While there was still a little less than an hour left in the morning, I thought it would be beneficial for Rob to let off a little steam by resuming the lessons we had just started the previous day. Or perhaps…cool off was a more fitting phrase depending on the lesson?

Hoping to break up the often-tedious daily tasks of running certain errands for his various bosses around Red Bay, I wanted to enrich Rob's mundane routine by giving him some simple spellcasting lessons with my staff, an activity that he displayed tremendous enthrallment for. Returning to the same backfield behind one of the buildings by the water, we got our little arrangement set.

It took some careful instruction and a quite amount of patience, but Rob managed to conjure simple flames and patches of frost with ease by the time we had wrapped up yesterday. I was eager to see how well he would manage summoning projectiles. Dangerous in the hands of an inexperienced wielder, yes, but even I had to accidentally set a few trees ablaze before I eventually mastered my staff's magic.

Some old glass bottles that I set up as simple practice targets were propped up on a few concrete blocks twenty feet away. Rob held my staff in both hands while standing in a semi-squatting position. One not accustomed to the forceful recoil was liable to be pushed off balance and landing flat on your back, consequently giving a nasty blow to the back of your head. I had done that enough times to know that no one needed to go through that.

"M'kay; ignite it with your passion," Rob recited to himself; a simple phrase that helped to remind a new wielder of how to operate the staff's enchanted mechanics―even though he didn't really understand what that meant. Having plenty of unrevealed passion within him, a bright yet simple flame licked up on the end of my staff's spear end as the dark runic patterns on the shaft flickered with similar brightness. I stood aside from him and approved of what I saw.

"I think someone truly is ready to move up a notch," I declared, which made Rob turn to look at me with a little pride.

"You think so?" he asked, seconds before his tender flame burst into a blazing fireball that dissipated harmlessly, though in such a dramatic fashion it startled Rob and made him break his posture. The all-too-relatable display made me giggle.

"Don't become distracted, Rob; untamed passion can turn destructive in an instant if you're not keen."

Like many humans I knew, Rob had no fur on his face, so I was able to see how red it turned after I watched him mess up like this. He was embarrassed enough, though not entirely because he messed up. I had gotten the impression he had gone through life learning quickly from his mistakes; he was mostly ticked for another reason I estimated.

"Yeah. My bad," Rob conceded, straightening himself up again before returning to that readied posture. He pointed my staff at the provided targets, leaning his head into it and closing one of his eyes for better accuracy. Seeing that he was overcompensating a little, I leaned forward and gently cusped one of his hands.

"It's also important to relax as well," I advised, pushing down tenderly, and Rob's arms complied almost too willingly, but that's what I had essentially instructed. "Too much focus will most certainly burn you out in more ways than one. You need to find that sweet spot where your emotions are in tune with your mind."

"Okay…" Rob said as I gave him some space. "But what about when I'm in a fight? I doubt you have time to do this every time someone's about to rush you."

I chuckled. "We're not learning combat skills right now, Rob," I said. "We're only concerned about unleashing a few simple fireballs at the moment."

Rob thought for a second before nodding his head complacently and returning his gaze to the targets. Repeating the same simple process, Rob unearthed the passion within him and the fire flickered to life sequentially. Having a resurgence of required confidence, he angled his new flame at the bottles on the blocks and appeared to wait for further instruction.

"All right," I acknowledge, taking a tentative step forward. "Now, push it out."

"Push?" Rob raised an eyebrow, side-glancing at me so as not to mess up his composure again. "What do you mean?"

"I mean push."

"As in physically? Like thrusting this thing forward like I'm jabbing somebody?"

"It's all about the heart and mind, Rob," I elaborated. "They both must work in tandem; the staff speaks to both and doesn't hear one over the other. This is what makes mastery over the staff such a delicate practice, but it is well within your range. It is essentially a matter of trust; more so in yourself than anything else."

Rob lingered on this information for a short moment before focusing on the targets again. He then closed his eyes and shimmied his shoulders just a little. I eagerly watched and waited as he gripped the shaft tighter in both hands, and after a quiet, few seconds as the flame on the spear end continued to dance, Rob scrunched his face and honed in all of his inner willpower with a tight clench in his hands, and fiery stream of light shot out from my staff and consumed the targets at twenty yards away, shattering to glassy pieces as the whole arrangement erupted in a column of fire.

Rob had unsurprisingly mustered up more than he had been ready for and was now laying on his back after being pushed backwards, though his eyes were wide and surprised as he quickly sat back upright to see what he had done, and he was quite elated at the results, to say the least. "Wo-o-oah!" he exclaimed, putting a hand on his head in disbelief. "That was unreal! I felt that come out of my arms!"

"Splendid job, Robert!" I beamed, offering him my hand, where he graciously took it and came to a stand. A rush of excitement had now come over him, flushing his face red in a different way this time.

"I wanna try that again. Why don't I find a few more bottles?"

Rob continued to pepper the field with scorch marks that ensued from his own blasts of fire for a good ten minutes after―mainly as the result of running out of targets to shoot at. While generally stiff in his posture and tended to overcorrect himself, often resulting in pitiful spurts of puny flames, Robert performed amicably well. It was obvious to me that he had encountered many situations where his mind and heart were bent on the same goal; I suppose growing up in a Combine-occupied world worked too well in developing such a mentality.

Eventually, converting your inner power into tangible fire wears one down rather quickly if done for an extensive amount of time, and a winded Robert Bushnell found himself lying up against a shady wall of one of the buildings, painting and drenched with sweat from both the exertion and the heat the staff had conjured. He readily offered it back to me when he collapsed on the ground and I retracted my heirloom back up again.

