Face of Eternity : The Little Angel

Radiant flowers painted the field in all kinds of vibrant colours, separating the concrete courtyard from the forested lands on the horizon.

The calmness of a cool breeze stroked across the flowers. Once passing the plants, it brushed through the feathers of my wings. I felt each individual feather tickle, like leaves shifting around on a tree.

"Steady yourself," Uncle ordered me. "Sense the life in your wings, each feather as it moves side to side. Working in harmony, they form the thing that shall take you into the sky."

I took a breath, focusing my mind harder on my fluffy appendage.

I twitched my wings twice, then gave them a hard wave toward the ground.

Fwoosh!

A weak gust of wind trailed out, but not nearly enough to push me up.

Uncle was hovering around me in his bee form. He was scanning my wings to make sure I was using the right muscles when I flapped them.

“Your form is still sloppy, but you're getting better."

With that last wave, I was standing a little like a ballerina on my tippy toes. My goal was to make such a big gust that I'd fly right up into the sky. Coming back down was an entirely different issue though. One bridge at a time, I guess.

“Now give it one more go!” he suddenly ordered.

Fwoosh!

My wings waved, cutting through the air in their path! That single stroke caused a gust of wind so strong that it pushed me backwards.

“Gah!” I shouted, falling to my back on the concrete. “Ouchy…”

Soreness from training all morning caused me to wave them the wrong way. It was making me feel like I was getting worse the more I tried.

My wings were so powerful though that I was hardly able to control how much they’d push me around when I swung them so fast. I was always either putting too much power in, or not enough. Another reason why I needed to keep practicing.

“No, no...this won’t do.” His bee head shook. “You need to control your wing power, not let it push you around.”

“Easy for you to say, Mr. I’ve Been Flying Forever!”

He was a magical construct, so things like that came naturally to him. Consider him specially made for this sort of thing.

Speaking of specially made…

“I started somewhere too, you know.” His entire body lit up brightly, and he transformed into his human mafia looking guy form. He's the only bee who can do that, so it made him very special.

Fwoosh!

His glass like wings shot out from behind him in an impressive display, sending out a mighty blast of air!

“Woah!” I held on tight against the tornado wind force! This was awesome!

His gust was way more powerful than mine! And he managed to stay standing the whole time.

I turned around to assess the damage to the flower field, but it looked like he was able to arc the wind upwards into the sky. The gust of wind was so strong, you could see it warping the air!

"How the heck did you do that?" I flapped my wings excitedly as Uncle helped me stand.

"I'd be lying if I said magic wasn't involved in my case." He smirked, adjusting his hat. "Wind magic allows me to control how the air will travel, and earth magic keeps me rooted in place."

I knew he had to be using some sort of trick! Truth be told, I already knew magic was involved, but seeing how he used it was pretty cool.

"So, I need to learn magic to fly?" I asked, dematerializing my wings.

He kneeled down to get eye level with me, then said, "Our bodies are different. You should be able to fly without magical aid. Defying the laws of physics should come second nature to an Exceed, even for one who recently turned seven. But learning magic will only enhance your abilities."

A few months ago, I started studying Exceed biology. It was pretty crazy to learn my ancestors could fly faster then jet planes and rockets. One day I'm going to be just like them.

But right now, this little jet plane needed to get fueled up...on tea, of course.

-☆◇☆-

The two of us moved over to a little outdoor table with a parasol attached to it and sat down. I left a few toys in the seats between us this morning. My unicorn was next to me, and Dilly Dolly and Simmpy Suzy were to Uncle's left and right.

Uncle summoned a few bees to go and fetch us a tea pot and some tea cups. When they returned, our usual after training tea party began.

"Yalda, good work today. But you still need to learn how to use magic too." He told me, sipping an empty tea cup. He couldn't eat anything, or so he says, since he was a magical construct. He just knew how to look convincing. "Have you been studying like I told you?"

"I have been." I took a sip from my tea cup. It tasted like white tea today! "I read the books you gave me twice, but I'm not learning the magic." I pulled out a book from under the table that weighed a ton. It was on all the different types of elemental magic.

The book did say you'd need to tattoo symbols on your skin in order to actually use elemental magic, but there were a lot of reasons why that wouldn't work on me.

