This is not one of the rainy days, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to see (and it means that Stormy can have a book with her, when she takes breaks from being the sky, without it getting ruined). She's sitting on the roof - she can get to a shallowly sloped part of it from her window without much danger of falling - and she's being clouds. Her teachers say that clouds aren't really puffy like pillows, but that they're more like fog. They're right, but even fog feels soft to her. She sinks into the clouds, she is the clouds, the clouds are her, the bit of her on the roof is of negligible importance.

Stormy doesn't notice. She's clouds. She's big, soft white clouds, sculling lazily across the sky. She drops them in the east when they're too far away, and picks them up in the west when they glide within range.

That's all right. Her company can wait.

The bottle goes back where it came from. Mathilde waits.

"Yes I did," says Mathilde.

"You made me lose my storm. I don't think I can find it again."

"I'm sorry about your storm," she says, "but keeping on that way could've killed you, so I'm not that sorry."

"I've never died being a storm before," Stormy points out.

"Have you been tested for magic?"

"Yes. I didn't have any. Ranae says me and the sky's just one of those things."

"Whoever told you that you don't have magic was wrong. You have plenty," says Mathilde. "What you're doing when you be storms is magic, and magic is dangerous, especially when you don't understand it properly. You went farther out than usual this time, didn't you?"

"...Yeah. I was chasing a cloud I liked, and then it went to join up with a storm, way over that way." She waves a hand.

"...That makes it sound like I can't just. Be the sky forever."

"You can't," Mathilde agrees. "If you tried, you'd die."

"Oh. I keep being able to do it for longer and longer, though."

"It's not safe to do that without anyone watching your body to make sure nothing happens to it, and watching you to make sure you find your way back."

"Oh." Pause. "I almost died? Just now?"

Mathilde nods.

"I don't want to die."

"Okay. How do I do magic safely, then?"

"That's not the kind of question I can just answer right away," she says. "It can take years to learn everything, especially if your magic is powerful or unusual, and yours is both. The best thing for your magic would probably be if you went to Winding Circle Temple, near Summersea, and studied there for a few years until you understood it all."

"...Oh. I don't know if Ranae wants me to go away that long."

"Then let's talk to Ranae and find out," Mathilde suggests.

"Okay." Stormy climbs back in her window, which she leaves wide open. It doesn't have a bed in it, but it has her books and playthings. "Mom! Mo-o-om!"

Stormy's mom says, "Come downstairs and tell me what you need!"

Stormy shrugs, goes downstairs, and opens the front door, looking for Mathilde.

Mathilde is standing right there!

"Mom! There's a lady here to talk to you!"

Ranae comes to the door, dusting off floury hands on her apron. "Hello? Can I help you?"

"My name is Mathilde," she says. "You could think of me as a kind of mage-checker, if you wanted. Your daughter has weather magic."

"We already went to a mage checker," Ranae says. "He didn't find anything."

"He was wrong," says Mathilde.

"He was very confident," says Ranae, not sounding very confident.

"He was confidently wrong," says Mathilde. "Mage-checkers often are, when it comes to ambient mages."

"I don't think I've heard of those," Ranae says.

"They're not very common," says Mathilde. "But your daughter is one."

"I suppose that would explain a lot. Well, thank you for letting us know," says Ranae.

"Strong magical talent like this needs to be trained," says Mathilde. "There are a few options, but the best and the safest would be for her to go to Winding Circle Temple and learn there."

"I... this is very sudden," says Ranae. "And - you are a complete stranger and, forgive me, but you look very young. And Winding Circle is not nearby. And I would need to consult with her father. And I don't think I can pay any significant tuition."

"You wouldn't need to pay tuition," she says. "Do you want to see my mage credentials?"

"It would help. I'd still need to talk to Charlie - and the distance! She's only ten."

"Misplace her - what?"

"One of the commonest dangers to an untrained ambient mage is that they'll start exploring their magic and not know how to stop. People have died or become very sick that way, when their attention is drawn out of their body and into the magic for too long."

