Cloud Shifters
Chapter 16: Release

The remainder of the school year went by so fast that Cadin was shocked when Instructor Kade posted a flier for Spring Badge Day on the notice board. Lep got excited, nudging Cadin out of the way to get a look, disrupting Gur’s nap. Gur hissed and Lep made a face at him, his Aura flaring in a challenge. It had become a friendly game that they often played. Gur jumped onto Lep and attempted to mess up his hair before retreating to Cadin’s shoulder. Cadin glanced at Lep’s Aura in longing, something he hadn’t done for a while. In general, he had become accustomed to being the only student in high school without one. Beyond school, Cadin now devoted all his free time at home to studying for his badges at home and practicing with his gins.

Master Emilio was away on a work trip and had given Cadin many gin drills to practice in his absence. He was not due back for another week, but so far, Cadin’s progress had been poor.

“Let’s go practice, Gur,” Cadin said as he gathered his things. He brought both sets of gins with him. His raw set from Mira had been kept safely away from the other gins in the ginex in the far corner of his room. It was the weekend, so Cadin had all day to practice.

Gur ran through the grass ahead of Cadin, scaring all the other cloud-life and then waiting for Cadin to catch up before running further ahead. Gur startled a couple of rock dragons as they approached the lake, pausing to watch them flex their wings and take off to the other side. Cadin wondered if Gur would ever fly, as he figured those dragons were about the same age as Gur, if not younger as they were a bit smaller. Gur huffed a bit of smoke his way.

“You’re right Gur; time to get started. But how?”

Gur looked at Cadin for a moment, and then turned towards the lake and jumped in. He returned to the surface with a small struggling fish locked firmly in his jaw. Gur sat down to enjoy his meal.

“I didn’t know you could do that!” Cadin said.

The dragon looked up from his fish for a moment; Cadin swore that he smiled before taking another bite.

“If Gur could fish all along, maybe I have been able to master these gins all along and I have just been holding myself back!” Cadin said to himself. He liked to talk out loud when Gur was with him.

Cadin was going to introduce his two gin sets to each other. Master Emilio had warned Cadin against two gin sets getting too close together. However, Cadin felt that this was different. Master Emilio had been talked about two sets of fused gins. Only one set of Cadin’s were fused. The ones that he got from Mira were still raw.

Cadin set the ginex down at one end of the field that edged up to Mist Lake. He then paced twenty steps back and pulled his dragon hide bag from his pocket. Cadin felt his gins activating and buzzing with excitement. He closed his eyes and deliberately tried to connect with each gin and then calm himself by taking big deep breaths. The gins reacted well, and slowed their buzzing. Cadin smiled pouring the gins into his open palm.

He warmed up with basic exercises, circling them just above his hands, something he used to replace tedious, but now found calming. Cadin took each gin and expanded it to a shape that matched the type of gin that it was. It was still a stressful exercise that had mixed results. He successfully shaped the tang-type gin into a cup and filled it with some water from the lake. As he rested, he found Gur an entertaining distraction. Gur had sucked half of the bones dry on the fish, leaving the remains for some grass dragons to fight over, while he returned to fishing. Gur sat on the edge of the lake, staring intently at the fish swimming by. Cadin smiled as Gur licked his lips and wiggled his rear end before jumping in after one. Gur’s entrance into the water was not nearly as elegant as the first time, and he returned to the surface fishless and frustrated.

“Don’t worry, Gur, you’ll get it.”

Despite Cadin’s encouragement, Gur remained unsuccessful after several more attempts.

“You’re trying too hard, Gur. You have to let your instincts take over like you did the first time,” Cadin said as he got up to continue his training.

He put his gins back into the dragon hide bag and set it down on a rock that he could see from across the field. He walked over to the magnetic box and felt a slight buzzing as he picked it up. He released the latch and lifted the lid ever so slightly, shielding his face in case the raw gins went crazy and flew out the second he opened it. Inch by inch he opened the lid; when nothing happened, he peered inside.

The dirty lumps looked harmless enough so Cadin slowly reached in and picked one up. When he set it in his palm, a faint glow came from the center and Cadin saw a pale-yellow glow under the surface of the chalky exterior. He went over to the lake, cupped his hand that was not holding the raw gin and picked up some water. He carefully washed it until more color was exposed. The chalk washed away easily and Cadin was left with a cute, yellow gin with rough edges. Cadin figured that his original set must have been highly polished and shaped even in their raw form.

