on a lark | Glowfic Constellation

"I might not stay here long enough to go to a store and buy metal. Does using wind and waterfalls and waves let you do without?"

wind_on_my_face

(Isn't staying here the opposite of leaving?)

“Sure, if you're only using it as slow as those sources provide it. Or if you find a really big waterfall, or a dam, of course.”

"So I just have to let things move my stuff and then it'll charge up the stuff."

wind_on_my_face

"Yes, and your stuff has to be trying not to move, but not so hard that it doesn't move. Like this.”

This time, the thing he gives her isn't a transparent sphere. It's an orange dumbbell.

She takes it, frowning at it.

wind_on_my_face

It moves like she's trying to stir a jar of peanut butter.

It's perfectly happy to stay where she puts it in midair.

"Is it slowing itself down?"

wind_on_my_face

“No, it's connected to the rest of me. If I made it stronger and you pushed hard then you could use it to push me around.”

"Can things slow themselves down? Could I pick a thing up and then drop it and let it fall very slow to charge it up? Or not fall?"

wind_on_my_face

“No, you have to have something else to connect it to. If you live in one place a lot you can claim the ground and use that, though.”

"Should I not claim ground if I'm not going to live a place?"

wind_on_my_face

“It just takes hours, and you can use stuff on top of the ground instead, which you can move with you.”

He points at the ring of thin glass on the sand around them that followed them down from the rock.

"Right. Makes sense."

wind_on_my_face

“Anyway, give this a try. Spread out some glass, put another piece above it, and make the connection. But before you were doing patterns that were only about how far away things are. This one is only about which way they are moving, towards or away, it always pushes in the opposite direction. Both at once can be done too.”

Elsewhere on the beach, the mock-bird-people land.

She looks at the birdpeople, but attends to the supplied exercise. Away with you, top glass chunk.

wind_on_my_face

“So if you've got it right, you should be able to push it around but it won't move by itself, like the one I gave you.”

Push...

wind_on_my_face

Puuuuuuuuuuuuush.

If she pushes it sideways too much from the glass on the ground then the whole structure can tip over. And when she lets go it starts creeping back to where she put it to start. But she's definitely got the feels-like-it's-stuck-in-goo part.

There's also a faint feeling of something about the glass changing, increasing, as she pushes the glass around. Maybe that's what the “stored energy” he was talking about feels like.

Huh. Okay. Push push push.

wind_on_my_face

As exercise machines go, this one isn't very ergonomic.

"What would happen if I balanced something heavy on this?"

wind_on_my_face

“If you made sure to push back enough so it went down gently rather than bouncing, then you'd have all of the energy that was used to lift the heavy thing up. That's the simplest way to use a waterfall, actually — fill a big bucket at the top and then lower it down.”

"Oh."

wind_on_my_face

“Your control looks fine, so here's the next practice technique. Take your glass and wrap it all around your body. Keep it ready to move the same way you do when you're going to reshape something. Then just move around like you normally would, and keep the glass with you — don't let it stop you from moving or come away. This will be tricky to get right, but I promise it's the last thing I'm gonna just tell you to do.”

He demonstrates on himself, walking around while the glass covers his body like an extra layer of clothes. His head is still exposed, and the glass has gaps and arrays of holes in it in various places, which experience will quickly show are needed to reduce the feeling of being in a personalized greenhouse while exercising.