Ranae puts her hand on Stormy's shoulder and pulls her in for a worried hug.

Stormy shifts from foot to foot but allows this.

"Which is why it's important to teach young mages," she adds.

"Does it have to be Winding Circle? Isn't there anywhere closer? She's only ten."

"I was eight when I went to Lightsbridge," says Mathilde, putting her medallion away. "She'll be fine. Winding Circle is her best chance."

"How often will we be able to visit? Do you need to take her soon - I should write to her father, he's upcountry -"

"You have time to write to her father. I can communicate magically with Winding Circle if you want to talk to someone there. As for visits, that depends on how often you can travel."

"I teach school - I can travel on school breaks. Charlie usually takes her when he has vacation... Oh, Bella."

"I almost followed a cloud too far," Bella says solemnly. "I should learn how to do it safely."

"Yes, you should," Mathilde agrees.

"What's Winding Circle like?" Stormy asks while Ranae is processing this upheaval.

"Well, I happen to know the woman who runs the girls' dormitories, so you won't have anything to complain about there," she says. "The whole temple is laid out like a spiral, with one winding road that circles in from the main gate, hence the name. Most of the adults there are temple dedicates, so you'll see them in blue or red or green or yellow robes, and the novices in white. But you don't need to dedicate yourself to the temple, or even plan to, in order to learn there. Some very famous mages have gotten their educations at Winding Circle and gone on to have their careers elsewhere."

"Like who?"

"Do you know any famous mages?"

"...I have some written down. I can't remember without going and looking."

"If you go and look, I'll tell you if they were educated at Winding Circle," she says.

Bella goes up the stairs, carefully taking each step, and comes back down with a notebook after a minute. "We did a unit on magic in history," she tells Mathilde. "I wrote down all the great mages the teacher talked about." She hands over the notebook, opened to the correct page; in neat but childlike handwriting it lists a large number of great mages, ranging from "Crane" to "Sandrilene fa Toren".

"Cool," says Bella. She takes the notebook back, closes it, and goes to put it away again.

"So - I hate to harp about finances - but no tuition, what about living expenses?"

"Winding Circle can cover it. That's not to say they won't appreciate you contributing what you can, but you don't have to."

"Can I come with you to help settle her in?"

"I think that will be fine."

"All right. I'll write Charlie that letter, then," and Ranae goes off to fetch paper.

"You can bring as much stuff as we can carry on the way. You'll have to ask Dedicate Honey about sleeping outside. There might not be anywhere outside for you to sleep; most of Winding Circle is in use somehow or other, even the outdoor parts."

"I have a hammock. Can't I put the hammock somewhere?" asks Stormy. "I've been sleeping outside since I was seven!"

"If there's somewhere to put your hammock, Dedicate Honey will find it," Mathilde assures her.

"I don't want to have to sleep all shut up inside," says Stormy. "It's stuffy."

"I'll make sure to tell Honey that."

"Good."

She smiles.

Charlie's eventual return letter accepts Ranae's judgment on their child's education, and the trip to Winding Circle is undertaken.

"Do I get to sleep outside?" asks Stormy, following the dedicate.

"You do!" says the dedicate.

"Good. But also I need to have a place for my stuff that isn't outside because books aren't waterproof."

Stormy bounces on her toes. It would probably be rude to taste the sky she will be living under right now, when there are people to meet.

"I'm named Isabella but I'd rather be called Stormy and if you have to call me something that's not Stormy Bella is better than Isabella."

"Pleased to meet you, Stormy. Why don't you bring your things inside?"

"Okay." She goes and get the first of a few boxes - she has a lot of books, and notebooks.

Sedge shows her the room just to the left of the door where a few of the people living in the house keep this and that. There's plenty of space for her boxes.

Stormy takes a few trips, and then she goes to look at the rest of the house.

Stormy peeps into that room.

It contains a bed, a wardrobe, a chair, and a girl. It's easy to miss the girl, because she is tucked into the small space between the bed and the wardrobe and is not moving any more than either.