He washed all the raw gins as best he could and counted twelve in total. They ranged in color from the happy yellow to a couple of bright purple gins, blues, a red, greens, and browns. All the raw gins were only about a quarter the size of his fused gins. He thought if he polished and shaped these raw gins that there would be very little left of them.

Cadin carefully placed the raw gins back into the magnetic box; as he did, he noticed that some seemed to have an affinity for each other. He remembered one raw chunk of chalk yielding two blue gins that now rolled next to each other in the corner. The happy yellow gin rolled in-between two purples while the green gins circled around the browns, and the red gin sat by itself. Smiling, he took them all out of the box again, shifted them in his hands and then placed them back again. Quickly they all rolled back to their friends and then stayed very still once they had found them. Cadin picked up the lonely red gin and placed it with the group of browns and greens. Very slowly it wobbled back to the center of the box where it sat by itself.

“Funny little gins. Time to meet the others.”

Ginex in hand, he slowly approached the rock with his dragon hide bag. The fused gins began to activate inside the bag, and Cadin slowed his pace. He never thought that rocks could be so temperamental. The bag began to slide off the rock just as Cadin had reached it, and reflexively he caught it. He froze as the gins inside went crazy. Cadin closed his eyes and took deep, calming breaths until he felt the gins slow down. Carefully he pulled out each fused gin one at a time and moved them around his empty hand, letting them feel the energy of the raw gins.

Gur found a rock to sun bathe on while he watched. Cadin thought now was as good a time as he could hope for to physically introduce the gins to each other.

“You might want to watch out, Gur,” Cadin said as he laid the fused gins out in a line and set the magnetic box gently down in front of them. The fused gins started to rock from side to side as Cadin opened the ginex. He flipped the lid back and quickly jumped behind a big rock next to Gur. He listened closely for any signs of calamity, but only heard some slight rustling. Gur jumped onto Cadin’s shoulder as Cadin peeked from behind the boulder. At first everything seemed normal until Cadin noticed that the line of fused gins was gone. Figuring that they had been repulsed by the raw gins, Cadin started looking through the grass behind their original line.

Cadin had no luck, and Gur was not helping as he gripped his claws into Cadin’s shoulder and craned himself backward.

“Cut it out, Gur,” Cadin said as he tried to pull Gur up. As he did so he noticed Gur’s intensity was focused on the box, and he was perched to try and see inside of it. Cadin moved to look inside.

“Oh,” was all he said as he watched the fused gins mingling with the raw. Mostly they were all just rolling or wobbling towards or away from each other, but Cadin sensed that the energy was more curiosity than animosity.

“Nice!” His plan of the two sets of gins working together seemed like more of a possibility than ever before. He picked up one of the purple, raw gins that had been hanging around his black slice-gin. Cadin tried to connect and make it grow. It did nothing but wobble. Cadin then grabbed the slice-gin.

“Watch,” Cadin said to the purple gin. Cadin imagined the slice-gin growing to a flat disk the size of his hand; the gin responded almost instantly. Cadin tried again with the purple gin, but nothing happened. Gur climbed down Cadin’s arm and gently nudged the purple gin as if in encouragement.

“I don’t think that raw gins can transform, Gur. They must need to be fused first.”

Cadin put both gins back in the box, feeling a little disappointed. He was no better with his basic skills with the fused gins than he had been the day before, and the raw ones couldn’t even transform.

“Oh well.”

Gur gave Cadin an affectionate nibble followed by, “gurr...squeak, guuurs.”

“I want to finish up a couple of drills with the active gins and then we’ll call it a day. What do you say?” Cadin asked Gur.

“Gurr!” spit, “gur,” Gur growled as he ran towards the lake to get in some last-minute fishing.

Cadin smiled and picked up a couple of the active gins and practiced shooting them at stones that he set up as targets. His hands started to tingle and he figured now was probably a good time to go back home. The sun sank into the horizon as the clouds reflected some of the most beautiful colors that he had ever seen. He grabbed the ginex that still held the mixture of active and raw gins and went to sit by the lake to watch Gur and the wonderful show of colors light up the clouds.

Gur managed to catch another fish, but it got away before he could surface with it. The disappointment on Gur’s face made Cadin laugh.

