Gemini

The Gift of the Asuras

«I mean, let me get this straight: out of all the people in the world, the Geminis are us? Great, all we needed was to be hated by, like, everyone» I said in a somewhat incredulous and stunned tone. «Ellie, we were lucky to already be friends when the mark manifested.

But think of past generations of Geminis, all those who failed to reunite with their Twin and lived their whole lives alone» Nate replied, no longer smiling.

All of a sudden I didn't feel like being mad with the world made much sense to me.

«You're right, sorry. I just wasn't thinking. We are lucky to be with each other. Let's get to the serious stuff now come on: have we already found out how to use them or what they do?» He started smiling again looking at me with an amused air, a bit like watching children play with a new toy.

«So: exactly we haven't been able to figure it out yet, but as far as we know, which is basically the same as knowing nothing, your Gift should have something to do with creation and mine with manipulating reality. Not much, that's true, but that's better than nothing. The literature on the subject is not much help to us».

His words managed to make me smile: who would have thought that a girl, always lost in her imaginary worlds, would get the chance to create whatever she wanted. At the moment I was not yet capable of it, it's true, but just the prospect of it managed to set me on edge. «So what are we waiting for? Help me up so we can go and see if we can figure this out together». Nate leaned down, and taking me by the hips, he put me back on my feet. «Et voilà, ready to go» he said laughing.

We then set off up some path leading into the middle of the woods, and as we walked I could not help but notice the beauty of the place where we were: an endless expanse of flowering trees, so tall that their tops seemed to touch the sky. The song of nightingales accompanied our path, and every now and then you could even see a few squirrels throwing acorns at the other squirrels, resulting in a chase through the branches.

We finally reached the place Nate had praised so much: it was a perfectly circular clearing in the middle of the forest, framed by the sun's rays. «Do you know that if it were up to me I would spend my whole life in this place?» I told him as I admired the surrounding landscape . «That makes two of us, Ellie, two of us».

How curious, it felt like a déjà-vu.

We sat right in the middle of the clearing, happily welcoming the sun shining in. We spent the next two hours thinking about how to make our Gifts work and also a bit of relaxing together. We made several attempts, and of course none of them worked. Of course they didn't.

We had tried to make a kind of list of possible combinations of actions that could somehow activate our Gifts, but nothing. I remember that at one point I jokingly suggested we try making hand gestures to focus the chakra, but Nate seemed not to get the joke. I guess in this world legends about ninjas were not so widespread. Too bad. We'll have to make up for it.

After hours and hours of searching and fruitless attempts it was getting late, and my stomach was starting to show some complaints: «Nate, we didn't happen to bring any food, did we?» I asked, holding a hand over my stomach. «I'm afraid not Ellie. Let's go see if we can find anything in the trees. Just in case». We walked around the whole clearing until we found an apple tree. Where were the apples? And why at a height of four meters? I sighed: «I guess we won't eat today» I said disconsolately. «Come on, don't despair, let me think if there is a way to reach them». Nate stood with one hand on his chin for several minutes staring at the apples and shaking his head several times.

At one point, however, he saw one of the apples break off sharply and fall on his head.

I couldn't hold back a laugh: «Are you ok?» I asked him. «Yes, yes, everything's fine, I'm not hurt. I'm just wondering...» as he said that, he kept staring intently at an apple on the tree until it fell clean off and fell on him just like the previous one.

And another, and another one. After a few moments he was being stormed by apples.

«I knew it! OUCH! I'm too good at this! Now though, I'm going to have to study as much as I can... I have to figure it out as much as I can» he began to say getting more and more excited, gesturing through the air as if he were drawing signs without any semblance of logic.

«Woah woah, hold your horses Sherlock, slow down. What have you figured out?» I asked him a little confused and envious that he had evidently figured out before me how to make his Gift work. «Basically earlier I was thinking about how nice it would be if I could draw the apple towards me instead of climbing the tree, and so it occurred to me that I had read in a book that two bodies exert an attraction towards each other purely due to their mass, and immediately what you saw happened. I just wonder how far I can go».

I was astonished: «Are you really telling me that by thinking about something you can change reality? That's fantastic!»

In hindsight I realised that it wasn't that astounding, I mean, it had to be called the Gift of Reality for a reason. That's peak Ellie Hyde for you.

I could see that he was getting more and more excited: he reached a point where he was no longer able to stand still. «Let's try something else. See that pine cone? Here, catch it. On my go throw it at me» you could actually see him thinking about a couple thousand things all at the same time.

He then concentrated for a moment and gave me the go-ahead: I threw the pine cone at him with all the strength I had (I missed him just a couple of times) only to see it stop a few millimeters from his chest. «How did you do that?» my surprise sure was palpable. «I simply thought that the space around me was no longer finite but divisible into infinite parts that added together would thus create an infinite space between the pine cone and me. And since the speed of the pine cone is finite, but space is infinite, the pine cone would take an infinite amount of time to reach me. In practice, it is as if the pine cone would slow down to a stop before hitting me».

I'll be honest with you: I didn't understand a single thing of what he told me, so I smiled and nodded as if it was all clear to me. He told me he wanted to try to combine a series of laws he said were "nice" to see what he could come up with. «If you hear an explosion...that's on me!» I heard him say as he took off running into the woods.

So I was alone for a while trying to make my stupid Gift work, which just didn't want to do anything. I think I even tried to use some punch lines from the few fantasy films I had seen in the other world, but nothing. I guess my Gift isn't much of a fantasy fan. After a while Nate came back and we spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out how to make my Gift work and him doing endless tests. He promised that nothing would have exploded on his watch, but then he added softly something that sounded a lot like a "maybe" to me.

I'm not sure if this clearing will still have much to live.

At one point I think I saw him flying behind some squirrels shouting: «Get some first species perpetual motion squirrels!».

As usual I had no idea what he was saying, but whatever. It was funny that way too.

Evening came sooner than we expected, and we agreed that we would stay there in the clearing for the night, that surprisingly was still very intact.

Nate took me in his arms, and with one of the "things I read in a book" (which is starting to smell like a physics book to me, I don't know about you) he carried us up a rather large branch, where we spent the night cuddled.

Or rather, that would have been the intention if what happened hadn't happened.