If someone had asked me in that moment, I could have told them the precise texture of all that earth, the way it would taste—copper, grit, sharp and mired. Its smell and the color and exact weight. All of it burst into my mind. I felt its ridges and planes and the exact points of momentum. I raised my hands, felt the expanse of all that earth in the widths of my fingers.
Then I bent it all.
I crushed it in on itself, brought billions of tumbling particles to a grinding halt. They were impossibly heavy. Heavier than anything I’d commanded before. I gasped beneath the weight of it. It rose up before me like a wave, and I shuddered beneath it, holding it steady.
But then slowly, ground shaking, I forced it back, back, then held it steady. I held it until the rumbling stopped, until I felt
