When Leif arrived at his front porch, the torrential downpour had calmed, leaving only a gentle drip from the eaves. And by habit, his gaze shifted toward the house next door.
It was his neighbor, Victor, playing in his small yard. His dog, Sparky, was a whirlwind of energy, jumping and running after a tennis ball. The dog gave happy barks, a perfectly normal sound on a day that had been anything but.
Seeing another kid playing so carelessly, so close to where...
Leif didn't think twice. He approached the fence separating the two houses.
"Victor!"
Victor, ball in hand, stopped playing. Sparky sat at his feet, panting.
"Hey," Leif said, and his tone became more serious than he intended, "Listen to me for a second. This is important."
The boy nodded, his bright eyes fixed on Leif.
"I've seen... there's a really weird guy lurking around here. A clown." Leif paused, the image of the storm drain fresh in his mind, "I'm not kidding, Victor. He's dangerous. If you see anyone who looks strange to you, or gives you a bad feeling... you don't stick around. You run home immediately. Do you hear me?"
?
Victor blinked, grasping the seriousness of his older neighbor. He nodded firmly.
"Got it, brother Leif."
The tension held for one more second, and then, as only a child can do, Victor broke eye contact and threw the ball to Sparky.
"Go get it!"
The dog shot off like an arrow, and the sound of carefree happiness filled the air again.
"..."
Leif watched them for a moment longer, the cheerful barking sharply contrasting with the buzzing in his own ears. He shook his head and turned around.
The dull sound of his front door closing seemed to put an end to the conversation.
"Leif, you're back!"
Carrie's voice greeted him before he even closed the door. She was sitting on the sofa, but upon seeing him, her face lit up and she straightened, unable to hide her enthusiasm.
Leif immediately approached with palpable concern, "How are you? Do you feel okay?"
She smiled, a shy pride showing in her expression. "Lillith said I just... overloaded myself. Like using up the entire battery at once. But, you know? I was practicing. Look!"
Carrie turned toward the coffee table. A glass of water trembled, slid an inch, and then lifted into the air. It wasn't much, barely a few feet, and it swayed like a leaf in the wind, but it was floating.
"Wow..." Leif let out a sigh, genuinely impressed, but also alarmed, "Carrie, that's incredible. But take it easy, okay?"
The compliment made her look down, and a slight blush rose to her cheeks. The glass fell with a dull clack onto the table.
Seeing her use that power, so new and so fragile, made the image of the clown return to his mind more forcefully. He turned, looking for Lillith.
He found her standing next to the kitchen archway, watching them. Leif approached, lowering his voice enough so that Carrie, focused on the glass again, wouldn't hear him.
"I need to talk to you."
Lillith looked at him.
"I ran into something out there. A clown, and he's sure to be looking for me." Leif kept his voice low, "If anything... strange... approaches the house, if you notice anything at all, your priority is to protect them. And find me."
Lillith frowned, "A clown, Master? What kind of trouble have you gotten into this time?"
"It's not a joke, Lillith. It feeds on fear. Something similar to you, but... corrupted. It's a stomach-churning sensation."
The trace of mockery vanished from Lillith's face. It was replaced by absolute seriousness, "Understood, Master. I will be vigilant."
Leif nodded. The need to test his own limits, to understand the Telekinesis he had just obtained, became urgent.
He needed an open space.
He went to his room and changed his clothes for something more comfortable for movement, heading back to the door.
But passing through the living room, he stopped.
Carrie was still there, frowning and her lips pressed together in concentration, making more glasses tremble without success.
Leif sighed, the tension in his shoulders relaxing a bit. He walked over and sat on the edge of the coffee table, facing her.
"You're forcing it."
Carrie looked up, frustrated, "It's not working!"
"That's because you're treating it like a muscle to push, and it's not that." He paused, searching for the words, "...Think of it as... threading a needle. You don't need brute force, you need precision."
His eyes fixed on hers, "Don't try to lift it. Try to feel it. Close your eyes. Feel the glass, cold. Feel the weight of the water inside. Try to move only the water, not the glass. Go slow. The trick is establishing the connection: you give a command, you see what happens, and you adjust."
"The real power isn't how much force you have, Carrie. It's whether you can control it. If you can make it stop exactly when you want to. That's the only standard that matters."
"..."
Carrie watched him, absorbing every word. The frustration on her face gave way to understanding. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and nodded.
"I understand, Leif."
He gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder and stood up. This time, when he walked out the door, he felt a little calmer. At least, with her.
...
Leif walked deep into the woods until the sound of the town disappeared. The midday silence, broken only by the wind through the leaves, made it the perfect testing ground.
He needed a place isolated from the world.
He found a clear spot, planted himself in the center, and inhaled deeply.
He didn't close his eyes to concentrate, but to connect with that new vibration he felt under his skin. He didn't have to try to activate it; he simply called it.
His target: a sturdy oak across the way.
And the response was instantaneous.
The tree branches shuddered violently, with not a hint of wind to move them... A second later, a tearing groan came from the ground.
The earth bulged.
With a crash that echoed through the forest, the entire tree was ripped from the roots and lifted, suspended ten meters in the air.
Leif opened his eyes, and the tree was still there.
He felt no strain in doing so. Trying something more, he raised a hand, and with a simple twist of the wrist, the gigantic tree slid through the air, deftly dodging other trunks like a chess piece on a three-dimensional board.
Fascinating…
He left the tree floating and directed his attention to some enormous rocks, embedded in the side of a hill.
Light
That was his only thought and suddenly, they were. Those rocks, which weighed tons, detached from the ground with the ease of children's toys.
With a thought, they rose, joining the tree in a strange aerial ballet.
Leif extended his open hand toward his floating creation... and closed it into a fist.
Instantly the rocks and the tree were crushed.
Subjected to a titanic pressure, the oak splintered into a thousand pieces and the rocks were pulverized.
"..."
Leif stood still, letting the dust settle. 'What about moving myself?'
He tried to envelop himself in that power, to feel it not as a tool, but as a second skin. It was... strange. The dust and rocks at his feet began to float, but when he tried to lift himself, it was different.
It was no longer effortless.
He rose one meter, then two, but he wobbled like a drunk, unstable, tilting in the air.
Moving a multi-ton tree was easy, but controlling his own center of gravity was a nightmare.
But he wasn't discouraged. He kept adjusting, finding the balance point. He took a deep breath, instinctively crouched in the air, and then "pushed." Not with his legs, but with his mind.
Swish
He shot off like an arrow, the speed increasing abruptly, much more than he intended.
The forest became a green and brown blur. He lost control of the direction in an instant, heading headlong toward the same hill he had pulled the rocks from.
!
Panic seized him, and in a reflexive act, Leif began to flail his arms, as if trying to swim in the air.
In the last second, the telekinesis obeyed his panic instead of his control, managing to deflect his trajectory, grazing the hillside.
The next attempt was a disaster. He overcorrected the trajectory and plummeted toward the ground, managing to brake barely an inch from the dirt, his face lashed by the grass he himself had lifted.
But every fall was a lesson.
He got back up, trembling from the effort, not from tenacious determination, but from the pure, stubborn need to make it work. He stopped fighting gravity and started to negotiate with it.
The abrupt, panicky movements smoothed out. The erratic ascent became a controlled glide. The dive turned into a slow drift, like an autumn leaf. He found the balance.
And with balance, came confidence.
A nervous laugh burst from his throat, turning into a shout of pure euphoria:
"WUHUU!"
Fear evaporated, replaced by adrenaline. He spun around, tracing spirals in the sky, laughing at the howl of the wind in his ears. That feeling... it was addictive. Seeing the ground recede, the world shrink beneath his feet... it was power.
He climbed higher and higher, until the trees were just a green carpet and the hills mere wrinkles in the earth. The landscape unfolded like a map. He couldn't help it.
Carried away by the moment, he stretched an arm forward, straightened his back, and adopted the classic Superman pose, a solitary silhouette against the clouds.
It was then that a deafening roar broke his moment, a sound that wasn't the wind.
A passenger jet passed next to him, so close that he felt the turbulence.
He could see the small windows.
Inside that pressurized cabin, Alex Browning was pounding his companion's armrest.
"Clear! Clear, damn it, LOOK!" he yelled, his voice shrill with disbelief.
Clear Rivers took off her headphones with a sigh of exasperation, "What, Alex? What is it now?"
"There was a man! Out there! HE WAS FLYING!"
"..."
Claire stared at him for a second with an expression of pure pity on her face. She placed a hand on his arm.
"Alex, you're exhausted. You're not dreaming, you're having hallucinations from fatigue. Try to get some sleep, okay? We still have a long way to go to Paris."
________
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