Fated by Water

Water's Gift

Huffing and puffing, running in a daze, thrashing through bushes and trees that keeps scratching at her body, Lily kept running through the woods as fast as her long legs could take her.
She was trying to get as far away from the river as possible, the river that seemed to be alive.
She can still hear the sound of water rushing towards her, she knows it won't stop, she knows its chasing her, she knows because she could still feel the tightening in her gut which she doesn't know how to loosen.
The river came alive when she dipped her hands in it to wash them after a long day of picking shrubs, herbs and berries and then when she wanted to pull out her hands to dry them, the river swelled in motion following her hand movements.
She got so scared thinking that the water wanted to overwhelm her and drown her, so she scrambled away and started running but then it followed, the water followed her no matter how hard or how fast she ran.
'I don't want to die, heck I'm only fourteen' she thought to herself frantic with the urge to escape.
'I have to get to the village' she thought again to herself when she suspected that it might be an elemental that was actually doing it but then she quickly reconsidered as she figured out that she'd only be putting the villagers themselves at risk.
'I can't, there are people there what if it decides to follow and drowns everyone' she said to herself in her thoughts yet again.
She veered off the path that led to the village and ran all the more till a voice at the back of her mind spoke to her.
The same voice that always warned her not to pass an alleyway only for her to later hear that someone was hurt or killed in that same alley, the same voice that helps her to pick the right fruits and the nonpoisonous plants, the voice that tells her if a hole in the ground has a snake or an equally dangerous animal in it.
'That voice has never been wrong' she thought to herself, and that voice had told her that she was in no danger from the water, 'the water is a friend' it seemed to say.
So with resolve she stopped and turned around to face the oncoming surge of water and sure enough there it was moving towards her at a steady pace.
She raised up her hands, palm facing front as if she wanted to push it back, and as it came closer she closed her eyes and let out a scream as she felt a stronger tug in her gut.
She kept expecting the water to crash down on her and drown her but nothing happened, then she opened her eyes and was marvelled at what she saw, the water had formed the exact shape of her hands, only bigger, as tall as she was and it was stopping right in front of her.
She moved her hands this way and that and sure enough the water moved the same way, her eyes opened wide when the realization dawned on her, as she also remembered that she recently seemed to always have one problem or the other with water;
it either forms weird shapes as she discovered one evening when she was cooking and it seemed that the water in the pot was actually a perfect sphere shape or it freezes as she noticed one early morning when the water in her face washing bowl was frozen but it was the middle of the spring season, there was that time too that their whole house erupted in little bursts of water everywhere, she had had just sneezed that very day, but then those occurences were too random to give her any clarity, unil now.
Now it's clear as crystal to her, right now with the way the water was responding to her, it dawned on her that she was a water elemental right before she passed out.
**
A whole week passed before Lily could bring herself to try anything else with water, her newly found affinity could as well be dangerous as it was useful.
Then again, confirming it the more would only mean that her life was about to head in a fixed direction, that is any of the elemental academy, where she will have to train and then pick any of the three profession, that is if it's not chosen for her based on her abilities.
Sure enough though, water control came very easy to her once she had accepted that this was who she is now.
She started gradually to use water for different means, starting from meager measures and chores like watering her mother's flower pots, to stirring the broth in her bowl, then stirring the pot, to moving water from the well or stream into her bucket or bowl, while also making the bucket or bowl lighter to carry.
Till she could actually create waves in the river, disrupt the flow of the river by stopping it sometimes till it builds up so huge and then she gently lets it flow again knowing fully well that releasing the whole thing at once could cause trouble, say a flashflood or something.
Lily always ensures that nobody saw her while she was using water control, it helped that she didn't need so much hand movements to make the water listen to her.
It also helped that because of the fact that she could detect wherever there was water, she could also detect if there was anyone close to her or around the area, humans are mostly made of water after all.
One other weird thing was that she could tell when there was something wrong with someone, maybe they were sick or injured, either a person or an animal, she would know because the water in their body system or in the part of their body that was affected would feel wrong, sometimes step knows what to do to help, sometimes she doesn't, sometimes it takes a subtle water control to help, sometimes it requires other things like herbs and other items.
It only took her a few months to start to master water control so much that she could even use it precisely and concisely in the presence of other without them knowing.
She later got to be able to transform water into it's different forms too, first was ice, which she found really useful, next was steam which was actually really messy and more difficult for her to control.
Eventually she got to master almost all the basic gifts of water control without needing a mentor or teacher.
"Maybe I wouldn't need to even go to an elemental academy after all, maybe I wouldn't need to leave my family, maybe I'll be able to keep this a secret for as long as possible" she said to herself one starry night as she laid close to the river bank while a few ice shards were flowing around her hand.
She didn't know how wrong she was though, she didn't know what fate had in store for her.

Ohk.... Hiya folks, this ain't the first chapter, just the first piece before the first chapter - what is that called again? - well hope you enjoyed it, there's many more to come, so comment, vote, and lets keep em coming... Peace out.... K