Chapter 7: 7 Heidi Brightstrike

The next two weeks left me in a constant state of pain. Before I considered myself healthy, I did a decent amount of physical activity before, knowing how important it was to get a good foundation of health when I was young.
Apparently my idea of a healthy foundation was way too meager compared to what Mr. Rider preferred. He told us that Dreamers needed to be presented as reliable and strong to the people, and that it was a fools belief to only rely on one tool.
Honestly I was surprised I had been able to pay attention to his words as he took us on a run on the road that lead back to the city.
Outside of the masochistic torture that Mr. Rider put us through every other day we spent the class time practicing our visualization and trying to open up our Dreamscape. No one had yet to succeed, which the teacher said was nothing unusual.
Only Cystella didn’t spend that time in the classroom, Professor Pure would take her out for independent study.
During the weekends most of the students went out into the city of Zuva. Elina had actually asked me if I wanted to go with her and a few others that she had become friendly with.
I had immediately declined on instinct. Since our talk at lunch we had only exchanged a few words during classes, so I didn’t believe I’d be able to enjoy myself. Instead I went to the library that the school had. Not only was it a treasure trove for information about Dreamers it also had a surprisingly thorough amount of information about a wide variety of subjects.
There was even a book written by a Dreamers about using mechanical objects to help train their Intent usage because of the delicacy of the gears. She detailed how she had taken the mainspring out of a pocket watch then used her own Intent to somehow force the watch to tick.
I understood the principle, it was like those magicians that could make an object move with their mind, but real. That was how I spent my weekends, either in the library reading, doing visualization practice, or in my room tinkering with my watches. I had nothing to create new ones with but I could take apart and put together my other ones as well as design some potential ones.
When I left the library a lot of the first years had returned as the sun began to change shades towards its moon phase. So I almost missed the small unmoving form a few feet away from the walkway between buildings.
I froze in place as I realized what it was. A bird had died, I didn’t know how from where I was standing, but I could see a bit of blood wetting the dirt around it. I sniffed the air, but could only barely make out the smell of blood. So it hadn’t been dead for long.
Had someone shot it out of the air? Or was it perhaps from falling itself? I had never heard of a bird falling to its death before, after all, they had wings. Had it been injured and tried to fly away, but its wounds had gotten the better of it and it succumbed to them?
I looked around for any other flecks of blood in the area that would indicate that, but someone had come up behind me while I had been in my own thoughts. I really needed to be better at my spatial awareness. I was shoved, hard.
I tried to land on my hands but I slipped on the stones and my head bounced off them. Even through the haze of disorientation and pain I had already guessed who it was. Of course it wasn’t a perfect guess, I had yet to meet most of the people in my grade, let alone the second or third years. It could also be a teacher but that was doubtful.
“It’s just a dead bird, don’t be such a pussy,” Brax said chuckling.
I turned to see Brax as well as three other kids laughing at me. Well, Brax was laughing the other three seemed to be chuckling half-heartedly. It was two other boys and a girl and they all shared something in common.
They were all noticeably smaller in stature than Brax and they didn’t look very comfortable with what was happening. One was the ratty boy that sat next to me in class, but I didn’t recognize the other two. In fact the only reason I knew Brax’s name is because he was such an unreasonable asshole.
Who pushes someone for no reason? It was illogical even for a fourteen year old.
“I was not being a pussy,” I corrected. “I was trying to figure out how the bird died.”
“Here’s how.”

Something blurred right through my vision from only inches away. The three goons, they could be nothing else, flinched back, but nothing had hit me. Brax was spinning a piece of rope, no two pieces of rope with something that could fit on my palm on the end. I recognized it as a sling.
I stifled a shiver of fear from almost having my jaw broken by the weapon. The movement of his twirling caught my attention. He moved his wrist and shoulder naturally, no stiffness or over compensated movements.
I wasn’t going to look down on the sling, it had been a tool for hunting for thousands of years and Brax obviously was proficient enough with it to kill a flying bird. Not that I had any intention of fighting him. A bit of pushing around wasn’t enough for me to have a violent reaction, we had yet to get a real rulebook so if I went too far then I could get into trouble.
If his actions began to interfere with my studies or normal activities then I would have to do something drastic.
“What did I say about acting like a creep?” Brax growled.
“I do not care what you said.”
He raised a mocking eyebrow and opened his mouth to respond, but another voice cut in over him.
“Back off!”
A short Solarian girl walked up between the two groups. Immediately we all recognized her, Heidi Brightstrike, the honor student that was a part of Professor Liraca’s class. Even Brax, with his unreasonable attitude was not stupid enough to talk back.
Not only was she one of the three only students that could use a Dreamers abilities, even if we had yet to see them. Two weeks was not enough time to really get a good sense of the other classes students.
At least not for me, the amount of friends some of these other children could make in such a little time was frightening.
“Apologies Lady Brightstrike, and you too Monty, I was just playing, didn’t mean to get so rough” Brax said, hands raised and taking cautious steps back as if she held a gun to him.
Heidi grimaced at the name, but didn’t say anything as Brax and his “followers” left. Brax didn’t do something cliche like look back and give me a death glare, he just left while talking to the others around him happily. While his followers didn’t seem to be into pushing around random people I could tell that the way Brax talked to them like they were all equally important brought light to the three followers eyes.

