We ate the sandwiches Mom and Eiea made with haste. The last two days had been full of twists and turns and now it was pretty much the first time we had been able to sit down and relax a bit. As such, all that strain came back to us as ravenous hunger, our plates were clean in no time. We were still hungry after that, so we made more sandwiches, then grabbed ice cream in the freezer and devoured those as well. We lingered around the kitchen table for a while in silence, trying to digest both our lunch and thoughts. After a long moment, Eiea got up from her chair.

 

“Alrighty, should we start the training immediately?”

“Right now?”

“Sure, why not?”

 

I felt like it was a bit sudden, but after thinking about it, I couldn’t find a reason to postpone it so I nodded and got up as well.

 

“Veronica, can we borrow the attic?”

“Why the attic? It’s never been used, it’s probably incredibly dirty.”

“We need somewhere to practise without windows, just in case. And, although it is incredibly unlikely that something will happen today, in the future practice might become pretty destructive so it’s a good idea to pick somewhere without many breakable things around.”

 

Mom needed a bit more convincing, but eventually she allowed us to use it. We went upstairs and found the trapdoor leading up inside a small closet in the corridor outside the bedrooms. Eiea knocked on it a few times, making a face that seemed like she was listening intently to something, and then pulled on the leather strap affixed to the little door. It opened and a small wooden staircase unfolded, spreading an intense amount of dust around the small space. I retreated outside, coughing a bit but Eiea looked unbothered. She quickly spun her hands together and all of the disturbed dust in the air swirled and gathered in front of her in a small mass that she threw back up with a casual flick of the wrist. Then, looking at the staircase remarkably less dusty but still encroached in spiderwebs, she gave the side of it a few taps of the palm and then spun her hand in the same fashion as earlier. The reminder of the dust as well as the webs were pulled off the wood, bundled together and thrown up from whence it came.

 

“What’s the point of putting back up? We’re gonna have to deal with it anyway if we want to use the room.”

“True, but it’s easier to get rid of if it's all in one place. Give me a moment, you stay down here and grab a garbage bag in the meantime.”

 

She climbed the stairs up, disappearing in the darkness of the small hole in the ceiling, and immediately I could hear sounds that were difficult to interpret. I left downstairs to grab a garbage bag in the kitchen. When I came back up, Eiea was waiting for me outside the closet. In front of her was levitating a large grey ball. It was as big as a beach ball, slowly rotating in mid-air. It was hard to tell, but sometimes hints of what composed it floated up to the surface from deeper in. Spider webs, dust, fragments of wood, various dead bugs, etc. I felt queasy looking at the disgusting display.

 

“Open up the bag”.

 

I did as I was told, opening the garbage bag as wide as I possibly could, trying to bring my hands as far as possible from the centre so that, hopefully, the large sphere of debris wouldn’t touch me. My fears were unfounded, however, as it slowly lowered down into the bag, shrinking as it approached the entrance to a size that would have no trouble missing my grip on the edges of the opening. Once it was completely in, Eiea told me to close the bag. I quickly closed it shut, twisting it a few times so that it wouldn’t open again. As soon as I finished doing that, Eiea stopped her fragment and the bag expanded suddenly as its contents were released from their prison. I brought the bag out of the house as fast as I could, dumping it in the large trash bin in front. I held out my breath the whole way, for no reason other than the fear of smelling something foul erupting from what I was holding. When I came back to the closet, Eiea nodded in satisfaction before climbing up the stairs once again, telling me to follow her. I hesitated for a few seconds before following the confident witch into the darkness above.

 

Eiea brought out a small electric lamp from somewhere and, even though I knew that she had just cleaned it, I was astonished at how dirtless the attic was. The floor was almost bare, showing old, unvarnished yet unrotten wood. A few boxes were lying in a corner, their content unknown. The ceiling was also devoid of any detritus, a few diagonal wooden beams supporting it. The whole place, despite how neat it now was, was enveloped in an eerie atmosphere. Perhaps it was created by the yellow light of the lamp. It would probably have been worse if there were a lot of objects occupying the space, the barrenness of it a bit comforting as it meant unknowns had no refuge to possibly hide in.

