Temple shoots Morgan a glare.

"No reason to exclude anyone out of things. People are gonna gossip anyway."

"I am just warning him."

"Oh, gossip. I do not care very much what people say about me."

"A healthy attitude to have."

"And I am sure we can include Tintin in things, or he will get to it once he starts school."

"Yes! I will try not to slow anyone down."

"Don't worry too much about it."

Anyway, eventually the snacks are eaten.

It's magic time!!

Magic time!!!

Tintin is extremely inquisitive about the warding process, and has many guesses about what is going on at any given moment.

Temple can explain the basic principles behind wards and rituals.

Rituals belong to schools which are kinda like magical languages, composed of not only speech but also actions. To use a ritual from a school you need to have a certain understanding of that school's components. Not all of it, but some of it. So each component of a ritual does a thing, like a word in a phrase, this circle in the floor is to tell the magic where to target. These symbols around it are about what things the magic is going to affect. The chant that dad is going to perform is how things are going to be affected and how strongly.

Warding people is relatively simple, as magic goes, sorcery has very well-defined units of "living beings" and "healthy" which the ritual can lean on to simplify things. So you tell the magic to do things like not letting collision, heat, cold or other things to not get too strong around this person, fuel with appropriate levels of breath, stamina and health, then you get a warded person.

And a lot of carefulness, because if you accidentally tell magic the wrong thing, it can hurt you.

In the rare moment he can get a word edgewise, Stephen will confirm Temple's words and point out which of Tintin's guesses are correct or not. He also nudges Temple to give the safety lecture.

Yeah, right. The safety lecture is not complicated, but everyone enforces its importance. Magical rituals are not-malicious, but are literal minded, it will do what it tells you to do, not what it wants it to do. You can be partially wrong about what a ritual does, and it won't care. And since the thing is literally using your life as a power source, even a ritual that produces a harmless magical effect, may drain you too much and hurt you.

The main safety principles are diligence and awareness. You can't improvise in the fly. Don't interrupt a ritual. Don't start a ritual that might be interrupted. Some pre-made rituals have guidelines to what to do when they are interrupted, but very often that guideline is run.

That's about right. Now, how about if everyone may sit still to receive the flight ritual?

Tintin can sit moderately still. Completely still is a different proposition.

Luckily, the parts that require stillness can be done in increments.

And  then there is some chanting, a weird feeling over Tintin's skin that dissipates...

"Now, try to think happy thoughts," Temple says floating.

Tintin gets a sense of something, almost something solid, that is centered on his chest, and that it can be "moved" like so to direct him to a place. And can be "held" like so to keep him in place.

Tintin immediately attempts to float into the air.

Floating he does, maybe with a little trouble at stopping, but Aaron catches him before he collides with anything and anyone.

"Yes!!! I am flying!"

He zips around the room, testing his airspeed and maneuverability.

"Yes you are!"

He can get at a decent speed once he builds up momentum in a single direction, but it slows down considerably when he makes turns and stops. But he can turn on a dime and it's easily faster than his running speed without none of the tiredness.

The rest of the boys and Stephen - Sovie decided not to join in - are zipping about. Stephen opens a window. "Outside, before anyone breaks something," he says without heat.

Tintin zips out the window!

He is soon followed. Aaron wants to show off some aerial maneuvers for Tintin to imitate.

Tintin is eager to learn aerial maneuvers! He swoops and soars through the air, clearly enjoying the process immensely.