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[unitas]

[ Text is about the only way Sharon feels comfortable posting this. She feels like an idiot even daring to ask on the network. ]

Does anyone here have experience in teaching people 'magic'? Or in helping out someone who has trouble controlling their own 'magical' abilities?

Because I might need some help.

Comments

[unitas]

[ This is the thing Sharon tries to avoid: contacting her abilities. There have been moments within Hadriel where, in a flurry of panic and fear, she instinctively unleashes it, but those moments were few and far between. She does not dare practice with it—Hell, she rarely wants to acknowledge it.

She tries to reach out to it, but it scares her. It flows in currents beneath her skin, a crowding, choking darkness; smoke, and fire, and out of control. She tries to remain relaxed, but she's slipping quickly.

It's a wounded beast inside her, twisted and gnarled after years, and years, and years of suffering. It is as much wound now as it is power. ]

[unknowable]

[He can't quite sense what she's doing - his powers don't exactly work that way - but he can feel her power, when he's half in a trance and accessing his own powers. He can feel that she's got something inside her, that she's powerful, that she doesn't know how to use or communicate with it, not really.

Adam understands that. He was in the same place once. But Cabeswater was never actively malevolent, it just didn't understand how humans worked, how he works. It's not the same thing.]

If it's too much, come back. Don't let it drag you down.

[He stays calm, because right now he thinks she might need that.]

[unitas]

[ His words make sense, but Sharon is remarkably stubborn—she pushes on. She's never done this before, never tried before, and to give up on the first go is failure to her. She wants control, needs it.

The people here, regardless of her level of like of them, do not deserve her nightmare, and the threat of it increases the longer she's here. ]

It's like fire. [ She tells him, a whisper. And it promises that she, too, will one day be fire. ]

[unknowable]

[It's not fire to him, but everyone's powers are different, and certainly hers are very different than his. It's good, he thinks, that she can talk at all - it means she hasn't been consumed by it. Adam is still worried, though, because he knows his own inexperience. He doesn't want anything to happen because he didn't know what he was doing.]

Does it burn?

[Or, maybe more importantly:]

Can you use it?

[unitas]

I... [ The words won't come out, not as she tries to use it. It does not burn, not in any sort of typical sense, but it makes her feel like fire; a phoenix that was birthed from the ashes of its last hollow self.

Without any warning, the water in the bowl boils, steaming, out of control. ]

[unknowable]

[He goes very still. Adam doesn't think that's a good sign, not unless she meant to do, and there's no indication she did. He thinks of Cabeswater, summons its strength - thinks of a still, clear, deep pool of water in the middle of a forest, something even fire couldn't touch.]

Hey. Come back, all right? Step back from it. Let go.

[unitas]

[ It seems like minutes pass before she can pull herself away, taking quick, small breaths. ]

S-Sorry. [ Her head feels light, and her stomach feels sick. Without any warning, she leans to the side and empties the contents of her stomach. The world smells of smoke, and ash, and burnt flesh to her. ]

And for that, too. [ that will take time to get used to. ]

[unknowable]

It's okay.

[It's a little alarming, sure, but Adam can't really judge. He did a lot of things he cringes to think back on when he was first figuring out his magic. He's not entirely sure whether to label this a success or a failure, but it was something.]

Are you all right? It... well, you seemed to reach out to it easily.