Out of curiosity, I approached the boxes in the corner, inspecting them. They were as clean as the rest, one made of wood and one of plastic. Opening the wooden one, I found old supplies. Tired sheets and covers, a curtain of dubious taste and various other pieces of cloth. The whole seemed like it came right out of the 70s. I had never seen them before, naturally since neither Mom nor I had ever used the attic before. These were probably left by the previous occupants, or even the ones before. I quickly checked the other boxes, finding nothing of much interest besides old clothes, kitchenware, a small oil lamp and a number of other things that somehow felt like they came from a time when electricity in homes wasn’t yet a thing.

 

A clap from behind me made me turn around.

 

“Alrighty, ready to start training?”

“Yes, but what kind of training is it?”

“You’ll see.”

 

Eiea sat down on the floor in the middle of the attic, gesturing me to sit down in front of her. After I did so, we looked at each other for a moment before she showed an expression like she just remembered something.

 

“Ah! I forgot something, be right back.”

 

So, she did just remember something. Eiea stood up and disappeared in the trap door leading to the closet with impressive speed. It took mere moments before she came back, slightly slower this time. She was holding a glass of water in her hand, which is probably the reason she couldn’t run back. She sat down in front of me again and deposited the glass in between the two of us.

 

“We will be using this glass of water for the first step of our training. What do you think that will be?”

 

It wasn’t very hard to guess after what we talked about earlier.

 

“We’re gonna train my fragment, right?”

“Correct. The first step that we need to clear is obvious. To train your fragment, you must learn to consciously invoke its effects. Of course, we don’t know yet exactly what kind of effect it had, but we can hazard a guess with the only time you used it. Yesterday, the effect it had was the amplification of your voice, enough to create a shockwave. So we will strive to reproduce something similar.”

“You want me to shout at the glass of water until I shatter it or something?”

“Not quite. Can you tell me what you felt when your fragment activated for the first time?”

“...It felt weird. Completely different from when I speak normally. It wasn’t a… vibration in my throat. More like a wave that came from within and propagated outwards with my voice.”

“Hum, that was my guess. I don’t think your fragment necessarily has to do with your voice. If that was the case, you would’ve felt the power surging directly from your throat, not from beyond. I believe it to be a safe bet to assume that you can produce shock waves or vibrations from any part of your body. And that is what we are going to try to do.”

 

Eiea approached the glass with her hands, putting the around the top part of it while keeping a gap of a few centimetres between them and the object. Then, slowly, the water began to visibly turn. At first, there were only slight ripples on top of the water, but soon enough they intensified, and out of seemingly nowhere a vortex was produced. It was like the water was being stirred but an invisible, intangible spoon. After a few seconds, she retracted her hands and the turbulence in the water slowly died over the next moments until it became completely still again.

 

“For the type of fragments I have, and that I believe you have as well, the simplest form their influence can take is something like this. These fragments are capable of influencing the matter around their user in some way, in my case it is by twisting or warping it. In your case, I think the creation of vibrations will be the simplest interaction you will be able to make. So I want you to try the same thing. Put your hands around the glass, without touching it. Then, concentrate on your hands and the space between them. Recall the feeling you felt as you invoked the fragment for the first time. Your goal will be to simply make the water ripple ‘on its own’.”

 

Indeed, it sounded simple when she explained it like this. I put my hands around the glass, leaving the same gap Eiea did earlier.

 

“Should I close my eyes?”

“Not sure if that would help or not. The influence of the five senses on fragments is different for everyone. Some succeed better when they can see their target, some only need to visualize the result. Try either and see what you’re more comfortable with.”

“How about you?”

“Me? Nowadays it doesn’t make much difference, but when I started it was easier with my eyes closed.”

“I see.”

