Chapter 7 - Pt 1

       The black gloves worn over my hands do not sit well with me, but while the tattoo on my biceps can be covered by clothes, the ones in the centre of my palms cannot be covered.

      So whether I’m within the academy or out of it, I have no choice but to wear gloves. Steven wants to hide the fact that I’m an Elementalist that’s what people like me and my ancestor are called. A one of a kind conjurer with powers that is beyond one’s imaginations. It’s my fourth day, and I’m back in Amelia’s study.

      She’s once again seated in front of me with a clipboard and a pen, legs crossed over one another as we stare at each other in silence. I notice she isn’t in a cheery disposition unlike yesterday, and wonder who pissed in her teacup. “So, Steven told me of what you guys did yesterday.”

      “Did he?” I ask, snorting.

    “Look, I want to be here just as much as you do Coral.” She sighs, uncrossing her legs to lean forward. “But you can’t bail on having this therapy session and I can’t bail on actually helping you.”

     “I thought we agreed to start the light?” I ask, my tone sarcastic, and her face fixes into a hard glare.

     “Try as you might, you can’t avoid facing your problems. Now you can either quit the smart ass replies and be serious here or you can continue to joke around and I walk out of this session. I’ve hard a crappy day and would like nothing more than for you to give me a reason to kick you out right now.”

     Taken aback, I blink a couple of times as I stare at her, unable to come up with a snarky response. “Are psychiatrists supposed to be this snippy with their clients?”

    “Can we just focus on the main issue here?”

     “Fine,” I reluctantly concede, a grumble slipping out of my lips. “What do you want to know?”

    “Let’s start with the night of your parent’s death, you witnessed it right?”

     Sucking in a harsh breath, I nod. She didn’t even subtly ease into the question. Unconsciously I wrap my hands around my body as my knee starts to bounce, the feeling in the study has gone from tense to claustrophobic and I wonder why it’s suddenly so hot in here.

    Pulling at the collar of my shirt, I shift uncomfortably on the couch. Raising my eyes I was startled to see Amelia watching me inquisitively, and frown in puzzlement. Slowly dropping my arms, I fold them on my knee and look down. “And your fear over a fire started from that day?”

    “Yes.”

    “Can you describe how you feel whenever faced with the sight of fire?”

    “Fear I guess. Blurry I'm ages of that night flash in my mind and then it becomes harder to breathe. Before coming here, I used to have nightmares, though I could never seem to remember the content of my dreams whenever I woke up.”

   “Okay, this is good progress. Why don’t you explain to me how you feel immediately after you wake up from one of your nightmares.”

    I hesitate, thinking about it for a long minute, before responding. “Pain. My heart races and I’m always out of breath, and there’s this heavyweight in my chest that feels like it’s being dragged down by something. It feels like someone tied my heart to a large boulder and dumped it into the middle of the ocean. It’s really,” I frown, thinking of the best word to describe the feeling. “Uncomfortable.”

    “So, basically, you felt pain, burdened, and suffocated?” She asks, to clarify, and I nod. She jots down in her journal like she always does before asking.

     “You say, these images that flash through your mind when you're having a panic attack are murky, correct?” I nod once again, raising my eyes to stare at her. “Do you think they appear that way because subconsciously you don’t want to remember that night?”

   “What do you mean?”

     Leaning forward she sets aside her journal and starts to explain. “Usually, when people are traumatized they experience what doctors call PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder. It is a mental illness triggered by witnessing or experiencing terrifying events. And some of the symptoms usually include nightmares, flashbacks, severe anxiety and uncontrollable thoughts about the traumatic events. Listening to you talk about your anxiety, I think your most likely suffering from this illness.”

    “So,” I swallow thickly and feel my stomach drop in fear as the words “mental illness” continues to ring in my head. “Are you saying I’m going crazy-”

     “No, of course not.” She reassures softly, staring into my eyes when she says. “You aren’t going crazy.” Leaning back, she keeps up her journal once again and sighs. “You mentioned earlier that you haven’t been having nightmares since you arrived is that correct?”

