Crin looks over at Alethia. "Do you require blood?"

What is the correct response, how often do vampires need blood she doesn't know-

Should she just say yes?

Uh, has her vampire heritage made the idea of drinking blood more appetizing, she'll maybe just drink some blood if it sounds tasty. A small enough amount nobody will miss it.

It actually does seem kind of appetizing!

Okay, does she actually want to cause someone to have Slightly Too Little Blood just to avoid potentially leaking some information when she's almost certainly going to tell Crin about her secrets eventually? And also bite a random stranger in a way that draws blood which feels Kind Of Kinky? She doesn't even know how to bite someone Correctly in a way that doesn't cause Problems.

So probably not if she can get away with it. And not even need to tell any lies.

"I don't, at the moment."

"Very well," Crin says. She looks over at Nikola. "Your wrist for a moment, Nikola."

Nikola unceremoniously folds back the cuff of her blouse and presents her wrist to Crin.

She bites it. It's almost dainty. Not a drop of blood is split. 

After only a few moments she withdraws and nods to Nikola. 

"Ishaza will treat the puncture-marks in the morning," she says. "For now, bandage that and get your rest."

"Yes, Lady." Nikola goes over to the bar and produces a small scrap of linen, which she ties neatly over the marks as if she's done it a hundred times before. Perhaps she has.

"It is probably for the best if we do not talk all night long and disturb everyone's sleep," Crin says. "Regrettably, I did not bring any books with me when I came here, but I can do my meditations. If you wish, you may observe; I believe you having a better grasp of Shyish's better uses is only a benefit to me."

"Oh! That would be so interesting! I'd love to!"

Magic! She gets to watch real magic! Not incredibly intense magic, but magic! And magic that isn't Wrong the way the stuff animating the zombies was!

"The village graveyard would be better than here, but I think for tonight it's best to stay under cover indoors. We can sit on Nikola's well-swept floor together."

So saying, Crin gets up from her place at the table, and sits cross-legged in the center of the room. "I won't be able to do large exercises without risking damaging the tavern, but I can do some basic shaping forms at least."

"Are those shaping forms sufficiently basic that I can attempt to follow along without this being a terrible idea? Or should I just watch?"

She wants to bounce in place, but restrains herself for now.

She sits facing Crin, mirroring her posture.

"You should just watch. The Lore of Death is not something to be trifled with lightly. It'll kill you if you let it."

She nods firmly.

"Certainly."

She will watch.

Crin settles down, palms upward in her lap, and a small cloud of violet energy gathers over her right palm. It feels... Heavy. Leaden. Empty. But not wrong. 

It drifts a little towards Alethia, but Crin corrals it into a sphere and starts doing movements of it back and forth across her hands, almost like she's contact juggling it. It forms slowly into a more condensed sphere as she moves it back and forth, back and forth. The feeling of weight goes back and forth, back and forth as it travels. 

"Shyish," Crin says lowly, "wants to end. Containing it, holding on to it, is against its nature. If you grasp it too firmly it crushes and becomes Dhar; if you let it go, it will happily end you. Channeling it, then, is an exercise in knowing what you wish to end at any given point, and encouraging it down that path rather than any other. More than most Winds, it will happily dissipate if you let it; the issue is letting it go in a way that doesn't destroy the local environment or produce Dhar."

She nods and pays very close attention to what Crin is doing. This is incredibly interesting but Crin has in fact succeeded at impressing upon her the danger of manipulating Shyish and so she shall contain her desire to happily bounce as she learns.

Crin keeps up the slow flow of Shyish from one hand to the other, back and forth, back and forth. She speeds it up, slows it down. It seems like a basic exercise.

"The more slowly I move it, the more force I have to exert to keep it from concentrating and having lingering effects. The more quickly I move it, the less it clings - but then, of course, I am tossing the Shyish around in such a way that it's more likely to... 'splatter', shall we say. The weight of death is heavy on both of us, tonight; that adds challenge, as it's easier for me to pull more Shyish than I need, and it has an inclination to gather upon each of us I must guard against."

All of this is fascinating, but it's also information about some of the things she'll need to be considering to avoid accidentally killing herself or other people, which lends it all enough gravity that her desire to bounce slowly fades into a very intent focus. She'd want to be taking notes, but she's pretty sure that she doesn't need to do that anywhere near as much as she used to, and also this is too fast for it not to be net-negative here and now, and sufficiently- clicky- that even before her upgrades she wouldn't have needed notes, she thinks.

"Focus and try to feel the movement of the Wind. Don't touch, just feel."

Crin continues her slow motions, sitting still as a statue. She doesn't breathe; the effect is somewhat unsettling.

She is going to pay so much attention to feeling the movement of the Wind. And equally to not touching- admittedly almost as much for reasons of desire to receive a good grade in magic student, a thing both reasonable to want and possible to achieve, as caution.

(She has noticed that she picked Fated Lovers and almost immediately met two very interesting and very clever and very pretty people who are both pretty firmly Her Type.)

It seems fairly intuitive to her. The magic has a tendency to clump, and clumps of it tend to act independently proportionally to their concentration... There's definitely a felt sense to it, but the exercise seems simple enough. It might just be that she's currently in a morose mood right now, but the finality of this Wind almost feels like it has a kinship with her. 

Crin holds the pattern of motion, speeding it up and slowing it down so Alethia can get a sense of how it surges at speed and clings at slow speed. It almost has a phase change.

That's so cool!

She wonders what the math that describes how it behaves looks like. It's been a while since she got her degree and it kind of didn't come up too much, so she's forgot enough she isn't quite sure. She wants graphs.

How discontinuous is the phase change? Is there a middle portion where it sort of- drifts rather than surge or cling?

There is, but it seems to be quite small, relatively.