"Huh. It doesn't feel like anything…"

Su-Yeong shakes her head.

"Generating magic doesn't feel like anything to me, either. Or to Morgan. Ha, I guess it's convenient that you changed your name, Lucy. Morgan's what I named my familiar after Hali drew him out."

...That cat just said 'Rothart'.  And there's peacocks all over the house.  Hali has this feeling that she knows from whence this disaster came.  Anyway.  There's other things.

"Well, it wouldn't; it's not - going in."

"Huh… they're just eating up the extra stuff I make, right? What if I-"

She makes another ball of glowing red light and nudges it towards Lucy.

The magic from this gets absorbed eagerly! It doesn't dissipate, either - well, it does, but only at the same rate it's been dissipating the whole time. The spectral swan - solidifies, just a little, and seems to wake up.

"… I think I feel that."

"And I saw it get absorbed.  And your swan's stirring."

(Their heart starts pounding with excitement. Even if - their brain is making up something to feel, there really is something to feel.)

They try to make a glowy orb of their own, but there doesn't seem to be quite enough magic in their reservoir. The swan looks like it wants to honk in frustration.

"Pass me a li'l more?"

A li'l more, this time in a continuous stream rather than a discrete ball.

"Oh, yeah, I'm definitely feeling it now…"

Lucy gets a distracted look on their face as a similar, pinker orb of light forms in their hand. Their magical motor is clearly running, chewing on the magical fuel Su-Yeong provides and outputting something more them-flavored. The swan preens happily.

"This is really interesting.  Can you - loop it through yourself, now that you have any magic?"

Blink.

"Hm? Like…"

They use their hands to stretch the light like putty into a stream of its own. It's a little thinner than Su-Yeong's.

"Point this back at myself?"

"Yeah."

They bend it back towards their chest. At first it stops, like it's a solid object, but after a moment of focus, it pushes inwards insubstantially.

"Heh, it feels warmer this way."

Their magic processor happily laps it back up!

"Neat.  You can reuse magic like that, I think."

"Nice!"

Su-Yeong cuts the flow of magic.

Lucy's able to keep the loop going for about a minute, but the reabsorbtion is as lossy as it was when Su-Yeong was feeding magic to them. Soon, the stream of light sputters out. The swan droops sadly, almost lethargically.

"Oh. Not for very long, I guess."

"...It's lossy, it seems.  Unfortunate.  I need to get a better look at what the heck happens in there, sometime, because it's just - baffling."

"Huh, what's it like?"

...Well, what is it like?

Possibly the weirdest thing about how Lucy's magic works is how close to normal, for this universe, it is. They can manipulate magic just the same as anyone else, with nothing blocking their use - just the clumsiness of someone out of practice. Possibly other people could take in magic the way they do, it's just that they don't have any reason to, since they usually generate their own. Everyone else dissipates magic, too, most people just generate it at about the same pace or faster, and nearly all magicians keep gemstones on their person so that the magic they naturally leak can be stored usefully instead of dissipating into nothing.

Lucy's connection to their familiar is slightly weirder, now that Hali's seen the ghost swan in its more active state. The un-familiar seems to be doing most of the work in doing anything with the magic that they take in, actually, though Lucy can get involved if they focus and mind meld with the swan a little.

… In general, it kind of seems like Lucy's connection to the swan is about halfway between a typical magician's connection with their familiar and Su-Yeong's. They're not quite as intertwined as a husk would be, but there's a lot more overlap between Lucy and the swan than between, say, the enchanter and her bird.

"...Huh.

"It's like you're a - demi-husk of some sort?

"In that - your familiar is, obviously, not physically separate, but that - the anatomy of your soul is also halfway between where you'd expect from a typical soul, and what I saw with Su-Yeong's."

(Ivy - almost speaks up.)

And Su-Yeong leans forward.

"Huh, that's interesting. I wonder how that happened, 'cause… well, the last time I saw you, you had totally normal magic. Do you know - when that happened?"

Lucy shakes their head.

"No, I've always been like this. Well, that I can remember. So I guess that means it… probably happened about five years ago, a little after I got my magic and a little before the summer I was twelve, which is the farthest back my memory goes."