To begin my collections, I go to the riverbank.

It opens into a clearing, the soft trickle of water running over rocks a calming sound. I sit on one of the larger rocks and dip my hand into the water, letting my fingers be carried along by the current. I don’t always come here; sometimes I go to the ocean, sometimes ponds, occasionally waterfalls, but this is where I chose today.

I like how determined freshwater is. It’s always moving, always working towards its destination. No matter how long a river’s journey is, you can always count on it reaching the ocean.

My fingers absentmindedly swish through the cold, and I feel the energy bubbling up beneath them.

I close my eyes and reach out, focusing on the river’s current. I imagine the path it has yet to travel and everything it has, how far it’s come from the mountainside it fell onto. I focus until I’m rushing along the stream as one with the water, and then I pull at it. Its energy flows into me, running from my fingertips to my toes as if it’s still rushing through the river.

When I’ve taken enough I pull my hand out and shake the stray droplets from it, opening my eyes to stare into the riverbed once more. It’s a shame to visit without the time to linger, but duty calls and I must continue on.

Next is the forest. Last time I collected from wildflowers, but this time I want to visit trees.

The walk to the woods isn’t far from the river, and the change in energy is like entering a different world. While water can’t stand to stay still, plants plant themself in one spot and stay forever.

I only need to find one good tree, so I walk until I find a big one. Its trunk is thick and sturdy, and its leaf canopy is wider than those around it. I press my hand to the bark, focusing on the veins beneath the tough shell. I follow them down to the web of roots underground and focus on it, gently tugging not only at the tree I’m touching, but at those it’s connected to. It takes more focus than pulling from the water, and I almost lose the energy as I pull it through the roots.

After a moment of hard work I feel warmth in my fingers, and I guide it through my arm to merge with mine for a while. Next is fire, and I know the search for that will be long.

In my search I walk for a long time, and unfortunately it means leaving the warm green of the forest behind me. Sometimes I get bored of looking and continue on without fire, but this won’t be one of those times. It seems a forest has begun to burn.

The closer I get to the smoke, the drier my surroundings become, and it’s clear the sun’s been scorching this earth for a while. I can’t blame the fire for breaking out; the sun here is unbearable.

I don’t need to touch fire to collect from it, but it’s better if I’m in the heart of the heat. As I go deeper, my surroundings turn from thick dark smoke to bright orange everywhere.

All of the undergrowth is burning away, some alive and some dead. It’s a harsh process, but space must be made for new things to grow. If old things don’t want to give way, fire forces them to. In a couple of years, this place will be green again.

I close my eyes, concentrating on the warmth around me. It’s extreme, and if I hadn’t done this before, I’d think it was going to melt me. I fix my stance, planting myself into the ground before swiftly pulling the heat around me in. The energy is searing hot, burning at the edges of my body before mellowing out and combining with my own.

For a moment there’s a bubble of cold around me, but the heat fills in before I can appreciate the chill. Makes sense; I was careful to leave the fire untouched. This’ll burn for a while longer, so I’ll leave it to do its job while I do mine.

For air I need the wind to be stronger, so I go to the cliffside.

By now I’m holding onto a lot more energy than normal, and it feels like it’s trying to jump out of my fingers. There’s no advantage in collecting from different places—I could’ve taken everything I needed from the river and been done with it, but I like to feel the shapes of the elements.

I walk through green grass clearings for a while, keeping to the edge of the cliffside so I can hear the waves far below. The path gets steeper, but I keep moving until I find a plateau on the cliffside.

Collecting wind is the slowest process of the four, as wind is willful. Sometimes it blows so strong I don’t even have to look for it, other times I climb the highest mountain I can find and it still evades me. That’s why I left it for last; so it’d have all the time it needs to decide to show up. I sit down to wait.

The sky is a soft gradient of dark purple and pink, and the sunset behind me is bleeding into my view. The wind comes and goes in waves, but every time it blows I’m ready for it. I absorb the energy the wind carries as it hits me, closing my eyes as it cards through my hair. Just like the water’s, it sweeps through my form, only settling down when it’s run through my entire body.

With that, I’ve finished my collection. All that’s left is to send everything to its final destination, and this is a fine spot to do that.

My focus is not only on the grass beneath me, but on every blade of grass sprouting from the earth. I hear the sea under me and feel every single river rushing into it. I know the breeze hitting me has travelled far, and I can see the fires it’s fanned along the way. I am everything around me as I am what I call me.

I inhale.

My eyes fall closed, and my focus shifts from outwards to inwards. I note all the energy within me, and begin to gently separate what belongs to me from what I’ve harvested. I push everything foreign to the edges of my shape.

Hold.

Senseless things. Forms waiting for something to turn them from husks to beings. I don’t see them so much as I feel them; gaps in a map so full of life.

I exhale and push everything out.

Gaps everywhere are filled in and where there was nothing now there is something. The energy feels warm as it leaves me, spilling out to become the next form of its eternal existence.

When it’s all gone, I feel a little empty. Sometimes I spend a while carrying the same energy, and like any caretaker, I grow attached. But I’ve seen them before, and I’ll see them again. I’ll shepherd the same energies over and over, so long as there’s life to give it to.

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I sit there for a while.