xp_logs | Nathan and Amanda, Thursday morning

Nathan and Amanda take today's TK-training session outside to the dock to practice with water. It goes rather well, apart from some incidental splashing. Afterwards, he comes clean with her about the events of last week and tells her not to worry.

It was one of those cool, crisp fall days that he had always rather liked, whenever he was living in the sort of climate that had them. Sitting cross-legged on the dock, Nathan smiled faintly at Amanda, sitting across from him in the same position. "Hope you don't mind us doing this out here," he said quietly. "I just felt like I needed out of the mansion for a little while."

"No arguments from me, tho' Remy'll be annoyed he's lost his favourite posin' spot," Amanda said with a grin. "Tho' it's probably too sunny for him right now. Can't be properly moody when it's sunny." Straightening her posture somewhat, she raised an inquiring eyebrow. "So, what're we workin' on today?"

Nathan looked at the water, raising a hand. A thin stream started to flow upwards, as if through an invisible spiral straw. Turning his outstretched hand palm-up, he pulled the water into an intricate pattern of knotwork and tied it off, holding it there in mid-air. "Water," he said, rather unnecessarily.

"Oh bollocks," Amanda sighed. Water was _heavy_. And not her element at all. But still, Nathan wouldn't ask her to do anything he didn't think she could do, and his faith in her made her think maybe there wasn't anything she couldn't do if she tried. She thought it through, trying to figure out how to start... A combination of spells, perhaps? Augmenting the telekinetic spell with the Summon Water? She too a breath and looked at him. "So, what first? 'Cause that's a little more 'n I can do straight away," she said, nodding at the knotted water floating between them.

"Basic shapes," Nathan told her soothingly, splitting off a piece of his pattern and compacting it into a small floating globe. Minimize the surface area, he thought. "Can you take that from me? Just using your telekinesis spell for now."

"No fair, you peeked," she grumbled at him, but with a smile. Focussing her concentration, she reached for the blob of water, frowning at the 'texture' of it against the spell. "'S different t' solid stuff," she said, glaring at the shape that was refusing her purchase. "Less solid, but still heavy." Finally she got a grip, although the tightness of it managed to squeeze Nathan's nice globe shape into a tortured looking mass. "Bugger."

Nathan 'tossed' the remainder of his first pattern in the direction of the lake, letting go of it once it was clear of the dock. The water fell with a splash, and he focused on Amanda and her one little globe. "Keep it as steady as you can," he told her, his eyes narrowing as he focused. Things like this were getting easier and easier, using the Askani's pattern-based techniques, and the crackle of feedback was much less noticeable than it would have been a couple of months ago as he carefully compacted the globe - and the little shield Amanda had around it - back into a proper spherical shape.

Her grip was too tight - murmuring a few words under her breath, Amanda adjusted the spell, mimicking the pattern of energy she could feel from Nathan's shield, and the little globe firmed up, became more steady in the air. "Think I've got it," she said, still concentrating fiercely on the water blob. "Let go for a minute?"

Nathan did, smiling as the globe's shape barely shifted. "Yeah, that would be you having it," he agreed, then pulled another blob of water up into the air, shaping it into a crisply defined cube. "Here's another," he said. "That doesn't mean you get to let go of the first."

"Arg," was Amanda's only protest, and she expanded her focus. The globe dropped a little as she reached for the cube, and she hauled it back up. The cubes edges softened and blurred as it tried to join its brother in spherical-ness, but eventually she managed to get things sorted. Once she had the spell stabilised, it wasn't so difficult. Just the changing and switching.

Nathan was grinning now as he formed a small pyramid and waved it at her. "You're getting the sense of how this goes now, aren't you?" He raised a defensive hand as she mock-glared at him. "I have a good reason for tormenting you, you know that..."

"You realise yer in the line of fire if I drop this lot, don't you?" she pointed out, even as she reached for the pyramid. It was easier than the cube, having less edges, but it still took effort. The three shapes were definitely dipping lower than before, 'though.

"A bit of a splash isn't going to hurt me. " Nathan pointed out. "How do you feel?"

"It's hard, but not as hard as it should be." The amulet was glowing, but not so strong as to indicate a major power drain. "I think... I think the thing with Rack, gettin' him out of me head... it freed up some stuff. 'S easier t' concentrate than before." With a slight smile, she 'stacked' the shapes on top of each other, globe, then cube, then pyramid on the top. The effort made her head twinge a little, but not overly so.

Nathan grinned. "Good! Manipulating them while holding their shapes steady... that's exactly the direction you want to be moving in." He tilted his head at her, catching the change in her expression. "Head hurting?"

"A bit. 'S nothin' right now." It was getting harder to hold the shapes, she noticed as she unstacked them and tried to rearrange the order. Pyramid on the bottom, square balanced on the tip... As she was placing the globe on the top, her hold slipped and the three shapes melded into one larger blob that she only just managed to hold onto. "Um, help? Moira'll kill me if you get the 'flu again."

Nathan snorted, but caught the mass of water easily. "I did not get the flu from falling in the lake," he reminded her. "It just... probably hurried things along a little." Whimsically, he reshaped the water into a perfect duplicate of Amanda's face and made it smile at her.

