“I mean maybe three or four times a month,” Lucas answered, not being able to come up with a definitive frequency of his coming to the forest. “Since I was thirteen… So doing that math… That’s quite a lot.” He laughed.

When Alice suggested he go collect some fire wood, he nodded and went off into the forest in search of suitable lumber. Back when his parents forced him to do Boy Scouts in sixth grade, one of the first things he learned was collecting the right amounts of different classes of wood: kindling, tinder, and fuelwood. The kindling was the most essential part, and you needed a lot of it: very small and brittle twigs, even some dehydrated leaves, if you could find them. After a few minutes, he had managed to collect a good amount of it into his arms. It was easier to find the kindling probably because not many people ventured into these woods often. Then, once Lucas decided that his amount of kindling was efficient, he began to pick up about half of the kindling’s amount in tinder: medium sized and preferably dry branches without any leaves. The fuelwood—or very large logs—would be a concern for later, after they started an initial blaze.

When he looked up after picked up his last piece of satisfactory tinder, he straightened up to find himself lost. Damn, it was so easy to get disoriented when you move around with your head down for a while. Keeping calm, Lucas shut his eyes and listened carefully, and eventually heard the sounds of faint rustling off to his right, which, he hoped, was coming from Alice.

He went off in that direction, and in about a minute or so, he was relieved to find her kneeling in front of the tent she had set up herself. Lucas approached their makeshift campsite and dropped his firewood down on a patch of leafless dirt. At that sound, Alice, made a quick movement inside the tent and crawled out hastily to face him, her cheeks burning red. He decided not to comment on it.

Lucas chuckled at what she said.

“Yes, I can charge your phone,” he replied. “But we can save that for when you’re low on battery.” He then took a few seconds to ponder what she had asked about her possibly getting shocked if she stood too close to him. That was one is his biggest fears—his powers unintentionally hurting someone he cared about.

“I’ve never really gone all out in front of someone before,” Lucas admitted, though he assumed she already knew that. “I guess keeping your distance couldn’t hurt. Lightning is dangerous and unpredictable.”

He turned around and scanned his surrounding for something that he could shock with his powers. His eyes fell upon the small stack of wood he had collected earlier and a bulb went off in his head.

“I have the perfect idea,” he told her, walking forward and arranging the small twigs and boughs into a neat pile. He walked around the campsite and gathered a handful of small rocks and placed them in the ground in a circle of about one and a half feet around the pile.

“This is so we don’t start a forest fire…” he grumbled, half-smirking at the prospect of them setting the forest ablaze. He hadn’t managed to do that before, but he wasn’t going to push his luck. He picked out any stray leaves or still leaving branches and tossed them out of the fire circle so that there was only dirt and the wood pile inside.

“All right,” he said. “We’re all ready here… Let’s see what we can do here.”

Lucas moved about seven or ten feet away from the fire circle; his and Alice’s positions from it formed a right angle. He assumed this was better then being directly in front of her or facing her head on.

Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and concentrated on calling upon the electric power deep inside him. A familiar sensation tugged at his stomach, and Lucas knew the energy was ready to be channeled. In one fell swoop, Lucas opened his eyes, and, with a grunt of effort, thrust his balled right fist forward in the wood’s direction.

[i]Zap![/i]

In a flash, four branches of bright blue bolt of lightning were discharged from his knuckles, and they all converged directly on the wood. Lucas knew that a quick bolt wouldn’t be enough to start a fire, so he held the lightning for just a moment longer than usual and finally let go. With a loud crack, the wood pile burst into a bright flame.

Lucas dropped his fist and leaned over with his hands on his knees, out of breath, like he had just been running.

“It normally doesn’t take this much out of me,” he explained to her. “But I did keep the lightning visible longer than usual.”