Falcon Feathers

Falcon Feathers (Chapter 5)

"The way you see people stretch in the morning, is how you want to stretch. Stretch your wings outwards to the sky." I did as I was instructed and was ready to go.

"Begin!" Ace shot up into the sky. I followed after him. For twenty minutes we flew at that quick pace. When we finally got to the mountain I was tired, sweaty, and never felt better. Ace sat on a ledge while I struggled trying to find a place to land on the cliff face.

"Grab onto the side of the mountain use your talons." Following his instructions I soon found a perch over looking a valley.

"How is it that I have talons but you still have regular feet?"

"Every person's transformation is different. But generally speaking for bird type masters there are three sets. All of us get wings but the thing that switches depending on the animal and person are the talons and beak." I shuddered at the thought of having a beak.

"Are you ready?" without waiting for me to respond he jumped into the air and went back towards camp at full speed. In an instant I was trailing him. For miles he kept up his insane sprint and when I finally got into the rhythm of this he started to speed up. (I thought he reached his top speed already) I as I strained to stay near Ace he started glowing. The air seemed to be charged beyond its capacity and then in a cloak of lightning Ace was traveling twice as fast as before. (you must be kidding me). As I looked on in disbelief an idea occurred to me. Peregrine falcons are the fastest animals in the world because of their diving speeds. I thought about this as I sped to where Ace was hovering.

"Didn't see that coming did ya?"

"Nope."

"Now we are at the sprint portion of the run we are around five miles away from camp. I'm going to fly back and when you see a lightening bolt in the sky that is your signal to go."

"Sounds easy enough" I said between staggered breaths.

"Oh and by the way if you don't get to camp within the time limit you get zapped." He said with a smile. I just gaped at him as he bolted off. In the short time it took him to get to camp I had decided to go with my plan of diving. As soon as I saw the lightening bolt in the sky I flew as fast as I could angling upward laboring to gain altitude. As I finally reached my decided leveling out point the sky had clouded over and the air began to tingle and buzz. (I sure hope this works. I've only got one shot at this.) I could see the camp in my sights and began to plummet out of the sky. I angled myself to be in perfect alignment with the camp. I drew closer to camp but just behind me I could hear the lightning bolts hitting the ground. I focused and continued to gain speed. Soon the bolts no longer fell randomly but in a straight line headed towards me from behind. I was less than 50 feet away when another line came at me from in front. In a move of instinct I barrel rolled out of the way and swooped down with my talons outstretched to absorb the impact.

"Nice job. You cut it close but you made it in time. I'm impressed. I honestly tried to hit you but you avoided at the last minute."

"You could have killed me" I replied out of breath.

"Could have. Tried to. But I didn't." I sent my death glare at him but to no effect. SO MUCH FOR ONLY SPRINTING 1 MILE. (don't remind me)

After the craziness of before, the magic lesson was tame and relaxing. It was about giving and taking energy from other beings. It felt so much better to give. Towards the end of the lesson Ace took me over to the place where the trees had been scorched from yesterday's demonstration.

"You must remember this. Although being a spirit master comes with a lot of power your biggest responsibility is to keep balance in the world." He bent over the remains of the tree that hadn't been disintegrated and said, "kanvwodi". As he said this the tree began to mend its broken branches and stand upright. It continued its recovery while the stream of energy became visible as he stepped back. The blackened trunk once again had its brown color and the leaves had grown back. By all accounts the only trace of yesterday's incident was the ash that covered the ground where there once stood its fellow trees.

"Can you fix the other three?" Ace shook his head.

"I'm not god. The dead cannot come back." His face darkened a bit. "Though their life force is gone they can still live on." He placed three seeds throughout the ash and covered them. As he turned to walk away I decided to add some of my own energy to all three of the trees.

"I hope you grow to be strong one day." I trotted back to the camp feeling better. THAT WAS GOOD OF YOU TO DO THAT. EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN NATURE HAS GOOD AND BAD CONCEQUENCES AND I'M PROUD THAT YOU DECIDED TO DO SOMETHING SELFLESS. AND WHO KNOWS SOME DAY THE KINDNESS MAY BE REPAYED (you sound like a fortune cookie but thanks. Now hurry up Una is waiting.)

For the next hour I read my summer reading. Darika was right about my liking the books. By the time my hour, which had become two due to Una and Gagan being late, was over I was already half way into the book. In their absence Ace set up the targets for me to hit. So when they did finally get back to camp no time was wasted in my training.

"This training should be fun and easy. I figured your weapon of choice for fighting was a bow. I hear you are quite the sharp shooter." (oh stop...) SUCH A BIG EGOOOO. ( ok Beyonce) "For this training you are going to have to focus. To hit all twelve targets you are gonna need some crazy Legolas focus and aim."

"What is it with you and movie references? Besides I only see five targets."

"Oh that's right once you hit the first five on the bull's eye you can move on to the others some of them move and others like the one to your right are just hard to hit because they are in the woods."

"That certainly makes things interesting."

"If you run out of arrows you start over and have to sprint around the clearing once. Happy hunting." So for the better part of two hours I was hitting bull's eyes and using my newfound super eyesight to do exceptionally well. I only had to start over once when I got to the moving targets. Soon we had lunch and then a ten minute break before we got onto the element training.

Element training was the most difficult part of the day since Ace didn't quite tell me what to do he said I had to feel it. But I did succeed in making a breeze after careful meditation. (whoopdey freakin doo that's why we have a/c). But take everything in stride. Combat training was demanding but fun so I learned a lot. By the end of the day I was completely burnt out. The next day was much the same and the next and so on my life went for the next two and a half weeks.