"Hi!" says Stormy, when she spots the girl. "I'm Stormy. I'm moving here. Do you live here?"

"Yes," she mumurs.

"What's your name?"

"Serahila."

"Are you magic too?"

She closes her eyes. "It's possible."

"You don't know?"

She hesitates, then nods.

Stormy goes and closes the door behind her properly, so no one else will be confused, and continues poking around.

"Yes please."

Outside they go. There is a place to put Stormy's hammock! He shows her it.

"Yes, you may."

2. A boy of maybe thirteen or fourteen, with a bright smile and quick hands, who is in the kitchen part of the kitchen-and-sitting-area making food of some kind.

3. Serahila, or someone very likely to be Serahila, sitting quiet and motionless at the table with her hands folded in her lap—

—and an identical-looking but better-dressed and much happier girl sitting next to her, who seems very likely to be her twin sister.

4. or 5., depending how you count, a girl sitting across the table from Serahila with her nose in a book. She looks closest to Stormy's own age; maybe a year older, maybe somewhat less.

"Hello!" says Probably Rook. "I'm going to guess that you're Stormy. Am I right?"

"I am," agrees Stormy. "I already met Serahila sort of, who's everybody else?"

"I'm Rook," says Apparently Rook.

"I'm Mercy," says the boy doing the cooking.

"I'm Niva!" says Serahila's twin.

"And I'm Elyth," says the youngest girl, looking up from her book to smile at Stormy.

Stormy realizes that she doesn't have a notebook on her. She goes to where her stuff was unloaded and collects a fresh one and then writes all this down.

Elyth observes this procedure curiously.

"It's so I don't forget," Stormy explains. "How do you spell Elyth?"

"E-l-y-t-h," she says.

Stormy writes this down. The other names she spells without help. "Are the rest of you magic?"

"Yes," says Elyth. "Well, debatably. Serahila and Niva are twins, and Niva has magic—"

"Smithing and lightning," she supplies.

"—so Serahila should have magic too, that's how it's supposed to work, but nobody knows what it is. And she doesn't like to talk, which is why I'm saying all this for her. My magic's with ink and paper, which is all one magic even though it sounds like two different things, and Mercy does thread and cooking, which is exactly the number of different things it sounds like. People don't usually have two different kinds, but Niva got hers because she was struck by lightning, which she doesn't like talking about, probably because it was painful and scary. And Rook is a plant mage and Sedge is a stone mage, and that's everyone at Discipline."

"That's just its name," says Rook. "As far as I can tell it's just a temple-y sort of thing to name a building and that's that. Discipline cottage is traditionally a home for children who don't fit in the regular dormitories, for one reason or another. You, for example, like to sleep outside in a hammock."

"Yes. I'm glad I don't have to sleep inside, it's stuffy."

Mercy snorts.

"What?" asks Stormy.

"I've had to sleep outside before. Places that weren't as nice as this temple. It's just funny hearing somebody say they like it better."

"I used to drag my mattress outside in the rain until Ranae got me my hammock."

He laughs.

"What do you do with ink and paper? You don't like - read it without looking, do you?" Stormy asks Elyth.

"I can if I really try, but I have to be touching the page and it's a lot slower than reading with looking and not nearly as fun."

"Okay. Um, don't read my notebooks unless I show you them. That goes for everybody but the ink and paper thing is why I asked."

"Okay," says Elyth.

"Sure," says Niva.

Mercy is doing some kind of cooking thing and apparently too absorbed to respond.

Serahila continues to do the same amount of exactly nothing she has been doing this whole time.

"The weird kinds are called 'ambient'," Rook says helpfully. "And 'a some other thing of some kind' is a good way to put it. The different kinds of ambient magic aren't necessarily anything like each other, especially if they're very different. Sometimes we talk about 'craft magics' like metal and thread as different from 'natural magics' like weather and plants, but even those categories aren't perfectly clear; metal can be found in nature, for example, and plants are often cultivated in ways some people might consider a craft."

"How do you craft a plant?"

