"I do not particularly have another suggestion. So I think I shall simply attempt to gain as much from watching as I can. Even if I can't learn anything, Shyish is beautiful, for all its dark finality."

"Then I will do small exercises to pass the time." 

Crin gathers her sphere of Shyish again and returns to moving it in the same regular pattern.

Alethia will watch, then, and attempt to squeeze every bit of improvement out of watching that she possibly can. Every little scrap of information and understanding.

Crin seems to settle into a familiar rhythm after ten minutes or so. The motions become smooth and easy. She even starts keeping the Shyish in its fluid zone after twenty minutes or so. 

Cool! Fluid fluidy Shyish! She wonders if this means Crin can cast Battle Magic. It does sound like she's been doing this for a while, and mortal humans manage it. So probably? She is unsure, and probably asking wouldn't be wise before they trust each other more.

And then... she just maintains that steady flow. 

There really isn't much more to see after that.

She will learn everything she can from this flow!

There. Um.

It really isn't long before the amount of things she can learn from the steady flow is "nothing."

She sits and watches and learns nothing for half an hour after that point, just because getting up would be Awkward and Rude.

But, eventually, the antsy desire to be Doing Something gets the better of her. And- she kind of wants to tell her notebook friend about events, actually. And get the chance to think about the fact that she killed someone without an audience.

"Crin?"

The steady flow wobbles for a moment, then stabilizes. 

Crin opens her eyes, and carefully disposes of the Shyish once more.

"Go on?"

"I actually have a room. And- I think I'm going to get up and think about today, and-"

The man she killed.

"-what happened during it off in private. Seems- wise to not just let everything- sit."

"Be well," Crin says. "I suppose I should take a room as well. It seems better than sitting on the tavern floor all night."

"I suppose this is true! And even if we are durable enough to spend all our time sitting on the floor, beds are still more comfortable."

Crin is pleasant to talk to. It's nice. Most people back home weren't, quite so much.

"Go on ahead of me," Crin says. "I'd like to practice a little more before I break my concentration entirely."

She nods.

"Okay. Have a pleasant rest of your night."

And off she'll go, back to her room.

It's still the same as before; the shutters closed, blocking out the accursed night. It's easier to see now, though, with her vampiric night vision. She doesn't even need a lantern.

Not needing a lantern is nice. She takes a breath just because she can, but she doesn't need to anymore. It's lovely. She spends a little while holding her breath, paying attention to the way it doesn't cause her to feel a burning sensation in her chest.

Her body just- works now. In a way it didn't, before. That is absolutely something worth celebrating.

But also, today she killed a man. An evil one, walking away from a building he'd just set of fire for no good reason. One who was going to kill her and everyone else in this village if she didn't stop him.

But a person. With hopes and dreams. He hurt, when she inflicted pain on him. He must have been terrified as she held him down and punched him again, and again, and again. And then- on the last punch, he wouldn't have been terrified anymore, because he couldn't be anything at all anymore.

She lived in a world she thought doomed, and still, it seems, death was not truly real for her before tonight.

He's gone. Unless she does something about it, he's never coming back. And she did it.

It's not okay.

She could ring herself in willpower and crush down the grief. He was an evil man, after all. She did what was right, she thinks.

But crushing it down would be wrong. Trampling on a part of her that she can't afford to trample, especially not now that she has this much power. And not for something like this.

If she needs to trample over something in herself to strike the final blow that saves the world, that's a different matter. But- she can't afford to sand off any of what makes her herself, what makes her good, just to skip the bit of tonight where she cries.

So she doesn't.

And eventually, it passes. As much for the simple reason that that is how crying tends to work, for her, as because she's worked through anything in any real fashion.

But still, the grief recedes, and she finds calm rising up through her to take its place.

She sits, and she lets the last of the clenching squeezing grief fade from her heart, for now.

And then she pulls a notebook from her backpack and opens it.