Chapter 20

“How hard could it be?” Yes, Silva remembered thinking just that this morning. How hard could it be to find a suitable outfit for an outing with a friend?

As it turned out it was an arduous and exhausting ordeal, that had taken the better part of her day And she still had yet to find what she was looking for. The shopping centre was too big for her taste, but at least here you could found most anything you would want to.

Worst yet was the fact that while shopping she could not use her ability. Or at least not always. There were some moments here and there where the shop was too big for any of the staff actually notice if she took something for trying out. She diligently returned the peace of clothing afterwards anyway, which was harder than it looked. You could never fold anything back just the same as it was before.

At the very least she had narrowed down her search to a few specific garments that she liked enough to remember. The search had been exhausting, but it had paid off.

In the end, it probably did not even matter what she would wear, but Silva herself wanted to look nice. She had not tried to do that for who knows how long. At least everything else was already prepared for tomorrow.

She once again circled the current shop with some kind of a fancy name, but everything was too expensive. Another reason for the prolonged suffering. There was only that much she could spend and some of the nicer pieces she had found had been thrown aside because of the price.

It was not even that the clothes here were that much better than in the other shops, so why were ten times as expensive? Silva suspected it was some kind of a scam.

In frustration, she left to head back to a shop which did not have a large selection, but at least was reasonably priced. Silva did not want to say cheap, but that it was.

On her way there something caught her attention. As usual, she was walking while concealed from the attention of others and when walking past a group of men she heard an unpleasant word – Refuge.

There were six men, all similarly dressed in black jackets and jeans and huddled together in a conspiratorial pile. They all had a blue symbol of a shining object on their clothes. Though, the place differed from man to man. The whispers between them did not travel far and the passerby was avoiding them. The only reason Silva happened to hear them was that she had not been careful of where she was walking, only paying enough attention as not to run into someone or something.

Silva’s first instinct was to recoil away from them, but right after she noticed that there was no way for them to detect her. After another look around she made sure that there was enough of a distance for her to not be noticed by a random person outside of her effective zone and tried to listen in on them.

Arguably she did not have much time for eavesdropping, but she wanted to make sure that they were not up to something nefarious. After a couple of minutes of listening she had learned nothing, but that their base was undergoing some kind of renovation, with many things being rebuilt.

That was when she remembered her quest of getting a blouse and she already had one in mind. There was no time to dally here eavesdropping. After carefully disengaging herself from the men, who were now heatedly discussing an actress, she briskly found the shop she had in mind.

To her relief, the blouse was still there. It suited her just fine, it was a very loose blue peace of garment that looked too thin for her, but at least it was not transparent. It also helped that the looseness would help to mask her bony body. She would have to wear a jacket over it, but at least she had one already home. One which she had yet to wear when meeting Mika.

And that begged the question – Was she trying too hard? Silva contemplated the question while paying for the blouse. It was not even that big of a deal to meet her friend. They did it all the time during the week and sometimes on weekends. Though when they had met on weekdays Steven was, mostly, with them as well.

It would be very sad if she arrived at tomorrows meeting all dressed up only to see Mika come in the usual attire. “Now that I think about it, it will probably happen…” Silva sighed, but still headed for the next shop where she had seen a nice skirt that was the right size and length for her.

At least Mika was not a person who would laugh about her, and Silva wanted for this occasion to be at least a little bit special.

Sure, they had met after school, sure they had spent a lot of time together, but it was still the first time that she had gotten an invitation of this kind. The kind that had everything pre-planned and took most of the day.

It would serve as a good way to relax her taut nerves and she was thankful that Mika had suggested it. She was sure that her friend too wanted to get out of her house for a while to have some fun. All the worrisome events had taken a toll on the three of them.

The invitation did leave out Steven, and while Silva was not sure why it had probably something to do with the fact that he was a man. Mika had no real girl friends other than her, so she probably wanted to have a quality girl-time with Silva. Whatever that included. She was not too sure. Probably some talk about boys? Cosmetic? Diet? That did quite not seem right, but all that was left was to wait for tomorrow and see for herself.

When she arrived at the place that was selling the skirt she was again lucky to find them still there. A simply designed black skirt that reached down to her ankles. The simple look of it appealed to Silva greatly, and these kinds of skirts could go together with all kind of clothing making them a great budget choice.

Upon exiting the shopping centre she noticed two of the men she had spied on previously walk together down the road while animatedly discussing something. Still, their voices were quiet, and that picked Silva's curiosity.

Her attempt earlier had not given anything useful, but walking after them went against the warnings that her friends had given to her. “But they are walking the same way I have to.” Silva made up a justification.

Despite her not wanting to go too close to her targets the reality proved that, despite their body language, they were talking in a very subdued way. It was not strange for people to be careful when speaking outside, but this level of tone was too low to be called ‘being careful’ and bordered paranoid.

Silva promptly ignored, that she was one of the reasons to be paranoid and made her way closer to them. She did not forget that she still had to be careful as she was outside and had to keep at least some distance, to not look weird to someone who would see her from further away. The numerous passerby helped her with that.

