"Alright! Listening to my surroundings it is, then."

"If you figure it out, promise you'll try to teach me? I wanna talk to plants and animals and stuff, not just shape-shift."

"Sure thing!"

And she settles in to meditate. It's a familiar motion, like she's done it a thousand times before despite not remembering ever doing this -

She turns her mind from that, focusing on her surroundings instead.

Slowly, steadily, she can feel something like a pulse. An answer to her breath. The earth thrums, and is echoed by the plants. Her friends - and the other mutants - seem not necessarily brighter, like this, but more concentrated. Faint, still, but present.

She gets excited enough to break her meditation the first few times, but eventually settles into it - at least, until her new friends get bored with designing the hideout.

She's skipping as they walk back, excitedly rambling to her friends about how cool magic is.

This is met with enthusiasm! The next two days are apparently also days off, which they can spend running around and exploring and trying to learn to meditate.

Monday, three days after her arrival, is not met with enthusiasm. Well, on her friends' parts, at least.

She's pretty enthused, though! She's tested out of everything boring, which means she should be getting the closest to magic classes they can manage.

The class for those with abilities best summarized as magical is small, led by a woman in a red costume with no particular effort spent to hide her face - her helmet instead frames it. She introduces herself as Cecilia Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, and clarifies she's a guest lecturer here, but that she'll be reachable even when off grounds. She won't always be able to respond right away to emails, given her variable duties as an Avenger, but she tries to keep consistent online office hours. Excepting emergencies, of course.

Loki recognizes her! She'd been at the Avengers meeting - one of the quieter ones, and while she hadn't been literally standing with Thor and Captain America she'd several times pointed out all the ex-villains the Avengers apparently have.

Loki waves, grinning.

She grins back.

"Since we have a new student today, I'm going to focus on getting established with her. Everyone else feel free to work on your projects from last week."

The students do so, a few splitting into groups but most working on their own, though there's continued curious glances sent Loki's way.

And Professor Maximoff comes to sit with Loki.

"Hey!" says Loki, smiling a bit. "What do you wanna know?"

"Mostly where you're at already, and a quick summary of your approach to magic."

"I haven't gotten much past sensing, and right now I'm just trying to feel things out. Meditate, and all. I don't remember ever actually using magic, so..."

"Then I suppose we can start with teaching you my method, and modify if it seems needed."

"Sure!"

So she explains acts of will, and knowing what is, and visualizing what should be, and different methods of concentrating to bridge the gap.

Loki takes notes! She discovered fancy hard bound journals, and rather likes writing in them with a variety of colorful gel pens. So her notes can be color coordinated, but also so she can put little pictures next to the important bits and doodle when she's bored.

And Professor Maximoff gives her some exercises to do - preferably with supervision at first, but she also explains how to tell where the safety margins on these are. They're mostly extensions of the meditation Loki's already been doing, and the first few, like lighting candles and changing the color of the flame, can be done in the classroom.

Then Loki can settle in to making an arrangement of rainbow flames! That change colors in interesting patterns.

Well, trying.

She gets a rainbow by the end of the period, but the flames tend to wink out when the colors change.

Their teacher helps a few other students with their own projects, doles out compliments and constructive criticism, and then dismisses them for the day. This particular class meets every class day barring emergencies (and when their Professor's called away they usually meet anyways to work without her), so she'll see them again here tomorrow.

Loki will collect some candles, put her notes together, thank the teacher, and then look around to see if anyone's looking like they want to talk to her.

There's two! Both teens, the younger of two a brunette who'd been playing with some circuits.

And a redheaded girl who'd been chanting lowly the entire class. The redhead walks up to Loki first, hands in the pockets of her pants - white with a loud floral print - and a friendly smile on her face.

"Hey! I'm Raine. You're Loki, right?" the redhead says, cheerfully.