Chapter 21 — The Awakening
Stephen — first person
Time moves like a ceiling fan: same circles, same hum, and every so often it flicks a shadow across your face you can't explain.
Mark turned seventeen five months ago. Five months of protein bars and backyard sprints and staring down gravity like it owed him money. Five months of pretending it didn't hurt that nothing had changed.
He taps his pen three times before he answers in class now. He laughs just a little louder at lunch. He looks at Dad the way you look at the ocean when you're not sure if it's going to pull you in or push you back.
I could name those tells because I've been taking inventory of other people's weather since I was little.
My weather changed quietly.
It started as a buzz—no, not a buzz. That's too surface. It started like company. Like something under the skin had come home and didn't need the lights on to find the couch. It was always there at night, when the house exhaled and Mark rolled over and the air conditioner said shhh.
I pressed my palm to the wall one night and the wall said hello back. Not in words. In pressure. In presence.
I told myself I was imagining it.
And then I stopped lying to myself.
_ _ ♛ _ _
You can't push a penny with thoughts. I tried. The penny laughed in copper.
You can push with you, though. That's the part no one tells you. You extend—not arms, but self—and the world notices you a little more than usual.
I locked my door. Closed the blinds. Cross-legged on the floor with a penny and my red notebook (PROPERTY OF DOOMBRINGER STEVE—past me was a branding genius) open beside me.
Step one: make it move.
I stared. I softened. I aimed without aiming. I let the thing under my skin lean forward a hair.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Wobble.
I blinked. The penny had twitched like it remembered a dance. Less than an inch. Enough.
I grinned so hard I had to bite my lip to keep the noise from waking Mark.
I wrote one word in the notebook: hello.
_ _ ♛ _ _
The field (I hate the word, but it's true) isn't mind-over-matter; it's reach. Think of standing in a pool and pushing a toy boat without touching it. You don't tell the water to move. You move and it carries the message.
I started walking the house barefoot. Carpet sang fuzzy. Tile hummed high. The air wasn't empty anymore; it had the texture of a cheap plastic tablecloth—thin, ready to ripple if you breathed on it wrong.
When I hovered my hand over my desk, the oak edge pushed back like a cat lifting its spine into a touch it had decided to enjoy.
I wasn't crazy. I was crowded in a new way.
_ _ ♛ _ _
"Stephen?" Mom called from the kitchen one night. "What are you doing in the dark?"
I was outside, knees in the grass, palms down, the moon laying silver bars over the yard. I'd forgotten the lights existed.
"Thinking," I said.
"It's ten thirty."
"I'll come in soon."
She let me have the dark. I loved her for that.
I didn't move.
Because I was balancing a soap bubble you can't see. If you breathe wrong, it pops. If you hold it too tight, it pops. If you ignore it, it pops. You don't hold so much as host.
The more I hosted, the more real it felt. I pressed—gently—and the grass flattened under my hands in a way that wasn't weight.
I laughed. Quiet, ridiculous, a kid on Christmas at midnight.
_ _ ♛ _ _
Next: shape.
You can lift with force and break everything, or you can lift with edges. I flattened the bubble until it was paper-thin, then I gave it a lip. I slid that lip under a pencil on my desk and said, up.
crack
Not from my fingers—from under.
It split clean with a sound that made my shoulders jump. I hugged my elbows and waited for the house to object. It didn't. The field hummed in my bones like a small engine that loved its job.
I wasn't tired. Not exactly. I was hungrier for light.
Sunband v0.2: 72% → 61%
I built the Sunband to be a joke with a function. Now it's a function with a joke. The LED on my wrist pulsed steady-soft. My battery wasn't food, not really, but the sun is… company. Warm hands on a cold day. Good cocoa. The field likes company.
_ _ ♛ _ _
I kept it to myself. Not because I'm lonely. Because Mark is waiting and I won't make my small fireworks in his sky right now. My brother is a storm with good manners; he'll get there, and when he does I want to clap so loud the neighbors complain.
So I practiced. Quietly. Methodically when it helped, playfully when it didn't.
I pushed a droplet of water across the table without touching it. It skated like a tiny seal. I caught a falling fork at dinner with a receive, not a grab, and made it look like I'd always been that quick. I moved air over my hand until my palm tingled and a napkin held the shape of a breeze for one extra second.
Failures were loud. The bubble burped and popped and sent a nickel pinging off the dresser and I almost ate the carpet diving for it. I laughed so hard I had to bury my face in a pillow.
Progress tasted like giggles in the dark. It tasted like keeping secrets from nobody in particular.
_ _ ♛ _ _
Dad watched. Not often. Enough that the back of my neck learned his weight at the window. He didn't say what are you building or what are you becoming. He said nothing, which is the way villains and good fathers both leave space for answers.
Sometimes I waved. Stupid, kid wave. He never waved back. Sometimes that hurt more than it should have. I decided to forgive him on layaway.
_ _ ♛ _ _
At school, I learned to touch with the bubble instead of hands. It's easier with edges—doorframes, desk corners, the metal lip of the vending machine that eats dollars and spits out Doritos like a sinner.
Jamie smacked the machine and almost broke his wrist. I double-tapped the top right panel, because pattern, and shifted the field under the coil that was pretending gravity didn't exist. The bag sighed into place.
