"Probably the day after tomorrow, if nothing else comes up. Maybe the day after that, depending on how class goes tomorrow morning, I want to get you to a point where you can practice without me while I'm gone."

"Sometimes I wish I wasn't such a quick learner."

Hug.

"I already spent a couple days with them, and I'm fine. And they know I was trying to come here, that's not going to be a surprise. For a trip like this, I'm starting from a really good position - I'd take this any day, over walking into a strange tigerfolk camp where they've never heard of me before and have every reason to be suspicious. It's... I do this, I'm good at it, I'll be okay. It doesn't matter how strong they are if they don't want to hurt me, and I'm good at not making people want to hurt me." Hug.

Hug.

"I know you'll probably be fine and it would be a bad idea for me to go with you. I just. Wish I could."

Nod, hug.

"I might be able to send messages back to let you know I'm okay, but I'm not sure I'll be able to do it without it causing problems, and I don't want you to worry if I can't. Do you want me to try anyway?"

"I would like it if you could but don't put yourself in more danger to do it."

Hug.

"I'll try, then." She squeezes Ana a bit, then disengages to make a portal and retrieve a set of small pebbles. She sets one of each color out on the table and indicates: "I'm okay", grey. "Trouble," black. "Good progress," brown. "I'll be back soon," white. "Okay? And if you show me where you're sleeping I can just send them there."

"That works!" Ana has finished eating. "Do you want to go now?"

The kobold finishes the last bite of her last tomato and teleports Ana's tray. "Sure."

"Follow me!"

East wing third floor last door on the left.

"Here we are!" The room is spartan, but lived-in. The bed is rumpled and unmade, datapads clutter the desk, and there is a spare robe draped over the back of the chair.

The kobold trances for a moment, and then there are four stones on Ana's pillow - grey, grey, white, white.

Kobold hug!

Hug!

"All right, bedtime?"

"I had probably better. Have to be well-rested to do magic!"

"Yup!" she grins. "See you in the morning, then." One last hug, and she's gone.

Morning arrives precisely on schedule.

Ana is in the cafeteria.

So is the kobold. She has extra of the pink things, but no new kinds of fruit today.

When she's done setting them out, she gets breakfast and goes to sit with Ana. "Good morning. Sleep okay?"

"Well enough. You?"

"Fine." Hug. "Looking forward to magic this morning?"

"Every day! Do I get a sneak preview of today's lesson?"

"Nope! Safety lecture first, and I don't want to do it twice," she grins. "But unless there's a lot of questions, I'll be showing you the magic forms after."

Delighted gasp!

Ana will eat extra quickly today.

The kobold grins, and works through her meal without further distraction. When they're both done, she teleports them to the courtyard to pick up the class and bring them to the workshop.

The safety lecture runs like so:

Casting this kind of magic involves moving the patterns they saw yesterday around in certain ways so that they fit into the pattern of a spell form; moving them around is a skill, and it takes a while to learn enough accuracy with it to move the patterns you want and avoid the ones you don't; improving with the skill is mostly a matter of practice, sorry Ana.

The reason that this is a safety lecture is that miscasts are dangerous; if they aren't broken in time, they'll break on their own, which kills the caster. 'In time' means within about three days; miscast spells start acting strange on the second or third day and spontaniously break sometime at least a quarter of a day after that. (This is all in earth time; a day is 24 hours.) So, learning to cast is perfectly safe so long as you only cast on things that you don't mind breaking and do so within two days; they'll eventually want to start leaving some enspelled things intact until they start acting weird, to see how they're progressing, but that can wait - she expects it to take at least a month before any of them has a stable spell at all, and at least three before any of them can cast reliably.

The need to break miscasts leads to the following rules:

1. Do not cast on people. Don't cast on animals, either, without a good reason or at least a specific plan. A spell on a living thing can't be broken without killing them. The first person they'll each be casting on is themselves, when they're confident enough to do so. Droids here might count, too; she hasn't found the time to check one yet.
2. Don't cast on durable or valuable things. Common sense, really. The traditional thing to start with is sticks - the basket has been refilled since yesterday - and once they've got the hang of defining objects to cast on, there's a couple more advanced tricks that will let them safely cast on a wider variety of things.
3. Keep track of things you've cast on. If you're in a situation where you might not be able to, break the thing right away.

The traditional goal for reliability is twenty-five consecutive stable spells, but it's not uncommon for new mages to wait a little while after that before casting their magic-vision spells, which is when someone is considered a real mage in her culture.

Any questions?

"Is it unavoidable that the first spells you cast will be miscasts?"

She nods. "I suppose it's not impossible that the Force will help you somehow, but so far I've never seen someone take much less than a month to get their first stable spell."