"That might be a problem. Usually, personal mana - that's the magical power that everyone has inside them, lying around untapped - regenerates overnight when you sleep. People who are cursed not to sleep, don't regenerate mana. So you might be chronically low on mana, which would mean you wouldn't be able to cast anything successfully.

And you don't eat, so I'm not sure that a Mageblood potion would actually do any good for you.

We might want to see if you can cast off crystal mana. Usually that is far too expensive, but Deskyl has just pulled quite a few up, so I'm happy to give you one back and see if that helps. If she can find mana crystals just by looking, she might be able to find more mana sites..."

"That sounds like a good thing to try, yes ma'am. Will you be able to tell if it works?"

"I've never heard of someone successfully draining a crystal without it being very noticeable to them and as part of casting something, so you should be able to tell - in fact, telling whether a crystal is charged or not when you're holding it might be an excellent first step, I'll get a fresh one and one of the expended ones we keep for jewelry crafts."

She gets up and starts heading towards the warehouse with a burst of energy, then thinks better of it and sends off someone who comes up to her on the way, while she goes to sit down again - slightly stiffly, to close observation.

"Haly will bring them over," she explains.

"Yes ma'am. Do you have a guess about whether I have any mana of my own? Droids don't have a connection to the Force at all, where Master Deskyl and I are from, not even to the degree that insensitive people do, and she was surprised that you thought I might be able to learn magic here."

"The closest comparison to droids that I have ever previously heard of is the wind up heralds and mechanical spiders of the Autumn realm, and obviously they're naturally magical.

So you may not have any mana and you may not be able to pick up magic, but in general being able to speak is a good sign of being able to learn magic.

If you can't feel anything in the mana crystal, I'll probably let Davyd try to teach you some chirurgy, or the artisan we've got coming over for the forge to try teaching item crafting - those are both somewhat magic but don't require personal mana.

But it would be unusual to pick it up in a couple of days anyway, especially without incidental exposure beforehand."

"Yes ma'am. I appreciate the help."

Haly comes back with two similar looking crystals. "Thanks," says Allegra, and puts them on the table. "Feel free to do what you like with them, they're yours now."

There's definitely - something about one of them. It's not emitting detectable radiation, or heavier, or vibrating. But it has an undeniable significance to it even so.

"Yes ma'am. - this one seems to have mana, ma'am."

"Ah, excellent! You're clearly not entirely lacking in the ability to sense magic, then - everyone can tell mana crystals up close, but I also think everyone who has the patience can learn magic.

I'm hoping that in itself will give you a better idea of what you are aiming for.

The next step normally involves a lot of repetition of the metaphor forms and... whatever kind of basic meditation or concentration exercises you find culturally relevant, until you can feel a potential mental motion you could push on."

You don't have to be Deskyl to notice, despite Allegra's usually pretty serious emotional control, 'methods of teaching introductory magic' is something that takes her a moment to get all her instinctive reaction back under the surface.

Yep, she notices. She's certainly not going to comment, though.

"I'm not familiar with how meditation is done, ma'am."

"Okay, so, the very basic one is... You don't breathe, either, do you."

"Not as such, ma'am. I do have cooling fans."

"That might still complicate things, let's start with a mantra instead. Pick a very short phrase - I actually tend to do it with a single syllable word, but nowadays I mostly use it for sleep rather than focus. A short line from a poem should do.

Then, close off all the sensory input you can - eventually you'll want to learn to do it alongside sensory input, but it's easier if you start without - and replace your train of thought with the phrase. Whenever you notice yourself thinking something that isn't the phrase, let it go and come back to the phrase.

If you have a highly visual thought track it can help to imagine writing the phrase over whatever visual thought is attempting to happen.

At first I'd expect it to be very difficult and you to be constantly interrupted by normal thoughts, but if you have a more herald like cognition we might instead need to set up a signal to bring you out of it..."

"I don't expect to be interrupted, ma'am. I can set up an internal alert to tell me when it's been a certain length of time; that might be easiest."

