“Now, Xavier, let's go over the basics. The first item we will go over is intent. A script needs to know what you want from it, what you INTEND to use it for. For example, let's talk about my force script. When I walk up into the air, my intent for that script is to create something solid where there is nothing. My intent was to force the air to lock in place and give my feet something solid to push off of.

  “WOH! That is so cool dad! Can you make a ladder into the sky?”

  Phil looked up at the sky and made one of those huffing sounds that makes your cheeks pop out before speaking. “I suppose…” he said and then paused for a few second before continuing. “I could if I was able to hold my intent. But that would be hard to do with something that size and if I didn’t fail right away, I probably would only end up turning the entire ladder solid and basically making a tall wall. As cool as your father is… Large script usage is not my specialty.”

  “How big of a shelf wall could you do?” Cale asked with amazement in his eyes, he didn’t care that his dad couldn’t make a big ladder. He was just impressed with his father overall and he wanted to know more about him.

  Phil looked around the area trying to gauge the size of the camp before responding. “I could probably make a wall as wide as this camp, though it wouldn’t last long at all.”

  “Could I shoot through it?”

  “Shoot? Like fire a ballista?”

  “No, like my script! Could your wall be one way and I could use my script through it, but things couldn’t come through from the other side?”

  “Xavier, I’ve never heard of such a thing, and my script couldn’t handle something like that. Maybe another force script could? There are a lot of cool force scripts out there, I once saw a script that was able to lock down an entire camp, about half the size of our base, with kinetic force.”

  “What do you mean lock down? They couldn’t move or they were just stuck in place?”

  “They couldn’t move. I was caught up in it and I remember only being able to move my eyes.”

  Cales’s eyes widened in amazement. “That is so cool,” he said in a quiet whisper as his brain contemplated the things someone could do with a skill like that. “Dad, you need that skill. If you had a room of enemies, you could freeze the air around them so they couldn’t breathe, you could possibly even freeze their hearts!”

  Phil stood there looking stunned as his not even five-year-old child discussed violent script ideas like he was talking about his favorite toys.

  “…uh Xavier. I can see you are excited about this. But what you just described is a little terrifying and I am a bit concerned about how fast you thought of those scary and brutal options… it’s ok if you share your ideas here, but don’t say stuff like that with other people around. OK?”

  “Sorry dad,” Cale said with his head down low. He had just gotten so excited and wanted to spit out ideas. “I don’t know why my mind went there when there are a lot of other cool things you could do, like make stairs to pick fruit from trees, or use the force barrier to re-direct water or to hold up a collapsing building, or…”

  “Yes, yes, yes. Those are all applications of ways to use force if you had the correct script.” Phil said with a nervous laugh. “Now let's move on to the next item. Focus, unless you want to keep listing ideas...”

  Cale shook his head no. He realized he was overcompensating and didn’t want to make it any more awkward.

  His father, seeing that Cale was ready to move on, continued with the lesson.

  “Intent without focus is like trying to read a book with the chapters in the wrong order. All the elements of the story are there... it just doesn’t make any sense.”

  Cale gave his dad a quizzical look as his analogy didn’t make much sense either.

  Seeing Cale’s face, Phil looked up and closed his eyes, making weird noises to himself for a few seconds before yelling out “Ah ha!” and then facing Cale again.

  “Ok, Xavier, you just watched me fly through the air with my force script, right?”

  “Yes, I saw you WALKING on air… Why?”

  Phil reeled back in fake shock at his son's clarification of his ability causing Cale to chuckle.

  “Walking... Flying... Close enough.” Phil said waving his hand as if he was trying to dismiss Cale’s comment before continuing. “Now imagine that is you up there, imagine that you are standing on an invisible platform and as long as it holds, you stay in place. Now close your eyes and imagine yourself standing there. Got it?”

  Cale could see that his dad was really enjoying this moment with his son. He watched his dad's eyes light up with excitement as he explained the basic ideas behind scripts to him. His father's love of scripts was entertaining for him to see, and he found himself smiling without trying to as he enjoyed the moment. Cale played along and closed his eyes while he imagined himself standing in the air like his father had described, he could see the tops of the trees and his dad looking at him from below. He imagined his dad waving and jumping around with joy. He then imagined how he was standing in the air; he imagined the air below him looking like a solid blue crystal with dimmer white, but defined edges. The air, the very matter itself below him, locked in place. With this image in his mind, Cale nodded his head. “I am imagining myself floating in the air, now what?”

  “Perfect! Now imagine as you float in the air, your mother comes into view and starts to yell at you. What do you do?”

