Exotic

"I figured it out" I said as the blood began to change shape how I wanted it to.

I was sending pulses of energy through my body each one trying to shape the drops of blood.

Too much energy and the aura disperses separating from the blood, too little and it will drop to the ground.

I got the idea from watching Ava whenever she needed to move she would instinctually form an array with her jelly.

Not an obvious one but by looking at her closely I could see parts of the jelly moving to create a flow over her body that resembled an array of sorts.

Underneath the shade of the dense forest I moved and waved my arm around, it looked like I was flailing my arms as I went between the ball and heel of my feet.

'This seems impossible' I said thinking of all the people use arrays.

The arrays themselves reminded me of snowflakes.

'Instead of forming the array after the blood is removed I should try and do it at the same time' I thought.

I bit my thumb again but this time I tried to draw the array in the air, it seemed to work at first but then I lost control before I could finish.

'They probably use the hand signs as a way to expedite the array being drawn' Ava commented which was my next thought.

'Paper would be amazing right now' Looking around I spot three eyed little chimps staring at me while their eye on the forhead scanned the trees above.

It was easy to get lost in this jungle, my sense of direction was useless as all the tall trees looked the same.

Colossal was the word to describe everything in the jungle.

I run into many nests and foot prints as large as I am making me wonder how regular people are supposed to come here.

I spotted many of the beasts I ate with the Inka and even the fruits and vegetables that tantalized me.

There was a hierarchy in this jungle, the smaller you are the higher you live, the bigger predators usually stayed on ground level, making the trees my new way of travel.

That is when I met the chimps, they all had long red noses and reminded me of a character from a childhood cartoon.

Some had more than one tail usually the larger ones.

They didn't mind me at all and I made sure to respect their turf.

I only took a few different colored fruits from the very edge of their territory.

Looking at the mountain from atop the trees was breathtaking every time.

The mountain looked like it was right in front of me but I knew that was just an optical illusion.

I dared not fly due to the amount of predators in the sky.

Even if I could feel them coming the sheer size of the creatures would be hard to deal with.

They looked like Pterodactyls roaming the skies, waiting for an opening in the thick vegitation to strike down on any unsespecting prey.

'It must be good to be top dog' I thought.

'I much prefer the farming life you talked about, it sounds peacful'.

'Tilling fields and eating fresh food, and maybe someone to share it with' she was yanked from her wistful thoughts when a I felt a large four legged preditor coming up the side of the tree.

Jumping forward in between the green and red leaves I hang low on a branch and spot it, an all red panther nearly twice as large as any jungle cat on earth.

I confirmed it wasn't coming for me but the chimps above, I didn't move lest I attract its attention.

The chimps saw it coming too late, dozens of them fled but a few are caught under its massive weight.

I don't leave until the cat breaks the neck of it's prey, once the blood filled its mouth and its feeding frenzy began I drop to a lower branch and scuttle off.

A thin mist fertalized the jungle below indicating night was coming.

Hunkering down on a branch I kept my back to the tree, the pitch blackness of the dense jungle was comforting, it felt like hug as my vision adapted to the night.

Ava went to sleep shortly after lulled by my sense of security.

I was able to see the ongoing of the night as I sat motionless, like a stone statue.

My breathing was light and steady barely audible to the other lifeforms around me.

I learned a lot that night, about how the creatures kept themselves safe, which predators hunted at night and who was their prey.

Trees had different colored leaves either orange or red making me wonder if it had anything to do with the mana.

Chimps would hang from tree's holding each other to sleep, birds would nestle in deep into the tree trunks.

Large predators would find the highest point they could climb or perch on and observe below, swooping down on unsuspecting prey.

I begin to go over everything that I learned, processing all the information trying to put the pieces together.

I ask myself a question I have asked thousands of times.

What is mana?

It has a gaseous property.

It has a solid property.

It had no liquid property unless mixed with specific substances.

I didn't breath it in, it entered my circulatory system when I breathed out.

I manipulated it by thought and muscle spasms in my abdomen.

It wasn't all around me, more like streaks and clouds of it in the air.

It links me with other organisms.

It crystalized...

I blink, something clicked and a theory began to form.

It felt like that night was short.

As the sun rose from the east, the night creatures went into hiding.

I stand and stretch bringing my hands above my head and calsping them in front of me.

When I breath out I send a pulse of mana through my body stopping the world energy from entering.

With each pause in stances I send stronger pulses slowing them down while switching from a pelvic thrust to a bridge ending the sequence.

In front of me was the mana I sent out In a hazy two demensional circle that looked like it was drawn by an epileptic.

Observing the thin hazy construct I made I began to take mental notes about as many details as I could.

That was until I heard movement and felt my hairs stand on end.

I bolted out and hit the tree tops flying low and fast.

Making my way west I began to practice the moves that Lissi taught me but this time I did it with mana pulsing through my body.

The wind was cool as I stretched by the small rushing stream.

A red moss could be seen underneath the clear water and the thick vegetation was filled with small wildlife coming to drink.

A red circle was forming in front of me, slowly coming together as I performed my different stanzas.

Each stance needed the appropriate amount of energy to pulse through the body before reaching the blood and shaping it.

'Your getting better at this' Ava commented while turning her jelly into a circle in the air.

'It helps that I have you' every action she took needed mana to be used so her thoughts and sensations are invaluable.

Ava feels no pain or thirst, only a hunger for more mana.

Using mana was second nature to her, so much so she didn't even realize she was doing it until she met me.

But she did visibly change when she used it, making me wonder what she was for the millionth time.

'So what do you think mana is'? Ava asked me when I was sharing all my observations.

'I want you to come up with an answer yourself and we'll compare notes' I was thinking about using this amazing organism to help with my blender problem.

An impartial opinion from her would expand my horizen.. hopefully.

'Alas that's how science works' I thought.

But a word that was thrown around in my life as Otis kept dancing in my mind.

A word physicist called rubish and a childs tale.

Exotic Matter.