[chaptered] Breaking Zero Kelvin - Chapter 7 (Practice Makes Progress)
Title: Breaking Zero Kelvin (Multichapter)
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx)
Pairing: Kazuyuri
Genre: Fantasy/Scifi
Summary: AU. They are two runaways, chased out of society through a deep-rooted stigma though they have no say in it at all. Only relying on word-of-mouth rumours and a set of sketchy directions, they now have to set out on their own journey to accomplish the impossible: escape.
Notes: Written for NaNoWriMo 2011.
Character list here.
Previous chapters: prologue | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06
~
07: Practice Makes Progress
Tae couldn’t sleep that night, so she stayed awake to practice her magic while Kei slept soundly. Getting frustrated with how her thoughts kept straying to either Erena or Karina, she closed her eyes to better her concentration.
Almost instantly she realized what practice had improved. While she still could not manipulate her power very well with her eyes open, the moment she closed her eyes and concentrated she could feel the spring of power without having to search for it for very long beforehand.
In a move that was beginning to feel more and more natural, she drew up a tendril of energy that glowed rose pink in her mindscape, and sent it down her arm.
Now, she told herself, is the hard part.
Slowly, she opened her eyes, trying her best not to lose concentration. She was rewarded with a pink glow that surrounded her hands. Trying to pick up her practice pebbles from the floor to join, she accidentally dropped one of them, instantly losing focus.
The pink glow went out like a light.
“Damn,” she muttered to herself.
Trying once again to achieve the same effect, she closed her eyes and forced all thoughts out from her mind. Her hands began to glow pink, only to lose the pink glow very shortly after.
Her practice carried well into the night.
~
By the time Kei woke her up, Tae had not managed to get much sleep, but didn’t seem very tired. She had woken up to find a neat chain of five pebbles fused together in her hand, and was currently feeling rather proud that she had finally managed to achieve something with her magic.
This good mood slowly faded as they finished their breakfast of muesli bars, and climbed back onto the motorcycle. Sitting behind Kei, she gradually began to feel extremely sleepy, and before she knew it she had dozed off, using his back as her pillow.
She slept on dreamlessly while Kei drove on, taking a harsh left turn at the only major fork in the path.
A long while later, she was pulled from dreamless sleep when Kei roughly shook her shoulder, and she opened her eyes blearily to see that they had stopped.
“Lunch,” Kei told her. “What, did you not sleep last night or something?”
She shook her head, and held up the fused rocks that she had stowed back into her waist pouch that morning.
“I made progress!” she said brightly.
Rolling his eyes, he plucked the stick-like structure from her fingers and examined it carefully.
“You should have slept instead,” he told her dryly, poking her forehead with one end of the stone stick. “You can practice during our breaks.”
Shrugging, Tae reached past him for the food bag, fishing out a couple of dried apricots.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she replied blithely. “We’re headed for District 10 next, right?”
Kei nodded, but a look of worry crossed his face.
“There was a fork in the tunnel just now, and I have no idea if we took the correct turning…”
“There’s an ancient saying that ‘All roads lead to Rome’, so I guess we should be fine,” Tae shrugged.
“Alright,” Kei sighed, but he did not look very convinced.
~
Despite Kei’s misgivings, they continued to press on instead of turning back. Tae vaguely remembered from a map of the 21 districts she had seen several times before at the convent that Districts 11 and 10 were rather close to each other, and estimated that they would probably be able to reach it in a couple of days.
When she relayed this bit of information to Kei, his response was merely to shrug and sigh.
“We’ll get there when we get there,” he told her vaguely. “It’s kind of hard to estimate time when we travel like this.”
~
They did reach District 10 soon enough, and Kei was relieved that they had not made a wrong turning in the end.
When Kei took a peek out of the manhole cover, he noted that is was mid-afternoon, so they ate another cereal bar each and began to wait for night to fall.
“We probably will not need to get food here,” Kei noted, tapping his chin in thought. “We did manage to get quite a bit from District 11, after all. I think our main objective here will be to get water.”
