All the tension drops out of her when it become clear Pradnakt's not going to push the point. "I can do careful."

"All right. I'll see if I can find time to go over my notes today, find some starter exercises we can adapt."

"Oooh, notes, can I take a look?"

"I only have the one copy, and they're not really set up for other people to read. But when I'm not using them, sure."

"I can probably figure it out."

"All right. They're under the bed; the four blue datadisc boxes. You probably just want the first one, the last two are mostly lightsaber stuff."

Daira finds the notes and returns to her seat in the corner of the room, already reading as she walks in.

Pradnakt was an enthusiastic fifteen-year-old when she started her training, and it rather shows; she eagerly, if somewhat idiosyncratically, documented everything her master, Lord Pritruth, had to say on the subject of using the Force. It's mostly theory, to start, and even at that age she seems to have had a good eye for the difference between theory and propaganda; very little of the latter made it into her notes without at least being marked as questionable, and to be checked later.

Eventually, it gets into practical applications. There are three basic schools of Force use; the first is control, which focuses on affecting the user's body, making them faster, stealthier, more durable, faster to heal, more able to withstand extremes of temperature, better able to see and hear in the mundane way, and so on: Pradnakt's description of the warmth aura as being based on her body's temperature regulation suggests that it's a control effect. The second is sense, which covers Force-based senses: detecting the presence, emotions, and eventually thoughts of others, distance viewing, precognition, and, hinted at by some especially incomprehensible notes, cognitive enhancement. And the third is alter, for ways of using the Force that have a direct effect on the world: telekinesis and lightning, primarily, but it can also be combined with the other two schools for a broader array of effects - changing someone's thoughts or perceptions, for example, when combined with the sense school, or including extra people in a control effect.

Oooooh.

Sense seems to be what she's been doing with the Force, and alter what she did with the pebble. Control might involve... hmm. She focuses on the Force running through her body, blocking out everything else. Pradnakt's notes had not been too clear on how to actually change anything about her body, but if she lets herself believe that there's no reason she shouldn't be able to adjust the temperature around herself like Pradnakt did - it's all part of the Force, she is part of the Force, the Force is everything and if she is this warm then there's no reason that the air around her can't be either, it's all the just the Force -

It doesn't take long for the air to get perceptibly warmer.

!!!

In her excitement, she loses her careful focus and the effect drops, but she hardly notices. She clasps her hands in front of her to keep from waving them around and grins widely. She did it!

Pradnakt glances up from her datapad with a grin. "Good job."

She lets herself smile back for a moment, then bends over the datapad again to hide her face.

A note of amusement joins Pradnakt's approval, but she leaves her to her reading and quickly goes back to her own work.

The next section of notes is about meditation. Pradnakt's daily emotion practice is foundational, apparently, though the instructions in her notes only cover negative emotions: anger, primarily, and then fear, and then sadness. She has a list of things that evoke each emotion; mostly references to particular pages in various books, some of which are obviously books of poetry, but also a few scenarios, sketched out in a few words each, not very informative without knowing any of the people mentioned.

When she reaches the section describing the emotions, she stops and frowns. She's had the Force react to her anger or her fear, true, but for the most part the Force was an escape from feeling. Dragging her emotions into it felt almost like a violation.

She finishes reading and sits silently for a while, working through her thoughts.

Pradnakt notices after a bit; she doesn't say anything, though, assuming her attention will be obvious enough without it, if Daira wants to talk to her.

Talking about her thoughts doesn't really occur to her as an action she can take. Eventually she skims through what she's read again and breathes out and thinks - hearing from the other techs on the Rising Star that there was a Sith Lord on planet, commandeering ships for transporting weapons or supplies or who knows what, departures monitored and her signed on for another month. No plausible reason to leave, and if she goes missing she'll draw attention to herself and the Sith will find her and catch her and what if he knows already if he's just waiting if running will only make it worse so sit there like a glitching droid and waitwaitwait for him to catch you - and she's lost in the memory, the Force rising up around her in response to her panic.

Pradnakt watches, thoughtfully, and after a moment begins humming, deep in her chest; not melodically, but a deep thrum, like the hum of an engine, as well as she can manage - an assertion: I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. And then she reaches out with the Force - carefully, disturbing Daira's emotions as little as possible, but offering a lifeline: You're here, too. Here's the way out.

At first she thinks Sith and flinches, but it feels wrong, too gentle to be an attack. She reaches out blindly with the Force, following the comforting presence.

She begins dampening Daira's panic down as she follows; it's very gentle, to start, and easy, instinctual even, to counteract, if Daira wants to.

"You're here. You're safe. Nothing's going to hurt you," Pradnakt repeats, mantra-like.

She calms slowly, Pradnakt's words and the pain in her arm where she'd hit it against the wall in her panic bringing her back into the present.

"I - sorry - I was trying -" she manages eventually.

"Yeah," she says gently, and comes around to sit across from her. "It's all right. It takes practice, to do that when you mean to and not when you don't."

"I'm not sure I want to practice that more," she says, hugging her knees to her chest.