"Farmers and gardeners keep plants in particular arrangements for particular purposes. Some gardens are just as decorative as a gold necklace, and some are just as useful as an iron hammer, and they get that way through the care and attention of people. And of course there's miniature trees. Those are crafted in what might be a more familiar way - their custodians encourage them to grow in specific shapes, for magical reasons or just because they're pretty that way."

"Miniature trees! They sound cute."

"I happen to think they are very cute," says Rook. "But that could be because I keep some and have gotten very fond of them over the years."

"I want to see the tiny trees."

"You can see the tiny trees! You can see them right now, if you like."

"Yes please!"

"They're so cute," exclaims Stormy. "Do they have names?"

"They do not have names. Would you like to name them? If you come up with good names, you can."

"I would! I don't know what kind of names trees should have though." She starts counting trees and writes down her total.

"I can tell you what kinds of trees they all are, if that would be useful to know."

"Yes please." Her pen is poised. "I'm not sure what kind of names any particular kind of tree should have either, but it can't hurt."

He lists all of the kinds, and spells any that Stormy has trouble with. Some of them are obscure.

When he names a lemon tree, Stormy giggles. "Does it make tiny lemons?"

"It makes lemons of ordinary size. Slightly smallish, maybe."

"It must be hard for it to hold up ordinary lemons. Can I pet the trees?"

"You may pet the trees. Please be careful; they're stronger than they might look, but they're still tiny, and it's hard for trees to replace broken branches."

"I'll be gentle." She gently pets the trees. "I think they should have tiny weather. Can I try to make them tiny weather? Sometimes I can do very, very small things if I try."

"You can make tiny weather for the tiny trees! That would be extremely cute," he says. "But please make sure you're very good at tiny weather before you try to put it on the tiny trees. And only give them gentle kinds of weather. I don't think they will appreciate lightning even if it is very tiny."

"Tiny rain with no lightning," agrees Stormy, "and I will try it first somewhere else. I think I might be the only thing in the world that likes lightning. It likes me too."

"If you can touch lightning without being hurt, then it makes perfect sense that you would like it. Most people can't."

"Yes, that's probably why. Is Niva the only other person who does lightning magic around? And she doesn't like it, it sounds like."

"Weather magic is rare; lightning magic in particular is even rarer. Winding Circle is the largest concentration of ambient mages in the world, and I'm still surprised to have two students here at the same time who have magic with lightning. Even if one of them got it in an unfortunate accident."

"Oh. I was sort of hoping there would be people around who could - I dunno. Play with the sky with me. Even only bits of it at once."

"There was another very famous weather mage here, but she died," he says. "I only knew her for a year or so, when I was thirteen."

"Mathilde looked at my list of great mages and there was a weather one on it who she said studied here. Trisana Chandler?"

"Yes, although I knew her as just Tris. She was my teacher's foster sister."

Niva pokes her head out the back door and announces, "Food!"

"Ooh, food." Stormy finishes petting the last tiny tree and goes inside.

Mercy beams. "You're welcome!"

"This is really good!"

"I'm good at food," Mercy says happily.

"Mm-hm. Is this magicked food?"

"Not especially," he shrugs. "It doesn't have magic in it. I made it, and I'm magic, but I'm not sure that counts."

"Were you doing magic when you made it?"

"Maybe!"

"You don't know?"

"I know what I was doing, I just don't know if what I was doing is 'magic' or not."

"That's reasonably common with ambient mages, and craft mages much more so," says Rook. "Because our magic comes from things in the world around us that we might interact with in ordinary ways - and craft mages in particular have magic with processes and activities that aren't magical at all by themselves, that it's possible to learn and do in a completely ordinary way - it can be hard to draw a clear line between doing magic and doing things we just happen to have magic with. That's part of the reason why ambient magic is harder to spot than the academic kind. When an academic mage does magic, it's usually very obvious."

"You'd think I'd be obvious. I think my magic-checker might not have been very smart. Then again he did check me in a closed up little room."

"Magic-checkers often only know the signs for academic magic, because ambient magic is so rare that it's very possible for a magic-checker to go their entire career without seeing one even if they know how to look. I'm sure he was very good at finding academic mages. You just happen not to be one."

