~Enchantress~

~8~

A truth that she had to keep hidden for all this time.

She wiped the final tear away and sniffled, reaching for Dom's head. She holds onto the sides of her face, subtly wiping away the wetness in her hair. She holds their faces close together, "I love you. So much."

Dom was slightly alarmed but didn't question it, "I-I love you too?" She didn't mean for it to come out as a question, but Makani knew how she meant it.

"There's still so much for us to talk about and I-I don't even know how to begin... I know you still have questions that aren't for me."

She didn't really question her because she wanted to further question her parents. The ones who chose to keep her and her brother in the dark for all of those years, seemingly for reasons they haven't tried to explain.

To be fair, we haven't given them much of a chance to explain... I'm still mad.

"We have work to do. Eleu would probably kill me if we didn't do anything productive today," Makani stands up and wipes her linen pants of any remaining sand.

Dom follows suit and barely notices when Makani waves her hand and instantly there is a long, flowery vine almost as tall as Dom waving at her.

"Ah! What!" Dom is taken aback and quickly apologizes for yelling. "Sorry."

"What?!" She whisper-shouts, her finger aggressively pointing to the wiggling vine in front of her.

"What if someone sees?! Wouldn't that defeat the point of the whole oath thing that we did?" Dom uses her hands to try and shield the dancing vine and her head immediately turns in all different directions, paranoid that someone might see them.

Makani lets out a chuckle and instead waves her hands around to gently wrap the growing vines around Dom's arms, manipulating her to dance around with it.

She's been so tense lately, she ponders.

"Ooh my god! Eleu is definitely gonna kill you now! What are we doing?!" Dom tries to keep up but it seemed as though her two left feet were not in sync with Makani's lighthearted and dainty dancing.

"Lighten up!"

Her vines dragged Dom across the shore until they were reaching the water and she would've fallen in had another set of vines not caught her by the waist.

"Oop!" She yelps as it brings her back to their designated spot under the palms, sitting comfortably on the sand.

"First lesson: Balance."

Dom was still trying to get it together, "What?"

"Balance! So, part of using Earth is internal balance. You're just, so tense all the time. You couldn't possibly keep up with all the elements with that amount of internal build-up." Dom still had a confused look on her face as she looked at Makani from the ground.

Makani softly groans and pulls up Dom by the arm, "Okay, I took up tai chi. There's a bunch of types but most of them serve the same purpose. Hao Tai Chi. Best one for us earth mages."

Dom notices Makani deeply breathing in and slowly maneuvering into the first pose. "One of the books I left in your training quarters is all about Wu Hao Taichi Chuan. The resort doesn't offer the class 'cause it's not a common style, but Eleu gave me the book years ago and it's helped me at least."

Dom tries to follow along, failing to maintain her balance, falling onto the sand as Makani slowly moves to change pose again before sighing, "Maybe we should stretch first..."

~~~

"Hey! Kailani! M told me I'd find you... here?" He reaches the end of the beach and looks around, searching for the girl he had only spoken his name to.