Once we were assigned to be on duty in the garden (by a lucky chance she was enrolled in my group). The duties included weeding and watering the beds. I was focusing completely on hoeing carrots, when suddenly the scream of Ema brought me out of my reflections and concentration on work. An unusual scene appeared before my eyes: a fragile girl was bravely struggling with a watering hose, from which a powerful stream of water was pouring to the fullest.
The sight was so eye-catching that I couldn’t help but laugh. The hose under the pressure of water kept popping out of Ema’s hands, flooding everything around, including the poor thing herself. Instead of letting go of it and turning off the faucet, she courageously and persistently continued to fight with it, trying to pacify the “ardor” of the hose.
I burst out laughing. Ema did not expect such impudence from me. Instead of help she got ridiculed. Indignation got over her what gave the girl strength to hold the hose jumping in all directions, hurry toward me and aim the whole jet of water at me. The pressure knocked me off my feet and threw me a couple of meters away. Angry but not feeling pain I ran up to her, tore the hose out of her hands and began to pour Ema from head to toe. Laughing and pouring water on each other we did not notice how one of the educators turned off the water and cursed us with words which “pigs” and “bastards” would be sounded the most polite and decent. Nevertheless, this episode became the starting point of our strong friendship.
Although Ema had platonic feelings for me, I fell head over heels in love with her. When she met Kayus, who was not a Bernaus, I had to put some distance between us, but we still did not break contact for good, because we were closely connected by a magical thread peculiar only to Bernauses. Once we find a soul mate, we cannot lose her or him anymore. Ema turned out to be just such a person – the closest of all. Her pain became my pain; her joy became my joy. We could not and did not want to violate the established order of things that existed in our kind, about which I still had to learn a lot.
My head was about to burst because of all these memories and the illusion I had experienced. My eyes were burning and seemed ready to pop out at any moment. In short, I was in such a state as if I had been partying all week long without getting sleep and having food, and for several days I had been suffering of the hangover. I barely forced myself to get out of bed, hoping that a cold shower would bring me back to normal.
I waddled into the bathroom and started splashing some water on my face. The light turned on (thanks to the automated system), and my eyes fell on the reflection in the mirror above the sink. What I saw shocked and scared me to death. From a brown-haired person, I turned into a blonde one. Actually my hair got whiter than snow, my skin became so transparent that I could even see the muscles of my face distinctly, and my eyes burned with red fire literally speaking. It was as if I transformed into a comic book monster. Out of anger and frustration I hit the sink with my fist, forgetting about my magical power, which splashed out of me like an invisible wave, smashing it to pieces along with half of the bathroom. A broken mirror, cracked walls and floor seemed to have fallen victims to an earthquake, even the lime fell from the ceiling. I closed my eyes trying to forget myself, when suddenly at the same moment someone persistently and continuously began knocking on my apartment door, ignoring the doorbell.
5. Mentor
Ema… As soon as I heard that name, I pictured the sounds of the sea in my mind. The sea, whose quiet waves in calm weather peacefully break on the rocky shore. Its salty air refreshes not only the body, but also the soul and the thoughts. Its sunsets make you love life and never cease to delight over and over again. However, as often it happens with the weather at sea: it is unpredictable. Calmness abruptly gives way to a storm, and there is no mercy for anyone who stands in its way. This is how my childhood friend seemed to me. A fury in an angelic image. She suddenly burst into my life, turned everything upside down in it and left no stone unturned, while promising nothing and giving no chance for a future together. Although I kept waiting and believing. The door swung open by itself before I opened it. It was Ema. Apparently, not expecting to see my unusual new look, she just stared at me without saying a word. There was an awkward silence between us. It lasted only a few seconds that seemed like an eternity.
“Have you decided to change your style, Kaulakis? It’s about time. I can even give you a compliment: it suits you!” Finally, she was the first to break the uncomfortable silence with sarcasm in her voice. Coming in, an unexpected guest slammed the door behind her without touching it.
“It’s not funny at all, Butkute,” I muttered in response without moving.
We often liked to address by last names to tease each other.
“You would have put on something at least, unless you were lost to all sense of shame. Is it in this outfit that guests are received nowadays?”
Only now I did notice that I was standing naked. Before I had time to think about what she said, the boxers and pants themselves flew into my hands, with the help of the friend’s telekinesis.
“What would I do without you?” Now it was my turn to say something sarcastically.
“Don’t worry about your look. It will go back to normal over time. After you take your powers under control, your inner self that has showed up now will fade away. It happens to everyone. You may call it as a kind of transition period. When you get used to new powers, learn to control them and feel comfortable with the energy in the body, you will never want to return to the previous state. Believe me. I know this from my own experience”.
“I didn’t know about your transition. What did you look like?”
“You don’t want to know. I went through it. No one is an exception to the rule. It happened the year when you served in the army. Thank God! I’m glad you didn’t see me then: I was a terrible bitch”.
“I think you had been a bitch before that”.
We laughed heartily. I felt a little better. I wanted to enjoy my life again.
“You still have to learn a lot. The transition is just the beginning. There are many sorts of rules and restrictions that you will need to learn by heart. The most important rule you should know right now is that under no circumstances should you ever use your powers in public. They may forgive violations of some laws, but that one is punished with the death penalty only. In the entire history of humankind, only two Bernauses had committed it, but I’ll tell you about them later. Now let’s do yoga, because there is no better way to find the shortest path to harmony with yourself and the world around you. Besides, you can’t go out like this. We’ll wait until dark. I’ll also tell you a brief history of our kind. There’s no future without knowing the past.
6. History Lesson
“Millions of years ago, a meteorite had fallen on Earth,” Ema began the narrative and, after a moment of intriguingly pausing, continued. “Its fall neither had brought any destruction, nor any changes to the place where it had found a “peace”, only had illuminated the whole area with an unearthly light and had gone out. No one still knows how big that meteorite had been and how it had looked like at all. Several million years had gone on and there had been no trace of the funnel left by it. It had been covered with many layers of soil. The surface had been overgrown with unpassable thickets and swamps. It had not been possible for any living creature to pass through these dense thickets. Even birds had avoided flying over them in the sky. As if some unknown powers had been guarding the peace of the mysterious meteorite, which now we call “Almighty Stone’.
After
