William Trey, Water elemental

  Telling Selena when my own family doesn’t know hadn't been on my list of good ideas, but honestly it should’ve been. She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. The only reason I think she’s going to this shitty college instead of some high end place is because she didn’t want to have to move into dorms. To be fair, I could’ve gone to U of A or something. I probably will, once I’ve learned everything I can from here. I hope Selena chooses to as well. It'd be lonely, and difficult to make new friends.

  Classes pass by in a blur, all a fuzz in the back of my mind at the moment. Everything they’re teaching so far I already know, since my love for the way liquid makes things work, and building new things, grew into an obsession as a child. I’m pretty sure I could have made a water gun that could cut steel if I had the resources. I did, however, make one that could cut skin. Slowly. That, uh… was a memorable birthday party. Trevor, the dorky kid who always sat with me in fifth grade, nearly lost an arm. Rarely seen him since. I think he ended up moving.

  The city is illuminated by the street lamps lining the roads like knights, polluting and smothering the stars with their brightness. The slight chill of night doesn’t affect me. At all. It’s weird, since now that I’m focusing on it, I can tell it’s there, yet it doesn’t make me feel cold. If anything it makes me feel a little slow. Tougher, even, as if I were slowly turning into ice. Yet another thing I need to test. Tiring, isn't it? Cool, yeah, but tiring.

  As I make my way through the city I let out a sigh. I'm not exactly sure what I should be doing. Keeping it a secret? Yes. This is a big deal, since time had to stop to make it happen apparently. At least nobody has seen my power- wait, no that's not right. I froze that truck. The ice is probably mostly gone now, but people saw that. I doubt they would be able to remember my face, as it was all chaotic. But the street cameras will. I swear to myself as I continue making my way, not to my home, but the forest just outside of our subdivision.

  …

  “I told my mom that I was doing a bit of extra studying in the library.” I say, settling down onto the bench. Selena reaches up and, with a tug, the overhead light turns on, illuminating the little treehouse we made together. Honestly, making the thing was stupid. We had little expertise in building at the time. Luckily I knew about basic physics. I also knew how to hammer a nail, courtesy of Selena's late father.

  “Lousy.” She says, setting down a large notebook between us. “extra studying on your first day? You haven't even learned anything new yet.”“Nor will I for a while.” I say, flipping open the book. “Why is this filled with pictures of anime characters?”

  “Anime characters using water.” She corrects, grinning. “Plus some with blood or ice related powers, as your abilities seem attuned to liquids. I also got this.” She pulls a few other things out from her bag. First, a vial of blood. Second, a juicebox. Third, a jar of mud.

  “Why the mud?” I ask. “And why the cartoons?”

  “Look beneath them.” She points to below an image of a cartoony woman making a spear out of water. “It lists what abilities they're using and whatever processes are explained in the books for how they work.”

  “Oh, I get it now.” I say, nodding. “You want to see if I can become an anime character.”

  “No, I want to see if you are an anime character.” She corrects. “Big difference.”“Ill take your word on it.” I say flatly before picking up the jar. “Why the mud?”

  “Mud is just earth plus water.” She says. “Let's see if you can control it.”

  “Alright I guess.” I open the jar and pull some mud out, holding a clump in my hand. Focusing on it, I feel through the liquid in it and shudder slightly. “Eugh, it feels so gross. Humans were never supposed to experience this.” I mutter as I try to make the ball rise. I focus on making it lift into the air off my hand. The ball begins to rise, but it feels off. Weighted down.“Hmmm…” I mutter to myself. “Pull my notebook out of my bag.” Selena nods and pulls the book out of my bag, flipping to a new page. “I can control the water in the mud. But the dirt itself weighs it down. and look.” I point to where the mud slowly began to dry out on the outside. “The water seems to flow together more in order to be able to hold the whole thing up. This results in the outside layers of mud hardening into dirt while the inside stays soft and liquid. It's more like controlling a hand wearing a glove than controlling the glove itself, if that makes sense.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “No, it makes sense.” Selena nods, finishing making her notes and setting the book back down. “And the other liquids?”