Amanda laughed at her water-twin, and Nathan copied the expression. "Well, I don't want t' hurry things along again. Besides, I've got enough laundry t' do without adding to it." She relaxed the spell for a moment, rubbing her temples, before trying again. "Let me see if I can split it back up again?"

Nathan passed the mass of water over again. "Remember the patterns," he told her as she started to concentrate again. "That's the key to all of it, and it seems to work as well for you as it does for me." Patterns, patterns, patterns. He was beginning to realize that all of Askani culture and knowledge came down to patterns in the end.

"Magic's all about patterns," she told him, the amulet glowing a bit more brightly now as she focussed more power on the water blob. It split into three smaller blobs, the sphere snapping back almost immediately, the pyramid following more slowly. "The pattern's the form of the spell - 's why it's important t' get the words an' components right." The cube was giving her trouble, the edges rounded rather than crisp like Nathan's had been.

Nathan delicately wound a strand of water around each of her shapes, knotting it periodically, to see if it interfered with her concentration at all. "I have patterns dancing in my head these days," he murmured. "Awake, asleep... I'm not sure what they all are."

Feedback crackled around the edges of the spell, but she held it. They'd been working so much together their powers were actually getting used to each other. "~The Clan?~" she asked in Askani, not even realising she was using it.

"~I think so. It's all so interesting, though - I can't complain.~" The knotted strand was beginning to bear a resemblance to one of those patterns, and Nathan found his eyes growing heavy suddenly. The pattern was glowing in gold on the inside of his eyelids. How strange.

"Oi, Nate, no fallin' asleep on the job." Amanda extended the cube shape into a long thin tendril to poke him. Well, that's what she _intended_ to do. What actually happened was the cube ended up smashing into his face, soaking him. "Oops."

Nathan's eyes flew open and he stared at her for a moment before laughing, the first real laughter he'd indulged in for... well, better not to try and count the days. "You brat!" he accused her.

"It was an accident!" she protested automatically, but laughing with him. Learning with Nathan was _much_ easier than learning with Rack. The other two shapes were wobbling precariously and she tried to float them over the lake where they could fall in peace. "Besides, you went all Askani spacey on me. Had t' get yer attention somehow. Just wasn't quite what I'd planned on doin'."

Nathan caught the two shapes, lightly tossing them back into the lake. Fortunately there hadn't been that much water in the one she'd unintentionally thrown at him. "Checked out again, did I?" he asked, getting up and going over to the end of the dock - and stepping off. He extended a hand towards her. "Coming?" he asked lightly.

She grinned and took his hand, letting him take most of her weight since the shapes had taken a bit out of her. "I never get bored of this," she confided, looking down at the water just below them.

"It's a funny feeling, isn't it?" he said, watching the water lap at her boots. "Like you're stepping outside the normal physical laws."

"Accordin' t' some, I do that by existin'," she said with a grin. "Then again, we all do, in one way of another."

They strode out across the lake, Nathan marveling at the fact that there was really no strain at all to this. The constant meditation really was working wonders. "I'm looking forward to getting this damned circuit breaker out," he said abruptly.

Amanda nodded, knowing _that_ feeling. She was tolerating more and more power, but she still was limited to what the amulet gave her. "Any idea on when?" she asked.

"Not one solitary clue," Nathan said. "Probably longer, now..." He trailed off a bit awkwardly.

"Now... what?" Amanda asked, before biting her lip. "If you want t' tell me, that is."

Nathan looked down at her. "Between us?" he asked quietly as they walked towards the opposite shore. "Well, a few other people know, but I just don't want this spread around."

"I have a big mouth sometimes, but never with anythin' important, you know that." Her hand crept into his. "Is somethin' wrong?"

"There are still... some bits and pieces of things in my head that shouldn't be there," he said, his voice low, but calmer than it would have been if it had been last week and they'd been talking about this. "Charles took care of what he found, took some precautions to make sure that if there was anything else, he'd have some warning." At the look she gave him, he smiled gently. "I have scars that are probably as extensive as yours," he pointed out. "They're just all inside my mind. Camoflauging what Charles found..."

Her grip tightened on his hand. "Sounds like you need yer own version of an unbinding spell," she said with a brief smile, but her eyes worried. "Can I... is there anythin' I can do t' help?"

"I don't think so. Look, mi'caehla, there might not even be anything more to worry about," he said, trying to reassure her. "That might have been one last residual trigger..." Oh, to be able to convince himself of that. "In any case, I have plenty of people keeping an eye on me. Nothing's going to happen."

"An' one more. If I..." It didn't need finishing. Instead, she kicked experimentally at the water, using a touch of the telekinetic spell to make the droplets arc up further, glittering in the sun.

He squeezed her hand. "Don't worry too much about it," he told her, smiling a bit wearily. "Like people keep telling me, it's a little unrealistic to have expected a magic wand. You don't wipe away twenty-five years in one day."

She chuckled a little. "You know that's completely the wrong person t' talk about magic wands to, right?"

He laughed softly, letting go of her hand and putting his arm around her shoulders instead. "No Harry Potter jokes from this direction, I promise. And definitely no comments about phoenix feathers. That has unfortunate resonance and all."