Day 74, Season of Summer, 507 AV
In the face of Kit's father's condition, and knowing she intended to spend more time with him, it made sense that Kit take some precautions.
She looked like her mother; there wasn't much way around that unless she wanted to veil her face, and Kit was not willing to do that. But under her father's advisement, she had her hair cut painfully short, almost like a boy's, and borrowed a hat to hold over her head, and cover the hair she had left. The results so far were promising, but Kit had no idea if it was because of the change in hair or if her father was in a string of good days.
He had Kit sit cross-legged in her aunt and uncle's vacant common room/kitchen/everything that wasn't the bedroom. She fidgeted, shook her head from side to side, still unused and uncomfortable with the lightness of her head, with the boyish look she sported without her hair and ponytail. She wondered, when could she begin to grow it back again? "Kit?" Her father said, and she jolted, looked up at her father. "Pay attention."
He was sitting also, but in a chair, still much higher than Kit. He winced as his fingers moved. Her father's eyes were focused for now entirely on her, not past her, on some distant dream. "There are four elements that a reimancer can touch." He held up a quartet of fingers. "Fire. Water. Air. Earth. The feeble may touch one. The adept may touch two. The excellent may touch three. And the truly great may touch all four."
"I know, Papa." Kit rolled her eyes. "Why you gotta keep sayin' it?"
"Because I just lied to you," he said, and Kit jerked upright, her eyebrows coming together. "It's a simple lie. An easy lie, because the reality is . . ." He pursed his lips. "Complicated. Kit . . . Do you know what lightning is?"
Kit narrowed her eyes, leaned forward and allowed her father time to make his case before she passed judgment. "Auntie says that when Zulrav gets angry, he throws the sea in the sky, and throws his lances at the earth, one by one. That's lightning."
He considered this. "She might be right, somewhat. But not completely." He shrugged, held out a hand, focused his eyes and murmured a word too quiet for Kit to hear. A red gel res from his hand, floated in midair. "Each of the four elements is new, unique, entirely its own. But there are others, paraelements between them, things given shape when one does not transmute something that is, say, fire or air. There are elements between the elements . . ."
He clenched his hand into fist and there was crack-buzz of electricity, the smell of burned oxone in the air as lightning danced about the ball of res, struggling desperately to escape and held only by her father's attraction. Kit's eyes went wide, thought and suspicion for a moment wiped clean by wonder.
"Have you ever wondered," he said, and he had to raise his voice to be heard over his own lightning. "What it might feel like . . . to throw the lance of a god?"
