Here is his wordless sense of How DNS Works. He sort of - holds it all in his head. Local cache, regional resolvers, configuring DNS records (and the MANY times he has had to explain to people that it takes TIME for the caches to clear and sync when you change them UGH)---

(There's the sense of a lot of information, available if you look carefully, but you can still only understand it once piece at a time and there's a lot. Like a diagram that takes up most of a big lecture hall sized chalkboard, and does make sense, but is just... Big, something you'd have to study for a while.)

It's like you dropped a textbook in my lap, I can read it but you'd have to - hold it there for me for a while - is this expensive for you - He's also trying to feel out how expensive but he doesn't have all that much practice at it.

I don't really know how to tell?

(The mental textbook wavers then firms up again.)

Guiding is starting to feel a little bit stronger?

I picked up a bit from throwing off your radar but you're overtaking me quick, I think - it takes practice to calibrate but if you want to try a lot of things maybe circle back to this one later?

He stops.

Sense of place is next.

And- Maybe it would be more distinct if Haru didn't know his own house well, but the door is that way you could stand and turn and walk out of it-

Got that, yeah, it was - Can he send the same thing back?

Yep!

-And I got that too. (Hesitation)-

-It cuts off with a distinct disconnect feeling.

"I think that's all I want to do right now, I can feel the backlash starting and amplifying already present anxieties."

Haru nods. Scoots a trifle closer. "If you're not scared of heights the way to pull up my backlash in a hurry is to go flying."

"Why wo- Even guides faster, right, I remember now. I don't think I'm particularly scared of heights? I don't think I'm that much higher backlash than you right now, though."

"You're not, we can just zero out, but if you did want to test more stuff and also fly."

"...I do kind of want to fly. Since it's, you know, an option. My last big idea is to test - range? Which can combine with flying, try to count souls in cars on a distant highway?"

"Sure. Do you have preferences about how to be carried?"

"Safely, please."

"I'm not going to drop you! I didn't drop Wendy even once."

"Sure! But uh, request stands. I am an anxious person."

"Weight distribution works out best for the form I wind up with flying if I do a bridal carry."

"...I feel like I should have some kind of objection to that but I actually do not?"

"Cool." He gets the door open and them comes back to scoop Teddy off his feet and - up and out they go!

"I can't get all that high, but I can get a fair distance away from things, so I get more altitude more easily over houses than over the sidewalk or something. It's like an extension of throwing off psychic stuff? If I'm like, that thing isn't allowed to touch me, including by being under me while I'm subject to gravity, then gravity is no longer in the picture."

"Eep!"

Did he just 'eep'?? It's fine. It's fine. They're in the air and it's fine.

"...It's really strange how - concept-aligned - these things are."

He looks around for a nice long sightline of street or highway.

Haru is heading highwaywards! They're very downtown and he doesn't fly too terribly fast but he can go in a nice straight line. There's a big street there. "Isn't it? You don't find someone who's like, hi, I throw fireballs and my backlash is that I get headaches, or if you did find that it'd turn out that their headaches were like brain freeze headaches and they were getting physically colder somehow."

"I'm going to stare as far down the street as I can..."

He - feels outward. Not in every direction, just in one, like a sweeping RADAR beam. Dozens of people. Dozens more. Further. He can feel them in the cars, clustered densely around that intersection... Further, can he reach the next one? Yes. The third one? Further? Yeah. It's starting to get - fuzzy, distant, straining. He's not seeing individuals even, now, just a sort of - flow of signals, motion standing out against stillness in the dense sea of light- The road curves a bit...

Oh no, he tried to do too much too fast. What good is a sensor who backlashes himself to uselessness in just a few minutes? He'll have to - try to remember that this is backlash-

"Gah. I, um... See that part where the road curves a bit? Right past that rail bridge? How far away is that?"

"Not sure! We can look for it on a map though, I know where this is and that's the first bridge in that direction." He swoops around back for home.

What if his arm is touching the nearest available Haru, which happens to be his neck. What then.

A perfectly good place for an arm to be in Haru's opinion.

He alights on the front step and lets Teddy down.

"That was cool! Um. Backlash is preying on my anxieties now, not very much but kind of noticeably, and I'm not sure how much it will help to be - reassured about it- Obviously you wanted to fly with me for some reason and I tell myself you could have just not volunteered it."