"I guess."

"Academic and ambient magic are very much different kinds of things. Before people knew a lot about ambient magic - and sometimes even afterward, if no one who knew about it was around, or if it was a rare kind of ambient magic - people used to mistake it, the natural magics especially, for the work of spirits or elementals. And sometimes craft magic just looks like ordinary talent, and craft magic breakouts can look like ordinary accidents. Academic magic has signs almost everyone can see, but ambient magic usually isn't obvious to anyone but ambient mages, and often not even then."

"Are there actually spirits around doing things that look like magic?"

"Sometimes. Spirits do exist, although we don't know as much about them as we might like. Under most circumstances, it's hard to tell they're there because they just go around doing the same things their natural phenomena were going to do anyway - the tide comes in and goes out, fires burn, winds blow, rain falls. The earth stays still, except when it doesn't. But sometimes a spirit gets attached to or tangled up with a person somehow, and then you get a person who makes natural phenomena behave strangely around them, and that can look similar to ambient magic, especially uncontrolled ambient magic. Fortunately, possession is even rarer, and these days we understand ambient magic well enough to realize that it's not the same thing at all."

"And Mathilde made sure I'm not attached to a spirit, that I'm really magic?"

"Yes. Mathilde can tell you are really magic, because seeing and understanding magic is one of her many specialties."

"Okay. What's a craft magic breakout?"

"A magic breakout of any kind is when someone does magic by accident, or without understanding and controlling it. When you saw the magic-checker, he probably asked you or your parents if you ever moved objects without touching them, or saw or drew pictures in fire? Those are two of the most common breakouts of academic magic. Almost all children with that kind of magic do those things. Weather breakouts include raining indoors, sudden winds, lightning striking nearby objects... my magic breakouts tended to make flowering plants bloom whenever I walked by them, which sounds very pretty but can tire out the plants if it keeps happening. Part of the point of teaching magic is to stop the student having breakouts, because they're usually inconvenient and sometimes dangerous."

"I've had indoor weather happen sometimes. I don't anymore, though."

"That's good, if it means you learned to stop doing it on your own."

"I didn't like having to keep my notebooks boxed up, or breaking the plates. And nobody else likes lightning up close."

"No kidding," mutters Niva.

"...If you ever have lightning around that you don't want you can just give it to me, if you can?" offers Stormy tentatively.

"...I'm not sure I know how to give lightning to people," says Niva. "But if I could, definitely."

Stormy smiles at her tentatively.

Niva smiles back.

Someone quietly comes in the front door of the cottage.

"Hello, Sedge! How was the Hub?"

"Tall and pointy."

"What is it besides that?"

"It's the building in the very centre of Winding Circle, where food is cooked and magic is done!"

"Is the magic mostly done to the food or do you mean something else?" (She takes a second helping.)

"The magic is mostly not done to the food. It's just convenient for all the food to come from the middle, so no one has to go farther than halfway across the circle to get it, and for similar reasons it's convenient to do some kinds of magic there."

"Earthquake protections, for example."

"Oh. Magic is often round?"

"You could say that," says Sedge.

"It's commonly easier, more with some kinds of magic than others, to do magic to a large area when you are in the middle of it. And the middles of round things are more middley than the middles of, say, squares. In a square, parts of the edge are closer to the middle than the corners are. Winding Circle is very conveniently round, so the Hub is an excellent place to do things that benefit from middleness. Like earthquake protections, which is what Sedge was just renewing."

Stormy nods. "I'm usually round parts of sky. Sometimes I sort of lean if I'm following something, but mostly it's just a ways in all directions from wherever I am."

"That makes sense."

"If I go really high it's kind of a dome, actually."

"That also makes sense! Even people who aren't the sky can usually go a ways in any direction from wherever they are, looking at things that are their magic."

"Cool."

Serahila silently leaves the table and goes upstairs.

Niva follows her.

This seems to cue a general dispersal from the table. Mercy starts cleaning things.

