Ten days had passed since they had left Nanaral, and Pearl couldn't help but feel exhilarated. Four or five days more before they reached Ilnanar. True he had travelled to Ilnanar a couple of times before, but that was with his father's caravan. Now he travelled like an adventurer from the bedtime stories, walking on cart trails through the forest, cooking in a campfire, sleeping beneath the starry sky. It was everything he had ever desired.
And there was Eranae, who was her own kind of wonderful. Pearl had thought that his mother and the elder lifesingers of the village were experts, which they were sort of, but compared to what Eranae knew, they were just adepts. According to Eranae, Ember, the most gifted lifesinger of Nanaral, was not even of the fourth cadence.
"Cadence is the measure of Lifesong's magnitude," Eranae had told him on the second morning of their journey, the day when she had begun teaching him, "Every human being is born with First Cadence, which is equivalent to their innate lifesong. Lifesingers are usually born with the Second Cadence, which is equal to the lifesong of ten ordinary humans. Naturally, this meant that one in ten newborn infants was a lifesinger in theory. However, not all those who are born with the Second Cadence have the potential to grow beyond that. The more common type of lifesingers were those of the Third Cadence, their lifesong equivalent to that of twenty five to fifty humans."
With that lesson, Pearl had begun his apprenticeship with Eranae who found the terminology silly. She claimed that it was just advice that she gave him. Her advice, Pearl had noticed, was quite specific. At first she had explained to him about perception of the other Primal Songs. The simplest way, she had informed, was to feel the corresponding element with a fairly exposed body and understand the rhythmic patterns it was composed of. Eranae preferred doing it by leaving her torso bare, so Pearl started doing the same. It was a bit embarrassing at first, because compared to Eranae, he was straight-up scrawny, which wasn't surprising because all his exercise came from running around the village and doing chores.
"It's not your fault," Eranae said encouragingly, "I was the same when I first began training, but on the opposite side of the spectrum."
"You were fat?" Pearl had asked with genuine surprise.
"That's not what I meant," Eranae sighed, "Anyways, a tuned body allows lifesong to flow more smoothly through it. That was why my tutelage involved training the body as much as it involved training with lifesong."
Hence she had given Pearl a moderately difficult training set. After ten days of following it devoutly, Pearl had picked it up pretty well. He could already feel the muscles building up, as underwent the series of exercises that Eranae had instructed him to perform. After the exercise, he meditated in an open spot to feel and perceive the Skysong which was said to be the easiest to learn among the remaining Songs. One thousand heartbeats was the time period he dedicated to meditation. Finally, it was over for that morning.
Pearl sprang up from the high rock over which he sat and jumped into the stream beside. He always did so whenever their path neared a running water body, which had happened three times counting that day. Pearl dipped himself into the cold water to wash away the sweat and fatigue. Sun had begun rising, so he had to hurry and return to the campsite, where Eranae slept. Pearl had chosen the early hours of dawn to do his workout so as to not waste any time travelling during the daylight hours. Apparently Eranae hadn't objected yet.
He floated in the water, relaxing, his long hair spread afloat in the water just like his limbs. The experience was soothing, so soothing that Pearl almost lost track of time. He was brought back to his senses by a ribbon of water that tickled into his ear. Pearl jolted, turning upside down in the water. He rose, wiping the water off his face, and found Eranae with the tip of her feet dipped in the stream. Rainsong, that was how she shaped the water into a ribbon and then controlled it.
"Good morning, Pearl," She greeted, "I was just making sure that you hadn't fallen asleep."
"You still haven't explained to me how to do that." Pearl reminded, moving to the shore and grabbing a woolen cloth to wipe himself, "Hold on, you are up early?"
"Yes, I knew you would be swimming and I would be able to show off some tricks with Rainsong," Eranae smiled.
"It would be better if you teach some of them to me," Pearl put his tunic on, "I have already figured out Skysong. Mostly. How difficult can Rainsong be?"
"If you are so eager, I will tell you how I do it." Era sighed, "Make physical contact with the water surface and pour some lifesong into it like how you transfer it to a specific body part. We are at the Fourth Cadence now so you will only be able to shape an amount of water that is one-tenth of your body mass."
Pearl swooped down and touched the water, pouring his lifesong into it just as instructed. Suddenly, he felt his consciousness expand, surrounding and gripping the spherical mass of water around his hand. He pulled it back and the water clung to his hand like wet clay.
"It seems you have a natural affinity for the Rainsong." Eranae noted, "Usually it takes weeks to attune the lifesong with Rainsong. I myself took a month to get a hang of it."
Pearl ignored her and raised the lump of water in his hand, giggling in excitement. He willed it, the same way he willed his limbs, to extend and the water spiralled up forming a rope. Extending to its full length, the rope burst out and the water splashed over Pearl's head, drenching it again.
"That's what you get for flying too close to the sun." Eranae smirked.
"It was worth the fun," Pearl began wiping his head again, "I need to practise more with it."
"Lifesingers!" a voice yelled in awe and astonishment.
Eranae and Pearl snapped alert, turning behind to find a small group approaching the stream. Two men armed with bows and a woman carrying a bucket, probably to collect water from the stream. They appeared to be local villagers rather than bandits judging by their clothes but Pearl wondered why the men were armed.
"This will be interesting." Rel's voice whispered in Pearl's ear, speaking to him for the first time in the day. Eranae turned to him, there was a confused expression on her face.
The group drew nearer and the older looking man approached them. His face was sunken and his eyes bulged with desperation. Pearl didn't know why but he felt sorry for the man.
"Lifesingers," the man spoke in Narlspeech. He dropped to his knees before Pearl and Eranae, almost sobbing, "Please! You must help us! Please, I beg you."