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 people had settled the neighboring areas, they had started making up many legends about that mysterious place into which no animal would have dared to enter and no bird would have dared to fly into or over it. Many brave men had challenged their gods (in the ancient times they believed that deities and other supernatural creatures inhabited in that forest, so all mortals were not able to come in there neither during their lives nor after death). All attempts to penetrate through the dense thickets had ended up in failure. Some had gone mad, some had disappeared and some in a kind of madness had given themselves injuries that had not agreed with life, but still the majority had never come back. As a result, the thicket had gained infamy among the tribes living near them. Humans had gradually begun to desert that area.
The reason for that had not been the cases with those who had been trying to get into the forbidden zone in spite of taboos, but strange and inexplicable visions and sounds that had not caused any harm yet, but frightened anyone who had faced them. Shamans, so called witch doctors, present in every tribes, had asked the spirits of their ancestors for answers, which had turned out not to be good. So the peoples had decided to leave their native lands, inhabited for many centuries. They had believed that the angry gods had been driving them out of there for some inexplicable reason. Although in fact it had been only the first signs of awakening of Almighty Stone.
People are always inclined to give negative interpretations to strange phenomena for which they cannot find a logical explanation. It took another thousand years before the Almighty Stone had finally woken up. By that time, almost everyone had forgotten about the thicket, since the locals had left all the surrounding areas many years ago. The trails had been overgrown. The rocks had surrounded it with dense walls. No one had tried to conquer those thickets anymore. However, the legends that had long turned into fairy tales had still lived among peoples. When the right time had come, Almighty Stone had awoken fully. The forests had opened