It took her a bit of an effort to cobble together the snippets of the dialogue she caught. For one thing, these men talked in a way that creeped her out. They were speaking about their leader as if he was some kind of a saint and it implied that he had done something that made him look like one.

Silva had already suspected it, but such a clearly magical item in the basement indicated that there was something more going on in that base. They also seemed to be looking for someone. First Silva thought that they were still searching for her, but after another couple of hundred meters of careful listening it turned out that it wasn't.

It made her curious who was more important than someone who had found out your biggest secret, but then again, it had been a couple of weeks since she had done that, so maybe they were reasonably sure that she would not start any trouble for them. Which in fairness Silva was not planning to do… For now.

At this point, these men, had left the more populated area they had been in before and Silva somewhat begrudgingly dropped her following act as it was getting too risky with so few people around. She watched the men leave as she turned left at the next intersection.

Despite the lack of any concrete information from these men Silva was still in a great mood. It was barely past four pm, which left her with enough time for some practice with her ability before she had to make dinner.

After some more deliberation she also decided to send a reminder to her friends to be careful of Refuge members. She half expected a call from Mika to remind her of being cautious, but all she received was a message from Steven affirming that he understood.

When Silva finally got home and dropped her stuff she got the missing message from her other friend. As expected Mika was not very happy with Silva’s decision to tail dangerous men. It was still a small wonder that there was no call, but with the next time she received a message, there also came an explanation. Her friend was with her parents and was visiting relatives.

Even if Mika made sense and had reason to worry Silva still felt that she was overly cautious. Sometimes it was cute to see her fuss over something irrelevant, but at points, it was a bit stifling. Despite how she looked Silva was still almost an adult. “Despite how I look…”

Another sigh escaped her mouth and went unnoticed by her. She looked at her reflection in the mirror she was walking past until she finally shook her head and went to make sure that she had everything ready for tomorrow.

Slowly she went through a list she had made. Everything was there. She also had reserved the bathroom for this evening, which had elected some complaints and inquiries from her father. It was hard to tell if he was disappointed or relieved when she had said that it was Mika that she was outing with. He still had his suspicions, which he loudly revealed to her warning that any boy should be introduced to him before she dated them.

Of course, Silva planed to do nothing of sorts. There was no way that a potential romance option could get trough such a potentially disastrous meeting. If Silva ever dated someone she would make damn sure that her father learns of it only after she was sure that it was going well.

But that was in the future, and for now, Silva decided to use her time more productively as she made sure to set an alarm before it was time to make dinner. She feared that while she was experimenting with her energy-sensing she would lose time. Or to be more accurate, that she would fall asleep.

After doing so she laid back in her bed and tried to rapidly access her inner world. It usually took a bit of time, and it bothered her. The time she spent in her inner world already left her with almost no connection with her surroundings, and she would rather shorten the time she was closed off.

Her attempts did not bear fruits, but she would keep trying. When she finally started to observe her energy flow a calmness and serenity overcame her, helping her concentrate on herself.

There was nothing really different from all of her other attempts, she still had no success in influencing the flow, other than the way to increase the energy spent on her ability.

That had been a giant leap for her. Not only it was useful but also had proved that she could use the energy. For now, it was one way, but there ought to be more. She carefully exited her inner world and started to run her ability on full power.

When she finally felt that she could not keep doing it she started to meditate again. The inner flows had gotten smaller and weaker, just as she had expected. What she wanted to do was to see how her energy returned to her.

If she could manage to do that she could find the source and with a source, she could try to feed her currents in a more purposeful way. Increasing her recovery speed and possibly the size of the streams.

For now, it was only a fantasy, and despite her tries, there were no actual results even after an hour of trying. Not that she had expected any on short notice. From the meeting in the forest, she had learned, that she had taken the first step. And if there was first, there had to be second and third.

She was not sure how many steps had Esha taken, but probably several, as he seemed to be able to do much more than he let on and what he had shown was plenty already.

If she and her friends were taken as a base then his ability seemed to be able to do many different things, while theirs was rooted in where they had started.

Speculation only, but not baseless. Silva also wanted her friends to discover this inner place in them and planned to talk in more detail about the process and sensations it involved if they did not manage by themselves.

When the phone finally reminded her of the time Silva started to move. It was already evening. Her father will be soon home and she was getting hungry as well.

The rest of the evening went by as expected, with her father giving out uncalled for advises that concerned dates. Silva had given up on trying to correct his misconception of her tomorrow outing and only gave cursory, noncommittal answers.

After Silva was done with the bathroom activities and returned to her room she double-checked if everything for tomorrow was still in places where she had left them. There still was some time till midnight and she did not have to get up that early she decided to continue where she had left her practice before.

Letting her ability run on full power she once again emptied her energy reserves and started to inspect the process of its recovery. Soon she started to nod off. Even if this meditation was close to actual sleep, it was not the same and her brain was requesting a proper rest.

Despite that Silva kept her attention on the slowly recovering stream and before she finally fell asleep there was a small dust-like particle that she saw joining the ever-present river in her inner world.