A weird theme for today but let’s talk about something elemental!
Unlike most children, Brenna loved baths. She was almost too eager when her parents told her it was time for one and almost impossible to get her out of the tub. Even when the water had turned cold and cloudy, when Brenna’s fingers had pruned she refused to get out of the water. Finally the three of them had made a compromise, a word Brenna didn’t like but that she’d started to learn was a word adults loved. If Brenna got out of the bath after half an hour she was allowed a snack before bed, if not then she got nothing, and while Brenna loved the water she loved her mom’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookies just the tiniest bit more and begrudgingly agreed to the compromise.
So she made the most out of what she considered a short bath. Her parents had filled it up with the strawberry bubble bath she loved so that pink foam floated around her on the hot water that steamed and made her whole body relax. She played her games like usual, diving to the deep bottom of the tub (which really wasn’t so deep), making forts and beards out of foam, building a village in the bath. When she tired herself out she just lay there, forcing her body under the now cooling water and enjoying that weightless feeling of it all.
Just as she was about to pull the plug on the bath, hear all the foam and water slurp down, she noticed something strange. She had taken her hand out of the water but some of the water had followed. Not in drops or mist, but it followed in a small stream from the surface of the water to the tip of her finger. She gasped when she noticed it, flung her hand right back under the water and regarded them both from their. She flexed her small fingers and moved her hands from back to palm but they looked the same way they always did. She cupped her hands into a bowl and when she brought them out they stayed, not pouring out through the small cracks between her fingers but stayed perfect and flat like her cat’s bowl of water. When she released her hands the water stayed, floating as if in zero gravity, following every movement of her palm and stretching towards her.
Her parents called her several times to get out of the tub but Brenna ignored them. The water conjurer was just learning what she could do, and she wanted to practice.
Sarah O'Connor 