Hexus

*27* Shiver

[8:40PM, November 14, UTC +01:00]

The skin on the tip of Portia's nose was really beginning to sting. She ignored the bite of the cold and waited impatiently, pulling lightly at the fur on top of the boots placed in her lap to keep her hands somewhat occupied. Her bare feet dangled off the edge of the wooden dock, dipped in the cold English Channel. She had focused her magic only around the area, exciting the water molecules to keep herself warm.

Henri, are you there?

She sighed tiredly, looking over the sea as fishing boats set off for the night and small dark waves crashed against the shore. Maybe he's late, she thought. She sent out another message, hoping that he would at least give her some sort of response.

Or maybe he can't hear me.

Her awareness of water seemed to be increasing every day, she noticed, unlike in the late summer months when she could barely sense anything beyond a few meters' radius. She'd initially blamed it on the humidity, but Master Tenzin had informed her that the turn of  Fall was at her anti-zenith. Right before he told her that she had learned all she could from him and should be able to survive on her own. She hated to admit it, but she actually missed the little man. She and Henri had learned so much from him, and many of those skills were useful when they had to battle the coven of carnivorous sirens a few weeks later.

She closed her eyes and let her mind feel through the water, enjoying the repetitive undulations of waves crashing, the currents moving in several directions, the consistency constantly disrupted by the millions of aquatic life beneath and the boats tearing through the surface. The very essence of the element filled her with a sense of purpose and power, and the strength and magnitude of the waves stirred an all-too-familiar vault of energy within her core. It really was surreal, when she thought about it. Barely a year ago was she a simple town girl, bothered with ordinary concerns like whether boys liked her and if she should go off to university or quit after high school and get a job. She never would have imagined that this - this world of power, danger and wonder, where anything was possible and nothing ever truly made sense - was what her life would become.

She felt a little pang of irritation and pushed her thoughts out again.

Henri, come on. Answer me. Where are you?

He should have been at the wharf by now. She started growing restless. Ever since he went off to his university, she barely got to see or hear from him. And with the lack of contact came the resurgence of the yearning that had haunted her through her early teenage years, the drive of their cores to be together. It was now even worse than before because they had been near-inseparable after they started training over six months ago, so the withdrawal was a shock to her system. It consumed her thoughts every day, sometimes to the point that she had to remind herself to breathe.

Which was why she was here, sitting on the fishing dock like a homeless person.

Thanks to Tenzin, they had figured out a way around her problem. By using the water as a medium, they could connect themselves physically and sometimes psychically, even across such a large distance. This discovery was a lifesaver, and had led to this twice-weekly scheduled activity of sitting around the sea, feeling through each other's emotions and occasionally talking about something - sometimes on the phone, when one of them had too much on the mind and the psychic link was fuzzy. It was something of a compromise, only because it didn't make much sense for her to travel all the way to Southampton and hang around his school purely for the sake of being near him.

Although, with the way she was feeling now, it didn't sound like such a bad idea.

Henri never got it, this craving, and he didn't understand it either. Perhaps if the feeling was mutual, he wouldn't make her wait so long. All he ever had to deal with was the occasional malignant thought, which he could pacify by looking at a picture or even revisiting a memory. While she, being the ever-lucky one, was stuck with this visceral need that made her feel like a heroin addict going cold-turkey. It was infuriating.