  “She probably wants me to get down, so I wave at her!” Cale said with a smirk on his face.

  “Uh... ok. Tell me Xavier, as you imagine your mother waving to you, what has happened to the platform you were standing on? Were you just thinking about it at all?”

  “The platform is still beneath me?” Cale said questioningly, he felt like he was about to get the answer wrong.

  “Correct, but incorrect. When you waved at your mother, were you still keeping the intent of the platform in place? Or did you forget about it and completely focus on waving?”

  Cale opened his eyes and looked at his dad. A vague understanding of what he was trying to say was dawning on him.

  “Dad, if I stop thinking about a script. Does it go away?”

  Phil nodded his head, “Yep, pretty much.”

  “How does it look when you lose focus on your scripts while in the air?

  A huge smile appeared on Phil’s face. “I’ll show you!” he basically yelled to Cale and then jumped into the air, landing on an invisible platform that made it look like he was hovering in the air.

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  Phil remained suspended in the air as he continued with the lesson. “Since I am using air as the base for my force script, when I lose focus…” he trailed off as he slowly started to sink in the air and then suddenly dropped the last few feet to the ground.

  "A script normally doesn’t stop working immediately. It will start to fail, and if you don’t recover your focus, it will fail entirely. That was what happened when I slowly dropped and then seemed to fall. Make sense?”

  Cale nodded his head in understanding. What his dad told him did make sense, but he didn’t have a scale for how much focus was needed. He needed to start using his scripts to get an understanding. He didn’t think his dad was stalling, but he was running out of patience as his desire to use his script was making him fidget on the spot.

  “Can I give it a try?” Cale asked as he rubbed his hands together in an excited fashion. His eagerness betraying any tone he tried to keep stable in his voice.

  His dad laughed when he saw his anticipation. “Sure thing, son. Don’t be upset if you don’t get your script to work like you want when you start. It often takes a couple of months to get an understanding of it and will take years before you can consider yourself good at using it.”

  This was news to Cale, but it didn’t deter him because he had already used a script, and he had used it when he was much younger.

  His dad motioned for him to go to the center of the clearing before continuing with his instructions.

  “Now our goal here is not to have you slice a tree in half like you did that Giant Condor. No, our goal here is to have you activate a script a few times so you can get the feel for it. Once you feel confident in its activation, we will then work on intent and focus. I will be only a few feet behind you so I will be close by in case anything happens. I don’t expect it to, but you are not the normal case. Ok? Are you ready?”

  Cale nodded his head and listened as his father continued.

  “The first thing we are going to work to do is getting you used to the feel of your script. We will do that by using a script a few times in a row. The first few activations can be tiresome, and people frequently pass out. So don’t be surprised if you activate your script and everything goes black. Ok?”

  Cale looked back at his dad with a hint of mild concern on his face. He was about to say something when he remembered how tired his little baby body had been when he used his script the first time, and he had passed out after his dad caught him. He was fine now, so it was probably nothing to worry about.

  He turned his attention forward. His wind script – splitting Air of the West Wind – was going to be the first script he would use. It had been there for him when he needed it the most, it was his longest known script, and he thought it wouldn’t be fair if he used another script to learn with.

  He planted his feet on the ground and opened his interface. He stared at his script for a few moments as he thought about the first time he activated it. It had been fairly simply, mostly a point and shoot type of thing, so he didn’t expect it to be difficult. He was quickly proven wrong when he decided to use his script and just wing it.

  He activated the script and waited the painfully long time it took to do whatever it did before working. He soon was distracted by the wait time and by the time he realized the script was starting, he had lost his focus and he watched the script almost fully fall apart right in front of him. In an attempt to try and save it, he locked his willpower down and tried to hold on to a small sliver of the script that remained. Instead of steadying the script, the slice of his remaining wind script took off! Zooming along the ground and slamming into a tree, blowing off some bark.

  While not bad for his first practice attempt, it was a pale shadow of the first time he had used the script. He wasn’t disappointed that the spell didn’t work as well as the first time he used it. That had been a life and death situation, one where the needed focus, willpower, and intent came naturally. Here he was in a safe-ish environment with his dad watching. He didn’t need to put everything into his script in order to survive, which meant his focus and intent were not at a life and death level, and it showed. Cale opened his interface and saw that the script's energy bar had already been refilled. He was about to activate it when he heard his father start talking to him.

  “Not bad, Xavier! Now that your script is empty, we will get the camp ready. You should be able to use your script again once we are done setting up.”

