Living Under Ice

Under Ice 21

Living Under Ice – 21

A/N.  Thanks to all of you who have voted so far!  The book now has over 100 votes.  I stumbled onto Wattpad just looking at Apps for my android phone and started this soon afterwards.  I am not a seasoned veteran at how to get this seen by people or read or at getting votes.  If only my own family reads and enjoys it, I am fine with that, but it looks like others are just beginning to discover it.  In fact, some of my children have never read this on Watt Pad, but on my computer.  That means they get it first since I cannot always get it to: 1. Transfer to my phone 2. Upload to Watt Pad.  I recently got a new USB cord; however, so transferring to the phone is no longer a problem.  I am also learning better that time and place and how one holds the phone makes a difference in the upload.  In honor of all the votes, I am now more motivated to write this next chapter.  Hope you enjoy it and I hope you vote.  Please “follow” me if you know how and apparently, you will then know when a new Chapter is written.  A special thanks to those of you who have gotten started on Watt Pad just to read this book which at this point is probably most of the votes!  You know who you are.

“...no one even knew yet what the final changes would be to those who had touched it.(the mind stone)  They wouldn’t have to wait nearly as long to find out the answer to that question.  The next few days and weeks would answer that.”

Those who touched the stone would never be the same again.  If that sounds cliché, it is still true.  The adults were affected the least.  Perhaps it was because their brains were less plastic than the children’s brains.  Still, they found that their mental function improved.  They were more able to learn and retain new information.  They were also better at processing that information and making connections.  However, the adults did not become able to speak to each other telepathically.  The pregnant women, however, did find that they were connected in that way to the growing baby inside them.  It was surprising how much the unborn babies thought.  Perhaps that was a side effect of the mind stone too.

As time passed, the babies asked more and more questions.  They wanted to know more about life and what it was like outside their mothers.  Both of them also seemed to talk to each other a lot.  Occasionally, they spoke to the teens, but seemed more focused on their mothers and each other.  Needless to say, it was like no other known pregnancies.  Bonding was not something that happened at birth.  It began way before birth and would be stronger than a normal bond.

What would happen at birth was yet to be seen.  Everyone was holding their breath on that one. 

Among the teens, total exposure to the stone mattered the most.  Having that exposure occur over time also increased the effect.  Touching the stone twice in one session did not deliver as much change as touching it several weeks apart.  The original teenagers saw the most remarkable abilities.

After touching the mind stone for the last time, the original teens were much less limited in their teleportation of objects.  They found that they could even move themselves as long as they didn’t try to go too far.  The danger was that their calculations would be off, however.  That could have ended with them emerging inside of solid ice.  No one wanted to see what would happen if that took place, so they all decided to limit self-transportation to true emergencies.

Tablitha used her abilities in her artwork.  She no longer needed any tool other than her mind to make sculptures.  Her sculptures were flawless and beautiful, but they still took a long time to create.  She would start with a solid block of whatever she was carving and then remove a little at a time until it formed the shape she wanted.  The difference was in her ability to remove material from anywhere including the inside of the block where normal tools could never reach.  She could also introduce impurities in either the stone or the ice that she was using for her medium.  These impurities would change the color depending on which ones she used.  The stone for making sculptures came from the one island on the planet or, more rarely, from the other planet if she could talk Samurai, the original A.I., into transporting some of it for her.  There was an area on the planet that had white stone almost like marble.  Her supply of that was very limited and she had to share it with the other artists, including her own mother, however, so she saved it for her best inspirations.  Usually she just used the local stone.  She was afraid that the ice would be less durable.