Jisa is so excited! Today is the BEST day! Her Uncle Van is home! He was fighting enemies on the Border, which is very exciting and cool, but it's even better to have him here where he can play with her. 

Yesterday he promised to go riding with her today, but then this morning he said he was too tired and could they maybe have tea in his room instead. And then he fell asleep. This is fine, though, because it means Jisa can SURPRISE him with the fact that she's a BIG GIRL now and knows how to read and write and lots of other things. 

She has some chalk and she's been drawing wards on his floor. She knows some designs, now, from bothering Sandra in her workshop when she's bored and Mama is too busy to talk to her, and she can pretend to be a real mage doing real magic. Uncle Van says she isn't going to be a mage even though she has potential, which Jisa thinks is deeply unfair, and she sort of hopes that if she just practices very hard then he'll be wrong and she will be a mage after all. Mindspeech is neat and apparently she's going to be a Mindhealer too, which is apparently rare and important although she doesn't really know what a Mindhealer does. But being a mage is the MOST cool. 

She sits on her Uncle Van's floor and draws big circles and little circles and decorates them and sings to herself under her breath.