"How'd you—"
"It was leaning," I said, because boring answers are armor.
I didn't take credit. I took notes.
[Note to self]: Coils respond to low-amplitude 'nudge' better than hard shove.
Sunband v0.2: 54% → 53%(trivial drain)
In science, Mrs. Lehman almost dropped a glass beaker because the clamp had died of "budget." I did not catch it. I moved the fall half a centimeter to the left so it kissed the rubber mat instead of tile and shattered into nobody. She looked at the ceiling and thanked lies.
I let the class clap for gravity doing a good job.
_ _ ♛ _ _
It snowed once. Late. The yard wore a quiet you can't buy.
I went out barefoot as a dare, expecting the field to fail or me to flinch. It didn't. Heat lives where attention goes; I let the bubble hold warmth like a coat with a conscience. My toes said thank you and I said you're welcome, because why not be polite with your own cells.
I walked a circle and didn't leave prints.
I stood there feeling gigantic and small at the same time. Snow came down like static on an old TV. The Sunband winked approvingly.
I didn't stay long. The rule writes itself: don't give the yard a mystery it has to solve tomorrow.
_ _ ♛ _ _
The drone came back—a sky owl with a bureaucratic heart. Higher than the streetlight, lower than the truth. I felt it before I saw it; the field buzzes when attention points at you, the way your skin knows when the microwave finishes before it beeps.
I lay on the roof with my Switch on my stomach and waved like an idiot kid who liked stars.
It moved on. I breathed again.
If watched, be ordinary. The rule's saved me more than once.
_ _ ♛ _ _
Mark found me on the roof later. We lay there like two notes on a staff, pretending the music was over.
"You okay?" he asked, eyes on the dark.
"I've always been quiet," I said.
"This is a different quiet. You've got that look."
"What look?"
"The 'I built a doomsday device named Kevin' look."
"Kevin is gentle," I said. "He only does dishes."
Mark laughed the laugh that loosens my ribs. Then he shut up, which is the rarest way to love someone. He let the silence be a blanket instead of a wall.
For all the ways he thinks he's not enough—he is good at making room.
_ _ ♛ _ _
Dawn is when the neighborhood confesses. Pipes cough. Cars decide if they are going to start. Birds do their group chat. The horizon pulls light like taffy.
I went out early, bare feet, hoodie, red notebook in my pocket because lucky. The dew turned the grass into galaxies.
I shaped the bubble slow. Thin disc. No fancy. I slid it under the dew and lifted not with strength but with under. The surface tension hung on, surprised. For half a breath the dew came up in a perfect glass sheet the size of my hands.
I wanted to gasp and that almost ruined it. I set it back down like a crown and it collapsed into a thousand small summers.
I laughed. It came out weird. Half joy, half relief. Eleven sounds old enough to own both.
"Okay," I told the air. "Okay."
I pushed the disc wider. The edges trembled. I kept it thin. Always thin until it listens. I put my palm down and did not let it touch. The field took my place. A ladybug tried to climb my skin and paused, confused. I backed off. No tests on living things. Even tiny ones. Especially tiny ones.
The sun lifted another inch. It slid into my ribs like a key that finally fits the lock.
It wasn't fireworks.
It was a click.
Something that had always been there sat up and said, I'm ready when you are.
I didn't rise into the air. I didn't want to—not yet. I pressed a little under my heels and felt the ground lighten. Not gone. Just… negotiable.
The world around me colored. Crickets went lime. A distant bus sighed chrome. Somewhere a wind chime was all yellow vowels. I felt like a radio dial that had finally found a station without static.
"Hi," I told the day, and I meant it.
Sunband v0.2: 62% → 79%(sunrise bump)
_ _ ♛ _ _
Dad's shadow paused at the window. I didn't look. Even looking is a kind of answer. I let the wind move my hoodie string, not the field. I picked up a fallen branch the regular way. I was very busy being eleven.
He stayed a beat. Left. The glass remembered him for a while.
Part of me wanted him to come outside and say the sentence that would make everything simpler. Part of me wanted him never to notice and for me to become a rumor that saved people and did dishes. Both parts were stupid and honest.
_ _ ♛ _ _
I'm almost twelve. Mark is seventeen and a half. He still checks the sky like it's going to text him back. He will fly. He will crash. He will get up. I'm going to clap so hard my hands sting when he does.
Me? I can move a penny, and a fork, and a splash of water, and a sheet of dew, and a feeling. I can hold warmth where cold wants to live. I can make space where impact wants to be. I can be a host for something that wants to help if I give it shape.
This isn't power so much as… posture. A way to stand in the world that makes the world stand differently.
The fan on the ceiling keeps turning. The shadow flicks, and when it hits my face now, it feels like a wink.
When the moment comes—and I don't mean prophecy, I mean Tuesday—I won't be the little brother in the background.
I'll be the boy who practiced until it felt like breathing.
I'll be ready.
_ _ ♛ _ _
Red Notebook — Latest 5
Field = extension, not force.(Press with presence; get under, then lift.)
Edges matter. Keep it thin until it listens.
Measure drain.(Sunband before/after every drill.)
No tests on living things.(Even ants. Especially ants.)
If the window is watching, let the wind be the only thing that moves.
End of Chapter 21
(A/N: oooh this is the end of volume 1, next chapter is the start of volume 2!)