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I looked at the dead bird that they had either left or forgotten about, trying to identify the area in which it was struck, but Heidi drew my attention back to her.
“Are you alright?” she asked sticking out a hand for me to grab.
I inspect her hand first, I wouldn’t want to touch a hand that seemed dirty. I noticed that they were well maintained with a thin layer of clear nail polish. Outside of that however I saw that despite her short stature and seemingly soft demeanor her hands had rough calluses on them as well as a few scars on both her knuckles and fingers, even having one as thick as a pen wrapping halfway around her wrist.
“Excuse me, are you alright? You’re head is bleeding,” then she muttered quietly to herself. “I should probably just take him to the nurse… wait, do we have a nurse?”
I was about to respond that while we didn’t technically have a nurse Professor Pure acted as one for our grade, maybe all grades, but he had told our class that he did so for the first years at least.
Instead of that however I instead stiffened as she picked me up as easily as if I was a two year old. A soft orangish yellow haze billowed softly out like steam from her body.
“Sorry I know you’re not all that tall or broad but, wait… sorry again, that seemed worse, never mind I’ll go back to what I was saying. Sorry but I don’t think I’m strong enough yet to carry you without using Intent.”
I didn’t like being touched by anyone, not even my grandparents hugged me much once I expressed that at the age of nine, but I was too entranced by the magic, literal magic happening in front of me.
Heidi ran, faster than anything I thought possible for a human while carrying me like a princess from a play. Was the mist like substance Intent? It had to be, no other logical conclusion based on my current knowledge.
But what was it coming out of? Her pores? Was her anatomy changed to allow that, did Intent suffuse the entire body and was expelled similarly to sweat? I put my hand over the mist like substance as thought I was trying to grab it. It felt like warm sunlight on a cold morning.
Then I tried to sniff it, it smelled like perfume, which was most likely just Heidi herself. I was about to see if I could take a mouthful and taste it when Heidi coughed.
I looked into her face to see her blushing, I had let my intrusive thoughts become actions again. She must’ve heard me smell her and been embarrassed. I understood, it was both rude and improper for a young man to do. It was also improper for a young woman to carry a young man like he was a damsel in distress, but that went both ways.
“…” she glanced at me but then looked ahead.
“…You smell nice?” I supplied.
“Wha?!” she squeaked.
“Apologies I didn’t know what to say… What does the Intent taste like.”
A look of absolute confusion crossed her face, and she looked incredibly adorable in that moment.
“I-I don’t know.”
“Can I try and taste it?”
“W-were here!” she said, then dumped me onto the ground.
The grounds for the school were actually quite large, deeper rather than wide, and the place where the teachers stayed was quite a ways off.
“Is there an issue?”
Professor Pure had opened the door as soon as Heidi dropped me and was now staring at the both of us with raised eyebrows.
“Yes Professor Pure!” She opened her mouth to speak more, then her eyes widened in horror turning to me. “I’m sorry what’s your name?”
“Monty.”
“Okay, so Monty was pushed down by another student and hit his head, he seemed to have trouble standing afterwards so I brought him here to get checked up.”
“Oh, good, I was worried you’d ask me to deal with the other student for a moment.”
“You wont? Isn’t it bad if we started pushing one another, especially when someone might accidentally use Intent in doing so?”
“We like to do hands off teaching,” he said shrugging, then he turned to me.
Instead of saying anything a ripple of blue light went through his body starting from the center of his chest. The light only lit up the tattoos that ran down both his arms and most of his body most likely as well seeing as I could see the flash of light through his clothing.
Then a pink light came from the center of his chest and he pointed a finger at me.
A ball of pink fire hit me right in the face.

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