Song: Africa, by: Weezer
~~~
Friday
"Makani... can I ask you something?"
"Yeah. Yeah, of course you can," she turns to Dom, giving her full attention.
"So... I know we already kinda talked about it on the plane. But, so what had happened to your mom... was really just a disappearance?"
Makani's face drops a little and she promptly turns her head out towards the sea. Her dark sunglasses were blocking her teary eyes and she tried her hardest to not get emotional as she always has every time she talks about her mother; Even though she could already feel her lip slightly trembling.
"She was doing research... I mean, this clan was her entire life and she was trying to find a way to prevent you having to get involved. Y'know, before he inevitably came back."
Dom's mouth in a straight line, she continued to uncomfortably listen, suddenly feeling guilty. Guilty because she knew Makani's mother and she knew that she was the kind of selfless person who would risk her life for any of the kids that surrounded her and her family, especially Dom or Tomas.
"I'm sorry, I-I didn't mean to-"
"Don't apologize," she blurts out, louder than she intended.
Dom remained silent. Not because of the small outburst from Makani, but because she had no comforting words for her. Her mother dedicated her life to saving hers, and her daughter's. A life for a life. A life for multiple lives.
"Don't apologize," she repeats.
In barely a whisper, she starts, "I don't want you to feel... I don't want you to feel like anything is your fault. How could you have known?" She looks at Dom, tears falling off her chin.
"You guys told me to stop feeling like it's my fault everything now is happening, and I want you to not feel like my mom disappearing is on you. Her being gone...helped me, in a way?"
Dom's face contorts in confusion and she scoots closer to Makani. She pulls her legs close to her body, hugging them as she looks intently at her friend. "What do you mean? Your mom disappearing destroyed you."
"Well, it did. But... if she had never left, I wouldn't have gotten so close to you guys, I wouldn't have dedicated so much time to my magic, and... I don't know... There's just a lot of good that came from the bad, and I think it'd be crazy stupid to ignore that."
Dom remains silent and simply leans onto Makani, laying her head onto her shoulder. Slivers of the sun peeked through the leaves from the palm tree above them, shining down on their feet. The sand tickled the grooves between Dom's toes as she wiggled them further into the grains. .
They both took a moment to smell the ocean breeze that was wafting in the air and to enjoy each other's company. Makani couldn't help but continue to let the silent tears drip down her face and onto Dom's hair. She hadn't felt like this in a long time, the aching feeling of the unknown had always been her largest emotional hurdle.
One that years of therapy or surrounding herself with supportive people simply couldn't shake. As the time went on, the hurdle kept getting higher and higher and Makani felt as though she were losing the momentum to jump that high.
The anxiety of her best friend and boyfriend being left behind in the shadows always ailed her, especially as they got older and were growing further and further away from ever knowing the truth.
A truth that she had to keep hidden for all this time.
She wiped the final tear away and sniffled, reaching for Dom's head. She holds onto the sides of her face, subtly wiping away the wetness in her hair. She holds their faces close together, "I love you. So much."
Dom was slightly alarmed but didn't question it, "I-I love you too?" She didn't mean for it to come out as a question, but Makani knew how she meant it.
"There's still so much for us to talk about and I-I don't even know how to begin... I know you still have questions that aren't for me."
She didn't really question her because she wanted to further question her parents. The ones who chose to keep her and her brother in the dark for all of those years, seemingly for reasons they haven't tried to explain.
To be fair, we haven't given them much of a chance to explain... I'm still mad.
"We have work to do. Eleu would probably kill me if we didn't do anything productive today," Makani stands up and wipes her linen pants of any remaining sand.
Dom follows suit and barely notices when Makani waves her hand and instantly there is a long, flowery vine almost as tall as Dom waving at her.
"Ah! What!" Dom is taken aback and quickly apologizes for yelling. "Sorry."
"What?!" She whisper-shouts, her finger aggressively pointing to the wiggling vine in front of her.
"What if someone sees?! Wouldn't that defeat the point of the whole oath thing that we did?" Dom uses her hands to try and shield the dancing vine and her head immediately turns in all different directions, paranoid that someone might see them.
Makani lets out a chuckle and instead waves her hands around to gently wrap the growing vines around Dom's arms, manipulating her to dance around with it.
She's been so tense lately, she ponders.
"Ooh my god! Eleu is definitely gonna kill you now! What are we doing?!" Dom tries to keep up but it seemed as though her two left feet were not in sync with Makani's lighthearted and dainty dancing.
"Lighten up!"
Her vines dragged Dom across the shore until they were reaching the water and she would've fallen in had another set of vines not caught her by the waist.
