Raul and I stayed cocooned in a comfortable silence for a long while, a privy truce already happening between us. I didn’t see him as the enemy anymore. However, I was still working on separating him from the Queen in my equation of retribution.
“How long are we going to stay here? Aren’t we returning to class?” I asked after sometime, my back already yelling in pain for reclining against the hard wall for a long period of time.
Raul shrugged his shoulders at my question. “It’s not like there will be any class going on. Do you see any professor around? I bet the students are huddled in their classes, wondering what next would go wrong with..”
“With me, you mean….”
Raul gave me an apologetic look, but it was all right. It was understandable. Since we have been here, no students have come close, no teachers too. The fire was still burning. I was sure it had ventured into the other classes. Weren’t they coming to stop it?
“You know you are the only one that can quench that fire….”
I piqued my eyebrow, not understanding what Raul was saying. “What do you mean by that?”
Raul sighed. “I heard the teachers talking, when Mr Robert called for their help. The fire you called forth is not the ordinary fire, Dora. It’s like hades. It will only answer to you. You have to quench it.”
I stirred, stepping away from the wall. What manner of freak was I? My hands were beginning to shake. What the hell!
“And we have been standing here?! What the hell, Raul! Shouldn’t we be over there? More classes are getting consumed! Can’t you see that?” I yelled, my hands swinging up and down as I spoke. I was just about to saunter off in the direction of the burning flame, to do anything to bring the fire down, when Raul grabbed my arm.
“You think I don’t know that, Dora? Why do you think I am here with you?”
My eyes narrowed, wondering what he was talking about.
“You were frozen right in a fire that wasn’t consuming you, but was bent on consuming others. You had gotten out of control, and so had the element you summoned. The teachers had wanted to call Diana. Somehow, they knew Diana grounded you, could get you back to work, could balance your magic if a case rises where her magic is needed…but it is dangerous.”
“And you volunteered….” I muttered, sinking my fingers into my hair, absolutely frustrated. “Thank you…” I said, not minding that the reason why he had come hadn’t been to really save me or something heroic like that. It was to save Diana. Or was it something else?
I shook my head. This was not important now. “What do I do? How do I quench the fire?” I asked, my words, enough of a hurrying tool to retrieve him from the hard wall.
“We quench it. Come this way.”
I nodded, and followed Raul back to the magic room, or rather back to the hallway which was choked with smoke and soot.
Raul instantly created a transparent huge ball that encased us, and prevented us from inhaling the smoke. The ball glittering with magic was also impenetrable, if the fire not getting into it was any indicator. All the same, we walked into one of the classrooms, the one which the fires had taken to at the moment.
“We have to stop it here, before it enters another class.”
I nodded again, flexing my hands. “What do I do?”
Raul glanced at me with a scrunched face, as if he expected that I knew the answer to that, or at least a part of it.
“Raul, I have no control over my magic. As a matter of fact, I don’t know the head or tail of it. It just…happens.”
Raul shook his head. “That is not so.”
Really? Trying to tell me my own feelings about the situation?
“I saw you on the live feed that day. You concentrated your magic and attacked Chyra. You had some semblance of control. I don’t know what’s going on with you now, but you need that semblance of control back.”
I opened my mouth to tell him that in actual sense I wasn’t the one with control, that it was my significant other, but then I shut it. That would be messing with his mind, and probably putting myself in the Queen’s hot soup again. As much as there was a semblance of truce between me and Raul now, I didn’t completely trust him.
“I don’t know what happened between you and my mother, but if that is what is making your magic spurn out of control, then forget it. Do you want me to help you forget?”
Situation with the Queen? Guy, the queen hasn’t that much over me!
However, before I could say something, Raul was in my face, and his lips were placed softly on mine. This was his method of forgetting? How in the world would this make me forget the Queen.
“Forget…” He whispered, and right about the moment I opened my mouth to ask what that meant, his tongue slipped into my mouth gently as if it had always belonged there.
His lips instantly took possession of my mouth totally, gently, in such a way that I moaned, and actually did forget the fire burning around us. When he disengaged from the kiss, I was still reeling from the experience.
“Might not be as good as the ones you have tasted in the city…”
I shut him up with a kiss.
What was that about being not as good as those in the city? He should save the humility for someone else.
However, when we disengaged, I was just as surprised as him. I didn’t explain myself. I understood now what he had meant by forgetting. The kiss had caused a lot of my overwhelming emotions to float in the background, and if I don’t stir them, if I don’t stir the question pool that the kiss had caused too, I might be aloof enough to stay in control.
“You get it now?”
I nodded, flexing my fingers again, not looking at him. My face was still hot. My lips were still tingling.
“Now, I’m going to get rid of the ball. You are going to protect you and I from being burnt. Are you ready?”
I nodded, even though I was not sure. But Raul being burnt for my sake was enough motivation to not stir the emotions within me. Diana was another.
“Take it off. I can do it.” I said, immediately retreating into that part of my mind that housed my significant other.
‘I need your help. I can’t do this without you. Can you help?’
‘You ignored me.’
I held myself from rolling my eyes.
‘I can still feel you rolling your eyes.’
Raul was muttering a chant now. I wasn’t sure for what, but it gave me the time I needed to talk with my other.
‘Will you help me or not?’
There was a silence, that had me gritting my teeth. It dare not abandon me now.
‘I will help you.’ It finally said, causing me to sigh in deep relief. ‘But I won’t be possessing you, only at the last minute, should you need it. I will guide you rather.’
That was alright by me. ‘Let’s go. I am ready.’
‘A deep breath in. The kiss from the wizard had helped calm your horses, however you need to build on that calmness. Take in a second inhalation of air, and then allow yourself to feel the energy coursing around you. Center your mind on it…’
As my significant other spoke, I followed the instructions to the later, aware of the exact moment that the shield around me and Raul was removed, aware of the exact moment Raul started to cough.
This needed to work. Guy was effing serious.
When the heat caused sweat to prickle down my skin, and my throat to close up, I didn’t falter from honing the energy within me.
‘Now, follow the energy. Wherever it leads you, go with it. Dance with it, if it is required.’
I followed that too. I flowed with the energy within me, distinctly aware of Raul falling to the ground, distinctively aware of my legs moving in a circular motion.
I was spurning around an orbit slowly, as if I was waltzing to a beat. My tongue loosened, as the magic increased within me, as the eye of it that dwelled in me, opened and stirred itself. It was then I began to hum.
My hands and feet continued the slow orbital movement, and I kept humming the tone I knew not where it came from, or the lyrics that accentuated it. I kept on, until I could feel the heat of the flames fading away, until I could feel their vengeance ebbing, until I couldn’t hear their cries anymore, until their fury died down.
I kept on, until I could no longer perceive the smoke in the atmosphere, until I could no longer perceive the smoke on my clothes. I continued until the air was pristine clean, until the air was as good as new.
I continued until Raul tapped me by the arm, stopping my waltz.
“You did it, Dora. It’s done.”