~Juniper~

           I woke up, face on the floor. I must've rolled off of the...not bed. I was sleeping on the couch? I looked around towards the other ends of the couch to see Jett and Kora. I guess I just fell asleep when we were playing. Not really a huge shocker to me, I was tired yesterday, and I'm sure those two were too. I think back to the talk I had with Sage yesterday. He's a nice guy, it sucks that him and his family were pulled into this mess of a world I've gotten used to. But I mean hey, at least he's alive, that's more than most other elementals can say. But if he wants to stay alive, he's gonna have to learn how to use his powers, so I should probably wake him up now. I looked at my watch, 9:00 am. Yeah it would probably be best if I woke him up now.

                I pushed myself off of the floor and started towards the door to his room. When I reached it I quietly opened it to see him silently sleeping. I'm glad he finally got some rest, he needed it. I stepped closer to the bed and shook him slightly, when he didn't move I shook him a bit harder. He started to shuffle under the covers and turned to face me. Then he finally opened his eyes and stared at me for a bit until I broke the silence.

               "Good morning sleeping beauty~" I laughed as his face turned bright red. He turned back over his back facing me and his arms crossed.

               "Now why should I get up if that's how I'm greeted?" He mumbled and I smirked.

              "Well I thought you might wanna learn how to use those powers of yours?" I replied, "But I guess if you don't wanna know how to use them, I'll just leave you be~" I said walking towards the door. More shuffling was heard from behind me as Sage had slipped out of the bed. "Meet me in the backyard, try not to wake up your siblings." I walked out of the back door and sat on the same log as yesterday. I really believe that Sage might actually be able to help fight back against these hunters, I mean his parents were legends, who knows, he might possess the same power. I stared at the back door, waiting for him to walk through into the yard with me.

               After what seemed like forever, he finally walked out. "Geez, what took you so long? You go shopping or something?" I tapped my foot impatiently, we needed to work on his powers, we don't have time to waste. He stretched out a bit and then stared at me smirking.
"Now let's see what I can do." He replied excitedly. I ushered him to sit down on the grass, to which he complied. I was a bit scared of what might happen in the next hour or so. I have no clue what this kid can really do.

              "Okay now listen to me, we're gonna start off slow and work our way up, okay?" I slowly spoke, this needed to be sort of peaceful, just so he doesn't go haywire. I looked up at him and he nodded. "Now, try to unlock the power from inside you, just focus on that for a bit." He stayed silent and closed his eyes, but nothing. He sighed and his shoulders sunk.

               "I'll never be able to do it at this rate, I'm truly trying, but nothing is happening. Nothing's changed." He said solemnly. "I'll never be the people my parents were, I'm sorry for wasting your time..." He started to push himself off of the ground but I stopped him, grabbing onto his arm and looking straight at him.

                "Sit down." I mumbled.

              "What? There's no way this will work, can't you see?" He looked so broken. I can't believe he's already given up. Well, he may have, but I sure as hell haven't yet.

                "I'm telling you, sit down, I'm going to try another way." He reluctantly returned to his sitting position from before, and huffed loudly.

                "I guess I can give it another try, but don't be surprised if it doesn't work." If this doesn't work, I honestly don't know what will. I grabbed onto his hands, startling him a bit, and I spoke,

              "Think of a memory of high emotion, it could be happy, or sad, or even angry. It just needs to be something very powerful. That should unlock your power." It had worked for me, so it might trigger something within him. No, it will trigger something in him, I just know it will.

               It took about five minutes until I saw something, and it wasn't an element, Sage was crying. I wanted to comfort him so badly, but I couldn't, not right now anyways, it might risk having him never unlock his powers. So that left me to sit and watch him silently suffer his own battle. Memories can really do damage to a person, trust me, I know.

             It had been a few more minutes and still nothing, I couldn't believe it wasn't working. It always does. I was about to break the silence until a circle of flames erupted around me and Sage. I turned to Sage to see him practically trembling, fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles were turning paper-white. He had done it, it's unlocked, now he just needs to control it. "Keep it under control!" I shouted. I wasn't really sure if he heard me past the roaring of flames, but sure enough the flames began to dim out. That is until the circle became a set of extremely tall walls of fire. Oh no, something must have gone wrong, he needs to snap out of it. We got him to unlock it, that's all we needed. I remember my older brother telling me others calm down on their own, but this was a dangerous situation and if I let it go on, not only us, but the entire yard and house would be burned down to the ground. I reached my hand towards Sage and placed my hand on his shoulder. "I'm right here, you can open your eyes, just keep calm." Slowly but surely the fire was extinguished and Sage pried his eyes open. He was taken aback by the scorch marks surrounding us. He looked at me in fear.

                "D-did I do this? Did I hurt anyone? Did I hurt you?" He looked close to tears again so I reached out to him and gave him a hug, trying to assure him everything was okay.
"No, you're perfectly fine. No one was hurt, and you finally got through to your powers! Isn't that great?" I gushed, glad that my last efforts worked. I smirked, fire huh, let's see where this takes us. "Now why don't we try to start out small again. Doing small things doesn't take much, it's just the full on power that'll do the damage. You've really gotta dig deep for more power, but that'd exhaust you. We'll just work on the smaller stuff as of now, sound good?" I stated, happy that we would finally get somewhere. "Now, if you just think about creating the flame, it should appear. Watch me." I held out my hand in front of him and then imagined a small vine. Sure enough a vine began wrapping around my arm. He stared at my arm in awe and then reached towards it and touched it, almost like he didn't believe it was real. He then turned back and looked at his own hand. He stared and focused on his hand. My eyes widened to see that a flame had begun to rise in the palm of his hand. I couldn't help but jump up and down in excitement, it finally worked! He started to smile to himself and wave his hand around. I heard the sliding back door open and Kora and Jett dashed out, sitting by my side watching their brother in amazement.

