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Ranara and her little daughter Azabel move to Urtho's Tower when the latter can say six words ("up", "mama", "milk", "no", "now", and "please") and hasn't started to walk yet. Ranara sets up to teach little children to read, ones who don't have evident Gifts yet - Ranara herself has Mindspeech, is all, with about a classroom's worth of range. Azabel sits in on classes, worn on her mother's back or later plopped in a corner with toys or, when she's only four, plopped in a corner with a book, younger than the other kids in the class. When Azabel has in fact sat through her mother's curriculum she is turned somewhat loose, to walk very carefully up and down and around the Tower, exploring.
smol bell in urtho's tower
anticipating_night
"Byyyye."
She has a nap in the garden, 'cause why not, and then has dinner, and then goes to bed early.
In the morning she shows up to practice!
small-and-alone
Ma'ar is early, waiting for her. He's made a shield a yard away from himself so he can practice tossing his ball at it; he waves.
small-and-alone
He carefully takes down his shield so he can pull back the energy from it. "Did you practice more yesterday?"
anticipating_night
"Yeah, lots! Skan came over and tried to break through my shields and I figured out how I want them different for if he's using his claws or just pouncing or what."
small-and-alone
"That sounds like good practice." Ma'ar is both kind of jealous and tempted to ask if he can join next time, and also very nervous about the idea.
anticipating_night
"It was but I was tired after. I can't wait to learn how to tap nodes. I'll look great with white hair."
small-and-alone
He can't help smiling a little. "Probably! All right, did you want to do yours first and I can throw -?"
anticipating_night
"Sure!" Here is the version that held up best against blunt force, stemmed and seamless.
small-and-alone
Ma'ar waits until she's done and then tosses the ball with medium force, retrieves it and checks if harder is all right, winds up to throw it as hard as he can -
small-and-alone
Ma'ar drops the ball and goes perfectly still, instinctively shielding his head and torso with the version he practiced yesterday afternoon until he could barely stand up. He doesn't make a sound.
anticipating_night
"We were practicing - Ma'ar, this is Skan, Skan this is Ma'ar, he's in my class - Ma'ar are you okay?"
small-and-alone
Ma'ar does not look especially okay. He doesn't answer right away because he's barely processing the fact that she's talking to him.
without-fear
"Aww." But Skan obediently backs off, moving on the ground rather than taking off again in case flying is itself scary. Gryphons are not optimized for either bipedal or quadrupedal walking on the ground; he can move effectively enough but looks ungainly and kind of silly doing it.
small-and-alone
Ma'ar tries to unfreeze himself, keeps the shield up but takes a few deep breaths and focuses on Azabel. "- Sorry, what was that?"
small-and-alone
"I - oh - sorry..." Is this another situation where it's stupid and inconvenient to be scared.
anticipating_night
"It's not like a huge deal... do you want me to ask my Mindhealing teacher about un-scaring you?"
small-and-alone
He can't tell if she means literally right now or later and either way the idea is the opposite of reassuring. "No thank you. We can - I can meet your friend if he. Comes up slowly." This isn't going to be pleasant but Ma'ar is fairly sure that if he keeps the shield up, he'll be able to keep himself from either running away or freezing so much he can't introduce himself back.