“It’s okay, Gur; we still have a few minutes—go get your fish.”

The dragon splashed away and Cadin started separating the fused gins into his left hand and the raw gins into his right. His hands tingled so much that they began to shake. At first, he thought that it was the gins, and then he realized that that the tingling was moving up his arms and down his back. Cadin started to panic, but then closed his eyes, took deep breaths and focused on the sensations surrounding him. The tingling was warm and at times included violent bursts down his back. The gins in both hands started to react to Cadin’s state and began buzzing and moving around his palms. Cadin gripped the gins tighter, not wanting to lose the comfort of the stones.

Heat radiated throughout his body. He was afraid to open his eyes, fearing that he would break down into a full panic. What was happening? He focused on his breathing and on the gins in his hands, which were rocking like an angry crow robbed of its juicy cloud-worm. The sensation turned into a hot scorch across his body and he let out a cry of pain. The gins vibrated so violently that he felt that if he held on much longer they would rip through his hands, but he was too afraid of the consequences if he let go.

Don’t let go. Don’t let go. Cadin started to repeat to himself over and over. Another violent surge ripped through him.

Don’t let go. Do not let go.

Do not let go.

Do…not…let…go.

Do

Not

Let

Go.

Let

Go

Let…go.

Let go!

Cadin, you must learn to let go.

Cadin didn’t know if the last voice was his or not, but as he realized the truth of it, he relaxed all of the muscles in his body and felt a huge release of energy, a hundred times more powerful than before. He opened his hands and his eyes at the same time and saw the gins release into a bright light, colliding with each other. Cadin closed his eyes to shield them from the blinding flash and doubted for a moment what he saw.

When the energy around him calmed down, Cadin opened his eyes again to see Gur peeking out from behind a rock, a fish flapping on the ground by his tail and the gins hovered in the air in front of him. Gur ran past the fish, knocking it back into the water as he jumped onto Cadin’s shoulder and started hissing in his ear, apparently demanding explanations.

“I have no idea, buddy. I think that the gins released a bunch of energy.”

Cadin reached for the gins and counted as he plucked them from the air.

“Only seven. What about the raw gins?” Cadin asked. His dad would kill him if he had managed to lose Mira’s gift. His gins felt heavier and he took a closer look at them. There was one, two or even three of the raw gins encompassed within each of his originals. It looked to Cadin like all the gins that had an affinity for each other had fused together.

“Wow,” Cadin said as he felt the new energy.

Cadin heard wings cutting through the air and turned around to see his mom and dad, both slowing down at the sight of him.

“Is everything okay?” Cadin yelled to them, as he got up meet them.

“Are you okay?” Tal asked, landing several yards away.

“Yes, fine.”

“We heard a loud boom coming from the lake, looked out and saw a burst of light. We knew you were here so we rushed over.”

“Oh, the lights, my gins,” Cadin said as he approached his parents to show them. Both Sara and Tal were speechless as Cadin explained what had happened.

“Son, I don’t think that it was gins that released the energy,” Tal said with a strange smile on his face.

Cadin shook his head, confused. “What do you mean, of course they did. How else would they combine like this?”

“Honey,” Cadin’s mom led him by the arm back towards the lake. “It was you that released the energy, the gins just reacted to it. Look,” she said as she pointed into the water.

Cadin gazed at the calm surface of the lake and was shocked by his reflection.

“My Aura!” Cadin shouted and then looked back. He imagined it so many times, but never had he pictured it like this. Looking back at him was a bright mirror image of himself looking perplexed as he was surrounded by the bright light of his Aura. The fact that his Aura had finally shinned through was not the confusing part. Cadin wasn’t sure if it was the lake water or something else, but Cadin couldn’t tell if his Aura was green or blue.

He turned to his parents. “Is something wrong with it?”

“Not wrong,” Sara answered. “Just different.”

“How can my Aura be different?” Cadin asked, his voice trembling.

“It appears that you have a mixed Aura, son,” Tal said as he patted Cadin on the shoulder. “It is rare, to be sure, but there is nothing wrong with it. You just have such a mixture of traits between green and blue, that your Aura reflects that.”

“That makes sense, I guess.” He smiled and said, “It took long enough!”

Cadin caught what he thought was a worried look pass between his parents.