Siva is Very Determined and the blowing-up isn't that bad. She can keep practicing for hours if it takes hours to get to the point where they can move on.

It won't take hours. The skill develops with practice; it's about fifteen minutes before she manages to hang onto the latest bundle of power for a solid minute and a half.

"All right - now, before you learn how to pick it up from yourself, do you want to learn how to do something with it besides let it blow up in your face? That part is also trickier than normal."

She considers for a moment. "Yeah," she decides. "That's probably the better order of operations."

"All right. So - you have plenty of experience by now with what pain magic feels like when it's doing fire. You've done fire the normal way. Can you see how they're - similar in some ways, different in others? They both feel like fire, but pain magic is - bigger, obviously, more active - and more complicated, less straightforward. It's hard to get pain magic to do exactly what you want it to and nothing else. So try something really simple first - a flash of light, if you don't feel like setting this lovely sitting room on fire. Catch the magic, hold it, feel what it would be like as light, and then send it out. Pain magic is just as clear with those little hints as the normal kind - clearer, at least for me, but that might just be because I have so much practice."

She thinks about this for a minute.

"Okay. Let me try?"

"One, two, three, catch -"

And there is light.

And a little heat, a little air motion, but--mostly light.

And it didn't blow up in her face!

"So there you go, now you know how to use it. Time to learn how to pick it up?"

"Sounds like a plan."

"Any preferences for what I do to you to get you in enough pain to work with?"

"We haven't actually gotten around to seeing if I like broken bones yet."

"Ooh."

He scoops her into his lap.

"Start big or start small, you think?"

"Mm--small, I think, just in case. Not a finger, though, I like my dexterity where it is."

"Pity, fingers are really convenient... I could crack a rib," he suggests.

"Sounds good to me!"

So he hugs her, and presses his hand against her side, and whether by magic or because he's just that strong... crack.

She makes a small, soft, startled noise. The look on her face isn't obviously positive  or negative. 

Then she smiles and says, "Do that again?"

"All right."

Crack.

"Okay," she says a little breathlessly, "cracked ribs at least are a good thing."

"Good to know!"

He hugs her.

"You're going to need a few more if you want to do magic with them. Want the next one to be worse?"

Snuggle. "Yes, please."

Snuggle. Crack. That one might be outright broken.

Do not kiss him, she tells herself firmly. You will almost certainly get carried away. You can seduce him after magic.

She's in enough pain to produce scattered inconstant wisps of power - not steady enough to use, not yet.

He breaks another rib.

"There," he says, hugging her. "Try picking that up. If you have trouble holding on, turn it into light."

The ribs are more than a little distracting. It takes her a couple of tries to pick it up. And then--light.