Sedge goes to help him with that, perhaps with an ulterior motive involving leftovers.

Rook goes out the back door, likely to do something plant-related.

And Elyth takes her book out front.

Stormy watches everyone go, then follows Elyth. "Can I ask you a thing?"

"Yes."

"I'm the only person sleeping outside all the time; what's everybody else doing here?"

"Mercy got in fights in the boys' dormitory. I'm not sure what about or who started them, but I know he injured some other boys. Serahila needs her own room to sleep in or she doesn't sleep. Niva came with Serahila because they're twins. And when I was in the girls' dormitory some of the noble and merchant girls started being nasty to me because I don't know who my father was, and I told Dedicate Honey it would be much easier to move me away from them than them away from me even though I know I didn't do anything wrong, so she sent me here."

"Thanks. ...I don't have to worry about Mercy being dangerous, do I?"

"I don't think so. He doesn't get in fights here, and Rook and Sedge aren't worried about that and they're the kind of people who'd worry about it if it seemed like a problem. I think Mercy is dangerous to some people some of the time but not to all people all of the time, and not to us."

"Okay, good. Do you know what-all I'm going to be doing all day while I'm here?"

"We have chores, and there's supposed to be a rotation, but Mercy always takes cooking and Serahila always takes cleaning so me and Niva don't usually have much to do except help Rook pull weeds and water his trees. Sedge teaches us meditation some afternoons, and other afternoons we study with our teachers. Rook is mine because there are no other paper mages at Winding Circle. Mercy has Dedicate Maple, the cook-mage in charge of the kitchens, and Dedicate Finch, the thread-mage in charge of the Air temple. Serahila doesn't have a teacher because nobody knows what her magic is, but she sometimes does extra meditation with Sedge when everyone else is with theirs. Niva studies with Spruce; she's a Fire temple smith."

"I'm going to make tiny weather for the tiny trees. Or try, anyway. Is Mathilde going to be my teacher or somebody else?"

"Mathilde's going to be your teacher if she can't find anyone else, and there aren't any other weather mages at Winding Circle either, so probably she can't."

"How do people who don't have the same kind of magic as their students teach it, anyway?"

"I don't know how people do it generally. Rook and I just sit and talk about magic and he suggests things and I try them. And he's teaching me how to make ink and paper. Or we're both learning it; I don't think he knew before. He says paper mages are very rare, and he says that's good because I don't have to be limited by tradition."

"Why would you have to be anyway?"

"Good question."

"What's meditation like?"

"I don't know if I can explain," she says consideringly. "I like it. It's... quiet."

"What is it, though?"

"You sit still and count your breathing so it's the same every time, and kind of... fit your mind into a shape."

"...that sounds boring."

"Niva complains sometimes, so she and Mercy are learning a different kind with Dedicate Finch, but they say it's harder because you have to move around and fight with sticks. I like the kind where you just have to sit. It doesn't bore me at all."

"...Um, what if I think the sitting kind is boring and also I can't do any complicated moving around without falling over?"

"Then you probably just have to learn the sitting kind anyway."

"Rats. Maybe it's not as boring as it sounds," sighs Stormy.

"I did say I might not be able to explain it well," says Elyth.

"What's it for?"

"It helps keep your magic steady so it doesn't do things you don't want it to and does do things you do want it to," she says. "And so you know what it looks like and where to find it. And some other things that are harder to explain than that."

"I can already keep it from doing things I don't want, and do things with it whenever," says Stormy, puzzled.

"Then maybe you do something else that helps with those, or maybe you're thinking about something different from what I mean because you've never meditated and you don't know what it's like. Or maybe both."

"Maybe I'm secretly meditating every time I'm the sky. My body sure isn't doing much at the time."

"Someone should check if that's true, because if it is, Rook and Sedge might want to draw circles around you when you do it. They say that it's important to have a circle when student mages are meditating because they might spill magic around and it could cause problems."

"Oh. Okay. Sedge said it was okay for me to check out the sky when I asked and he didn't draw a circle then, though."

