It is larger! It is darker! She can't even see the little LEDs and such in its area any more.

She approves!

Experiment two: trying to produce a second blob of darkness while the first one still exists.

She can do that too, though controlling them by gestures gets a bit harder.

She shoos away the second blob and writes down this result.

Can she draw a little tendril of darkness out of the main blob, and then proceed to move it separately?

With a few false starts, yes she can!

What a good power.

She tries taking a picture of the resulting darkness tendril.

It photographs just fine. Looks like it does in real life.

Okay, so it isn’t illusory, or if it is illusory it’s in some complicated and unlikely way...

She wonders if it covers less visible parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.

She shoos away all of her current darkness, strides downstairs, pours a touch of cold water into a microwave-safe mug, puts the cup in the microwave, fills the microwave with darkness, and puts the microwave on for a minute; when it starts beeping at her, she dismisses the darkness, and peers at the water.

It is hot and bubbly.

She wasn’t really expecting that to work, but it was worth a shot. Oh well.

... hmm.

She’s suddenly really curious about which darkness-properties she can intuitively affect.

She sketches down a list of possibilities, and tries them out, in order: can she make a hollow blob of darkness, darkness in the shape of a cube, darkness in the shape of a bird, darkness produced in a steady ribbon from her hand instead of all at once, darkness that fades a few seconds after she makes it instead of lingering, darkness blobs with unusually wispy borders, darkness which is substantially less dark than her darkness ordinarily is - the word ‘darkness’ no longer looks like an actual word and she should probably start noting it down as ‘umbra’ or something for variety...

She can make a hollow blob. She can make a soft-edged cube and a blobby bird. She can do a steady stream, though "ribbon" is a generous description. She can make it fade early. She can make it wispier and less dark.

These results are promising.

She informs her uncle that she’s going to the park - an ordinary one one, not anything fancy. He continues absentmindedly munching on chips and watching some manner of sitcom, and mumbles something about seeing her later.

She finds a relatively secluded and flat spot - she might just do her dance practice here, now that she can fly, the walk was previously prohibitive - and she practices doing a relatively simple routine with her wings out.

They create some drag and change her balance a lot, but aren't hard to get used to on a proprioceptive level.

Somebody has a video camera on him and starts filming her.

... you know what, fine, she’ll tolerate being filmed. This isn’t really the level of performance she prefers to have on tape, but whatever. Perhaps she should try busking.

Once she feels like she has a pretty good grip on this whole ‘dancing while winged’ thing, she starts trailing a stream of darkness from her left hand, letting it trace out her movements and setting it so that it’ll dissipates about ten seconds after being made. She continues running through relatively basic routines.

She's attracted a slowly rotating audience of about eight people now.

This really isn’t what she had in mind, although in retrospect it isn’t surprising. Busking seems increasingly less far fetched.

She moves on to more advanced routines.

The audience doesn't get much bigger than eight, but the guy who's recording is a fixture.

She eventually decides to stop - it’s getting kind of late, and this isn’t exactly an easy stroll, even if she’s in excellent shape.

She bows, wings flaring out to each side.

Applause! One audience member whistles.

- she has no idea what you’re supposed to say after this sort of thing - she’s tempted to disappear into a dramatic cloud of darkness and fly away, but she wants to talk to the guy with the camera -

She de-bows and... stands there. 

People start peeling off. Guy with the camera packs up his camera.

She approaches camera-guy after enough people have peeled off.

”Do you often take videos of strange women in the park?”

"Sometimes it's birds," he says cheerfully. "But if I come across other things I film those too. Better to ask forgiveness and all."

What a moderately charming answer.

“I’m closer to a bird than to many other things. Do you have a name?”

"George." His accent's faintly British.