Apatite stands in front of me, her face still with a smile.
Walking closer, i begin to walk up the hill, stopping in front of Apatite.
"Okay, so what should we do now?"
I ask Apatite.
"You'll learn how to increase and decrease your own Soul Energy."
I nod:
"Is that not the same as being able to just make my Soul Energy wrap around my arm?"
"No, it's not."
She says her words cutting through with serious sarcasm.
"Okay, I'll just follow what you tell me to do."
"Thank you."
She says with happiness in her voice.
"How did we do it before?"
Apatite asks.
"We…"
"Oh I remember!"
She interrupts me, stopping my sentence before I can finish it.
"Okay, remember, like sweat coming off of your skin."
I nod along.
With a deep breath, I close my eye, feeling the numbness slowly coming off of my forearms, that start at the tip of my fingers and go down to the ends of my elbow.
"Okay."
Apatite says as she sees the shimmering of my arms.
I open my eye and look at Apatite.
"Good. Now you're going to try to adjust the amount you release."
Nodding:
"How do I do that?"
"You're right?"
She tilts her head.
"The way your Soul Energy works is different to mine."
"Meaning?"
She shrugs her shoulders.
"Well, all I had to do was kind of like visualize the Energy and it happens for me. Making it pretty easy. After all Soul Energy, is a very easy thing to learn, as long as you do have the ability to manipulate it."
I tilt my head:
"What do you mean. As long as you ability to manipulate it?"
"Well some people and things, don't have the ability to manipulate Soul Energy even if they have it."
"What?"
She nods her head:
"Yeah, like the main difference between pigs and Soul pigs, isn't just the ssize, but also the ability to use Soul Energy."
"Have you ever seen what a Soul Pig can do?"
Apatite nods.
"Yes, they dash in a straight line, so fast, it's like they are just big arrows. The tusks they have, act as a way to pierce skin, or any other Soul creatures out there."
"Soul Pigs have tusks?"
"Yes, the darting around along with the tusks make them extremely dangerous, but they have a great weakness. They are just stupid. Many times you'd find a Soul Pig dead because it rammed right into a tree."
I chuckle.
"Yeah, thats just how it is."
Apatite shares a laugh with me.
Slowly the laughter we share dies down, making us get right back to topic.
"Anyway, if I can figure out how to make it work for you, I'll have a good time."
"Okay, then, I guess we'll have to continue trying to figure out what to do."
I say to her as I begin to sit down, into a crisscrossing position.
"Yeah."
Apatite sits down in front of me as well.
Her face contorted in confusion.
I just stare at her as she looks off into the distance, behind me, beside us, or into the sky.
Whenever she changes directions she'll either let out a sigh of defeat. A gasp of relief, or one after the other, then give up to look into another direction.
"You think of anything?"
She asks me as I just stare at her and her into the air.
"Nope, thought it was you that was doing the thinking."
She looks down to me slowly, like a person that was just betrayed by their closest friend.
"You didn't even think of one way that you could have been able to manipulate your own Soul Energy?"
I shake my head.
"Nope…"
"I hate you."
She says with contempt.
I look down, in disappointment.
The numbness on my arms fade just slightly.
"Wait…"
I look at my arms with a face that is different from disappointment, but with a sense of happiness, that is.
"I think it happens with how I feel."
I say lifting my arms showing the very, very faint shimmering.
"So that means… We figured it out."
'I did but I don't mind sharing the achievement.'
"Yup!"
Apatite jumps off from her knees and into the air.
I don't follow her movement but I do stand happy that we found a way to achieve a way to manipulate my Soul Energy.
"So. How do we apply that to my bow?"
I ask, unslinging my bow from my shoulder and holding it in front of myself.
"Well, I guess just think of it as an extension of yourself… wouldn't that be the best way for you?"
She says and for some reason, that:
"So smart!"
She lights up when I say that, happy that she is a good teacher and not a terrible teacher.
"Nice."
Turning around my body, with bow held up in hand, Apatite takes a step back.
Standing there with my bow in hand I try to visualize the bow as a part of me that can use Soul Energy, but the idea and concept is a tad bit harder to visualize for me.
When I use Soul Energy, and wrap it around my arm it feels numb, but when I just have to see the slight shimmering coming off of the bow if I want to know that it is working.
"When I manage to manipulate Soul Energy into my bow, is when I'll be passing or no?"
"Well, we still have to make you learn how to be fully able to control your Soul Energy."
"I thought that was today's lesson?"
I turn my head to face her, my left eye's the one that looks at her, but the eye patch blocks my vision of her.
"Well, you're the one that decided to go and try to find a way for you to extend your Soul Energy into you bow."
"That… That's very true."
"But it's okay that you decide to go ahead and try this now, that way when you are to try and use arrows later on, with that short scary lady, you'll maybe… be able to impress her."
'Short scary lady…? Oh, Sply.'
"Sply is a very scary lady, that is indeed teaching me how to use my bow, but I don't think being able to Soul Energy better will impress her, I mean I barely had anything said to her after she saw that I killed the Soul Bear."
"With our help!"
She adds on to my last sentence.
"Yes, with your help."
I add to my end of the sentence.
Before I look back to my bow and see the shimmering on the wood of the bow.
"Okay, I did it."
tapping the sigil and the arrow appears on the arrow hold, the blue arrow shining just a bit brighter than it did before and I can see it, the slight shimmering of the arrow.
"Good, now you can be able to shoot your arrows with ease. Along with being able to shoot much more powerful arrows. But that, isn't even near enough to be able to shoot through another Soul Bear."
"God, I hope I don't have to shoot through another Soul Bear."
Apatite chuckles at those words.
"Soul Bear are way more rare than they should be, you'd have to sell both arms to vendors for the chance to fight another."
"Thank god."
As I say that I pull and release the arrow, it weaves off and misses the tree, stabbing into a tree I wasn't even aiming at and going into it just slightly.
"Atleast we know that I can get it to hit a tree."
Apatite doesn't seem to notice that I missed the tree I was aiming at.
"What do you mean at least?"
"Oh, I missed my target."
"I thought that tree was your target?"
"No, it went off to the left and hit that tree."
I point to the tree that I hit.
"Good thing I was behind you then."
I nod:
"Right."
I turn to her, she softly aims the bow down, I wasn't even holding it up.
"For now, let's practice, making sure you can manipulate and use your Soul Energy."
Nodding, both her and I get back into sitting in our crisscross position, putting my bow to the side.