He suddenlyfelt a little guilty. He had already opened it.
Then heremembered that Terren had put him to sleep and rummaged throughhis memories. She had left his father’s present behind.
‘Hello Aquitain.’ said a voice. ‘You have come of age. Youhave freed your memories. I can do no more for you.’
Aquitain lookedaround and saw an image of Terren.
‘What has happened Terren?’
‘What your father expected. They have worked out that yourfather had a plan to escape and they are going to try and stophim.’
‘Who are they, Terren?’
‘Very powerful gods! Never mind for now. Your job is to saveMiranda. She has sent you a message. Considering what they did toher, she’s remarkable. Save her Aquitain then come to Astaria andget your home back. Then we can think about saving your father.’and Terren vanished.
Much happiernow he raced down and splashed in the cool water for a while beforewalking back and sitting on the warm sand. He picked up a hand fullof sand and idly let it run through his fingers as he thought aboutMiranda again. Something about its texture seemed to draw hisattention to it. There was something strangely familiar about it.He looked closely at it and remembered this stuff was like his ballof mind clay.
He imagined hehad a ball of mind clay in his hand and to his surprise a stream ofsand flowed up from the ground into his hand and formed itself intoa ball of mind clay. He tested it by turning it into severaldifferent objects.
‘Amazing!’ he thought. ‘It behaves just like the stuff in thereal world.’ so he formed it into a hat to provide shade from thesun’s glare.
Then he hadanother thought. He imagined a tree and another and another andthey formed. He imagined a circular zone of rock under his feet andit formed. He walked around and the zone of rock followed him. Hecould terraform his surroundings to his will.
‘WOW! I have some powers that I had forgotten or more likelywere blocked.’ he thought then dismissed the zone.
He looked outover the sea again breathing in the wonderful fresh air and saw amulti-coloured butterfly in the distance fluttering over the wavestowards the land. When it reached the beach it changed directionand flew over and landed beside him within reach. He leaned over totouch it with a finger and its wings fell off and it beganburrowing into the sand.
‘That’s strange.’ he thought as he tried to pick up the wingsbut they simply evaporated as he touched them. He sat there for aminute pondering whether there was a meaning in this when henoticed a green stalk shooting up from the sand where the butterflyhad disappeared. He moved back a pace and sat down watching thestalk grow until it was about waist high then some small leavessprouted along its length and a green bulb formed at the top whichsuddenly split open and formed a flower which he instantlyrecognized.
He touched theflower with a finger and remembered the love that he had sealed inthe image of the flower that he had implanted in Miranda’s mind. Hereached over and kissed the flower and its petals turned into bluebutterflies that all fluttered off the stalk and headed out tosea.
‘What a remarkable girl she is!’ he thought ‘This is justbrilliant!’
He imagined awater elemental at the water’s edge and one appeared. He commandedit to carry him and it lifted him up high then followed thebutterflies remaining a few paces behind them. Just over thehorizon he saw an island of open woodland.
On arriving atthe island he dismissed the water elemental and followed thebutterflies on foot until he ran into a soft but invisible barrier.The butterflies quickly flew out of sight but he noticed otherbutterflies landing here and there and turning into flowers. Therewere thousands of them.
He imaginedthat the barrier would be hemispherical around the place whereMiranda was. He walked along feeling the edge of the barrier for awhile placing an imaginary stake every hundred paces. By lookingback along the line of stakes he could get an idea of how big thearea enclosed by the barrier was. It was large, probably a coupleof thousand paces across. The question was how to get in.
Movement ahundred paces to his right caught his eye. He walked in thatdirection and spotted two light brown coloured rabbits. He walkedtowards them and they hopped away from him when he had approachedwithin several paces, then sat looking at him wiggling theirwhiskers. He tried talking to them for a couple of minutes by theydidn’t seem to understand him.
‘That’s strange.’ he thought but they seemed harmless so hetried to think why they would be there. Eventually he came to theconclusion that they must be there to give him some sort of clue asto how to get through the barrier.
The thoughtsuddenly occurred that rabbits burrowed under barriers to get pastthem. So he imagined a large rabbit and directed it to dig downbeside the barrier. Unfortunately, after five minutes digging herealized that the barrier went into the ground as well, meaningthat his rabbit couldn’t burrow under it so he dismissed it andstood thinking about how he had got past barriers in the past.
This was amental barrier. Miranda would give him an easy way to get through.He thought of all sorts of strange and complex ways and dismissedthem all. It had to be easy and simple to pass through and then heremembered how he told her she could leave a mindlink session.Create a mental door and walk through. Immediately he imagined adoor against the barrier opened it and tried to walk through.Unfortunately it still wouldn’t let him pass.
‘Damn.’ he thought. ‘Maybe she’s outsmarted herself thistime.’ as he again looked at the rabbits. One scratched in the dirtwhile watching him.
‘It’s the dirt.’ he suddenly thought aloud and quicklyimagined a ball of mind clay forming in his hand. A stream of dirtrose up and formed a ball that he placed against the barrier
