Potent

Chapter 4

After having a 1 hour lecture on why I must treat teachers with respect and how my behaviour is inexcusable and if it continues I will be excluded, I seriously need to release my anger. I decide that I can’t handle being alone in my house waiting for Mum’s arrival, so instead I go somewhere where I can feel safe. Where, I know that I can be myself and use my powers without being afraid that someone may see me.

 Finally here, I close my eyes and open up my other senses to my surroundings. Smells of musky pine trees and damp earth smother me. A cool breeze makes my red, unruly curls flutter as I run my hand over the rough bark of an ancient tree beside me. I can hear the rustle of the leaves and the chirping of the birds in the treetops. Opening my eyes, I smile at the untainted nature before me. The Pine Forest. My personal safe haven.

Slowly as I relax, I let all my anger and frustration go, channelling the energy into my hand. Growing like a delicate flower, a fire ball the size of a golf ball blooms. My hand should be burning, but it’s not. I should feel pain, but I don’t. This should be impossible, but it isn’t. Staring at it in concentration, I will it to expand but it will grow not further than a tennis ball. Sighing, I exhale deeply on the ball of light and it spreads out around me, like Dragon’s breath. Smiling gleefully, I begin snapping my fingers here and there, creating sparks of fire. Feeling my warmth and power flowing free inside and out, I clench my fists letting all my anger flow into my hands and then in one sudden movement, two fire bolts shoot forth from my hands and strikes the tree in front of me. The fire begins to spread rapidly from one tree to the next. Although it thrills me to see the fire’s energy growing, it also terrifies me that I could easily reduce this natural paradise into a black bowl of death. Desperately, I try to put out the fire but all I do is fuel it.

 Terrified at the thought of being a murderer of innocent life, I ran through the fire as fast as I can. Then my foot snags on a tree root -bringing me down to the ground with a ‘THUD’. My head is spinning, I try to get up but my foot is caught. Screaming, I watch as the murderous, merciless flames begin to engulf the woods around me, creeping ever closer. I yell out and feel someone cut away the snare and drag me to my feet. I try to see the face of my saviour but my vision is clouded with smoke. Together we run through the forest away from the fire. He suddenly grounds to a halt as before us stands an angry wall of approaching flames, looking around we are surrounded; trapped. What he did next is extradinary. From his pale hand shoots forth a jet of crystal clear water that immediately defuses the fire ahead.

 As we emerge from the blazing forest he lets go of me and then raises his hands to the sky, causing a sudden downpour of rain which extinguishes the forest fire. Squinting though the rain which soaks my skin, I see a young man with pale skin, blond hair and cold blue eyes-all familiar to me except from the easy smile that plays on his lips.

“Dylan?” I say, breaking the silence, my voice shaking with the cold.

He turns to me with an unreadable expression on his face. “There’s more to this world than you think. You’re not alone.” He utters mysteriously and then he is gone in the blink of an eye. Vanished- with his words still ringing in my ears and new questions circling my mind.