skymuffins | [Sept. 9/11] Training Hall, Room 15, Afternoon

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[Sept. 9/11] Training Hall, Room 15, Afternoon

Allison tapped her laminated class schedule against her cheek as she made her way down a hall she hadn't been before. Huge windows showcased an equally huge field and if she stopped and squinted through the sunny glare, she could spot areas that looked a little charred.

Well, there was a reason this area of the school wasn't for those who had no reason to be here. Allison hadn't yet decided what she thought of the fact that she was here, though anything had to be better than setting things on fire when she got upset.

She grimaced a bit while she counted doors. There were worse things than the fires, really, but they were more noticeable to others. Allison supposed that was a good thing. She stopped outside the fifteenth door and double checked her schedule to make sure it was the right one.

It was. She was stalling. That's dangerous, she scolded herself, and then tucked her schedule into her backpack. Then, before she could think better of it, she rapidly knocked on the door (to give her tutor the heads up she was here, in case they weren't one of the ones that could just tell that) and opened it.

"Morning!" she said, poking her head in.

It was one in the afternoon.

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"Thanks," she said, ducking her head a little. "That really does make me feel better."

Playing with fire was a scary prospect. Knowing he could heal was a comforting piece of knowledge.

"I can't do anything like that," she said, a bit wistfully. "I would've liked being a healer."

"Well, if you start taking to the lessons at hand quickly enough, I could probably be swayed to teach you some more practical shite," Dover offered, grinning sidelong at her. "How's some good old-fashioned mundane first-aid sound? Learned a fair bit of it before ever knowing I was going to get a rock shoved into me throat. Didn't let myself get lazy and forget it just because a chunk of larimar made it easier for me, either."

He pursed his lips for a moment in thought, and then nodded as he made up his mind.

"I'll make a chart. Little milestones I want to see you hit. And for each one you do pass, I'll teach you the way the healers without the rocks do the same bloody things I can do with one. Most of what the H.A.H. do can be done by anybody. Just a little more slowly with with a bit of ingenuity on the side."

"Really?"

Allison was not big-eyed with excitement, she really wasn't. Much. Honest. Even if it meant that this would wind up cutting into her social life (and his!) more than just these lessons would.

But to able to help someone instead of harm them...

She'd take it.

"I mean, if it won't be a bother for you..."

"Nah, not hardly," came Dover's reply, slipping back into 'casual dismissive' as the trees started to thin and the sound of a babbling stream could be heard dead ahead. "You want my opinion, the H.A.H. could stand to learn a thing or two about conventional medicines, anyhow. They get cocky, thinkin' they can fix it all with their powers. I'll tell you, in my time here, I still rely more on what I can do with my hands than what I can do with my stone. Powers are a wildcard, especially for people like you and me. One time you need 'em most might be the one time your only hope is a tourniquet and a prayer."

There was that tone again. Slightly haunted. Mostly, carefully, matter-of-fact.

"Besides, it'll keep me from gettin' rusty, too, teachin' it to you. So, really, doing it this way'll be doin' us both a favour, won't it?"

Her brow furrowed a little, at his tone, because there was something that she couldn't... quite pinpoint in it. Allison studied him covertly as she looked around.

"Your short cut," she said, "wasn't much of one." But she was still grateful. It hadn't been so bad, walking through the woods. Far better than passing the graves. "I... don't think all of the H.A.H. is like that but I see your point."

Not as well as he did, she guessed, but the same could be said for any upperclassman of hers.

"Nah, some of 'em are well and good," he admitted, after a moment's silence too long. "They do their best with what they've got, and they take their jobs seriously. But a power's no good if you freeze up when it matters most, is it? The passive ones, sure, fine enough. But some of 'em need focus, and when you're watching the worst happen before your eyes, you'll be lacking in a bit of that."

He bit the inside of his cheek, and then a moment later he slid into a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"S'why you learn how to do it the other way, too. Train your hands to know what to do when your rock doesn't know up from down. For you, just your hands, granted. But just think how much good your fire'll do you if you need to sterilize something, even? Boil water, clean a needle, any of that? You'll be thankin' me for this someday, mark my words, Cuttie."

There were a lot of flippant things, she thought, that she could say to that. Things like 'I'd rather thank you now' or 'thanks will be the last thing on my mind if I need these things' or 'watch, it'll be you I need to fix and then won't you regret it' but Allison had learnt enough about silences that stretched and the set of peoples' shoulders in the last year to know better.

And she didn't really want to step on any of his issues. He was being nice enough--he'd even made them food, so they could train longer--and she was his first student. He had to be as nervous as she was, on one level.

"I'll do my best," she said, after a moment of her own. "Hopefully I won't be utterly dreadful."

"No worries there, luv," Dover countered, his tone still a little too light, "you're already dreadful. If you were a professional at all of this, you wouldn't have any need for a tutor, would you?"

It was sound enough logic, anyhow.

"Now, the stream's just a stone's throw, around that tree, there. Let's fine a place in the open to settle ourselves down and get started, shall we?"

"Well," she said, keeping it light to match his though she didn't know what had set him off, "if we didn't get started then there wouldn't be a whole lot of point to being out here, right?"

Right.

She walked after him, listening to the stream (which was water and therefore reassuring and how ridiculous a thought was that, really, because of course a stream was water). "What are we covering today?"