Tae mumbled a sound of assent, more preoccupied with finding more things to practice with. Eventually, she had picked up several small pebbles and some sticks, and settled herself by the motorcycle to practice.
Manipulating her power was easier now after the long practice she had done the day before, though she still needed to close her eyes first before anything could happen. Slowly, she began to play with the pebbles, making sure that she was concentrating hard enough that the pink glow of magic never faded from her hands.
Eventually, she finished, and she picked up her masterpiece to show to Kei.
“Look!” she said happily. “It’s you, in miniature!”
It was in fact simply a straight line of pebbles fused together, with sticks fused at awkward angles for arms and legs, and Kei snorted, taking it from her for a closer look.
“…Cute,” he said at last, and Tae giggled.
“It’s good practice,” she told him, and he shrugged, stowing the stone doll in his bag.
Yawning, Kei stretched his arms above his head.
“Let’s get some rest,” he suggested. “There’s still quite a long way to go till night.”
~
They took turns to sleep in shifts, always regularly checking to see what time it had become in the outside world. Tae slept more than Kei, having exhausted quite a bit of magic playing around with the sticks and stones.
Finally, night did fall, and Tae woke Kei up so they could go find water.
The town was eerily silent, but it was a silence that Tae was slowly growing used to. Kei lead the way, as usual, and they quickly found a store that had some bottles lying around behind it.
Once they had taken as many as Tae’s bag could fit, they walked back to find the tunnel opening.
“…Are you sure we came by this way?” Tae asked, looking around after a while. “The streets…don’t look that familiar.”
Kei shook his head.
“Look, see? The manhole cover’s there. You usually don’t get them in alleys, so this must be it.”
Trailing behind him, Tae helped hold the cover and the bottles while Kei jumped down. The plan was for her to toss the bottles down after he had climbed back down, and then climb down herself.
Those plans were rudely interrupted when Kei grasped in the darkness for the ladder, but only grabbed hold of thin air and fell to the ground with a thud. Tae winced, but he had somehow managed to land on his feet, preventing any possible head trauma.
“The ladder’s gone,” he called up. “So is everything else.”
Tae tried her best to peer down in the darkness, and noticed something that Kei had not noticed after his jarring fall.
“It’s much lower than I remember,” she called back down. “And I don’t remember there being some lump that looks like a giant boulder. Maybe this is where the other path led to - the path you didn’t take at the fork.”
“Maybe,” Kei relented. “How am I going to get back up, though?”
Tae hesitated, thinking. Suddenly, she remembered that she still had the water bottles with her.
“Hold on for a bit,” she instructed, as she checked inside her bag. Sure enough the bottles were wrapped in sturdy plastic. Ripping off all the plastic she could get from the two six-packs they had taken, she took a deep breath and began to concentrate.
Gripping the plastic in her hands, she slowly began to fuse them together as magic flowed down her arm in a slow but steady stream, until she had managed to produce a makeshift plastic rope of decent length.
“Can you reach this?” she asked, lowering it down the hole. It looked long enough, but only when she had stuck her arm down the hole as well was Kei able to grab hold of it.
Now to pull him up, she thought, and looked up in thought to see a rusty metal pole attached to the alley wall. If she jumped, she could reach it, but with Kei hanging onto the plastic she wasn’t so sure if she could actually do it.
“When I count to three, jump,” she told Kei.
“…Huh, why?”
“Just do it!” she half-snapped. “One, two, three!”
She jumped up as high as she could, and by the lack of stress on her arm which was holding the plastic she knew he had jumped as well. She raised her hand and looped the plastic over the rod, before landing on the ground again.
“I’m dangling,” Kei yelped from somewhere inside the hole. “My arms are dying.”
“I’m on it,” she sighed, and began to try and haul him up using her makeshift pulley system.
It was a long process, but eventually his head came inching out of the hole, and when he was high enough he scrambled back out onto solid ground and let go of the plastic rope.
“Thanks,” he wheezed, wiggling his fingers and studying his palms where gripping the plastic had left bright red marks on them.
Eyeing the plastic, Tae chucked it down the hole before replacing the manhole cover.
