“Have a seat! Bea’s gonna start teaching!” Yon whispered to me. I sat down near the campfire, just as Bea started her lecture.

“So, red is all about “Offense is the best defense”. Basically, you continuously attack/paint them that they don’t even have the chance to counter, they’re forced to always defend. Although that’s a best case scenario, usually I still have to use basic defense strokes and splatters to block incoming projectiles! Anyways, the best example I could think of was this campfire.”

Bea picked up a stick from the forest ground and tossed it into the fire. “Look at this stick. When the fire touches it, it burns to ashes. At doesn’t stop burning, and start burning again, it continuously burns the stick, until it’s ashes. Or charcoal.

Also, if you try to punch, kick, or just spar with the fire, if you don't move quick enough you’ll get burned. So don’t try that.

Look into the fire. You can also see some yellow in there. The yellow is the reason when the wind blows in this campfire, the fire bends to the wind.”

“Try it out!”

“The theory stuff is mainly only useful if you have an affinity to that colour. Actually choosing what colour to pick is simply envisioning something with that colour inside your chroma center. If you don’t envision anything, then you’ll just paint the colour of your affinity. So in this case, you could just envision this campfire! Make sure to focus on the red though. If you get the red mixed with the yellow in the fire, the outcome would be orange, a fusion of red and yellow. It’s not bad, it’s just that you want to paint red this time.” Opa explained.

So I concentrated on envisioning a fireplace inside my lower abdomen. It wasn’t really hard, literally just imagining something inside your body. Just like I had done the first time I painted, I let the energy flow through my channels, out my right arm, into Tsara, and finally out into the air.

What came out wasn’t what I imagined a stroke of red to be. It was similar though, a brighter version of it. I assumed that was the “orange” colour Opa was talking about.

“Orange is good enough for me! To the tree stump! It’s time to get Tsara’s spirit up and running!” Bea said, dragging me to the special tree stump. Everyone else followed, rushing to get closer to the stump.

“Alright, now everyone back off, and give Elliot some space!” Opa said, standing tall. Then, she turned to me. “Go ahead now, put your hand on that stump.”

“Go on Elliot!”

“You can do this!”

“Hurry it up!”

“No no, take your time darling!”

Even Lupe (aka Luperca) was wagging his tail, catching some of the impatient vibes. Despite Opa’s earlier commands, everyone leaned in.

Heck, even Opa was leaning in, peering intently at the stump.

A bit nervous but excited from all the vibes, I finally put my hand onto the stump. Just like last time, light began running through the carved indentations of the symbol. I couldn’t name what colour the light was, but it was so bright that I could almost feel the warm glow emanating from it.

First came blue, then came yellow, and finally, came the colour I recognized as red. I saw the whole outer circle of the symbol shrink, fusing the three primary colour in the process. The result was a small floating platform of light, the same colour that once flowed through the carved indentations.

“Touch it Elliot. Touch the white light.” Yon whispered, as though he might wake a sleeping baby.

Biting the nails on my left hand, I slowly extended my right arm closer and closer to the glowing “white” platform.

And that’s when Lupe, on top of Bea’s head, got impatient and hopped into the white light.