And that? That right there? Was when Dover broke into a grin that he meant, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a candle.

"Theory."

What, did she think he was going to make her throw fireballs around on her very first lesson?

"We came all the way out here to light candles?"

Allison stopped and found her lips twitching. Maybe she should have been irritated but, really, it was funny.

"Or is the theory really theory and you're going to lecture me?"

"Oh, you wound me," Dover replied, chuckling a little as he put his free hand over his heart. He was quick to return it to his side, spinning on his heel and planting the candle in the dirt beside the stream. "You ever light one of these before? First time I tried, I blew a hole in that room we just left."

Just saying.

Allison winced.

She could understand why they were out here then.

"No," she admitted, "I haven't. Lit other things on fire but not really... deliberately."

Dover gave a little, knowing nod.

"And it wasn't small, was it? Never is. Small's hard. You could level half the school with a hiccough if your powers flared up on you, but I bet you anything that the first time you light that candle, we'll be staring at a puddle of molten paraffin in the dirt not long after."

He sat down beside her, and then rummaged through his bag, pulling out a dozen more candles.

"Lesson today ends when you light one of these without destroying it. Theory for today is this, Cuttie. Fire's easy. You want it, and there it is. But it's big. That's what I'm gettin' at, here. You want to hold it back. I'm telling you that you have to figure out how the whole mess of it works before you can even think about putting it through a funnel."

She tucked her feet under her knees a little more securely and then reached for one of the candles. Just to toy with it, to stare at it a bit.

It was tempting to sigh but she understood where he was coming from with this lesson. "It's funny," she said, "that people are but aren't scared of powers like these."

Her powers were destructive and yet she still had friends. Allison was grateful for that.

She told herself that, after the lesson, she would be grateful for this afternoon as well.

"Now I really hope I'm not dreadful," she said, with a sidelong glance at him. "Wouldn't want us to be out here all night."

"Well, if we are, I packed mosquito spray, too."

Nice, flammable mosquito spray.

"So, before we really get started, do you have any sort of practical experience, yet? With your pyro, your geo, whatever else you might have in that bag of tricks of yours?"

"Last year..." Had been a year she didn't really care to think about and this year had it's own problems already. "I've learned the basics of control." Her lips quirked slightly. "Enough to keep from burning the place down, or shaking it up too badly."

Though it helped, really, that Allison was relatively mild-mannered anyway.

"Mostly they taught me meditation and how to maximize my ability to scry." She shrugged a little. "I'm not so hot at it, since it's just a secondary ability. Snowflake Obsidian, you know?"

Careful, Allison. He'd start calling you Snowflake, at this rate.

"Yeah, I know how that goes," Dover agreed, nodding a little as he flicked another little tongue of flame at the end of one finger, and passed it idly from hand to hand. "That's... a start, at least. You probably got into the importance of visualization, being aware that there's something beyond you and pulling it in, that kind of thing, right?"

As far as stone related nicknames went, Snowflake wasn't nearly as bad as it could be. Jasper was in her grade, after all.

"Yeah," she said, watching as he played with his fire. "Yeah. We covered that."

The flame flickered from orange to blue-white, twisting around at his fingertips until it had taken on the shape of a young woman, no taller than a couple of inches, smiling and noiselessly laughing as she leapt from one finger to the next.

Dover just grinned.

"Won't do you any good, here."

Helpful, Dover.

Helpful enough that she tossed the candle at him.

"Thanks," Allison said. "Any tips for me on what will help or am I just supposed to guess?"

And try, try again?

He reached up and caught the candle, his little flame woman flickering out of existence as he did so. He was still smirking as he turned the candle over in his hands.

"They tell you it's like a well, right? And they tell you to reach into it and tap it and let it flow, but that's not really quite right." He tilted his head, looking for the right words to use, here. "It's more like... It's a part of yourself. Like another arm, or like your breath, or your voice. And what you want to do with that voice is scream. Scream and scream at the top of your lungs until you can't feel your throat any more. But what you need to do is learn how to whisper."

Allison swallowed. "Whisper," she said, looking at the candle he'd set in the dirt.

She shivered, though she wasn't cold.

"Hard thing to do," she said, "when it's easier to shout."

The magic liked shouting. Blistering through her skin. Absently she toyed with her stone then settled her hands in front of her.

"All right. I'll give it a try."

"Whisper," he agreed. "And I'll be here to help, if you start screaming."

He had the water at his back and a firmer grasp on the flames than she would for quite some time.

And a lot of candles. Like, a lot.

She nodded shallowly and fixed her eyes on the candle. It was just an exercise, Allison reminded herself. There was nothing there to be hurt. If she messed up, it was just a candle, and Dover wasn't going to let anyone get hurt.

She trusted him that much. The school would not have made him a tutor otherwise.

Allison regulated her breathing, not caring if this took a long time because it was better to take a long time and try to get it right than hurry through it and, besides, the last thing she wanted to do was wake her magic up in a hurry.

It was weird, but her magic always felt cold to her. Like her fingertips were freezing, or like there was a brisk breeze chilling her nose. Allison flexed her fingers, not really seeing the candle anymore, though she knew where it was, and coaxed her magic forward.

Carefully, carefully... and then there was no being careful because it blazed past her, like a molten sun, as it spun through her fingertips.

The candle didn't have a chance.

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