“Let’s find the real tunnel entrance,” she said, hefting the bag, refusing to let Kei carry it after seeing the state of his palms.
~
After another long bout of wandering, they found another manhole cover sitting innocently in an alley. Tae checked to make sure that the rod sticking out from the wall was nowhere in sight.
“I think this might be the correct one,” she said. “It’s not the one from just now, at any rate.”
Kei cautiously opened the manhole cover and began feeling around the opening.
“…There’s a ladder there, all right,” he said, sounding relieved. “I’ll go down first, toss down the water later.”
Tae watched as he began to climb down, then let out a sigh of relief as she saw a light bloom in the darkness - Kei had somehow managed to locate his lamp. Waiting for him to look up, she heaved the bag of bottles and dropped it, hoping that he would catch it - they did not need their precious water to explode all over the floor now.
Pulling the manhole cover back in place as she balanced on the ladder, Tae then climbed down swiftly.
“I’m tired,” she groaned. “Stupid plastic rope.”
Kei flopped down next to her, not even bothering to check what he was lying on first.
“So am I,” he sighed. “Thanks though - if you hadn’t been able to use your magic properly I might have had to walk all the way until the paths merged or something.”
Tae beamed, feeling warm at the praise - she did not remember ever being praised very often and this was a pleasant new experience.
~
Dinner was cashews and loose cereal from a packet, and they crunched away slowly.
“I’m bored,” Tae mumbled around a mouthful of cashew. “After the excitement just now I don’t feel like sleeping anytime soon.”
Kei studied his boots, and the soles that were beginning to wear thin.
“Back home, there used to be this game that we liked to play - the original five of us. It’s a word game, called Magical Banana, and it actually helps to pass the time.”
Tae was intrigued.
“How does it work? We don’t have any bananas, you know.”
Laughing, Kei shook his head.
“You don’t need bananas. You just need to think of things related to each other. Like, when I say banana, I think of yellow. When I say yellow, I think of…”
“…The sun?” Tae hazarded, and Kei grinned.
“Yeah, like that. Now, when you say the sun, I think of summer…”
They played well into the night.
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx)
Pairing: Kazuyuri
Genre: Fantasy/Scifi
Summary: AU. They are two runaways, chased out of society through a deep-rooted stigma though they have no say in it at all. Only relying on word-of-mouth rumours and a set of sketchy directions, they now have to set out on their own journey to accomplish the impossible: escape.
Notes: Written for NaNoWriMo 2011.
Character list here.
Previous chapters: prologue | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06
~
07: Practice Makes Progress
Tae couldn’t sleep that night, so she stayed awake to practice her magic while Kei slept soundly. Getting frustrated with how her thoughts kept straying to either Erena or Karina, she closed her eyes to better her concentration.
Almost instantly she realized what practice had improved. While she still could not manipulate her power very well with her eyes open, the moment she closed her eyes and concentrated she could feel the spring of power without having to search for it for very long beforehand.
In a move that was beginning to feel more and more natural, she drew up a tendril of energy that glowed rose pink in her mindscape, and sent it down her arm.
Now, she told herself, is the hard part.
Slowly, she opened her eyes, trying her best not to lose concentration. She was rewarded with a pink glow that surrounded her hands. Trying to pick up her practice pebbles from the floor to join, she accidentally dropped one of them, instantly losing focus.
The pink glow went out like a light.
“Damn,” she muttered to herself.
Trying once again to achieve the same effect, she closed her eyes and forced all thoughts out from her mind. Her hands began to glow pink, only to lose the pink glow very shortly after.
Her practice carried well into the night.
~
By the time Kei woke her up, Tae had not managed to get much sleep, but didn’t seem very tired. She had woken up to find a neat chain of five pebbles fused together in her hand, and was currently feeling rather proud that she had finally managed to achieve something with her magic.
This good mood slowly faded as they finished their breakfast of muesli bars, and climbed back onto the motorcycle. Sitting behind Kei, she gradually began to feel extremely sleepy, and before she knew it she had dozed off, using his back as her pillow.