"Yes, if you have a reliable internal time sense that doesn't impinge too much on your thoughts to monitor it, that would work very well. I recommend no more than one minute to start with, although we'll rapidly get up to at least ten and maybe longer; if you do take to it effortlessly we'll probably want a more focused visualisation, this exercise is mostly for getting the hang of it at all."

"I'm not sure Master Deskyl would approve of me being unaware of my surroundings for ten minutes, ma'am. It might also be dangerous."

"Let's take it in shorter bursts, then. Once you've got it down, you can start being aware of the surroundings at the same time, as long as you can avoid it interfering - but still not especially alert, that is likely to disrupt the mind state. We might have to leave longer stretches to when Deskyl is awake, if you don't trust our safety here."

"It might be dangerous in the sense that she might suddenly need to be calmed down, ma'am, it will be riskier when she's awake. But droids are very good at paying attention to what we mean to; I expect I'll be able to learn to do it with my senses available without very much practice."

Allegra looks... distinctly nonplussed at the idea of Deskyl needing to be calmed down.

"You know her better than I do," she settles on, at length. "Let's start with a minute, or whatever you feel comfortable with, and then you can report on what that was like and start re-incorporating sensory input?"

"Yes ma'am."

She sets her hands in the 'I'm safe' sign, and goes very, very still.

(And we bided for the daylight, And the daylight came at last.
And we bided for the daylight, And the daylight came at last.
And we bided for the daylight, And the daylight came at last.
And we bided for the daylight, And the daylight came at last.
And we bided for the daylight, And the daylight came at last.
And we bided for the daylight, And the daylight came at last...)

Okay, that is kind of creepy but she seems to have got the whole meditation thing sorted? Allegra gives her up to five minutes to surface before starting to be concerned.

Then the lightstone flares for a moment - like daylight - and Allegra is on her feet with her staff in her hands before she has really noticed it.

"I'm sorry," she apologises automatically, not sure whether DZ is hearing yet, "that was not what I expected."

DZ comes out of her reverie after a minute by the clock, not long after the lightstone's flare. "...I'm sorry, ma'am?"

"Well, it looks like you have - some kind of hearth magic. Or your own magic. Whatever you were concentrating on made the lightstone perk up, very briefly.

Hearth magic is notorious for being impossible to experiment with, I wouldn't even necessarily expect it to do the same thing twice. But it's promising that you're attuned to _something_.

Let's try a more focussed meditation and see if we can get you a bit further. Hold the mana crystal, look for something inside yourself that - matches. Try a few different lines and see if any of them resonate with it. You shouldn't be able to drain it without saying anything out loud, so don't worry too much about that, just see what kind of thought-forms might - tug on it?

You might not get anywhere today at all. Meanwhile..."

She gets a mirrored tile out of her bag and puts it on the table. "The hearth magic that normally goes with light is witness and reflections. If you don't like turning your senses off, you might want to try looking in a mirror instead; it works for me, but I was raised Urizeni."

"Yes ma'am." She picks up the mirror and the mana crystal, and, considers.

Well, the thing in her that's most like the mana crystal is her battery, obviously. Unfortunately, there's not much poetry about batteries, and next to none that are about them the way droids experience them. The closest biological equivalent would be food, and there's plenty of poetry about that, though of course she has trouble relating very personally to it; perhaps poetry about other power sources will work? Which brings her back to Out of Darkness Into Light, conveniently enough...

Till we wondered at the sunshine, When at length we felt its rays.

Then upon the far horizon Came the faintest tint of gold;

Richer, deeper, grew the radiance, Till our eyes could hold no more.
We had traveled to the eastward, And our journeying was o'er.

Now the light is round about us, And the sun to guide our feet

The lightstone - maybe brightens, a little? It's not as dramatic as the first flare was, it's on the edge of detectability. It doesn't seem to be doing very much to the mana crystal, light and sunlight apparently don't resonate very strongly with mana.

Allegra gets a notebook out and starts studying a list of names with letters next to them, sometimes adding another letter or crossing one out. She seems to be assuming they aren't going to make any more noticeable progress. Now and then someone will wander over to ask her something, mostly about where things or people are, or details of the forge building (which she mostly just reflects back to them and asks them what they think, or recommends someone else to ask about).