"Oop!" She yelps as it brings her back to their designated spot under the palms, sitting comfortably on the sand.
"First lesson: Balance."
Dom was still trying to get it together, "What?"
"Balance! So, part of using Earth is internal balance. You're just, so tense all the time. You couldn't possibly keep up with all the elements with that amount of internal build-up." Dom still had a confused look on her face as she looked at Makani from the ground.
Makani softly groans and pulls up Dom by the arm, "Okay, I took up tai chi. There's a bunch of types but most of them serve the same purpose. Hao Tai Chi. Best one for us earth mages."
Dom notices Makani deeply breathing in and slowly maneuvering into the first pose. "One of the books I left in your training quarters is all about Wu Hao Taichi Chuan. The resort doesn't offer the class 'cause it's not a common style, but Eleu gave me the book years ago and it's helped me at least."
Dom tries to follow along, failing to maintain her balance, falling onto the sand as Makani slowly moves to change pose again before sighing, "Maybe we should stretch first..."
~~~
"Hey! Kailani! M told me I'd find you... here?" He reaches the end of the beach and looks around, searching for the girl he had only spoken his name to.
Tomas peeks his head around until he sees a girl deep within a dark cave. The cave had a low, 6 foot opening that grew as he walked further into it. His sneakers crunched on the black rocks that penetrated the sand around him as he approached her, the light from outside only reaching so far into the cave.
She appears to be meditating on the rocky ground and opens her eyes when Tomas talks to her.
"Kailani, what are we doing in... a cave?"
She rolls onto her back and flips onto a nearby boulder, and while crouching, she holds her hand up, a flame swirling around her slim fingers. "Do you know what fuels fire?"
He shakes his head.
"Fire is fueled by the sun. It's harder to manifest and control in a place like a dark, wet cave." Her free hand reaches down to the boulder and she proceeds to stand herself up with one hand, her body completely straight and balanced as her other arm becomes completely engulfed in flames.
"Tomas, come here," she calls him.
When he approaches, her right leg lights up in flames as it swings down and misses his face by a mere inch, a sliver of his hair becoming singed as she flips down, the rest of her now standing in front of him.
"What the hell was that for?! You almost lit me up!"
"Part of being a fire mage is being fast. You have to be strong, you have to be fast, and you have to mean it."
Tomas reaches up to touch the end of a wavy strand of hair that smelled like smoke. "I'm a fire mage?"
"That's one of the main reasons Eleu paired you up with me instead of Makani, she's an earth mage. And I'm younger than all of those old cows, but that doesn't really matter."
"Well, how'd you know that and I didn't?"
Kailani stands in front of Tomas and squints her eyes at him, trying to get some kind of read on him. His head instinctively inches away, feeling very confused by this entire interaction, "Mages can usually tell other mages' elements by their aura. I can see it in your eyes. Y'know how people say 'there's a fire in your eyes' and they use it to describe a passion or drive?"
Tomas stays silent.
"Well, there's a passion and drive in your eyes. I don't know what for, but you're a chosen fire mage. I can see it."
"Will I ever be able to tell other people's elements? What about Dom's? What does her aura say? She's all the elements, so is it like... a big mess of auras? That would make sense. For her aura to be a huge mess." Tomas rambles to Kailani.
She didn't seem to be unapproachable, but she did seem to mean serious business. She almost burned his hair off in the first five minutes, for Christ sake.
"Today, you'll learn how to light your flames on," a flame appearing out of her palm, 'and off," the same flame now put out. "In this dark and wet cave. With no source."
She is definitely badass.
He laughs a little and turns around, taking in his surroundings again. They were in a dark, claustrophobic cave that felt like it could go on forever. There was a light breeze in the direction of the darkness but not even Makani could convince him to go down there.
There were large holes leading into other paths of the cave, making the place seem more scary than he initially thought.
"Okay, and how do I do that?"
She shrugged her shoulders and walked away to sit back down in her initial spot, taking a long, deep breath and continuing her meditation.
"What the fuck?.." He whispers to himself.
"I'm going to look stupid just standing here trying to piss fire... You could help me, y'know! Just something to think about!"
She keeps her eyes closed and shouts back, "I know!"
He groans and leans against one of the humid walls of the cave, frustrated with Kailani's nonchalance.
I come here, she almost roasts me alive, and then leaves me to figure it out on my own. Great, great, great.
"You figure it out yet?!" Her shouts reverberate throughout the cave, reaching him on the other side.
"Do you see me pissing fire yet?!"
"I don't think so!"
"Then, no!"
