"About..." He shuts his eyes. "One and a half the volume of this house, in a sphere. I can count the blades of grass—I can count the ants on the blades of grass—the edge fuzzes out rather than being sharp but it's not a very thick shell of fuzz. It seems to just—be a sense I have, like sight and sound, I may not be paying attention to all of it all the time but vampire memory still works."

"Hm! Can you change the shape of it like I can change my set volume? Can you spread it out further and get less absurd detail...?"

"Mummy, clothes," cries Aurene, releasing her affectionate bite.

"Oh. Yes. Sorry, dear, mummy got distracted."

Back to making clothes!! Very important job, this.

They're vampires; they can multitask.

"It seems to just be a strict specific distance from me, like a regular sense. I don't... know how I would even go about messing with it, I only just noticed I have it."

"Well you also just have sight and smell and hearing, but you can focus less on those and move your attention to something else, can't you? Would you say that your range of sensing is the same when you focus versus when you don't?" she wonders, as she carefully continues the pattern of blue and green. "And anyways, it's magic, why should it work that way at all?"

"Well, even when I'm not paying attention to everything I'm sensing I can still remember it later, smells and sight and so on." He frowns. "Is that a just me thing? I'm starting to question all my assumptions about how vampires work here."

"That is not just a you thing. But I also can't... follow trails after the fact in memory, things have to be closer and more obvious for me to notice them at all if I'm not paying attention. Like, for smell, if I notice something when I'm there smelling it, I can follow the trail. But I might not pick up on it then, because I wasn't paying attention. Whereas if I just go over it later I can notice it, but can't do anything about it. Which ultimately makes the range of sensing lower."

"Yeah, okay, that tracks. I think... well, now that I'm actually paying attention to the difference between this and sight and sound it seems to work more like I'm constantly paying full attention to everything even though I'm... not? It's a bit confusing."

"Huh."

She finishes the little dress she was making for Aurene, and hangs it up to dry. There are others, drying on a line beside it, made through the same method.

"What do you want the next one to look like, sweetheart?"

"Mmmm... Purple!"

"Okay! Light purple or dark purple? Any designs? Maybe some ruffles?"

She considers these questions with utmost seriousness.

"Both," she declares, imperiously. "Yes ruffles."

This seems to be the extent of her highness's decrees, she gives a firm nod and nestles closer to her daddy, looking very pleased with herself.

"Of course, dear," agrees her mother, and she gets to starting the next little dress.

"So I obviously think you should mess with it, relentlessly," she says to her husband. "Be like me, love! Poke it every way you can think of, and see what it does!!"

He laughs and kisses the top of Aurene's head again. "Well, I suppose I can try. I have no idea where to even begin, though."

Ee! Kisses! Okay she can bite him again, her mummy is back on track and she is happy. Nom.

His wife hums thoughtfully. "So at the very least you might want to give it priorities, or, or. Something to alert you if it notices something important, like another vampire, but you aren't watching it. 'Strange thing has showed up in your radius, James pay attention!' or something."

Cute bitey gremlin.

"I might... have that one already? In retrospect I think I was using that in the boat to make sure I would be there to steer it whenever I needed to."

"... Okay, homework, then," she snorts. "Compare what you have now to what you had when you first turned. Has anything changed, or has it always been exactly like this?"

James laughs again. "Homework?"

"Love, you clearly need your wife to tell you how to figure out your witch power. I'm just giving you some kind of structure, here. So, yes, homework."

"Well, how long am I meant to spend on the assignment? Thinking about it I cannot tell of any way it has changed over the past century and a half."

"When you feel you have properly ruled it out. This homework is ultimately for your benefit. But you seem to be thinking of it like it's an immutable thing that you have, when I think it might be more like a part of you that you haven't figured out how to wiggle. Like your ears."

"...you can wiggle your ears?"

"Well. Not me personally, Blair's the one who figured that out, for some insane reason, but. You see my point, yes?"