     Nodding, I lean back as well. “Yeah. I haven’t.”

    “Why do you think that is, I mean in the past few days since you arrived you’ve learnt quite a shocking amount of new information about yourself and family, and surprisingly you seem just fine."

     Shaking my head, I think about it as well and frown. “I don’t know, I mean each day has been overwhelming since my arrival but I think I’ve been able to handle feeling a little stressed just fine.”

     “Really,” She asks sceptically, raising a brow. “Because rather than handling it I think you're avoiding it. What was your reaction when you first learnt about who you were?”

     “Scepticism, shock, fear, and terror. I was sceptical about Steven’s sanity when he started explained things to me,” I smile, shaking my head at the memory. “Shocked when things started to seem like a reality, fear that he might not be joking around. And lastly terror. But that’s mostly because I unexpectedly had to watch a male create a ball of fire in his hand for the first time.” I shrug, glancing up.

       Amelia stares at me with pursed lips and narrowed eyes for a few minutes before she spoke, slipping off the glasses perched on her nose she uses the ends of her pink top to clean the smudges before slipping them back on her face. “Do you want to know how I felt when I first found out I was adopted into a family of elemental’s?”

      Hesitating, I glance at her bare hands before nodding. Arriving yesterday, one of the few things I’d noticed about Amelia was the lack of a tattoo, and it seemed rude and a little inappropriate to ask so I never did. Not even after Steven and I left her place. Placing her hand beneath her chin, she crosses her legs and placed her elbow on the raised knee.

    Tapping her chin, she begins with a low hum in her throat. “I was adopted by my family when I was like five, not too old but not young enough to not notice the strange things happening at home. Adopting me into the family had been quite an ordeal for my parents, and even to this day I’m not sure why they went through all the trouble, but society rules stated that if they wanted to bring a human within the confines of their home I had to be informed of everything. It was a shock, honestly to have my suspicions be confirmed when I was age 8.”

     She holds up 8 fingers to show me just in case it wasn’t clear.

      “I don’t think I talked to them for over a month because of the fear I’d felt, my small brain had analysed over and over again why they adopted me, or told me their secret, or even try their hardest to ensure I never felt like an outsider in their home.”

      “What did you do after they told you?” I ask, leaning forward in curiosity.

    “What else, I avoided them.” She snorts, a smile playing on her face as a faraway expression settled in her eyes. “My imaginations ran crazy when I thought about what they’d do to me now that I knew their secret, and once I even tried to run away from home but got caught by one of my sisters.”

     She chuckles, shaking her head at the memory. “But after weeks of analysing and driving myself crazy, I decided to stop avoiding them and just ask.”

      “And,” I press, wanting to find out more. I have no idea why I feel so interested to know, but I guess it just feels nice to not be the only one talking about myself. “What did they say?”

      “Nothing big,” She shrugged. “They said they just wanted me to know because they didn’t like keeping who they were a secret. I was sceptical of how truthful they were for a few days, but once I got used to having a family with powers, I became a little kid excited to watch them use it.” She snorts, and I couldn’t help but smile.

       Turning her focus back to me, she becomes serious once again. “My point here is that I didn’t push aside the emotions I felt over learning their secret into a corner in my mind and decided to just move on as if nothing happened. If I did, I don’t think I would have turned out completely sane. My family too, gave me space to digest and come to terms with the new information pushed upon me, which gave me a bit of breathing space to accept things the way they were.”

      Tilting her head, she regards me in sympathy. “But that’s not the case for you Coral, and I don’t think it will be for quite a while.”

      Looking down, I run my tongue over my lips and bite down on the lower one. Running a hand down my ponytail, I take in a deep breath before responding. “I’ve always pushed aside things that made me uncomfortable in a box in my mind, it made me feel safer and a lot more calmer to… avoid what was troubling. Every time, I promised myself that I’d deal with those problems when I’m ready, but I don’t have any Idea when that time will come.”

    “Hmm,” She sighs, nodding. “How about we try to open that box right now. We can tackle your issues one by one until later, you won’t even need it anymore.”