She slept on dreamlessly while Kei drove on, taking a harsh left turn at the only major fork in the path.
A long while later, she was pulled from dreamless sleep when Kei roughly shook her shoulder, and she opened her eyes blearily to see that they had stopped.
“Lunch,” Kei told her. “What, did you not sleep last night or something?”
She shook her head, and held up the fused rocks that she had stowed back into her waist pouch that morning.
“I made progress!” she said brightly.
Rolling his eyes, he plucked the stick-like structure from her fingers and examined it carefully.
“You should have slept instead,” he told her dryly, poking her forehead with one end of the stone stick. “You can practice during our breaks.”
Shrugging, Tae reached past him for the food bag, fishing out a couple of dried apricots.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she replied blithely. “We’re headed for District 10 next, right?”
Kei nodded, but a look of worry crossed his face.
“There was a fork in the tunnel just now, and I have no idea if we took the correct turning…”
“There’s an ancient saying that ‘All roads lead to Rome’, so I guess we should be fine,” Tae shrugged.
“Alright,” Kei sighed, but he did not look very convinced.
~
Despite Kei’s misgivings, they continued to press on instead of turning back. Tae vaguely remembered from a map of the 21 districts she had seen several times before at the convent that Districts 11 and 10 were rather close to each other, and estimated that they would probably be able to reach it in a couple of days.
When she relayed this bit of information to Kei, his response was merely to shrug and sigh.
“We’ll get there when we get there,” he told her vaguely. “It’s kind of hard to estimate time when we travel like this.”
~
They did reach District 10 soon enough, and Kei was relieved that they had not made a wrong turning in the end.
When Kei took a peek out of the manhole cover, he noted that is was mid-afternoon, so they ate another cereal bar each and began to wait for night to fall.
“We probably will not need to get food here,” Kei noted, tapping his chin in thought. “We did manage to get quite a bit from District 11, after all. I think our main objective here will be to get water.”
Tae mumbled a sound of assent, more preoccupied with finding more things to practice with. Eventually, she had picked up several small pebbles and some sticks, and settled herself by the motorcycle to practice.
Manipulating her power was easier now after the long practice she had done the day before, though she still needed to close her eyes first before anything could happen. Slowly, she began to play with the pebbles, making sure that she was concentrating hard enough that the pink glow of magic never faded from her hands.
Eventually, she finished, and she picked up her masterpiece to show to Kei.
“Look!” she said happily. “It’s you, in miniature!”
It was in fact simply a straight line of pebbles fused together, with sticks fused at awkward angles for arms and legs, and Kei snorted, taking it from her for a closer look.
“…Cute,” he said at last, and Tae giggled.
“It’s good practice,” she told him, and he shrugged, stowing the stone doll in his bag.
Yawning, Kei stretched his arms above his head.
“Let’s get some rest,” he suggested. “There’s still quite a long way to go till night.”
~
They took turns to sleep in shifts, always regularly checking to see what time it had become in the outside world. Tae slept more than Kei, having exhausted quite a bit of magic playing around with the sticks and stones.
Finally, night did fall, and Tae woke Kei up so they could go find water.
The town was eerily silent, but it was a silence that Tae was slowly growing used to. Kei lead the way, as usual, and they quickly found a store that had some bottles lying around behind it.
Once they had taken as many as Tae’s bag could fit, they walked back to find the tunnel opening.
“…Are you sure we came by this way?” Tae asked, looking around after a while. “The streets…don’t look that familiar.”
Kei shook his head.
“Look, see? The manhole cover’s there. You usually don’t get them in alleys, so this must be it.”
Trailing behind him, Tae helped hold the cover and the bottles while Kei jumped down. The plan was for her to toss the bottles down after he had climbed back down, and then climb down herself.
Those plans were rudely interrupted when Kei grasped in the darkness for the ladder, but only grabbed hold of thin air and fell to the ground with a thud. Tae winced, but he had somehow managed to land on his feet, preventing any possible head trauma.
“The ladder’s gone,” he called up. “So is everything else.”
