{SHORTLIST OpenNovellaContest 2021}
{ONC 2021 Round One Ambassador Picks}
Aithne Pan, a Chinese-Irish girl living in the futuristic city of Venice has to decide between what her heart tells her is correct, and what she has always been taught is righ...
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I need to get there in the next ten minutes - no, half that time.
Eagle has just flown off with Diamond, both of them looking disappointed that I refused to fly with them to meet Gold and the rest of the team. But it's not my fault. The mere thought of flying, just the mention of hovering in the air, in contact with nothing but the winds sends chills down my spine.
I am scared of flying.
Shaking my head, I look up, trying to figure out how to get to Street Querini Stampalia on the second level. Because I have been trying to keep a low profile I'm not carrying the water bottle that is usually strapped to my waist, so I'm going to have to figure out another way to get there. In the worst case, I can use the lift, although I would have to be extremely lucky to make it in the next five - four now - minutes.
Looking around me, I can see various sources of water. There is the obvious choice, the sea, and the not so obvious one, using the water in the water tanks strapped to the bottom part of the buildings above. If I use the seawater, it will be harder to manipulate because of the salt and I will have to push a large body of liquid up, freeze it against a building, and pull myself up, the effort much larger than just pulling water down from the underbelly of the buildings on the second level, using it to pull myself up and then deposit it back into its rightful place.
Jumping up and down to warm my body, I concentrate on the water inside the tanks. The idea was to be able to store water on each level by having individual tanks under each building, all the rainwater which falls upon the building is caught and stored in the tanks beneath it. Over the years, though, the lower level's tanks haven't been cleaned, so they have all the dirt from the years of rubbish that is thrown from the upper levels. There is even a game some of my old classmates used to play that consisted of aiming paper planes at the pipes from the lower level, and whoever managed to get the plane to fly through was crowned royalty for the day, enabling him or her to shout out commands and be obeyed.
Three minutes.
I pull, my arms moving backwards as I close my eyes, the feeling of the water rushing up and finding a hole to sneak out of tingling my skin. After a few seconds, I feel a sliver of water fall down. Opening my eyes, I grab the water, freezing it to a state that is flexible and strong enough to pull me up. With a flick of my wrist, I make it retreat back into the tank it belonged to.
I made myself a promise months ago, a promise that I would know how to manipulate water in order to create icy ropes, and I've been practising ever since, meaning the ones I can create now are almost perfect, although, in order to make sure my part is believable, that I am not as good at controlling my powers as I am, I make sure to lose a few drops of water on the way up, snowflakes falling towards the ground below.
Two minutes.
I repeat the process on the second level, this time more quickly, but instead of pulling myself up, I use the impulse to move towards my objective, swinging from one side of the street to the other, Querini Stampalia Street now in sight.
