The feeling of my wings opening was.... weird.
It was so weird!
Can you imagine how it feels to have 2 slits open down your back, and wings push out of those slits till they fully open and you suddenly have extra limbs?
It didn't hurt but, urgh. Shudder!
Flying was tough, it really was.
'Right wing. Left wing. Together.'
After 2 minutes of that, Felix decided that it was best for him and a guy named Bob to stay behind with me as they were the least injured, while the others, especially another guy called Byron, went back first to get treated.
30 minutes of fumbling and the two men's attempt at helping, I was somehow able to fly. I couldn't really blame them as flying was like walking to them, they mostly learned by observation and couldn't really teach it.
Because Felix was the first person I spoke to, I was still more comfortable with him at first. The fact that he was handsome helped.
Golden blonde, gray eyes, wheat colored skin, long pointed ears, and lean firm muscles like an athlete. Height... maybe 6 foot 4', and his protective film makes it look like he's surrounded by a halo.
Bob is a big guy. He's 6 foot 7' (he told me with his chest puffed out), muscular like a body builder, with a square jaw, dirty blonde hair, and light brown eyes. Also handsome, with a sunny and straightforward personality.
He couldn't hide his shock when I confessed that I had never flown before.
"Like you've NEVER flown before?"
"And you're how old?"
"Not even once?"
"Were you maltreated at home?"
"Were you sick?"
"Was it a punishment for something you did?"
It was a bit annoying but I could understand. It was like someone perfectly capable of walking saying that they'd never walked before.
While Felix didn't say much about it, I could see the shock clearly on his face.
I made up an excuse saying that I was too pampered at home.
"I had no need to fly, and my family was too scared of something bad happening to me to let me. As most people in my tribe walked, I got used to it and lost the urge to fly."
"... most people walked?"
"Yeah! How's that possible? Was your father the tribe chief or something and asked the people to walk for your sake?"
I pretended to look surprised and said,
"Wow Bob! So you can be this sharp witted?"
"Hey! That's an unfair statement made based on my looks!"
"Haha! Can you blame her?"
"But Bob actually has one of the keenest instincts in our whole tribe"
"I can understand keen instincts, but sharp wits? Meh"
"Pwahaha!"
"Leader!"
Thanks to Bob I was able to relax a lot, and like so, we joked around like old friends till we got to the tribe.
I don't know if the tribe was actually that far, or it was because I was dragging us down with my clumsy flying, but it took us an hour to reach our destination.
During our journey I actually learnt some more things about the people of Threa.
For example, the lyne can be used as indicator of a person's health.
The more lustrous the lyne was, the better the person's health, and when a woman was pregnant, her lyne would have many vivid colors like a rainbow.
The lyne, as I learned, is the protective film around our bodies.
After the woman has given birth, only the color representing the element her child was born with is left for 6 days, before that also fades and her lyne goes back to normal.
Yeah, every person on this planet is able to control an element.
It's definitely nowhere near as amazing as avatar, but it's something.
A person with the fire element can light a camp fire, and a person with the wind element can run and fly a bit faster than others.
Someone with the water element will never go thirsty, and the people with the earth element are actually the strongest as they can form an earth shield to protect themselves. In this dangerous world, it was the most useful ability, so people with the earth element have pretty high statuses.
There are also special elements, and some abilities that are not part of the elements at all.
Light, dark, ice, lightning, wood, metal, space, sound, and there's even sci-fi ones like telekinesis, mind-reading, invisibility. Everyone here has something, and some are even born with more than one ability.
Another fun fact is that everyone in this world is blonde. And I mean, everyone!
This is something the system told me, but what it didn't tell me was that it didn't mean that everyone was walking around with the same hair color.
In fact, the element a person is born with reflects in their hair color. The stronger your ability, the more it reflects in your hair, and sometimes your eyes too.
So although the base is blonde, it's always tinted with the color of the person's element. For those with powerful abilities, the blonde base might even be completely overtaken by the elements color.
Some of the colors are easy to figure out, like brown for earth, blue for water, red for fire, gray for wind. Even for the special abilities, you can still guess that purple is lightning, wood is green, light is yellow, and dark is black.
Ice is light blue but if the person's ability is very strong, it becomes white.
Metal is not so straightforward, and others are just impossible to guess.
Usually people with the metal element have metallic silver hair, but due to the many different types of metals, this isn't always the case. If a person has a stronger affinity for a particular type of metal, the color of that metal will reflect in their hair.
For example, a strong affinity with copper will give the hair a reddish sheen, so they're sometimes mistaken for a fire element user.
As for the other abilities;
...drumroll...
Space is... maroon! Of course it wasn't called that, but they described the color as a muddy red, so I equated it to maroon.
Telekinesis is a gradient of blue and purple, mind-reading is pink, and with invisibility you get a rainbow!
The person's hair is divided into seven sections, for each color of the rainbow.
Since no ability is gender specific, so men get invisibility too, meaning that there are big buff men walking around with rainbow hair.... I really can't imagine how that looks...
My hair looks like a flame. Not like the one from a kitchen burner that has blue in it, no. Picture a raging bonfire, with the red, orange, and yellow, flowing and merging with into other. The colors are so vivid that if the wind were to blow my hair, it would look like my head was on fire.
So obviously, I'm a fire element user, and a strong one at that.
Of course, it's currently difficult to see all the layers to my hair because of all the dirt and grass in it -gosh I can't wait to take a bath- but the red is still pretty obvious, so Felix and Bob know what I element I use.
Speaking of, Felix uses light, while Bob is a precious earth user.
Honestly, it was quite difficult to get all this information out of them without making them suspicious of me, as all this is common sense to the people of this world.
I'm really so lucky.
These people are so backwards that I don't know what they'd do to me if they deemed me as suspicious.