Chapter 5

Chapter 5

“Alright, brat. Listen up. You’re going to learn how to fetch properly,” Amelia declared, pointing a finger at Storm.The moment the word “fetch” left her lips, Storm became a purple-and-gold blur. Before Amelia could even point out a target, the little Windray had dashed out into the void, snagging an Aether Stone that had been drifting a dozen yards away—far enough that Amelia hadn’t even noticed it.

Amelia stood there, finger still pointed at empty air, her jaw dropping. “I didn’t even tell you which—!”

Storm was already back, hovering in front of Amelia’s face with a distended, lumpy throat and a proud look in her golden eyes. With a familiar, wet blurgh, the stone was launched. It smacked into Amelia’s palm with a sickening, liquid squelch.

Amelia stared down at the glistening, slime-coated rock in her hand. She could already feel the saliva cooling against her skin, turning into a tacky, stubborn film.

“I don’t know if I should be happy that you can fetch from that far,” she sighed, her shoulders slumping as she looked toward her small pond, “or worried that I’m going to run out of water just from washing my hands.”

For the next couple of hours, Amelia tried her best to teach Storm how to nudge the stones back. She tried hand signals, she tried gentle pushes, and she even tried to mimic the “nudging” motion with her own elbow, but it all ended in a resounding failure. Storm simply didn’t understand the point of the extra effort—after all, her mouth worked perfectly every time.