Mial is somewhat between projects after he settles on his three new forms. The pouncing game keeps him occupied for a little while, and he's always interested in helping his mother test her spells, but as time goes on and Mial continues to lack a focus for all his energy, the household's frazzlement level gradually rises.

Koridaar's first solution, since he was so enthusiastic about wizardry, is to turn him loose on her collection of spellbooks, theoretical texts, and old research notes. While he's busy with those, she finally finds a scoot whose promised safety parameters meet her standards and whose price falls within her modest budget. She buys it; it's convenient to have for trips to medium-distant places she hasn't already been, and after all, everyone else in her family can fly.

Mial, predictably, is fascinated by the scoot. He climbs all over it in human, feline, and goat forms the day she brings it home. It is shiny and blue and he wants to know everything about it. How fast does it go? How high? Can he see both these attributes demonstrated? How do you make it go? Can he make it go?

Once he allows his mother to get a word in edgewise, she explains that it goes both fast and high, that she is not planning to take it out again until she has analyzed it to her satisfaction, that it has controls in the front seat which she knows how to use, and that she will teach him how to use them too if he promises to be very, very, very careful. Very. Very, Mial.

He eyes the scoot with a mixture of suspicion and longing.

Mial cannot quite articulate his feelings about scoots, beyond insisting that it is shiny and he likes it.

It takes him a week, and three flights with Mom at the controls, before he finally acquiesces to her condition and swears to be very careful with the scoot. In order to limit the temptation to bend this promise - they take promises seriously in Mial's line, but the scoot is very shiny and goes very fast - she extracts a secondary promise that he will not take it out by himself, even after he knows how, until both of his parents are satisfied with his ability to handle it and his understanding of its safety mechanisms.

She told herself she wouldn't, but Koridaar finds herself writing up a detailed list of suggested improvements to those. There are so many things that can go wrong when you are zooming along at high speed in a bespelled contraption, and now that she actually has the thing in her possession, she can see that it is not really adequately protected against all of them. She sends the letter to the manufacturer not expecting much to come of it; they're probably just going to find it obnoxious.

In order to lower that risk, she declines to mention the significant role her seven-equivalent son played in thinking up some of the more obscure ideas. As he has already proved while helping with her research, Mial has a twisty little mind that thrives on the challenge of figuring out how to break the unbreakable.

He complains loudly that having to be very very careful ruins the fun, but he is impeccably conscientious in his actual handling of the vehicle. And deeply, deeply enthusiastic about his scoot-flying lessons. Clearly not all of the fun has been ruined.

Aurin decides that he too wants to learn to fly the scoot.

Alys asks Koridaar what she thinks of this idea.

Alys tells Aurin that he may have one lesson, and then she'll make an updated decision based on how he handles that.

Aurin is on his very best behavior.

Koridaar teaches him some basic things about how to make a scoot go.

(Mial sits in. He nobly refrains from heckling. He can heckle later, when Aurin has learned how to fly the scoot.)

It's not unusual for Mial's mood to take a downswing and stay that way for a few days until he bounces back to normal.

It is a little unusual for those few days to stretch out into a week. Then two. Then three.

"'kay."

He shuffles over and opens the door.