Heritage of New Heaven

Chapter 21

Robert

I hear the door open on the pool shed again and turn around. Rose is standing there pulling at the neck of the sea blue togs she has on to try and cover the top of her mark. She looks beautiful.

She has left her hair down and the sun is making it a golden-brown colour. I suddenly want to run my hands through it. She sees me watching her and smiles, before coming to the waters edge and stepping in.

'why are you looking at me?' she asks adorably,

I think for a second, 'you look beautiful in blue, it matches the sea'

She blushes, 'oh, ok' and dives in. No-one can dive in that perfectly, but she just did.

Come on Robert, you gotta snap out of it. She needs you to help her understand what she can do.

I'm vaguely aware that Rose has surfaced at the other end of the pool way faster than anyone should be able to swim.

I call out to her 'I can't be bothered swimming, a little help?' she tilts her head and puts a finger to her lips in mock thinking

'ahhh, no. You pushed me in you will suffer the consequence of swimming over here yourself' she smiles sweetly

I sigh inwardly, I know I can swim over there with a good time anyway, so I make my way across the pool. However, I'm halfway across when the water starts pushing against me. I look up in time to see Rose quickly look out over the forest trying not to smile, the water lets up. I start swimming again and suddenly there is a current against me again. I stop and look up, Rose is puffing out her cheeks trying to keep the laughter in. Then when she can't hold it any more, she bursts,

'oh my God!' she laughs barely keeping her head above the water 'you actually thought I was gonna let you come over here? And your face was priceless!' she is laughing so hard I have a chance to swim over and grab her. She screams in delight and tries to wriggle out of my grip, still laughing, but I'm not letting go. I wriggle my fingers into her sides and she laughs so hard I have to keep her held above the water. She pulls my hand off her side and I find another place to tickle.

'stop, mercy, mercy Robert' she says laughing. I can barely control my own. She pushes me away with the strength of the water around us and finally I let go. We are both laughing.

Rose makes a tiny whirlpool with her finger in the water absentmindedly, it reminds me what we came here for.

'so,' I ask, 'do you wanna see what you can do?'

Her eyes light up in a way only hers can 'yes, yes, yes!' she squeals 'what do I do first?'

'hold on there sparky, you need to set your boundaries, you need to work out how far your gonna push yourself. Its dangerous to go too far, you can tire yourself out and faint, and well we don't want that in here.' I gesture around myself at the pool. She still looks eager so I continue 'so, the first thing you want to do is see how well you can control your ability.' I cringe inwardly, remembering when I tried.

Rose smirks 'I can breathe underwater Robert, oh don't look so surprised' 

She giggles and looks at the blue of the sky between the stone arches and then sends a spiraling jet of water into the air. Then she twists her hands around each other and makes the water curl around the top of the arch without touching it, the sight is magical. On the fourth ring around the stone arch she lets the water fall back into the pool and onto my head. Its feels like someone dropping a block of concrete falling on me. I glare at her through the waterfall still going down my head because she is still letting the water go up. She stops after a moment and brings it up off my head and I watch as it reverses the path it just took, finally becoming little more than a ripple on the water.

'holy starfishes, ha ha ha see what I did there. . . starfish- water – you. . .' I say trailing off as I see her raised eyebrow at my shitty comment.

'How about you stick with; AWESOME AS FU-'

The intercom crackles with the default cool female voice 'Robert, Robert, please come, alone, to lab 3 immediately. Robert come, alone, to lab 3 immediately' and then shuts off.

I glance at Rose, who glances right back and answers with a shrug of her shoulders.

'I guess I should go see what they want' I know without having ask anyone that it is Victax and/or Kate. No-one else but me can get the intercom to work. 'you stay here, Rose, don't do anything' I put another meaning behind the word,

 Don't use your powers.