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Handling Your Powers, Tuesday

"Welcome back from the trip," Kaidan greeted the kids as they came into the class. He sounded - and looked - a little tired. Which he was. He just didn't want it to affect his class. "Since we focused on the physical last time, I figured I could bring you guys in gentle this week."

"We're going to be doing some extended meditation exercises," he continued, "then we're going to sit down and everyone can share as much of their story as they want to. I'm using the word 'story' for a reason here - you can cover the last ten years or the last five days. One of the most important reasons we're here doing this thing is to learn from each other's experiences, figure out we're not alone in this crap."

He stepped past the desk. "Now let's get these tables out of the way..."

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Celia considered her hands thoughtfully as she rolled through the options of what she could -- or would -- share.

"My mother died when I was five," she offered quietly. "At that time, I was given to my father for care -- they weren't married, and as far as I know hadn't even seen each other since the events leading to my conception. And my father is a practicing stage illusionist. He makes his living traveling the world and making doves appear out of thin air."

She smiled a little, wiggling her fingers. "But as we all know, they're not just illusions, and I inherited my father's magic. When I was five, and I came into his care, my father bound me to a challenge with a fellow magician: I have been trained, every day of my life since, to eventually face an unknown opponent who has also been trained for as long and as intensely, to see who is the better magician."

Celia cleared her throat, obviously a little uncomfortable. "That's why I'm so helpless without my powers," she added, shrugging. "At home, I I'm not even allowed tie my boots or pour the tea without magic, because it's part of my training." And if she sounded a little bitter about that -- well. There were two people in the room who knew explicitly how abusive her father's methods had really been, and it wasn't exactly difficult to read between the lines, anyway.

Edited 2014-03-04 17:20 (UTC)

Especially not when you'd been on the receiving end of the same kind of treatment. "Are you glad you came here?" Kaidan asked. He wasn't even trying to obscure the sympathy in his voice.

"Yes," she said, barely breathing the word. Celia shook her head a little, and added, more firmly, "I didn't know I could train -- like this. How I have been, here, rather than...how I do at home."

Minus the broken bones and dead birds, that was.

"On your own terms?" Kaidan guessed.

"Do you want to learn those things?" Eleanor asked. "How to do things without powers, I mean. I could teach you how to braid hair."

That didn't address the bare fact of Celia's abusive childhood, but it was a legitimate question nonetheless.

"That would be wonderful," Celia sighed gratefully. "I can manage, or at least I did when I was without my gifts that one weekend, but I definitely could...benefit from some lessons in doing the mundane in the mundane style."

"It would make you feel less at a loss, when your powers absented themselves," Eleanor suggested. "Now. Are you sure there's no way to break this magical contract?"

She shook her head. "I have no idea. But the consequences are sure to be catastrophic. I mean, it was bound by a ring being burned magically into my skin. I hate to think what breaking it might mean."

Celia was betting she wouldn't live through it, at least.

"It's worth investigating," Eleanor suggested. "If there's a loophole, somewhere, cosmically. You were too young to consent; since the intent was with another, perhaps the results can be bound to him, as well."

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Handling Your Powers, Tuesday

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