Morty knows he shouldn't be screwing around with multidimensional shit. It's dangerous, it's impractical, it's blah blah blah. But it's a potential key to unlimited energy, how does nobody see that? He's built a dimensional siphon (it kind of looks like a cardboard box with a funnel and a TI-84 taped to it, but it damn well works), keyed in the dimensional coordinates to a random plane, and by God he's going to use it.
He flips the switch and waits for the energy bar to fill up.
It does! It fills up very rapidly. Then it explodes, along with the box. There's rather more smoke than there should be, and once the smoke clears someone is standing there.
"Oh dear," Morty says faintly.
"Immensely. I'm good at it, too, although admittedly not the kind of good at it that I imagine I'll be able to finagle when there's concrete results other than my personal satisfaction attached."
"Practice never hurts. I was not so good at controlling my feelings when my education began, and while I overcame it, I'm sure you'll have a better time all around. And the more quickly you can hold on to Essence, the sooner you can accrue enough to ignite properly. Then, your education begins in truth."
"And you see no reason why my being from another world should interfere at all with accumulating, igniting, and using Essence in a locally conventional fashion."
"If that were the case, I would have taken one look at you and shaken my head and expressed my deepest apologies. I have not done that."
"Tuesday. However, if you wish, we may as well have our first meditative exercise today. I have nothing scheduled for a few hours."
"I... will take you up on that after fifteen minutes to deliver a more complete explanation to my sister of my plans so that she can explain to our parents, because apparently they're freaking out and I still haven't told her why I even wanted the price of silver."
"Naturally." Circe sits on a large leather couch, looking exactly as comfortable as always.
And she stops doing the chin-on-hand gesture that seems to be her convention for indicating when she's talking to her twin.
Circe guides her through a basic box-breathing meditation exercise. (Ariel participates as well, because "you can never have too much magic, right?")
While they breathe, Circe speaks quietly and melodiously about the flow of energy through each cell of their bodies. It kind of sounds like hippie bullshit, but on the other hand, magic demonstrably exists, so she might get the benefit of the doubt on that.
Benefit of the doubt is present. It's not precisely like any previous hippie bullshit Bella has been exposed to in the particulars, anyway.
Half an hour or so in, Circe murmurs to Bella, "Try to lose yourself in the meditation. Too much conscious thought keeps the exercise from working as well as it should."
Bella isn't entirely sure how to do this, but doing less conscious thought sounds like a promising start. Breathing. Breathing. Breathing...
An amount of time later, Circe says something about bringing awareness back to the body. "Wiggle your fingers and toes, and feel your pulse come back to normal levels. Open your eyes once you feel ready. Excellent job on your first day, Bella. For your homework, in addition to your cognitive work I want you to do some research in the library and put together a list of ten simple spells you will want to learn first, some basic spells that don't take too much Essence. Then, put together a list of at least ten spells you feel should be absolutely necessary to your eventual education.”
"Any homework for me, Teach?"
"Your homework is to get out of my office."
"Before dawn. At the moment, that means 7:00; it will grow earlier and earlier, obviously. Some days I will require you to be here an hour early. Also, I will want to see you on certain dates even if they are not Sundays, but I will provide advance warning in those cases."
"Do you have any recommendations for other classes I should take, as long as I am conveniently free of the obligation to turn up to school back home?"
Ariel cackles. "Oh man, Harry's gonna be teaching about chaos magic? This is going to be amazing, you have to take this class."
"Well, I'm sold." Bella hops to her feet and stretches. "All right, Ariel, let's get out of her hair. Where do I get a catalog and sign up for things?"
"It does. A fairly substantial one."
"So, there's that too. Anyway, yeah, Carson."
"Lovely. Thank you for your time, Circe, see you Sunday." Bella has already noted where Carson normally loiters. Pop.