  “I can feel them, same as the water. And it kind of feels like the mud, but to a far lesser extent.” Blood flows out of the open vial, forming into a crimson orb above one finger. “There's no loss of chemicals here. It's more thoroughly a part of the water, so it's easier. Mud is around 20-30 percent water. We will equalize it out at 25 for simplicity's sake.”

  As I talk, Selena makes notes as best she can. I'll have to simplify them later, but it's good for now. “Blood, however, is around 50 percent water. The plasma inside the blood, though, is between 90 and 95 percent water. Just input 92.5. I think I could separate this plasma from the blood, and I don't think it'd have much harmful effect if done in a human. well, besides the loss of 55 percent of your blood's composition. I'm not eager to test that though, so we will stick with this.” the blood flows back into the vial, and I begin the separation. out, 2 liquids flow. The first is a flowing red liquid, not dissimilar from the blood it was extracted from.

  “What is that?” Selena asks. “Wait, I think I remember. Red blood cells, right? that's all red blood cells?”“What I could get from it, yeah.” I nod. “there's less water in this though, so it's around as hard to hold onto as mud. I actually had to leave some water in to be able to control it at all. This is where the rest of the water is.” Next out flows a pale yellow liquid. I grin. “Liquid gold. This stuff is blood plasma. It's not actually as costly as gold. 200 dollars a liter I think.”“Why do you know all this?” Selena asks, frowning. “You sure you aren't actually planning to go into dissecting people or something?”

  “Nah, but I considered designing human augmentations once I grew up at one point. Spurred a whole year of research into the human body, its functions, prices of body parts, stuff that is and isn't necessary, why the human body is structured how it was, that sort of stuff. I don't only play video games, you know.”

  “Now that I think about it, you always did ask my mom lots of questions about blood, didn't you?” Selena leans forward, looking down at the floating yellow blood. “Looks like piss.”

  “The color of your pee isn't from this, actually, it's from the red blood cells.” I say, pointing to the red I put back in the glass. “The breaking down of red blood cells results in this chemical that makes pee yellow. Drinking water dilutes the yellow color.”

  “I wonder if drinking blue food dye makes your pee green.” Selena says to herself, picking up the juicebox and stabbing a straw into it.

  “What?” I give her a confused and slightly scandalized look. “I… actually, I don't know. Do we have service here? I wanna google it.”

  I pull my phone out of my pocket and turned it on. “3 bars. Should be fine.” I say, setting my phone down. She takes a moment to type into her phone, then nods.

  “Yep, green pee.”

  “Why did you even want to know that?”

  “For science!”

  “That’s not- well, it technically is science but- that’s not science!” I mix the yellow blood plasma back into the red blood cells and hand it back to her. “Now hand over the juicebox. I’m tired.”“You’re tired? I’ve been awake for 16 hours already. I should be asleep right now.” Selena shoots back, then hands me the joicebox. With a simple flex of will, the liquid rides up the straw and forms yet another ball in the air. I grin, trying to form it into a shape. A perfect sphere isn’t too hard, nor is a square or rectangle or really any complex shape. It’s when I want to form complex three dimensional shapes that it gets difficult.

  “Ooh, make it float into my mouth!” Selena enthusiastically stands up and opens her mouth wide. I roll my eyes, then split the juice into two balls. One ball, around the size of a regular sip of juice, I lightly toss into her mouth, while I keep the other, larger ball. She immediately chokes on it.

  “And here you call me the dumbass.” I say flatly, giving her a look as she swallows the fruit strawberry lemonade juice and catches her breath, now coughing on the floor. She shoots me a look that could kill, but it only makes me chuckle.

  “I want to argue with you, but I can’t, can I?” She sighs.

  “You get more enthusiastic when you’re tired. I have no idea how that works.” I say, raising an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

  “I think it’s a hormone problem.” She says as she gathers her things up. “I think it’s time for bed. You coming, or are you planning to sleep in the trees with the rest of your kind?”

  “If I wasn’t such a great friend I’d be offended by that.” I say flatly. “Actually, I choose to be offended anyway.” At the word “friend” I notice a subtle drooping in her body language, which worries me a not inconsiderable amount. Does she not see me as her friend or something? If she wants to tell me something, though, she will. She’s blunt like that.

  “Come on, let's go.” I pick up the book and climb down with her. As we make our way through the city, I fail to notice the way the water around us subtly leans towards me.