Both of us at the same time jump for joy, sincerely happy. The biggest smile on both of our faces.
"We did it!"
Apatite says as we both look our my arms.
They look slightly shimmery. Not even a color.
"Yes! I can't believe it!"
I hold my hand out for a high five.
She returns it.
"How did you even think that my sweat would correlate to me and my Soul Energy? I never even thought of that."
Apatite shrugs her shoulders.
"I have no clue? But it just seemed like the way it should go, because how else would you have learned about it."
My voice gets high and squeaky with happiness.
"I don't know?!"
A voice crack happens when I say know, but I don't care about it.
"The feeling in my hands feel cold."
Apatite nods.
"Yeah, that how you know it's working good!"
She grabs my wrist, the feeling around her hand is different. It feels like she's touching me, but not touching at the same time, giving this feeling of numbness where she touching which makes me feel very weirdly uncomfortable.
"What's happening?"
"I want you to try and hit a tree."
I shake my head and wrench my wrist free from her.
"Why would I ever do that?"
I say with small amounts of stupidity leaving my voice to tell her that.
"No, don't worry you wound get hurt."
I shrug my shoulders and slightly tilt my head.
"I don't really believe you…"
"Trust me. You'll be fine."
She says, as she gets closer to the tree with me in tow.
"I'm not going to punch full force, then have a bleeding hand now am I?"
I ask, my right eye, giving her the stink eye.
She shake her head.
"You don't have to worry about that, because many people have already done this type of test already, plus, there's also something that has to be checked to clearly understand how good your Soul Energy is wrapped around your hand."
"And what is that test?"
We are now in front of a tree, and it'd be an understatement to say, that it's just taller than us, because it is towering over us, with it's adolescent, but not smaller friendly trees, standing beside itself.
"You punch the tree."
She says that like it's an everyday thing to do to many trees around these parts.
"That's not a good test."
She gives me an, *Are you serious?*
"Okay, would you do it if I did it?"
She says, her tone sounding, a little like she's down with it, but still hopefull, for further progress on me.
I nod:
"Yeah, but if you get hurt, don't get pissy at me."
She looks at me weird.
"What does pissy mean?"
I shake my head.
"Nothing."
She turns without a word, and takes a few breaths as she stares at the tree in front of her. She then closes her eyes, closes her hand, and a shimmery light, the same as my hands now.
'She's going to hurt herself.'
She pulls back her fists and with one last breathe, she throws a very awkward punch toward the tree, as both of her feet, were planted very weirdly into the ground, along with the fact she threw the punch with only her arms and nothing else.
When she threw her hand into the tree, instead of her hurting herself instead, the tree bent into the face of her fist, small but indented into the tree, with the bark breaking out in splinters facing towards us, and some even flying off.
She sighs with thankfulness and pulls her fist out of the indent, with a good pull.
She turns around to look at my awe struck face.
"See if I can do it, with little to no effort, then you'll do just fine."
Apatite says, her joy has jumped tenfold, compared to when she had just seen me wrap Soul Energy around my fist.
She moves away from the tree and points to it.
"As your new found, Soul Energy teacher... you have to so at least that as a bare minimum to pass MY test."
She says, *MY*, with emphasis.
I nod.
"Okay, I can do that... Yeah, I can."
I say that to tell her I can, but to mostly encourage myself to do what she had just did.
I stand in front of her, putting my good foot back as a foothold for me and my lead foot, just in front of the tree.
My Soul Energy, feels like it's beading sweat off of my body, at the same time as cooling and numbing my arms weakly from under my fist.
'One punch, that's all I need.'
I pull my fist just below my jawline and I feel my knuckles crack under the faint shimmering, but the sound fading out slightly.
I feel my mind wondering straight to the my fist and I throw my punch as hard as I can with little effort, and zero pain, my fist slams into the tree, HARD. The tree's bark that once held the shape of Apatite's smaller fists is now made into a small crater in the tree's side.
With pieces of wood chips flying everywhere and many of the leaves from the top of the tree falling in a slow, beautiful fashion.
I turn to look at Apatite, with my fist still inside of the small crater I have created inside of the tree.
"Did I pass?"
Apatite looks at me with a smile on her face, and awe somewhat in there as well:
"Yeah, you do..."
Without a beat she continues:
"Now for our next..."
But she doesn't finish before a clicking sound is heard from inside the treeline.
And a very familiar voice is heard as well.
"Lazuli!"
Steel and from the sound of it, Prag is looking for, both me and Apatite.
We look at each other and Apatite says:
"Guess we'll continue, tomorrow the same, time, and when the sun is at it's peak once more."
I nod.
"Okay."
After Apatite says that Prag, jumps down from what appears to be a tree branch far above us and land right beside Apatite.
"Your mother has finish with lunch."
Steel ends up behind me as well, some of his hair having leaves and branches in them.
"Yeah, and we have to head home, your sister has been scared for you very much recently."
I nod as Sply breaks through the darkness of the trees as well and not without something in her hands, my bow.
Same brown color, some tight string and upside down U sigil.
Prag and Apatite begins to walk into the tree's darkness as both, Sply gets closer to me and hands me my bow.
I grab it in my hand and run my thumb up and down, as if it has, been attached to me for too long even though, I've only had it for a few days.
I look behind Sply to look behind her and toward Apatite.
My vision blocking out Sply because of the eye patch and seeing Apatite looking behind her own father to look at me.
"Bye Lazuli!"
She waves to me her hand raised high as I could see before she disappeared into the endless darkness and a clicking sound.
"See you tomorrow Apatite!"
I wave to her from where I'm standing and Sply then hops into my vision to make me look at her.
"How are you, child?"
I look up at her face as she asks that.
"I'm fine…"
"Good."
She pauses as Steel looks at her as well.
"Tomorrow morning, when the sun sends its first ray of red from over the horizon is when we'll begin our training."
She says as she looks down to me, speaking in her same monotone voice.
Steel gives her an irritating look and begins to suck in air through his teeth, but before he says anything Sply speaks to me.
"I'll be sure to be easier on you next time."
She says, with a slight hint of disapproval entering her voice, not for me but… herself?
I nod.
"Thank you for being considerate of me."
She nods and Steel lets out the sigh he's been holding in.
"For now I guess we'll just head home. Marcilene probably waited long enough for her adorable younger brother."
He says as he ruffles my black hair, making it as messy as he can.
He laughs then goes and moves his hand over my arm, the numb feeling, along with the shimmering still there.
He feels its numbing feeling.
"Lazi, did she… teach you how to wrap your Soul Energy around your arms?"
He says with surprise, and Sply gives me a look of surprise, destroying her normal facade of neutral energy.
I nod as I feel the numbness leave my arm and replaced with the feelings of feeling by Steel arm.
"Steel, she made me understand how to use Soul Energy… we were so happy when I did it, because we sat here for so long trying to figure out how to do it, now…"
I hold up my other arm and the shimmering is gone.
My face grows slightly disappointed.
"Well, I guess i still need some lesson on how to do it alone."
Steel nods, letting out a small chuckle as well.
"Yeah, I guess that's true."
As he takes my hand in his we continue to walk through the forest to exit in the village.