Silva was lying in bed, her head hidden in the pillow. Every time she tried to move, the sourness reminded her of itself, and she stopped in her tracks. She knew she was in bad shape, but this was too much!

  Instead of some muscle ache, Silva could barely move. "...can’t even bme no one else for my overzealousness.” She had gone jogging only thrice, once every two days, but already she was regretting every second of it. She would not stop doing it, but a little bit of whining to herself was acceptable.

  Silva had never gotten a massage but really craved one right now. If only she could afford it. Or have enough courage to actually go for it. In the end, the answer to both problems was - ‘there is no way’.

  Steven had scolded her for not stretching properly before and after running. He also had shown her how to do it right, but she just could not get up in time to do it correctly and still make it in time for school.

  Trying to remember what else Steven had told her, she did some stretches. It ended up being a half-hearted effort. “That should do it.” She sat back on her bed and let her body fall back until it reached the wall.

  It was already evening. Silva and her dad had eaten dinner, and now she could hear him watching a movie down the corridor. He had congratuted her for thinking about her health when she had told him about her pns to jog. And he had also ughed about her misery after he had seen the results.

  But that was fine. Getting in shape was never quick and took time and will. At least that’s what the guide she had read cimed. Silva hoped that the muscle ache would be gone soon. It couldn’t just happen after every workout, right? It would really suck.

  Fortunately, she had better luck concerning her ability, keeping her mood from turning downright pessimistic.

  Silva kept using it as much as possible, even when washing, cooking, on the toilet, running and, of course, when trying to fall asleep.

  Of course, it didn’t always succeed. When Silva woke up, the ability had turned itself off, but she was not sure at which point. She couldn’t figure out if it happened right after she fell asleep or ter.

  It had been years since Silva gained her ability. She had been actively using it ever since.

  While she could not cim to have experimented a lot, she still managed to increase her area of influence.

  At the start, Silva’s ability had coverage only as wide as her room. Now, it reached past ten meters, and she had the confidence to increase it even more.

  At least compared to her friends, Silva could say she had been very diligent in her practice, even if it was rgely unintended.

  The only thing she regretted was not having tried any other applications of her ability, and she hoped to rectify this in the following months.

  She wanted to try to hide objects from others, even while she was absent, hide only from selected people, speak while still under the effect of her ability and more. But for now, her attention had been drawn elsewhere.

  Flexing her proverbial muscles, she once again activated her ability. Silva concentrated on how it happened, how her power flowed, how it slowly coursed through her. The sensation of flow was definitely there.

  Silva’s mind wandered as she thought of the different energy types she had searched for on the net.

  There had been several. A lot of pces had descriptions of wonderful energies - be it in folklore, fantasy or religious texts.

  The problem was that most of them fit. Maybe not the religious ones. Silva didn’t really believe in higher forces.

  In the end, it did not matter what she was feeling but the fact that it was there. Truthfully, the feeling was very vague, and she had to…

  Not concentrate exactly… It was more akin to meditation, but instead of emptying her mind, it had to drift towards properties of her ability.

  The discovery came to her a few days ago. The day had been exhausting, and she had been spent. When the evening finally came, she was so tired that all she could do was fall into her bed and try to shut her mind down.

  Instead of falling asleep, she thought about the problems she and her friends had amassed seemingly from nowhere.

  After a good ten minutes of fretting, her mind had finally drifted to simply evaluating her ability. It was then that she had felt it for the first time.

  A feeling that she had felt only once before in her life when she had awakened her ability. It was very subtle, and back then, it had gone past her attention unnoticed. But thinking back now, it was simir.

  Slowly, Silva let her mind follow the lines along her body where the energy slowly circuted. Intangible was another word for how she thought of it. That, however, did not stop her from trying to influence it. For now, she was curious if she could slow or fasten the circution of this energy.

  After twenty more minutes, she finally gave up. Silva tried to figure out how to convey this new information to her friends. She felt that they could fare better than she did.

  Or maybe they might have some ideas of what exactly she was experiencing. And hopefully, they won’t think that she was crazy.

  Soon, Silva found herself returning to the earlier sleeping position with her face buried in the pillow. She had also tried the meditation positions found on the internet.

  None of them worked for her. They didn’t even change the difficulty of feeling the energy. After spending so much energy on various poses, she settled on simply lying down.

  It was much easier than sitting with her legs crossed - though her way came with the danger of falling asleep.

  Today, there had been no progress. Again. Tomorrow was the day that they had pnned on having the trip to the mountains, and the ck of progress weighed on her mind. If she had discovered something more, it would be easier to speak with her friends.

  But well… It was not the biggest worry. It did not even come in as the second biggest.

  They would be visiting the mountains tomorrow, and the monster wolf was still on the loose. There was some good news, at least.

  The test information revealed the wolf’s current position was far from their pnned destination - almost a day's drive away.

  The test news on TV had the hunters speak about their encounters and the general trend of the movement of the beast. It seemed to head in the entirely opposite way of where they were going. The app dedicated to its search also confirmed this notion. With that, Mika had lost the st excuse she had to stop this excursion.

  “... and speaking of Mika.” Silva stopped her observations for a moment. She still felt the energy on the edge of her perception, but after a few seconds, the sensation had faded. “She should be more careful with her wording to avoid any misunderstandings...”

  Silva was, of course, thinking about the name 'date'. She understood that it was only an expression. It wasn’t the first time she had heard someone refer to an outing this way.

