side. His head hangs forward and one of his eyes bulges from its socket. He has greasy, curly salt and peppered hair and a toothless mouth. I get close enough to notice a disgusting smell emanating from the stranger, a mix of sewage and blue cheese…if it weren’t for the fact that I’m desperate to find out what’s going on, I would run away from this scene as fast as I possibly could. As I stare into the whites of his eyes, I see his pupil jump and move in my direction. It’s as unexpected as having a corpse move it its coffin. Everything else happens in a fraction of a second. The man grabs me by the arm and shoves me aside. He points to the car and shoots a translucent jet towards it. The shock wave that it produces halts the car in its path towards the ground. It raises the car into the air and gently deposits it on the ground, on all four wheels as easily as if it were a sheet of tissue paper, all that with one hand gesture. Gertrude gets up and stretches nonchalantly as if she were stepping out of a comfortable bed. The man answers in a voice filled with arrogance.
“There, I don’t owe you anything anymore Gertrude, I want you to leave me alone and never cross my path again. Forget my name, I’ve had enough of the magical world, I want to be forgotten, do you hear me?” He doesn’t wait for an answer and disappears into the bushes.
Gertrude runs towards me, almost skipping. Incredible, her energy level returned and I’m flabbergasted.
“Oh my God, my dear, I knew it! Ether, it’s so obvious,” she said with the excitement of a child in front of a pile of Christmas gifts.
“What are you talking about, and what just happened? And who was that grumpy, crazy old man?” I say as I lean on the hood of the car, still steaming from its magical encounter.
“The grumpy old man who just left is Ernest. He owed me a favor. His sign is Ether and his gift is telekinesis, he can move objects. I asked him to wait for us here and to cause an accident. That was the only way that I could uncover your gift in an accelerated way. The same sign as your mother, it’s wonderful, she would be so proud to find out!”
“So I was the one who stopped the car back there? I can do telekinesis as well? I moved a jar of peanut butter this morning just by thinking about it. And what would have happened if I had had another sign? We would have died in the accident! Are you completely nuts? If you have a death-wish, please leave me out of it!”
Gertrude approaches, her arms wide, I imagine she wants to comfort me, but for the moment it’s a little bizarre, she’s crazy.
“Relax dear, give me a chance to explain. You don’t have the gift of telekinesis, Lou, but something even better than that. The jar probably moved because you had just been looking at the book and sometimes that can mess with the energy that you give off. No, your gift is that you can stop time for a few moments, maybe even for a few minutes with practice. But don’t worry, if your sign hadn’t been Ether, Ernest would have been able to control the car. Although I have to say that once I saw the ground coming up at us, and the car started to rollover, the thought did occur to me that he might choose not to control it. Your gift to manipulate time gives you so many options! But, for now, it will take a lot of energy…that’s why you can’t yet do it on command.”
“But that was a little extreme, wouldn’t you could say?! I still have my heart in my throat! So, I’m like my mother? Does Ether give me other abilities?”
“As I told you, Ether is one of the rarest of signs and one of the most impressive. It will be a great advantage to you when you are at the training center as you will be able to create your own team, and that will help us later on, that’s for sure. Also, as a Moonchild and with your gifts, you will be very powerful. Those with Ether as a sign are holders of one of these four gifts: telekinesis like Ernest, clairvoyance
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