"Holy cow, that thing is amazing…" he panted with exhaustion, though triumphant all the same as I sat down next to him.

"It is only as proficient as the wielder," I grinned with delight. "I am thoroughly impressed, Rob. With enough time and training, I could see you becoming a master of this weapon in little time."

"Well, ain't that a thrill to hear," Rob wheezed, currently in the process of removing his vest and shirt, wearing only his white undershirt as he continued to breathe heavily up against the wall. His curly blond hair was now flat and clung clammily to his forehead, but it parted way some as Rob wiped some sweat from his forehead, sparing a glance at the retracted staff on my lap. "You wouldn't know where I can find another one of those things, would you? I feel like owning a thing like that could solve a lot of my problems."

I shook my head. "I'm afraid not. This is one of the only two relics left of my doomed world―including myself."

Wanting to prevent a possible heatstroke, I waved my now-retracted staff in front of my friend, commanding a gentle, yet embracing gust of chilly air around him, who took to it rather euphorically. I could still use magic even when my staff was in its compact state, though in limited capacities. I maintained being this young man's fan until I would see the colour return to his face.

"Oh, that's fantastic," Rob said wispily, looking tempted to nod off, but he began to laugh a little tiredly. "Geez, I'm starting to think humanity may have been getting it wrong this whole time."

That confused me. "How do you mean?"

"I mean spending all of our time with science and stuff," he said, still rather winded. "Dabbling around with bad science is what got us all in this mess to begin with. We should've been a race of wizards, man. Maybe magic is where it's at; I somehow don't suspect that the Combine combs that field for exploitations that much. Better living through magic, as I always say―starting now."

I found that a little funny, albeit with a lack of proper understanding. "Well, I am certain that Cerinian society was just that, and they along with the whole planet have vanished from existence," I said, still keeping up in cooling Rob down, though I looked off at the hills for a moment. "Perhaps they were an example of dabbling with bad magic for all I know."

There was a quiet moment between us before Rob was quick to end it. "Hey, I didn't mean to…" I said, abruptly stopping. "Ah, I'm sorry…"

I turned to look at him. "For what?"

"That's got to be an incredibly sensitive subject," he said. "That didn't cross my mind."

"Never fret, it's all right," I insisted. "I've never known a life with my culture or my family. I've gotten just fine on my own."

Rob just looked at me, now propping his head upright. It was then I cancelled my miniature Fichina breeze and set my retracted staff aside. "It is you who has truly suffered," I said. "You've grown up in a world of tyranny, whereas I mainly prospered in isolation. I cannot imagine being as young as you were and trying to live underneath the Combine's thumb."

I had come to know Rob as a fairly modest individual who held little interest in talking about himself, but he was courteous about speaking his history to me after I spoke of mine to him. Rob was just barely four years old when he was separated from his parents. The Combine had not initiated the intense shake-up and shuffling of the human population until a few years into their reign, so when it finally came into effect, he had been ripped away from his parents and effectively made into a child slave among the other abducted children, forced to work on whatever their "benefactors" made them do, like apparently manufacturing cremator heads among all things.

On one of my first nights here, I learned of the suppression field during my commune's nightly gathering; an insidious construct that generated a field around the whole planet that prohibited human reproduction, making birthrates drop to zero. Rob had been born before the suppression field had fully become operational, making him among one of the last generations of humans to be born. The people of Red Bay were rather protective of him for this very reason, heavily restricting him from leaving town despite proving his ability to survive both within and outside of the Combine's close gaze.

Even still, despite all that life had given him, Rob made a closed smile that illustrated little regret. "Hey, come on, it ain't that bad," Rob asserted. "I've got it pretty lucky also, considering that I actually have my home world and people―what remains of them at least."

I returned a mutual smile as my tail swished lightly in the short grass, which was now fluffed to its full width since tail bands were not currently on. Although it might not have seemed it at first glance, me and Rob both had quite a lot in common. We were both orphaned at a young age and have learned to survive and thrive in the conditions we had been forsaken by.

He was only a few years younger than me, yet the amount he had already gone through was more than any living being should have had to endure. The fact that he was cordial and charming in his own right proved to me that he had grown up learning the right lessons, wherever he got them from and from whom. I wished to honour him for that in any way that I could think of.

"Hmm, that is true as well," I shrugged, pleased that Rob could still find fortune amongst all this gloom. "I have come to understand that being alive makes me the luckiest Cerinian to have ever lived. It is an unending reminder to me that life is precious. Though you may not like it, I believe I sympathise with the denizens of Red Bay for being so watchful of you."

That made Rob cross, though in a more tit-for-tat, accepting a challenge from me, kind of way. "Oh, so you're in that camp as well, huh?" he furrowed his brow. "Okay then, what business do you have engaging in perilous dogfights with spaceships? Maybe somebody ought to bench you for your own safety. You know, with life being so precious and all."

Our friendly, jib-packed conversation had unfortunately but cut short before it could turn glorious when what sounded and felt like an explosion going off somewhere in the background. My ears shot straight up as the sound rippled through the air, consequently causing my unbanded tail to plume with surprise, and Rob had now entirely shaken off his fatigue as those distinctive and familiar fight-or-flight instincts kicked in. His eyes told me everything if my telepathy could not.

An alarm then began to blare throughout the vicinity, prompting an unmistakable declaration of emergency. It was time to find out if this were an accident, or even worse, an attack. "Come on!" I prompted urgently, deploying my staff again. We ran off to the scene of the action seconds later.