            "We were watching from the window, we couldn't stand staying up there any longer while Sage got some awesome powers!" Jett argued. He had a fair point, I guess there's no real harm done with that, just so long as Sage can keep it under control.

             "That's alright, I can understand, just stand back a bit until I know he has full control of his powers." The two complied and took a few steps back, eyes still glued on their brother. I looked at Sage's eyes to see a hint of anxiety, but he still nodded anyways. I used a bit of effort to grow a large vine onto the tree nearby. "I want you to burn the vine, and only the vine." He looked at me like I was crazy, but this was important.

              "You've got to be kidding me, I just figured out how to even make this stupid flame. Now you're saying you want me to somehow not burn that entire tree down?" I looked at him with a stern look.

              "Of course I do, this is a very crucial thing you must learn, and I don't have much time to teach you. Who knows how long it'll take until danger finds us again. Just focus on the vine, not the tree, and focus." I scolded. He scoffed and raised an eyebrow.

               "You really think that'll do anything?"

                "I know it will, you've just got to trust me." I smiled a reassuring smile towards him and watched as he turned around to face the vine. He took in a deep breath and then focused his eyes on the vine. I saw a flame, but it wasn't on the vine, it was on the fence behind the tree.

                 "Hey! I said the vine! Not the fence! Come on you can do better than that." I laughed. He grumbled something incoherent under his breath and then faced the vine again. This time, still not being on the vine, but it was extremely close, which is definitely an improvement. "Almost there! Keep going." I ushered. He looked directly at the vine this time with more concentration than I've ever seen him have before. It took a bit for him to collect himself and then the vine burst into flames. As I watched the fire dim out, I looked to the tree to see if it had been touched, and if you hadn't seen the vine there before you wouldn't have even known something had happened on that tree. No scorch marks, or even ash. It was perfect. Sage turned back to us and smiled triumphantly. Kora clapped for him and Jett stood in awe. "That was way better, but we're not done, I still have much to teach you." His expression of happiness dropped.

                   "You mean that I have to do more than that? I was impressed that I could burn a vine, and I still have more?" I giggled at his distraught face.

                   "Of course dummy! You think learning to control all of your powers takes an hour? We'll be out here for a while." I replied, shaking my head.

                   And I didn't lie, we were out there for quite a while, most of the day actually, obviously taking a couple of breaks to eat and such. But for the most part, we were training. And man, did that training do him well. We accomplished throwing projectiles, y'know, like little balls of fire. They're still a bit slow, but we'll work on that. And we also worked on more control, I taught him how to not only move his fire around objects, but how to extinguish it before burning something down entirely. Extinguishing it is just as important as starting the fire. There were obviously a few other things I had taught to them, but they were smaller things. More or less just working on accuracy and power. But I'd like to think he's finally got some sort of grip of how to use his abilities, which is essential in the long run. I looked up towards the sky and realized it was getting closer to night, we should probably wrap it up before it gets too dark. Sage must've been thinking the same, because he turned to me, looking exhausted as ever.

                  "You think we're good for today? It's getting kinda dark out." His eyes were practically pleading for sleep, and I'm sure mine looked the same, if not worse. I shook my head and waved him into the house. Both of Sage's siblings were already in their rooms, they'd been playing all day nonstop, and they must've passed out. Before going to his own bedroom, Sage peeked through the crack in the door to check on Jett and Kora. Once he seemed satisfied that they were okay, he completely closed the door and headed towards his own, when he opened his door, he spun around to face me once more. "Hey, thanks for the help today, I needed to know how to use my powers. I want to always be able to protect my siblings, they're really all of the family I have left, I can't lose them too, y'know?" I nodded in agreement and he smiled back at me. He then continued to walk towards his bed, closing the door behind him. Hm, Sage. He seems like such a caring guy. I'm glad that I met him. I quietly moved towards my own room, opening the door and walking to the mirror. Yep, I look like a mess. You can even see the bags under my eyes. My normally lively green eyes now had more of an olive tint. And I didn't even think my skin could get this pale, or at least, paler than it normally is. I'm pretty sure I'm as close to an albino as you can get. But since I kinda wanted to sleep, I took my shoulder-length brown hair out of the messy bun I had made earlier this morning. There is literally no possible way that I could sleep comfortably with my hair up. It's just a natural thing that I can't do. And to go along with stuff that I always do, I went to go check my window. It's something I do every night in this house. It makes me feel safer to know that there's no one out in the front yard. You never know who's watching you.
                After going through my nightly routine, I finally pulled back the sheets from my bed and peacefully drifted into a night full of dreams. I think It's just now that I have people to talk to, I feel less alone. I don't like to be alone. Being alone is never a nice feeling. But now with Sage and his siblings, I feel like I can be at peace for a long time. Maybe it's just one of those feelings, y'know, when you're with friends, nothing could ever go wrong.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A/N If I could have a sit-down chat with my past self. I would hit myself. HARD. Possibly with a metal chair. Because WHO told me this was GOOD. I mean, PARDON. WHAT AND WHY. Anyways,, continue on please.