He closes his eyes again, takes a few moments to focus, and then - something shifts, in the layer of his mind where the reaction spread outward. He nudges a gear a little to the side, so that the drive-chain stringing it to another gear that conveys that initial spread slips off and hangs loosely, no longer able to transmit the movement of the first gear. 

"Now watch." And he does the focusing-on-it motion again, whatever 'it' is in this case, and there's a little ripple but it almost instantly dies out rather than being echoed around. 

"- ohhhhh, okay - and putting it back would be - can I try that actually -"

"Yes, of course!" He smiles encouragingly at her. 

Puuuut back?

She has to get at the unhooked chain from exactly the right 'angle', but when she does it pops very easily back onto the right gear, and Lionwind grins at her. "Perfect! You have such fine control already." 

She bounces in her chair a little.

Azabel's next few weeks and months of lessons go well! Lionwind still has nothing but praise for her, though he says it'll be at least a year before she's ready to see patients partnered with him. He finds her some books of patient case studies (with names and other personal facts obfuscated), and gets permission from some of his own patients to share his notes with her. Mostly he has her practice refining and interpreting her Sight, knowing which questions to ask to clarify it when the Sight alone isn't enough information, and various basic Mindhealing techniques like the fences and detours. 

Skan continues to be a willing and eager volunteer for having his mind looked at, though his attention-span difficulties with reading prove non-obvious to fix, at least at her current skill level. 

...And nine months later, shortly after her eleventh birthday, she's sitting out in the garden with Skan, who's reading a book, murmuring the words out loud to himself under his breath, which he hasn't needed to do to manage reading in years - 

- or, wait, maybe it's not quite reading out loud...

...experimentally, she covers her ears.

This does not make the murmuring-to-himself stop, or change at all! 

She centers and grounds. She is right here on the ground, new Gift, see, go away.

She's at this point very good at center-ground-shield. The new Gift obediently stops overhearing Skan's internal monologue as he reads. 

"I think my Thoughtsensing woke up," she says. "All I got was the words in your book though."

"Mmm? –Oh!" Skan drops the book. "That'ss sso exciting!" 

"It means I'll be able to shield, which makes me feel better, I don't like having to expect everybody to be polite. Sometimes people are not polite about everything else, so I bet sometimes they aren't polite about that. And it'll be convenient!"

Bounce bounce bounce. "It sseems sso usseful! For doing Mindhealing. If your patientss ssay you can usse it, I mean." He's quietly reflective for a moment. "I think I'd let a Mindhealer read my thoughtss. Ssometimes it'ss hard to ssay what your feelings are in wordss." 

"Well, I'm not ready to have patients yet, but I guess it could be useful for that if someone wants me to. Mostly I meant it'd be convenient for talking if somebody's far away - or when we're flying around and it's windy."

"That too! And we could have ssecret converssationss in front of people. Like sspiess." Skan looks delighted about this. 

"We could! I should ask Lionwind if he knows how I can do that if the other person isn't a Mindspeaker - or if they are for that matter - or if I need to take separate lessons."

"You sshould! I have no idea. He iss a Mindsspeaker too, right?" 

"He's never Mindspoken me, so I don't remember for sure."

"Fair enough!"

Skan looks down at his book, and decides he's had his fill of reading for now. "Going flying, you coming?" 

"Yeah!" Up she hops.

At their next lesson, Lionwind is delighted to hear about her new Gift. "Wonderful! ...And, yes, I have a little bit of Mindspeech. Not enough to reach beyond a room, or Mindspeak someone without the Gift themselves." 

"But you can teach me how it works."