in me when you do know if I can actually complete a spell without messing that up..?"
She asks.
"Well…"
I pause.
"Your mom gave me this whole talk about how you were being taught about how to use magic then to protect yourself she said you were good enough to use spells."
Apatite laughed, a small short laugh. More of a breath of laughing air really.
"She would say something like that, to be fair I can use better than above average spells, but compared to my mom's best spells, I can't even hope to compare."
I shake my head.
"But I'm not asking for the best, I'm asking for you..?"
When I say that, she goes red slightly.
'Did I say something bad…?'
She then looks at me with an aggressive look.
'…Yeah… Yeah, I did.'
She hops off the window sill and walks over to me.
"Okay then, you want me? I'll teach you then."
As she gets close she stick out her forefinger and plants it into my chest with every word of her last sentence.
"But I don't plan to be easy."
She holds her finger there for a second, her face still slightly red, as it begins to reach her ears she pulls her finger away from my chest, with what seems to be embarrassment.
'I'm not that bad to touch, she over exaggerating it.'
I think to myself in a pained confusion.
"I never planned for an easy experience, I planned to learn as much as I could."
I say with my head held as high as I can hold it.
I grip my hands, as if my bow is in it.
"And, if I don't have the ability to get through with training from an eight year old girl, I'll never be able to protect my sister."
She tilts her head and lets out a sighed laughter.
"Marcilene is your sister."
She said it as a statement.
"Yes."
She looks at me again and with a calmer tone:
"Okay, then we'll learn now."
She says with a smile.
'She's happy, now..?'
I mentally scratch my head and shake my head.
'She's chronically insane isn't she...?'
She grabs my forearm and runs out the door, I put one foot in front of the other as I follow after her, trying not to fall.
We exit the room door, running past both Sply and Yelena.
Sply, sees us running off in the direction of the door and doesn't say anything.
Apatite opens the door and with me still in tow right behind her she continues out the door.
She doesn't turn back to see that her mother could see her run out of the corner of her eye and smiled as she did so, I did though, I saw that weird tiny smirk.
The door closed behind me with a thud.
Once outside, the small house was surrounded by trees. Making it become a house hidden in trees.
I turn to my left, to see a shed that was smaller than the house.
Outside the shed on to the side of it, was Steel and Prag, both of them standing around the same Soul Bear I had killed and cleaning it the scene, was not pleasant. I immediately turned my head away from the scene not wanting it to be imbedded into me anymore than needed.
Steel turns from the Bear after hearing footsteps from behind him.
"Lazuli? Where are you going?"
I shrug my shoulders as I still unwillingly get pulled after a girl, the same height as me.
Prag, then calls for his daughter:
"Apa!? Where are you going?"
She doesn't turn as she gets closer to the treeline, that hides their house.
"Lazuli and I are going to train!"
Prag, with bloodied hands, from Soul Bear guts, yells out.
"What?! Right after what happened, last night?!"
Apatite sighs, and then makes a clicking sound.
"We'll be safe, Bye dad!"
After that she takes me into the tree line, hiding deep into the trees and making the darkness consume us.
Apatite continues to make clicking sounds as she guides us through the forest.
making us run past trees, making me nearly hit one, on more than some occasions.
Then after a while, of non-stop running, which has been way to exhausting for me. I have sweat running down my face, in small pellets.
'Wow, when Steel said that the Sun's heat can get trapped in here he was right.'
We get to a clearing, or better yet, the clearing.
The same one from last night, the one where I killed the Soul Bear, the one where I first saw both Prag and Apatite.
"Why are we here?"
I ask her, my voice very much questioning.
"I thought it would be obvious..."
She pause, then turns to me.
"...this is the place you'll be trained at by me."
She smiles at me as she says that.
"But how are you going to teach me anything...?"
She looks me up and down as if I just asked her something outrageous.
"By telling you what to do... or is that not how you learn things?"
I chuckle.
"No, I mean. How will you teach me without my bow."
She nods at me.
"I see what your getting at, but I don't know how to use a bow."
She says.
"I know how to use Soul Energy, Which means..."
She doesn't finish her sentence with words instead with Soul Magic.
Her feet slightly lift off the ground as she begins to chant things in a language, that matches that of what her mother was saying but, this time it's prolonged, by Apatite's continue speaking.
It puts me in awe of her, letting me see her ability, first hand. Knowing that she, just maybe she may be my best and greatest choice for a mentor, even if she's younger than me... Mentally I mean.
A small feeling is felt from my eye. Not the one, that can see her, but the one that the eye patch is laid over.
I feel it, but this time the feeling, it's not a sting as it was before, when Steel released his Soul Energy, but instead a soft, calming, maybe even a lovely feeling.
It makes me lift my eye patch and catch sight of the most beautiful demonstration of aura I've seen to date.
It's her aura, spreading from under her feet, blasting her up with her speech, the color that surrounds her swirls around her and makes her continue to lift up, slightly lower, then pick right back up.
She sees my amazed look and smiles at me, as if she had just been seen as the best person in the world.
She then drops back to the ground and looks me in the eyes.
The aura then slowly returns to it's passive small release.
I put my eyepatch back on.
"I'll now begin to teach you how to handle the Soul Energy you release."
She says with the whitest smile she can muster.