 

I closed my eyes and concentrated on my hands. A ripple was the only thing I needed to create. It should be easy, right? Compared to the force I generated yesterday, such a small scale should be simple… I think? I focused on imagining and visualizing the glass of water. It’s still surface, its transparency, the curvature of the glass, it’s texture on my skin, it’s temperature… What temperature was it? I opened my eyes, putting my hand to the side of the glass. Tiny ripples were created on the surface of the water, but that wasn’t from my fragment. The smooth exterior felt cold to the touch.

Satisfied, I closed my eyes again, resuming where I had stopped. I imagined it, the feeling of a wave of power going through my body and my hands. Where should it come from? Yesterday it was lower than my neck. My bosom? My heart? Does it matter? I didn’t know. For now, it felt most natural to imagine it coming from the hands directly. Trying hard to imagine that feeling in my hands, I clenched unwittingly small muscles in my hand and wrist. Or perhaps it was my triceps. Either way, I felt my hands starting to shake slightly. Conjuring in my mind the sensation I was trying to reach, over and over, I slowly became frustrated. It didn’t come at all. What if I had succeeded and I didn’t know because my eyes were closed? I opened them, my gaze landing on the flat, featureless surface of the water.

 

“If you succeed, I'll tell you, so don’t worry. Focus on concentrating.”

“‘Focus on concentrating’ is redundant.”

“If you have time to point that out, you have time to focus more.”

“Cheeky.”

 

Eiea chuckled as I closed my eyes again. I don’t know how much time passed while I tried, repeatedly, to produce the slightest feeling of something not caused by my muscles or my imagination. I think I fell in a sort of trance at some point, or maybe I fell asleep. Either way, I ended up lowering my hands in discouragement.

 

“It doesn’t work.”

 

Eiea put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing it.

 

“Don’t worry too much about it. It’s perfectly normal not to succeed the first time.”

“Yeah? So nobody you know succeeded on the first try?”

“Well… One guy does like to tell people that he did. But knowing him, the chances are high that he’s just bullshitting.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll refrain from telling you that for now. I don’t want to give you false expectations either too high or too low.”

 

I frowned, dissatisfied, but Eiea just patted my head a few times, ruffling my hair, before grabbing the glass and rising to her feet. I picked myself up as well, following her down the stairs. Once in the corridor, she casually waved a finger and the staircase pulled up, vanishing behind the trapdoor.

 

“Can you not casually do something I just failed at?”

“Haha, sorry. Don’t feel so grumpy, I’m sure you’ll get it soon enough.”

“Are you telling me that just to cheer me up or?”

“...Sorta. We can’t actually guess how much time it’ll take. I don’t know the average of all witches, but most of the ones I know got it in a few weeks.”

“Weeks?! It’s that long?!”

“As I said, it varies a lot. Don’t let that lower your spirit.”

“Fine”

 

I looked at the nearby window, but the outside couldn’t tell me how much time we spent up in the attic. All I knew is that it was still midday looking. We got down to the first floor and, on the microwave, I saw 15:00. 

 

“We stayed for almost 2 hours!”

“Yes, you were truly concentrating hard.”

 

Mom greeted us with a smile from the table, reading a book I did not recognize.

“Welcome back! How did it go?”

“Terribly”

“Don’t be so defeatist, Maria. She didn’t succeed today, but that’s normal. It takes some time for everyone before they can use their fragment at will.”

“Oh so that’s the kind of training you two were doing. That makes sense.”

 

Mom nodded in understanding. I grumbled, wanting to express my frustration, but she only giggled and pointed at the oven with her thumb.

 

“In the meantime, I made biscuits. You can eat one when they are ready and cheer up, alright?”

 

It’s not like I could keep being mad at my failure for long, so I took this hint to smile a bit. However, Eiea went and broke that quickly.

 

“Ah, that’ll be perfect for when we come back from the second training.”

“The second training? You didn’t mention that.”

 

I lifted my brow at her as much as I could, but she ignored it.

 

“When you are able to use your fragment, we will be able to combine both into one training, but for now it’ll be separate.”

“What kind of training is it?”

 

Eiea smiled and somehow, I felt a little chill down my spine.

 

“We’re gonna run. A lot.”