Tae tried her best to peer down in the darkness, and noticed something that Kei had not noticed after his jarring fall.
“It’s much lower than I remember,” she called back down. “And I don’t remember there being some lump that looks like a giant boulder. Maybe this is where the other path led to - the path you didn’t take at the fork.”
“Maybe,” Kei relented. “How am I going to get back up, though?”
Tae hesitated, thinking. Suddenly, she remembered that she still had the water bottles with her.
“Hold on for a bit,” she instructed, as she checked inside her bag. Sure enough the bottles were wrapped in sturdy plastic. Ripping off all the plastic she could get from the two six-packs they had taken, she took a deep breath and began to concentrate.
Gripping the plastic in her hands, she slowly began to fuse them together as magic flowed down her arm in a slow but steady stream, until she had managed to produce a makeshift plastic rope of decent length.
“Can you reach this?” she asked, lowering it down the hole. It looked long enough, but only when she had stuck her arm down the hole as well was Kei able to grab hold of it.
Now to pull him up, she thought, and looked up in thought to see a rusty metal pole attached to the alley wall. If she jumped, she could reach it, but with Kei hanging onto the plastic she wasn’t so sure if she could actually do it.
“When I count to three, jump,” she told Kei.
“…Huh, why?”
“Just do it!” she half-snapped. “One, two, three!”
She jumped up as high as she could, and by the lack of stress on her arm which was holding the plastic she knew he had jumped as well. She raised her hand and looped the plastic over the rod, before landing on the ground again.
“I’m dangling,” Kei yelped from somewhere inside the hole. “My arms are dying.”
“I’m on it,” she sighed, and began to try and haul him up using her makeshift pulley system.
It was a long process, but eventually his head came inching out of the hole, and when he was high enough he scrambled back out onto solid ground and let go of the plastic rope.
“Thanks,” he wheezed, wiggling his fingers and studying his palms where gripping the plastic had left bright red marks on them.
Eyeing the plastic, Tae chucked it down the hole before replacing the manhole cover.
“Let’s find the real tunnel entrance,” she said, hefting the bag, refusing to let Kei carry it after seeing the state of his palms.
~
After another long bout of wandering, they found another manhole cover sitting innocently in an alley. Tae checked to make sure that the rod sticking out from the wall was nowhere in sight.
“I think this might be the correct one,” she said. “It’s not the one from just now, at any rate.”
Kei cautiously opened the manhole cover and began feeling around the opening.
“…There’s a ladder there, all right,” he said, sounding relieved. “I’ll go down first, toss down the water later.”
Tae watched as he began to climb down, then let out a sigh of relief as she saw a light bloom in the darkness - Kei had somehow managed to locate his lamp. Waiting for him to look up, she heaved the bag of bottles and dropped it, hoping that he would catch it - they did not need their precious water to explode all over the floor now.
Pulling the manhole cover back in place as she balanced on the ladder, Tae then climbed down swiftly.
“I’m tired,” she groaned. “Stupid plastic rope.”
Kei flopped down next to her, not even bothering to check what he was lying on first.
“So am I,” he sighed. “Thanks though - if you hadn’t been able to use your magic properly I might have had to walk all the way until the paths merged or something.”
Tae beamed, feeling warm at the praise - she did not remember ever being praised very often and this was a pleasant new experience.
~
Dinner was cashews and loose cereal from a packet, and they crunched away slowly.
“I’m bored,” Tae mumbled around a mouthful of cashew. “After the excitement just now I don’t feel like sleeping anytime soon.”
Kei studied his boots, and the soles that were beginning to wear thin.
“Back home, there used to be this game that we liked to play - the original five of us. It’s a word game, called Magical Banana, and it actually helps to pass the time.”
Tae was intrigued.
“How does it work? We don’t have any bananas, you know.”
Laughing, Kei shook his head.
“You don’t need bananas. You just need to think of things related to each other. Like, when I say banana, I think of yellow. When I say yellow, I think of…”
“…The sun?” Tae hazarded, and Kei grinned.
“Yeah, like that. Now, when you say the sun, I think of summer…”
They played well into the night.