On the eighth day after breakfast, we all went back down to the arena and Elya followed us and sat down on the side like she usually does. Each of us was continuing with our training while waiting for Mom to come down the stairs. When Mom did eventually come down to the arena she looked mad. She went by each and every one of us and silently watched as we trained. Whenever we made a mistake she would sigh, and after a few minutes of this she must have lost her patience.
"STOP!"
We all froze in place. The water I was trying to hold was still moving around quickly, so when I let go it got all over my arms. Liza was moving a large stone again, and when she dropped it I made sure to cover my ears. Idrel simply threw the flame she was controlling away and looked at Mom.
"All of you have been doing mostly well. I think that maybe after a few more days of this kind of practice, I'll finally be able to start really expanding on the possibilities of each of your individual affinities. However, one of you promised that you would try to manifest their affinity a week ago and that person hasn't even asked me or their sisters any questions about how."
She turned to Elya.
"I'm just watching them! I still don't understand how they do it!"
"Don't lie to me, Elya. I told you on the second day that if you had any questions or any doubts about how you would manifest your affinity you should come to me. Did I ever say to learn by only watching your sisters?"
"No, but-"
"No excuses, Elya. Listen, I understand that it may seem scary, but once you get the hang of it you'll look at yourself now and think that you were stupid for ever not wanting to learn more about your affinity."
"I don't want to do it! You said long ago that we can still live many different lives without our powers, right?"
"That was before I got sick. The situation has changed now, and if you want to live any life at all you need to make sure that you can control what you will need to just survive a single night."
"I don't want to!"
"This isn't a debate. I'm not asking for your opinion on whether you should or shouldn't learn how to control your affinity, you are going to. If you're going to be stubborn then I'll come over there and force you to learn more about your affinity myself, we have the same one after all."
"Please, I promise I'll do it later, I promise! I just don't know how to, please!"
"See, now you're changing your story, Elya. The way you're responding to this is the same way you respond to every new experience. You make as many excuses as possible, and then eventually when we actually get you to do whatever it is you're throwing a fit about you find out that you actually enjoy it. I'm not going to baby you like your father always insists I do, you're going to learn how to use your affinity and then we'll never have this argument again."
She started to walk over to Elya.
"No! Stay back!"
What was she going to do to her? Why did she talk about how they had the same affinity? Elya looked like she was about to cry, and she was holding her arms out in front of her like she was trying to stop Mom before she even got to her. The situation made me remember what Dad had told me about how I needed to be there for Elya and the others even though Mom was still here with us. I don't know why but I dashed over to Elya and stopped in between her and Mom. I held my arms out at my sides like trying to stop Mom, I wasn't sure if this would even work at all. Liza was still frozen while watching this, but Idrel had gone back to practicing.
"Hold on, Mom. Please just let her sit out this time. I promise that I'll get her to practice soon, please just don't do whatever you're going to do to her."
"While I appreciate the fact that you're trying to protect your sister, you don't have to protect her from me. I'm your mother, Aryet."
She began to walk forward again but I did not move.
"Please! If you try to force her to learn she's only going to do it without effort, she's going to just do whatever she has to in order to make sure you're not mad at her. Don't you want her to actually want to learn?"
"That is ideally what would happen, but your sister is being stubborn. Sometimes, when children are being stubborn their parents have to discipline them. Elya needs to learn that she won't always be able to say no and just have all her problems disappear, and she also needs to learn how to use her damn affinity."
"I promise she will, I'll personally help her train if you tell me what her affinity is. I'll stay up late, I'll stop my own training to help her."
"Get out of my way, Aryet."
"Please, Mom! If you hurt her you're just going to make things worse!"
"You don't know anything about what it's like to be a parent, Aryet. Maybe when you have children of your own we can talk about my decision, but right now your words don't mean anything to me. Move out of my way, I'm not going to ask again."
She started walking towards Elya once more. What could I say to convince her? How was I going to stop her from forcing Elya to go through pain just so she could learn how to use her power? What could I do, what should I say? What would Mom do whenever people didn't listen to her? What did that man do when the people around the carriage were too loud?
"DON'T MOVE!"
Liza had put her hands over her mouth and Idrel had stopped practicing to look over at me.
"Excuse me?"
"Dad asked me to take care of Elya and the others, so that's what I'm going to do. Don't come closer!"
"Wow, you really want to learn your important lesson first. Why didn't you just tell me?"
She grabbed me by the hair and started to walk towards the stairs.
"Ow!"