"It might be different if he thought you were doing something like meditating."

"Okay. But it was obviously magic, wasn't it?"

"Probably."

"Probably?"

"I wasn't there, so I don't know how obvious it was. He could've thought you were just going to look at it with your eyes."

"Oh. I guess I should have been specific."

"Maybe," Elyth agrees.

"...do magic circles like the kind you mean last a pretty long time? Because I go up every day sometimes a few times, and if they tell me to stop..."

"Well, they have to unmake it and remake it every time someone goes in or out, but it's not very hard to make. When Sedge does his you can't even see them; he makes them in the ground under the cottage. I think it's his way of showing off."

"Okay, so maybe it won't be too bad."

"You'd probably just have to ask a grown-up mage every time you wanted to go up, and only go up when there was one around to make a circle for you. If going up is like meditating that way. And we don't know for sure if it is."

"Well, I guess I'll ask, I had about an hour before and I can do with that for the day."

Stormy decides to leave her be and go looking for whichever of Rook or Sedge is easiest to find.

Sedge is in the kitchen with Mercy, having apparently finished washing the dishes. They are talking, in some language or combination of languages that isn't Imperial.

Stormy tilts her head and listens curiously, waiting to be acknowledged.

"Hello, Stormy," says Sedge, as soon as he sees her.

Mercy waves.

"Hi. Uum, something Elyth said made me think maybe you didn't realize it's probably magic when I check out a sky? Apparently you're supposed to do magic circles for some kinds of things?"

"We do magic circles when it's important to keep magic contained. Sometimes that's because someone's doing magic and they might leak some. Rook can see magic; if you show him what you do when you check out a sky, he'll know if it's leaky or not."

"Okay, I can go show him. Where is he?"

Sedge points at the back door. "Watering his trees, last I checked."

Out Stormy goes to where the tiny trees are.

Rook is watering the tiny trees! He is using a normal-sized watering can, however.

"Earlier I asked Sedge if I could check out the sky and he said I could so I did but then Elyth said something that made me wonder if I'm going to have to do that in a magic circle from now on and Sedge said you would be able to tell."

"Well, what does checking out the sky look like? Show me and we'll see," he says, putting down his watering can.

"Okay. Usually I flop in my hammock but I don't have to, as long as I'm outside." She sits. "I won't stay long," she says conscientiously, and up she flings.

Rook observes this. She is quite surprisingly un-leaky, for someone so completely untutored... but unfortunately that doesn't mean she isn't leaking at all.

Stormy races around the sky, soaking up sun and twisting herself along the paths of winds, and then she dives back down and opens her eyes.

"You don't leak very much," he says, "but you do leak some. Until you learn how to meditate properly, I think it would be a good idea for us to make a circle around you while you're being the sky, to stop the leaking from going all over the place. But it's not as important as making a circle around all the students when they're learning to meditate together, so if we can't make a circle that stops the leaking but still lets you check out the sky, it'll be okay if you still check out the sky anyway as long as you do it out here by Discipline and not near the Hub or anywhere else magically sensitive."

"What does the leaking do?"

"A lot of the same kinds of things that leaking, say, water might do. But magically. There are things, like paper, that if you get them wet they can be damaged or ruined; similarly, there's some kinds of magical things that are sensitive to leaked magic, and if they get too much on them they go wrong or stop working. And it's your magical power that you're leaking, so if you didn't leak, you'd have more of it to use for the things you want to do."

"I've never run out before. I guess maybe I'll be learning more things to do with it though."

"That's the general idea!"

Stormy smiles. "Is it a lot of trouble to make a circle? Can we see now if I can still go up when I'm in one? How often can I get one to be in?"

"It's not very much trouble at all. If you usually go up from your hammock, then it might be a good idea to get Sedge to make a circle under your hammock, because he can open and close his circles very easily once he's made them and they stay made even while they're open. When I make mine I have to pour circles of powdered plants on the ground and it is generally less convenient. So first let's see if Sedge can make a circle that lets you go up."

"Okay," agrees Stormy.

