Landon nods, approvingly. "Not bad. ...Feel free to do it again a few more times, to get comfy with it. It's going to be a lot harder with yours - sorry, I'm just not as good as the best adult artificer in Sacramento." 

"That's okay, I understand." Sip put sip put sip put. Eventually she gives back the sharer.

"Right. Good. So - I need you to at least try to put some mana into the conch. It's not going to work on the first go, but it'll give me a better sense to direct what I work on next. ....The mental image that works for me, to do this, is sort of like imagining that I have a spool of thread in my chest? And I unspool some thread from it, and feed it into the mana sink, and try to start wrapping it around and around and around.... You might need something different, sorry, it's pretty hard to explain in words." 

"Do I have to make it new or can it be what I have from just walking around?"

"- Oh, sorry, right. The first one. Um, do you have good mana building methods worked out yet?" 

"I don't have a specific thing but I've been doing my least favorite vocal exercises and some stretching, when I need some and haven't climbed enough stairs lately."

"...I don't know how much you hate your least favorite vocal exercises, but that may not be as fast as you want. Do you know how to do a plank? If you do it on your elbows, it'll leave your hands mostly free so you can hold the conch." 

He demonstrates. 

"....It doesn't feel all that hard at first, but trust me, thirty seconds in you'll notice." 

She imitates him, conch cradled carefully in her hands. "I don't hate them that much but if I keep doing them for a really long time my lips'll fall asleep - oh, wow, you're right, that was fast -" Mana go IN shell. Like a conch-animal. There is presumably some kind of animal that is a conch, that's where shells come from, and now her mana will go where once a conch was. She decides she will imagine that conchs look like those pretty Spanish dancer sea slugs.

Landon will continue doing plank and building mana next to her, for moral support and because it's just a good idea anyway. 

"If it gets too hard to concentrate you can take a break for, like, ten seconds? ....At some point this gets too easy and then you can switch to doing one-handed or with one foot off the ground." Landon, who's been able to do five minutes of plank at a stretch since sophomore year and can no longer get much mana at all from the normal kind, demonstrates this. 

"Wow. I'm going to get in such amazing shape!" Plank plank plank and now she needs a break. Okay back to trying to make a mana conch.

"You can switch it up with side-plank if you want - it'll give you more balanced core strength, anyway." Landon demonstrates, rolling so that he's planking on one elbow, with the other arm raised toward the ceiling. After a moment he lifts his top leg as well and starts doing plank-side-leg-lifts. "....Anyway, can you feel it catching at all before it slips out? It's okay if not, it takes a pretty variable amount of time before it's attuned enough for that, but I'd rather not cast my divination spell and check until you think you feel something." 

(Landon does not sound even slightly out of breath, despite the fact that he's been continuously in plank position and also doing weird extras since before Rebecca started at all.) 

Side-plank! She tries the leg lift too! Be a conch! "I don't think it's - ooh I think there was maybe a bit there but it's not there any more if I try to get it back out -"

"Yeah, sorry, I should've been more clear - it's definitely not going to be holding the mana yet, I just need to know when you've gotten it attuned to you enough that it....slightly starts trying to hold it? 'Trying' isn't quite the word but, yes, the 'there was a bit there' sounds like the thing. Keep trying a bit longer and see if you keep noticing it?" 

CONCH CONCH CONCH CONCH CONCH "There it was again for a sec -" She switches sides.

"Great! Good. - All right, maybe take a break for a minute now? I'm going to cast my divination spell so I can see exactly how to work on the attunement-to-you, and it only lasts a minute, so I want you to definitely be able to concentrate enough to get it at least a couple of times." 

"Okay!" She unplanks and flops on the floor.

Landon can barely feel the burn in his abs at all, yet. This is the problem with being in excellent shape. He keeps going. "I'd be happy to teach you some other good exercises sometime? And, yep, you'll get in such good shape. I guess toned abs are one of the few actual benefits we get out of this place?" 

"I mean that and learning magic, I really like the learning magic. And I'm meeting really great people."

“- Right, yeah, I guess you hadn’t had much of a chance to meet wizards before this? Fair enough. And the library’s pretty great! Have you had much of a chance to look around it yet?”

"Some, yeah! Chloe helped me find dictionaries for the languages I'm doing."

"Oh, good, I'm glad! It seems like you're managing pretty well here, honestly? Good work." 

"I'm really lucky I met Zeke right off! Instead of, like, the murderer or whatever!"

"...Yeah. All right, that's probably long enough. Ready to have another go at mana-building and feeding it into your conch, so I can watch you?"

"Sure thing!" Okay little conch-animal it's lunchtime for little conch-animals and you eat PLANKS.

Landon turns and walks to the opposite end of the room so he can whisper some words under his breath without risking Rebecca picking up a new language. He watches for the entire minute that the spell lasts, without saying a word. 

"- Yes. Very good."