  In a way, Silva enjoyed this interaction - even if she intentionally ignored that the word 'date' had many expectations attached to it.

  Or she tried to ignore it. “What am I even going to wear? I have nothing…”

  In her mind, she catalogued every piece of clothing she owned. There was nothing Silva could call presentable, and everything came up woefully cking.

  If Mika had not said 'date', Silva would have gone in jeans and a hoodie, but now she felt it was inappropriate for the occasion. “I'll have to put on make-up as well... Stupid Mika...” Silva grumbled to herself as she returned to the faux meditation.

  It worked out somewhat, as Silva cleared her mind in only a few minutes. She observed the energy, or more specifically, the amount. She had used her ability quite often today.

  By evening, whatever was fuelling the ability was running dry. Silva knew sleeping would replenish it, but it was not the fact of sleeping itself. Resting did the same, albeit at a lower rate if she calcuted correctly.

  There was one thing that bothered her about the energy’s recovery. Where did the energy come from? She had spent a lot of time studying the circution through her body and concluded the flows were closed loops. There was no start, nor there was an end.

  When Silva used her ability for a long time, the stream of energy started to run dry. When she rested, it returned to its previous capacity. That’s why it was strange.

  Silva furrowed her brows as she pondered the problem. The only other source she could think of was from around her. But she did not feel anything. “Maybe I just need to practice more?” The thought made Silva sigh. As always, she only got ‘maybe’ and ‘possibly’. Nothing was simple in her life tely.

  It was already getting te, and she expected no further results from her experimentation. It was already midnight, and it was time to get at least some sleep. Her father had gone asleep an hour ago already, so when she went to the bathroom to wash, she was extra careful to not make noise, only to remember that she could just use her ability to erase noise made by her.

  Silva still had to mind the distance, but for once, the apartment being so small had its upsides in cases like these.

  As expected, when she finally got to her bed, the sleep eluded her. It was not strange to her. Even though she knew tomorrow would be a busy day, she could not force herself to fall asleep.

  The problems she had to face just kept multiplying. That Amaraleo guy and mysterious number, the unclear future, the school, the small but constant trickle of suspicious news on the internet, the blue floating bead... “Wait… The bead!”

  Silva suddenly rose up. "Come to think of it, the energy around the crystal feels simir to the one I have in my body!"

  For the next few minutes, she tried to calm down. The implications of her conclusion…

  It was important. But without actually returning to that basement, she could only specute.

  Silva started to concentrate on her ability and her inner flow. She had to see if feeling out the energy would make her memory clearer.

  After comparing her memory with the flow in her body, Silva concluded she was not sure.

  With furrowed brows, she tried to recall every detail but to no avail. “It feels simir, but there is something different...”

  But what was the difference? Silva could not tell... However, the more she thought about it, the more confident she was.

  It was almost the same...“If only I could go back and check.” Silva thought but immediately discarded the idea. It was too dangerous. There were no guarantees that the pce was not secured more tightly after her break-in. There was no way it had not become more dangerous.

  There was something else too. The energy Silva felt in herself was a pittance to what she had sensed in the basement. Whatever had caused the phenomena only added to the danger, but at the same time, she remembered how that room had made her feel. The strength and confidence, the palpable improvements of how she felt and used her ability.

  Silva wondered where those ruffians had obtained something like that. After a moment of fantasising, she remembered how the bead itself had felt. Almost as if it reached for her very soul. She shuddered and discarded those thoughts, returning to her practice.

  After half an hour of aimlessly trying to feel the source of her energy, she opened her eyes. Sleep kept eluding her despite the tiredness she felt.

  Silva sighed, which was quickly becoming a habit. After longingly looking at her pillow, she decided to do something different. Her body was demanding rest, but her mind was still running wildly.

  After lying on her bed, Silva started her version of meditation. She had almost fallen asleep the st time she tried to meditate this way. Now, she hoped for a repeat of that time.

  To her satisfaction, Silva soon felt like drifting away as her mind seemed to flow together with the energy in her body. She activated her ability, wondering if it would st through her sleep this time.

  With a corner of her mind, she wondered what would happen if her father entered her room and found no one. Then she dismissed the idle thought as her father wouldn’t do that without her permission.

  The st thought she had before completely drifting away was how she should crify the dress code for her pnned meeting with Mika.

  –

  The loud ringing of the arm clock was quick to end Silva’s sleep. She hurried to find her phone to silence it. Her groggy state made it almost an insurmountable task.

  After what felt like a short fight with her unyielding eyelids, she opened her eyes to see her room faintly lit by the autumn morning sun. Not much light came in through the windows, but it was enough for her to see.

  Silva groggily sat up and zily scratched her stomach. Her mind was still catching up to her body as she stood up to walk to the bathroom. She slowly made her way, not bothering to be quiet, as her father had already left for work at this hour.

  When she returned to her room and slumped back in her bed, her mind had cleared up enough to take notice of one very obvious fact. She had her ability still active!

  Silva tried to remember if she had turned it on this morning, and she concluded that she had not. After she checked if her energy had been depleted, she was pleased to see that it had not. So that meant she had found a way to keep her ability on indefinitely!

  After regaining her composure, Silva realised that, while cool, the fact itself did not change anything. She already had an easy time keeping her ability up.

  The fact that she could do that forever meant little when she also had to live her life. There was no way she could spend all of her life as a hermit.

  And speaking of life, she was te for school. Letting out a curse, Silva quickly started dressing. The stiff joints did not help, and it became apparent that she would be te.