"Either you walk with me or I'll drag you by your hair."
She was mad at me. I shouldn't have said no to her, I should have let her hurt Elya. Why was she going to hurt Elya? If Elya was hurt she wouldn't want to practice any more than she did before, and Mom knows her the best. Why would she think that hurting Elya would work now if it has never worked in the past? It didn't matter now, she was going to hurt me instead of Elya. I walked close to her so she didn't pull on my hair as we went up the stairs. When we got upstairs Mom went to the garden near the courtyard. She let go of my hair after we got to the garden, it was pouring.
"Please Mom, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to say no to you, I just didn't want Elya to get hurt! Please, I promise I won't talk back to you again."
"It's alright."
"What?"
"I said it's alright. Everyone has the urge to act out sometimes, I remember back when I was a kid I would say no to my parents all the time. I can't expect you to be any better than I was."
"Really?"
"Yeah. However, I need you to understand that what you did wasn't okay, and I need you to promise that you'll never do it again."
Mom was really okay with me screaming at her? Why did she drag me all the way up here if she was just going to ask me to apologize and promise to not do what I did again?
"I apologize, what I did was stupid, and I won't do it again."
"You're right, it was stupid. Now that I think about it, an apology isn't enough. Here's how you're going to make it up to me. Manifest your affinity in front of you right now."
Well, that was easy, I had been practicing all week and there was water all around me. After a few seconds, a ball of water appeared in between my hands.
"Great, now I just need one more thing from you. After this, we can go back downstairs and pretend this never happened."
Mom walked over to the flower that she knew was my favorite, she waved at me to come closer to her so I walked over to the flower.
"Sometimes you're going to need to think fast when you're manifesting your affinity. Maybe you won't have the time to figure out how the place you're in connects to water, and that is when you need to get it from a nearby source. Do you know what an example of a source is?"
"A river?"
"Right! What else?"
"The rain?"
"Also correct. I'll give you a hint for this next one, it's right in front of you."
"A flower?"
"Correct! Flowers have water in them. What I want you to do, to prove to me that you're truly sorry, is take the water from this flower."
"What?"
"You heard me. Take the water from the flower."
"That's my favorite flower!"
"I'm sure the flower will be happy that you used the water in it."
"Can't I use another flower?"
"No, I told you to take the water from this one."
"Please, any other flower, I want to keep this one alive!"
Mom stood up and walked behind me.
"So what you're saying is, you won't take the water from this flower?"
"Please, I'll do it for any other flower in this garden."
She placed her hand on the side of my head.
"Oh, Aryet. My sweet, sweet, sweet child. Remember what I said when we started training?"
"What?"
"Everything I do, I'm doing it so you have a better future."
I heard a crack and suddenly I felt the worst pain I had ever known throughout my entire body. It felt like a thousand knives were inside me and all of them were stabbing through me trying to get out. I immediately started screaming, if this continued I was sure I would die. I can't collect my thoughts, all I can think about is whether or not I'll die. A few seconds later the pain finally stopped. I fell to the ground and I could hear Mom's voice again.
"What's wrong, Aryet? I thought you were so confident in telling me that you wouldn't do what I told you to. So, how about killing that flower?"
I barely was able to stand back up.
"I don't want to!"
The same pain came back again. At any moment I might explode, burst from whatever is trying to destroy everything inside me. I could hear Mom's voice while I was trying not to scream so loud I couldn't speak.
"Are you going to kill the flower, Aryet?"
I could only say a few words without feeling like I'd be better off dead.
"I don't know how!"
"Feel the water inside the flower, and pull it."
"I can't!"
"Pull it."
"Mom!"
"PULL IT!"
I reached my hand out towards the flower, and I pulled as hard as I could. Again, and again, and again, I pulled as hard as I could possibly pull. The pain went away once more, and when I could see clearly the flower in front of me was nothing but dust. I fell to the ground again, I couldn't move a single part of my body.
"See, that wasn't so hard. Good job!"
Mom grabbed me by the hair and pulled my head up so I could see her face. She was smiling, but it looked weird. It looked familiar, like something I had seen before. She had the same face as the woman in my dream, and I felt the same pain that she gave me. She had the same smile that made me afraid of the person in front of me, how could someone smile after hurting me like that?
"Don't you ever fucking talk to me like that again."
She threw my head back onto the ground.
"Get yourself downstairs."
I heard her walk away back into the house, and after a bit, I couldn't hear anything but the rain. I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore, and I fell asleep lying in the dirt and mud.