~~~
"I do wonder how Tomi is doing right now, what do you think they're working on, Dom? He's always been a good student in school, he's probably doing well, don't ya' think?"
Makani was currently sitting on her left leg, pulling her right one towards her to stretch out the muscle. Dom was imitating her movements, feeling plenty of soreness from not being very active back at home.
"Well, I definitely don't know. You're the magic one, not me, remember?" Dom winces as she pulls her leg closer to her back, feeling the tightness in her quadricep.
"You are a magic one. You are the magic one, if anything, Ms. Enchantress." Makani lets her leg go and stands up.
With her arms raised above her head, she slowly leaned down and her palms touched the sand. She proceeded to slowly step forward with her hands until she reached a plank position and then walked herself back.
I wish I had that kind of strength. No wonder Makani's abs are rock hard.
Dom stared at her in disbelief, "No way you want me to do that."
"It's not that hard. Just do it, you baby."
Dom is able to reach the ground, but once her hands started to come up and forward, she could feel her abdominal muscles screaming at her to stop. Before she could reach the plank, her body laid down on the ground, "I don't know how you do this."
"We gotta get you in shape."
Dom crouches onto her legs and looks down at herself. Her thighs were being slightly squeezed by her low-waisted jean shorts and her small pudge was starting to pool over the waistband of the shorts.
While she was, by no standard, overweight, getting into shape would probably help with the training.
"But-"
"No buts. Every morning, you run. Up and down the resort beach, hmm. How many times should I make you do it?.." Makani tapped her finger on her chin, thinking about how many hours of torture to put Dom through.
"It's the first week, so how about we do up and down the resort beach until failure?"
"I will achieve failure on the first run through."
"..."
"How long until I can do the vine thing that you do? That was cool."
"You can technically do it right now, but it's all in the qi and that balance. That we have determined you don't have. You can try. Look, hold onto this root." She takes Dom's hand and puts it on the root of the palm tree they were sitting under.
"You can grow these roots. Easy peasy."
"Yeah, right," she mumbles under her breath.
Right after her words, the root blows up along with the tree, wrapping her into it. Dom is now squished between the palm tree and its abundantly overgrown roots, "What the...?"
Dom is dangling a few inches off of the ground and is looking around everywhere around her, laughing at the situation. "I'm off the ground... Makani, look at me!"
Makani fell over onto the ground from the roots booming out of the ground and couldn't help but laugh along with Dom.
Thank god we're far away from the resort...
~~~
"So?!"
Tomas rolls his eyes and repeatedly knocks his head onto the wall behind him. "God, why me?" He whispers to himself.
He doesn't move when he hears Kailani approaching him or even talk back to her. She lights up her index finger to illuminate the small space, "Really? Nothing? It's been an hour."
"Well, if someone actually showed me what exactly it is I'm supposed to do, maybe, just maybe, I could've gotten it by now."
"Some of the best fire mages I've ever met in my lifetime had the worst attitudes I'd ever seen... You're just whiny," she deadpans.
He immediately stands up and crosses his arms, "I'm not whiny!"
"You just whined..."
"Well... I'm just mad! I tried! I tried, I really did! I know maybe it seems like I didn't, but I tried! I whipped and waved my arms around, I flapped them like a damn bird, I invented a new language to create a spell, and still nothing! I'm still me! How is it so easy for you to just, whoop! Turn it on, just like that?!" He rambled on and on in frustration. Kailani was purposely being unbearable, but she figured if she got him angry enough, it would come out.
She doesn't like to fuel her fire on her emotions, it could be... destructive. But, for someone like Tomas who's never used their powers before, it's the easiest way to at least get embers out of him.
"... You think that doesn't make you sound whiny?"
"I'm not whiny! If I could get my stupid fire to work, I-I could probably do it better than you anyway!"
I really do sound whiny. That's Dom's job.
"I-I-I-I-I... Ha! With that attitude, you'll never make it. Fire mages are supposed to be confident. We don't walk, we strut. We don't pull our punches, we follow through. We don't whine, we make it happen!"
"Oh my god, shut up!" When his fists slammed down to his thighs, sparks flew.
The heat overtook his hands for only seconds and when he looked down, he saw small clouds of smoke escaping his fists.
"Holy shit, I just did that."
"No you didn't, I don't see flames yet."
His hands immediately explode in flames and he brings them closer to his face, careful not to singe his hair or eyebrows. He laughs and jumps excitedly, "Kailani! I did it! Look! I made it happen!"
"Yes, you did," with her strong arms crossed, she smiles at him. On the inside, she's just as excited as him but she can't let him know that. She can't let him think it's going to be easy from here on out.
~~~
Ily <33