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Beila studies waterbending, and when she has the basics (waves, ice, the water whip, other relatively simple forms) she's permitted to specialize in healing.
Later on she'll be able to volunteer at a hospital and get her practice in that way, but to start, her teacher advocates practicing on oneself - just a few times, to get a feel for what one's healing bending is doing on both ends at the same time. This dojo produces more and better healers than most, so Beila's inclined to agree with the practice. It's only a few minor injuries, the teacher will be right there to patch her up if Beila doesn't manage the trick by the end of the lesson, and - it's not like she minds, in the right mindset.
Beila gets this faster relative to other students than she did the ordinary waterbending forms. The teacher says she has a natural aptitude. Over the course of her three-hour lesson she heals several burns (these are the easiest injuries to handle with waterbending) and then moves on to slicing her palm shallowly and then pressing healing water into the cut.
It's almost meditative, almost hypnotic. The teacher is satisfied she doesn't need immediate oversight and has gone to see to another student; Beila loses track of time. She's sitting in the dojo courtyard with her bowls of water (one bloody, one clear) and slicing her hand open again at the time her boyfriend is supposed to pick her up.
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roc_on
roc_on
"Yeah, when I first got the idea there was something to find when I was thirteen I had to spend a lot of time sitting with my screen staring at the ceiling making guesses and seeing if they sounded good or not-good and in what ways," Beila says, "it's not like the snakenewts all line up and I just have to put them in a basket."
roc_on
"Okay. Unsupported by experiment, I think cuts and burns and hair-pulling are good, strangulation and having my movement restricted and actual hitting are bad. For instance."
thinklikethis
"...Was healing practice not enough experimentation to figure out your feelings on cuts?"
roc_on
"And burns! But no, not really, these were little, I don't think I had to be kinky, especially since I'm not attracted to Shifu Hayaka. I mean I haven't messed with those things in context."
thinklikethis
"No, like - I have to let myself think about it first, and I have all this practice doing the exact opposite of that, so it's hard."
thinklikethis
"Uh... I dunno," he says. "Still getting used to the part where I can talk about it, at all, to anybody."
roc_on
"Do you want to talk about it or d'you want me to go away for a while and let you get some processing done?"
