Those beautiful crimson flames kept lighting up the dark area around us. My blade kept moving with my arms and performing the moves until failure.
I experimented with breathing like doing one deep breath and performing all the forms I could before needing to take another breath, I found I could do up to 8 consecutive forms before having to take a breath however my mind started to hallucinate, and everything around me grew dark and a glowing woman that I could only describe as THICC stood in front of me, he blue wavy hair gave me the illusion of the waves of a beach lapping at the shore, her face was ever-changing from a seductress beauty to a caring mother kind of charm to a girl next door allure.
Her smile stole any and all thoughts from my mind leaving it in an empty zen state. "Breath." She told me and the next instant I was on the ground on my hands and knees, gulping breaths of air feeling like I was in some space with no air. My insides felt like they were on fire and I was trying to fuel it with more air. An idea came to me from the memory of making a fire earlier, since I could make a fire, a source of heat with magic couldn't I push air into my lungs using my wind magic?
Even if I had an idea of what to do, performing it in the middle of coughing is entirely different. Every time a brid of air formed in front of my mouth a burning pain wrecked through my body and destroyed my concentration.
Tifas was beside me at some point, her hand on my back giving me small taps, and her eyes full of worry. The contact helped me concentrate on one thing among the pain, her touch. A wind brid formed centimeters in front of my mouth, it gently pushed a wave of air down to my lungs via my mouth.
Even with the soothing stream of air, it took a long moment to calm down. The idea of tuning down my breathing to the moon style popped into my mind for a second before I shot it down, I need one that can build up my breathing while remaining powerful.
"I'm okay now, thank you for coming to help me." My smile had Tifa blushing.
"Yeah, it's uh... I uh..." Unable to give me a straight reply she gave me a shy smile, lowered he face a little but kept her eyes darting between my eyes and my lips.
I had seen this before, in the memories of my previous life. In them, I either didn't notice them at first until long after the event or was too indecisive to take the chance. Even now I felt pressure for even thinking about it. Being wrong about how she felt about me would make the rest of the quest feel extremely awkward and it had just started.
"W-well I'll get back to training," I got up and took a stance again, unmoving trying to figure out how to tune down sun breathing down to water, wind, rock, mist, or fire breathing to build up my strength, but my mind kept dragging me back to that moment. It was like having two personalities fight over control, the stoic personality that could detach itself from the current moment and see everything from a bird's viewpoint, and the personality that frets over every little thing and worries about what everybody else thinks about me.
I opened my eye which let me see in her direction and saw her walking back to the make-shit camp with her head down and her shoulders down in a defeated pose.
Seeing that posture gave me the confidence... to let my birds-eye view take control. I stabbed my sword in front of me and walked after her at a faster pace handheld her from behind, my forearms crossed over her abdomen holding her tightly to me, her softness and warmth promoting me to enjoy the hug way more than I would do normally, maybe.
When I felt the moment of enjoying the hug was going for too long my left hand moved to her chin and moved her head right and upward where I could plant my lips on hers. It was not one of those deep passionate kisses, it was more like a peck that did not want to end. I closed my eyes and tried to run some mental image of how much I liked her, hoping my feelings somehow got transmitted.
Truth be told I didn't know much about kissing, a peck or small kiss is all I knew. I had heard of the French kiss but how like jamming your tongue into the partner's mouth? My father in the otherworld memories had told me once that a way to do it was to bite softly or suck the other person's upper lip and switch to the bottom one when you think it is time. I didn't feel either of us was ready for that so a simple kiss is all I would do right now.
I pulled back and opened my eyes to find her eyes closed and her lips puckered u for the kiss, a dreamy aura enveloped her.
She opened her eyes and we stared into each other's eyes hoping to see the other person liked what just happened.
I hugged her tighter for a moment, "Go warm up and sleep by the fire." I whispered close to her ear. She gave me a small nod and started skipping to her bedroll near the fire.
I was going back to where I stabbed my sword into the ground and picked it up. Memories and thoughts of the kiss took the place of the doubts in my mind but it was easier to concentrate on the lesser breathing forms.
My breathing kept wavering on the amount of air I took in with every other swing most swings did not generate an element that could either be seen in a good or bad light.
"What kind of training are you doing?" Came the voice of someone who did not interact with me a lot.
"Regulating my breathing, and optimizing it for every swing," I replied and turned to the person, Donny sat on the edge of the small plateau staring at me.
"The cut you did on the spike was clean and powerful, but when you did it a crimson fire came out right now the ones you did emit various elements and not the flame."
"Tha move set paralyzes me after 4-5 moves. Not something I smart to do in the middle of combat."
"Can you lower the power output but keep the same breathing?" His suggestion made me pause, I was so busy thinking breathing was the same as strength and speed spread throughout the body evenly that I forgot what thunder pussy did. He concentrated most of the strength breathing gave him into his legs. I could keep my breathing at the same level but pull most of the strength I could not handle at the moment and regulate for different types of breathing forms. It was not a major shift in the point of view but it was enough to give me new ideas to separate breathing and speed or strength.
Focusing on giving those others strengths and weaknesses I kept doing them to get them right. Once I got the first right the rest of the form for that style was soon mastered, By the time I had water and lightning my time to watch was long over and Jessie was up by the fire, her hands were hovering close to it.
"Oh, you're finally gonna catch some winks? Tifa moved her bedroll close to yours, did something happen while I was asleep?"" She sounded eager to tease Tifa but was fighting against the urge to wake her up to do it right away.
"Bet you will find out tomorrow, right now I need some sleep." Wrecking my body and resting to rebuild it stronger than before huh, reminds me of going to the gym. I slipped inside the mouth of the bedroll to find the heat from my body, the fire nearby, and the fatigue of my muscles robbed me of consciousness in seconds.
The light of dawn came too soon, Movement from beside me brought me out of my dreamless sleep.
Tifa looked through her backpack before fishing out some food supplies and passing them to Jessie who dumped them into a pot placed over the fire, Its back and sides were shielded with stones to keep the heat in.
She had dumped in some vegetables and a flavor bar which soon after had the smell of something tasty coming out of it.
"How did you sleep?" Tifa asked, her bedroll already tied to the top of her backpack.
"Wish we could sleep longer."I got out of mine and started folding it.
"Well, you were up for a long time and moving a lot." Jessie bumped with a jovial tone. "Also nice move, got Tifa here swooning after what you did."
"So you found out huh," I said, not as a question but as a fact.
---
Word Count 1544
If there are any grammatical errors let me with a comment on the paragraph.
Thank you guys. I appreciate your reading so far.