  “Dad, my script is already ready. Can I practice a few more times before we setup camp?”

  “It’s ready… already? If it is ready then yes, go for it. We can wait longer while you keep practicing. How many more times can you activate your script?”

  “No idea,” Cale shrugged, “When I used it years ago it took a long time to fill, now it happened almost immediately.”

  “Hmm,” his father mumbled as he stood there scratching his chin for a few moments.

  “I think it’s fine. Just as long as you don’t hurt yourself. If you feel yourself becoming exhausted, then stop.”

  Cale gave his dad a nod before focusing back on his script. It was his second try, and he wanted to do better than his first attempt. He stood firmly in place and imagined what he wanted his script to achieve. He focused on the idea of a wind blade, a blade of wind that was as sharp as a knife and would slice through things with ease. He was starting to get into this whole imagining thing and in his mind, he saw the blade of wind having a whispery fog trailing off of it, and imagined the blade being white with a blue undertone to it along the blade edge.

  He activated the script and put his hand out like before, as he waited for the script to activate, it occurred to him that he had not imagined how far the blade of wind would go, or how much force to put behind. In a split-second decision, he decided that his intent with the spell was for it to slowly float out in front of him until it hit a tree, then it should stop. He didn’t attempt to think about it any more than that since he could feel his script finally activating.

  He kept his eyes closed as the script activated, he envisioned in his mind the floating blade of wind, slowly moving forward. Once the script had fully activated, he dared to open his eyes and see what his work had brought him. Before him was the blade of wind he had envisioned. It was sleek looking and very sharp; the sun glistened off the tip of the blade and the foggy effect behind it moved gently with the natural air moving around it.

  Cale stood there in amazement of his script. There was one flaw though, He realized that he hadn’t thought about the SIZE of the wind blade. It was easily 15-20 feet in length from tip to tip and was over a foot long front to back. It was what he imagined but not what he imagined. He was happy that it was at least as thin as a kitchen knife like he had wanted it to be. He had held that part of his intent very securely in his mind and would have been disappointed if it didn’t turn out.

  With Cale looking at his script, and not focusing on intent, the script began to destabilize, and Cale let it happen. He was curious about what happened to the script when it stopped having intent and willpower given to it and he wanted to watch it happen. The script didn’t go out in a loud boom like he kind of hoped it would, nor did it fall to the ground with a big thud. Instead, it started to slowly fade away, quickly starting to become completely invisible on the edges. Then, when the script was half visible, it simply dissipated. No fanfare, no noise, it was just gone.

  “Was that what you were expecting?” came his father voice from behind him. A tone of concern barely hidden in his voice.

  “Not exactly, a bit bigger than I wanted but it came out fairly close.”

  “Oh. Uh… Well…”

  “I think I know why it came out this way.” Cale said quickly, interrupting his dad. “I’m going to go again if that’s ok.”

  “…” Cale’s father just blinked.

  Cale looked over at his dad who wasn’t saying anything, “Dad, is it ok if I go again?”

  “Uh. Yes. One. Well. Ok. Yes. Continue to practice, we can talk after.”

  Cale looked at his dad and if he could have raised an eyebrow, he would have. He wasn’t used to his dad stumbling over his words and he wasn’t sure why. Cale watched his dad for a few seconds after he stopped talking and didn’t see his dad doing anything weird, so Cale re-focused on his script. He repeated his last motions as his previous attempt, but when it came to the design of the wind blade, he reinforced the idea that the blade was only as wide as his hand. When the script activated, he didn’t immediately look at it, he kept his eyes closed and maintained his intent in his mind, he didn’t want it to dissipate as quickly as last time so he could observe it longer. When he finally felt confident that his intent would hold, he opened his eyes and focused on his script.

  “Yes!” Cale screamed as he jumped up and down with excitement. Soon he was doing a silly dance where he punched the air in front of him while sliding his feet back and forth. He couldn’t contain his excitement! He had come out here concerned that his scripts wouldn’t activate or that he had broken something when he activated his script years ago. But instead, his first learned script looked and functioned exactly how he wanted it to.

  Soon, despite his best dancing, his script started to dissipate into the environment and Cale let it fade away like the last one. He was ecstatic by the success of his first few attempts at using one of his scripts and felt like he was flying. He looked over at his dad, who hadn’t moved at all and whose face was unusually unreadable.

  “Xavier, let’s set up camp,” were all the words his father said, his somber tone causing Cale’s excitement to falter. Cale didn’t argue and soon he was helping his dad prepare camp for the night.