SPRITES: Legacy of the Black Phoenix

Chapter 8 : Reflections

The boys climbed out of the water and grabbed their backpacks from the edge of the dock. Wasting no time, they quickly grabbed the sandwiches they had prepared and ate in silence.

Briggs finally broke the silence. "You know, it's crazy that we still haven't told anyone about our powers after all this time. Not even our parents know what we can do. Do you think we'll ever be able to let the world know who we are?"

Vidaj glanced toward Briggs who had been staring off into the distance in deep contemplation about his question. "It would be nice to let our family and friends know, but eventually others would figure it out somehow, and that's when things get messy."

Briggs broke his trance with a devilish smirk. "But we'd be so famous if we let people in on our secret. We could have our own reality show! The ratings would be through the roof!"

Vidaj leaned in towards him studying his smile. "There's no doubt that we'd get a lot of attention, but I don't think that's something you'd like. You're too much of a low-key guy."

Vidaj rubbed his chin in deep contemplation. "But let's talk through this. Let's say we tell the word and they treat us like some type of super powered celebrities. That's great and all, but then they start to get to know us. Not just you and me, but strong personalities like Ian and Felix. It's only a matter of time before we got caught up in something that causes a lot of trouble."

Briggs mirrored Vidaj's chin stroking. "Sounds like I'm not the only one who thinks about this stuff."

Flicking his hand toward the lake, a small vortex spread and knocked some of the water in the air. Frustrated, he burst out, "I thought I'd considered everything, but I was only looking at the positives. When you put it that way maybe we're better off hiding." The vortex had now formed into a small whirlpool that grew larger as he continued. "Why do we even try to keep our powers a secret? Does it even matter? I mean, what's the point? Someone's going to figure it out eventually. We can't rely on Lana forever."

Vidaj remained quiet, as he too was guilty of having toyed with the idea of telling his brother about his powers for a long time. Without even realizing it, he filled the vortex with a solid shadowy layer just above it. "We all know it hasn't been easy carrying around this kind of secret all these years, but at least we were lucky enough to be able to sense each other's powers. That makes it much easier to deal with hiding ourselves from the ones we care about."

Briggs lifted a layer of water from under the shadow and placed it on top. "I get that we have responsibilities when it comes to controlling our powers," he said, "but what's the point of having them if we're always worried about people finding out? We can't even test our true limits to see how far our powers can really take us."

Vidaj extended his shadowy layer to create a second shadow layer over Briggs's layer of water. "We've been pretty slow about developing our powers, and I agree we're just scratching the surface of what we can do, but we have to be patient. Jane told me recently that she thinks there'll be a day when we can truly show what we can do, and I believe her. But for now, we'll have to stick to small things like jumping off high cliffs. I mean, if you consider that cliff small..." Vidaj grinned.

"I don't know about you, but I thought that was pretty cool. By the way, this layer thing we're making is pretty awesome too. How high do you think we can stack it?" Vidaj continued.

Briggs formed another layer of the water to overlap the shadow Vidaj had just placed. "I don't know. Let's find out."

Vidaj followed with yet another layer. Before they knew it, the boys had stacked dozens of layers until Briggs smiled and said, "You know, the dark layers looked cool at first, but now we've done so many that I can't tell where the divisions are."