Rook fetches Sedge. They proceed to Stormy's hammock.

Sedge sits on the ground next to the hammock and closes his eyes.

Stormy hops up into her hammock and waits for a go-ahead.

The ground trembles very, very slightly, then settles again. Sedge opens his eyes. "Okay," he says. "Try going up."

Stormy tries -

It works just fine.

She comes back (after tasting a cloud for rain potential and determining that it's not happening unless she messes with a lot of stuff). "Works fine," she reports.

"Good!" says Sedge, standing up and dusting himself off. He pauses for a moment before stepping away from the hammock. "Just come get me if you want to do that and I'll close the circle for you. It'll open by itself if you step out of it, but it's a little more work to close it again afterward that way, so I'll try to keep an eye on you so I can open it for you when you're done. And if I'm not around, you can ask Rook to make a circle instead, but his are messier."

"Sometimes I go up for a long time, is that going to be really inconvenient for you?"

"Not really. I stay by the cottage a lot anyway, and it's not that inconvenient to fix the circle if you leave it by yourself."

"Okay."

"Back to teaching Mercy Namornese, then," says Sedge, and he waves to her a little and goes back inside.

Stormy departs the circle and gets a notebook and finds a place to sit and write inside the house. It has been quite a day.

"Pretty good. I'm supposed to ask Sedge to close the circle around my hammock when I want to be the sky. Meditation sounds boring but it might not really be but if it is I'm stuck because I don't think I can do the stick fighting kind. Mercy's a really good cook and Elyth is really nice and I wish Niva liked lightning because it'd be fun to have someone to play with properly but she doesn't."

"That does sound pretty good, overall. I have a correction to make, by the way," she says. "I knew Crane was a former First Dedicate of the Air Temple, but I didn't know he studied at Lightsbridge before that. So he wasn't educated here."

"Okay," says Stormy, and she makes a little margin note to go fix the record in her other notebook. "Elyth said you'd be my teacher if you couldn't find anyone else and that weather mages are really rare so you probably couldn't."

"Elyth is right on both counts. One of the things I just checked is whether or not anyone here has heard of a practicing ambient weather mage in this or any nearby country, and they haven't. So that leaves me as your teacher, unless you find someone else you like better who wants to teach you."

"I like you fine so far," says Stormy encouragingly.

"I'm glad to hear it!"

"What are we gonna do? Besides meditating?"

"I'm going to read a lot of books about ambient weather magic, and about weather itself and how it works. You can read them too, if you'd like. And then I'm going to help you learn all the important parts."

"I want to read them," says Stormy.

"I thought you might! When I've collected some good ones, I'll bring them here and you can borrow the ones you think are most interesting. And don't worry, it's my job as your teacher to read the boring ones and teach you anything useful they're hiding behind their boringness."

"...That is the best thing ever," opines Stormy.

"Some teachers think they can get away with making their students read all the boring books, but I've never thought that was a very effective teaching technique."

"I like some books that lots of people think are boring, at least people my age, but some books really just are terrible."

"I like a lot of books that people think are boring - my age or otherwise. I always have. But some things can still bore even me."

"Why do people write terrible books?"

"I think they usually don't realize they're doing it. They must not think their own books are terrible; I have trouble seeing how they could write them otherwise."

"If I ever write a book will you warn me if it is terrible?"

"If you want to be warned, yes, absolutely."

"Well, I'd rather write a good book in the first place, but if I can only write a terrible one I would like to be warned. Maybe I could get someone to help with the terribleness."

"I can probably do that too."

"Have you written books?"

"Not yet! I plan to, someday, but first I have to decide what I want to write about."

"Do you have a list of things it could be?"

"Not exactly. More of a general topic. I know it's going to be about magic somehow or other, but 'magic' covers a lot of things, and I haven't yet thought of one I especially want to write about compared to the rest."

"Maybe if most of the books about weather magic are terrible we can both study mine and write a not-terrible book about it."

"If most of the books about weather magic are terrible, that's definitely going to be an appealing option!"

Bella grins.