For starters, I'm too young to get a tattoo. I don't think I'd want one even if I could get one. You know, does my ferronium armour skin even let me get tattoos? Probably not.

Another issue was that the only way to get the tattoo was complicated and required a very specific magical art to work. It wouldn't do any good if you just got a regular tattoo. You needed special ink.

And thirdly, Uncle didn't approve of the idea, based on his head shaking.

"You shouldn't need to be marked to use magic, it should already be accessible to you."

When I was studying my people's biology, the references did mention something about that. But I kept checking my subroutines to see if they had any dealings with elemental magic, but nothing came up.

To be fair, the Exceed biology study was only basic level stuff, so there may have been more I didn't know about yet. One thing that it said was that we 'learn best by watching.'

The pony tail on the left side of my head started shifting around, and a purplish brown snake slithered down from my head and coiled up on the table.

"Samael?" Uncle raised his brow. "What's the matter?"

Samael's my pet snake. He sits up in my white hair like a scrunchy and gives me a ponytail off the left side of my head. I've had him for a while now, and he's usually a kind and gentle soul.

Man. Has it been 4 years since I found him? That was around the time daddy left...

I don't know why he was slithering around the table in a panic. He kept doing circles around the whole thing like a mad snake.

"Wow, what's he doing, Uncle?"

"Hhhhhh!" Samael hissed out, then he leapt off the table and raced into the flower fields.

"Hey!" I stood up and ran after him. "Come back!"

I hope he wasn't running away! I'd miss him so much. Maybe I wasn't feeding him enough? I guess he could tell the difference between fish and red meat...he really liked red meat, but it has too much cholesterol!

I reached the flower field, but Samael was nowhere in sight. He must have disappeared under the flowers. It would take two and a half forevers to find him there.

"Oh no…" I teared up, thinking I may never see him again, "Samael slithered away…"

Uncle was just behind and comforted me with a hug.

"It seemed like something alarmed him." Uncle patted my head, then looked off into the distance. "I'll send out Drones to go search for him."

*Sniffle* *Sniffle*

"Okay." I nodded. "We'll have to find him before he gets in trouble."

Uncle was sure we'd find him soon, but he was more concerned why Samael ran off to begin with. He seemed really upset, so what was going on?

There were other animals around here, like birds, rabbits, occasionally we'd see deer, wolves and hawks, but The Hive's defenses usually kept away big threats.

By the way, the big diamond shaped structure above us was known as The Hive. It was our home.

We heard some birds squeaking off in the distance, and they almost looked like they were heading away from the direction Samael was going.

"What's going on?"

There was a forest that way. I think there was a little smoke rising up from deep in it.

"What sort of madness…?" Uncle tapped his foot. He brought up a virtual screen in front of him and started sifting around some data on it.

The sky turned cloudy gray, yellow lines raced across it. Home was on high alert in case there was danger.

"Yalda, go inside. I'll deal with this."

"No!" I stomped my foot! "If Samael is in danger, I'm coming too!" I took on a Karate stance, then I gave a serious face. "I can fight off bad guys. You taught me Karate!"

He rolled his eyes.

"You have yet to earn a belt passed white."

Yeesh...splitting hairs, aren't we? I mean, a white belt's still a belt.

"I still know Karate!"

He couldn't deny my logic, I'm sure of it. It was clear enough to see how strong I had gotten over the last few months.

"Do you understand that this may be dangerous? Not long ago you were put in grave danger, and you would risk that again?"

“Uncle, if I was able to deal with all that last year, I can do this now!” I took on a power pose.

He gave me that look where he narrowed his eyes and rubbed his chin. That meant I was close to breaking his will!

“How is your armour skin? Has it been developing properly?”

“It’s been fine.” I knocked on my purplish chest a few times with my fist. “And my heart is okay too, so don’t worry about that.” I pointed to the crystal gem embedded into me.

“Hmm…” Uncle took a moment to consider everything in depth.

"I'm ready, Uncle. Let's do this!"

If I couldn't save my pet, how was I going to save humanity from darkness and demons one day? That was why daddy made me in the first place; to destroy any evil out there that threatened mankind, just like my ancestors.

Uncle sighed at my eagerness, then said in a defeated tone, "Very well. Let's get going."