back and tell Kaigii I don’t know what’s happening, she’ll hold that over me for the rest of my life. Xzarze. No!
‘Seventh dimension,’
his Intuition said.
‘Blazing Novas, of course!’ he exclaimed, and opened his memory to those studies. Relaxing, he composed his body as best as possible, breathed deeply and steadily and settled into his Kore. Then he expanded his energy field out through the snowman, into the ground and far enough to encompass the two youngsters.
He discovered that it was the first heavy snowfall of the year and the whole village was out for the day celebrating with snowball fights and making snowmen. He was inside one of several snowmen in a row facing a forest at the side of what in a few days time was to become the local ski slope. Midwinter was some time away. That was why there was a fuzziness to everything. He had gone back in time!
How many times had he dreamed of this, played with Wrenden at being slow, clumsy Azurii, stuck on the ground, confined to travelling in boxes on roads and unable to use image-into-action. Alright, he was stuck in the snowman, but Dragon’s Breath! this was amazing, better than any deepstate he’d ever experienced.
The boy he’d seen a few moments ago was talking to him. Or that was how it seemed. Wearing a dark blue anorak with the neck of a blue and white sweater showing, Qwelby named him BlueBoy. Unable to hear or be heard he felt frustrated.
The girl appeared. She was wearing a lilac anorak with a white scarf around her neck. Under a multi-coloured woollen hat her long blonde hair fell over her shoulders. It was not as long and thick as most Tazii, but there was something about her that Qwelby liked. He named her LilacGirl.
They looked just like Azurii did in flikkers, except seeing them for real they did not look quite so ugly with their horizontal eyes, small noses and mouths. The boy was a lot taller than the girl and both had white skin with bright red cheeks.
He saw that they were happy, shy, liking each other, not knowing what to say. They must be meeting for the first time. But how weird! How on ’Tazia did they manage without reading each other’s energy fields? Then he realised. Their auras did not spread out past their thick clothing, but he was still able to see them!
‘Seventh dimension,’
his Intuition said.
Qwelby wanted to meet them. Once again he tried to move, wave, call out. Nothing happened. Then they turned their backs on him, looking up into the sky.
Qwelby followed their gaze and saw a faint image. It looked like a small, round blurry cloud with two dark objects in the middle. ‘That’s me. Up there!’ he called out, and felt stupid when they did not react.
Still looking up into the sky, they moved closer to each other. Hesitantly, each reached out a hand, touched, and held. They turned to look at one another, faces pink from more than the cold. Their lips moved.
‘You’ve seen us! That’s me and Kaigii, up there, somewhere,’ Qwelby said aloud, desperately hoping that something would change and they would hear him.
In an instant, the energies changed. Three boys had arrived, all with pale faces, pink cheeks and short, blonde hair. Two were shorter than BlueBoy, the third was about the same height and bigger built. BigBoy was speaking. His arm lashed out straight towards Qwelby. He did not have the room to duck! The fist passed right through him.
‘Roaring Xzarze!’ Qwelby exclaimed, for no-one to hear, as an altercation proceed in front of him.
One of the boys made a grab at the girl’s hat. BlueBoy stepped in the way. There was pushing, then a fight. The biggest boy stood watching with his arms folded as BlueBoy held his own for a few moments against the other two. Then he and one of his attackers went down in a tangle with BlueBoy on top.
Seeing blood on the face of the attacker, Qwelby was nearly sick. Violence simply did not exist on Vertazia. All Tazii knew how violent the Azurii were. After a lot