“I told you that you need to focus!” Kingdra scolded me again as my attention drifted from meditation to the Horseas playing in the water.

  We had been training for days, which to Kingdra meant meditating to better sense my aura with short breaks to eat fish or berries she brought. If I wasn’t eating or sleeping, I was meditating—and I was starting to grow restless at my lack of progress.

  “I can’t sit in the same spot for hours on end doing nothing,” I complained.

  “You shouldn’t be doing nothing; you should be learning to detect your aura,” Kingdra countered.

  “And how do I do that exactly?” I snapped back, my voice rising slightly.

  “Perhaps you do need a break. You won’t make any progress if you are worked up like this.”

  I let out a long breath, trying to calm down. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t snap at you. It’s just so frustrating, you know? We’ve been at this for days now, and I’m no closer to feeling my aura than when we started.”

  “You expect to master something that has taken me my entire life to learn in only a few days?”

  “Not master, no—but eventually I’d like to go back to some form of civilization. As nice as your cave is—and it really is a nice cave—it’s not somewhere I want to live for the rest of my life.”

  “I just need to be able to feel my own aura. Then, you said I should be able to prevent any Pokémon from pulling on it without my permission, right?”

  “Indeed. A simple grasp should be all that is required, unless a significantly more powerful adversary wishes to overwhelm you. For that, you will need considerably more training.”

  Standing up, I stretched my back before walking to the shoreline. “Hey, I have an idea that might be a nice change of pace,” I said, looking down at Horsea.

  “Hmm? And what, pray tell, is this idea?” Kingdra mused. I suspected she already knew what I was going to say.

  “Well, Horsea can take my aura to use for his own attacks, so why don’t we practice taking small amounts of aura? It should help him build stamina, improve his mastery over moves, and maybe the small fluctuations in my aura will help me sense it.”

  “Normally this would be a terrible idea. Horsea’s control over aura is no better than yours, and teaching him like this would leave you drained to dangerous levels. That being said, the rate at which you produce aura means it might be viable—provided you are supervised so you don’t overdo it.”

  “You hear that, buddy? We get to train!” I yelled excitedly. I hadn’t gotten to do any Pokémon training since Kingdra asked me to become Horsea’s trainer. She insisted we focus solely on my aura training, but despite everything that had happened, I had been reborn into a world of fantastic creatures, and I was eager to see what my little Pokémon could do.

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  Horsea, for his part, simply turned his head in confusion.

  “Right, sorry. I forgot your mum was speaking telepathically so you didn’t hear her. We’re going to do some training to help you grow stronger,” I explained to the little seahorse.

  This got him very excited. If there was one thing I had learned about the little guy over the past few days, it was that he was a bundle of energy—especially when it came to anything involving his growth. The rascal would use any excuse to spar with his brother and sister, much to their mother’s chagrin.

  “So, like you did before, Horsea—I want you to take my aura to empower your Water Gun attack. But this time, I want you to focus on taking as little as possible.”

  “Hor? Horsey?” he asked, tilting his head.

  “Why only a little? Well, a few reasons. One: so you don’t accidentally kill me. Not dying is pretty high on my list of things to do. Second: it’ll help train your endurance for battles when you’re older. Right now, your spars end in only a handful of moves, but when you reach your mum’s level, battles can last a lot longer. You don’t want to put everything into one attack only for them to use something like Protect—making your attack useless and leaving you a sitting duck…lett.”

  “Horsey Horse Horse.”

  “Yes, I am very clever. Now let’s get to practicing,” I said, placing my hand on Horsea’s back to allow him to draw my aura.

  “You have gotten a lot better at understanding him over the past few days,” Kingdra commented.

  “I did notice that, but I can’t really understand his brother or sister, so I’m guessing it has something to do with him using my aura. Maybe it’s built some sort of bond that lets me understand him more. I’m just speculating, of course—it could be a number of things, but that at least makes sense to me.”

  Although, despite saying I understand him more, I’m only picking up every other word at best. The rest I’m guessing from context clues. It helps that Horsea isn’t that complex a Pokémon, I thought, not wanting to voice it out loud in case it sounded like I was criticizing Kingdra’s son.

  “Okay, Horsea. I want you to use Water Gun, but unlike last time, go slow. Build up the water and hold it before you release it, instead of firing it immediately.”

  “Horsey!” the seahorse cried as he started drawing on my aura. Almost immediately, I felt the strain as my body grew heavy, so I pulled my hand away, stopping the flow. Horsea shot out a large Water Gun before turning to me, confused.

  “Ho? Horsey horse?” he asked.

  “Sorry, I didn’t catch that,” I said, trying to catch my breath.

  “He asked why you broke the connection so quickly,” Kingdra informed me.

  “Well, you were drawing too much aura. I could feel myself getting low, so I broke the connection before anything bad could happen.”

  “Horsey Horsey Horsey!” he cried frantically.

  Not understanding, I looked to Kingdra with a raised eyebrow.

  “He says he’s sorry, that he didn’t mean to put you in harm’s way, and that he was trying to take it as slow as possible.”

  “Hey, it’s okay, you didn't do anything wrong” I said, bending down to pet him. “You did a great job. It was slower than last time—see? I’m only a little worn out instead of passed out.”

  “Horsey.”

  “It seems you’ve made more progress than we thought,” Kingdra said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, unsure of where she was going with this.

  “You realized that your aura was getting low and broke the connection yourself, without my intervention. You must have felt your aura on some level—otherwise you would have let yourself be drained dry again.”

  “Huh. I guess you have a point. I didn’t feel my aura per se—more like exhaustion overtaking my body, like after a hard workout,” I explained.

  “Still, it is a step in the right direction. Perhaps this form of training will be more beneficial than the meditative exercises I had you perform.”

  And just like that, we settled into a training routine that lasted another two weeks.