xp_logs | Nathan and Askani, Friday evening

Nathan is meditating, unsuccessfully. Askani offers some advice.

Nathan opened his eyes, sighing as he saw the clock on the wall and realized that he still had a good forty minutes left of his daily hour of meditation. Which is feeling like six today... Some days it was easier than others, but there hadn't been very many of those lately. Not since he'd landed himself in the medlab last week. The psionic patterns Charles had given him to examine were baffling him, which meant that the calm he needed to meditate properly was pretty much out of reach. My fault for having a low frustration threshold...

"You don't, you realize." Askani's voice came from somewhere behind him. She came around and sat down in front of him, mimicking his cross-legged position. Nathan couldn't help noticing that she wasn't wearing her red white, her white robe, or her armor. Instead, she was in a simple green dress of a velvety material, something he'd never seen her wear before. He raised an eyebrow and she actually colored slightly. "Rawn and I are visiting a memory tonight," she explained.

They were going on dates. In his head. He opened his mouth to make some comment to that effect, but then thought of that last vision of the Clan's last battle, Askani kissing Rawn just before she flung herself into the sky and unleashed every ounce of her telekinesis against the Canaanites and her own people alike. "Ah," he said quietly. It struck Nathan then that she wasn't actually manifesting; he couldn't feel any drain on his power. "I don't what?" he asked, focusing on her first comment.

"Have a low frustration threshold. You're merely approaching it the wrong way." Askani held out her hands, palms up, and thin threads of red-gold psionic energy wound upwards from her hands, knotting themselves into elaborate patterns. "Function follows form, little brother. You can only be what you can see."

"Pushing too hard?" he murmured, his eyes on the patterns of energy. Mimicking the patterns Charles had given him, he realized, but subtly different as well.

"Yes. Pushing too hard, worrying too much. Xavier did not intend you to fret like this." He looked up in time to catch her slight, yet fond smile as she watched him, her green eyes keen. "You will heal, you know," she told him with a soft chuckle. "You're too stubborn to do anything else."

"And there's too much ahead of me to let myself fail now," he said, completing the unfinished thought.

There was a gleam of appreciation in those bright green eyes. "Far too much," she agreed softly. "Now close your eyes, little brother. See the patterns in your mind."

Nathan did as he was told, letting his hands rest lightly on his knees as he formed the two patterns in his mind, side-by-side. Something about them reminded him of some of the Askani meditative patterns, and he started to trace those as well, laying them on top of Charles' templates to examine the similarities. His mind was filled with elegant curves and knot-work, and he let his thoughts slide into the patterns, just like he'd slid into the Askani's fighting style with Haroun. Felt energy follow.

Lost in meditation, he didn't feel himself levitate slowly and turn in the air, still in his cross-legged position, until he hung there upside-down.