Chapter 7 - Learning The Basics (2/2)

My father would leave in the morning and return before sunset, kind of beaten up.

My sister, on the other hand, would leave for most of the week just to return on what I'm guessing are the weekends. She would try to spend a lot of time with me and mom, while trying her best to ignore the bickering of the twins who were a lot more open to each other than to other people, to the point the quiet one would be shouting and the smug one would be quaking in his boots.

Anyways, due to the absence of everyone but my mom, (and even then, she had a social image and a group of friends to deal with) I would usually try to find ways to breathe elemental particles into my body or to try and manipulate those same elements to creating a wind, a candle sized fire or even a small bubble but it seemed pointless.

I was advancing so slowly in magic that I was questioning how the hell anyone could use magic at the young age of 15 or if I was just bad at magic in general.

***

A week later, it seemed that I had made a breakthrough, sort of?

It was not a breakthrough in magic per se, but it was a breakthrough nonetheless. One day when I was looking at my mother while she was washing the dishes while I was just enjoying the view in front of me, I saw a small flicker of golden light slightly under her chest and above her belly button area.

The golden flicker started to increase in size slowly and turned into a golden flame around the size of an adult's fist. The flame was burning steadily inside her but was not causing any pain to its host.

The brightly Burning flame was plain yet like any other flame in appearance if you ignore its golden glow. Nonetheless, to me, it strangely resembled my birth mother/ present mother from its gentleness to its brightness.

6 and a half days after the breakthrough, I was able to check on everyone's flame since everyone had one, but it took a lot of concentration on the specific place where I know the flame is located.

What I found out is that my sister had the brightest and largest flame in the family, while my grandmother had the bright yet smaller flame.

Even though this had ticked off most of my assumptions, it didn't mean that the older you are, the smaller and dimmer your flame will be. From what I saw, my father would have a dim and slightly small flame that would burn weakly after he gets home. The catch was that when he woke up, the flame would be bright again and slightly bigger than it was the day before when he came back.

This indicates that the larger and brighter the flame is, the more healthy and energetic you are.. While the brightness of the flame would indicate a person's mental health, the size would indicate their physical health or strength which explains why old women like my grandmother would have a smaller flame while my brothers who have not fully developed their bodies would also have a smaller flame than their sister yet slightly larger than my mother's.