He gets to sleep eventually, although it takes several hours.

When he wakes up, the sun is up, Pradnakt has moved to a slightly different curled-up configuration, the animals have been let out of the barn, and a noticeable amount of the water in the bucket has evaporated, but everything else is apparently the same.

...yep. He's still here. Wasn't a dream.

Now what.

Kind of up to him, isn't it.

...it's very tempting to just huddle in his tent not doing anything.

But that is probably the wrong answer.

But he doesn't know what he should be doing instead.

About ten minutes after he wakes up, Pradnakt uncurls and sits up, and after a further ten minutes she stands and leaves the house; a few seconds later she's stopped to announce herself at the door of his tent.

There is a brief flicker of an expectation in the back of his head that actually that's his father and he is about to be set on fire, but he's so used to those moments that he barely notices the thought as it goes by. He peers nervously out of the tent at her.

She's holding a tray of food, and also holding very still and making a rather disturbed face.

...???

She blinks and snaps out of it, instead looking worried and vaguely incredulous. She holds out the tray for him to take: scrambled eggs, buttered toast, a small bowl of applesauce and a glass of milk.

"Um. Thank you?" he says hesitantly, accepting the tray. It is worrying that she's disturbed or worried by something and he doesn't know what, but he also doesn't know how to find out, so he might as well just have breakfast.

Tray delivered, she heads back into the house.

She takes longer with breakfast than he does, but not dramatically so. When she's done, she returns, this time with a sketch pad and colored pencils.

Once he finishes his breakfast he calls up a little of the water from his comfort bucket and cleans all of the dishes with it; he is just finishing with that as she returns.

Aw.

Okay, so. Sketchpad: the first page has a simple drawing of a fire; she points to it, then to Sora, making a face that rather clearly communicates 'what the heck?' and also that she is worried about him, and then floats the pad and pencils over.

...okay if she wants him to draw things he can draw things, but what - oh, she probably caught him thinking about his father.

He is not much of an artist but he manages four stick figures, each manipulating an element. Stick figure with hovering rock: "Earthbender." Stick figure with streams of water: "Waterbender." Stick figure with flame blast: "Firebender." Stick figure with little swirling breezes: "Airbender."

New pair of stick figures with associated elements: "Father, firebender. Mother, waterbender." Ensuing family tree: "Brother, firebender. Sora, waterbender." Brother gets crossed out. He's not sure if she's still reading his mind, but if she's not he has no idea how to explain 'my father strongly implied when I was growing up that I had an older brother who was a firebender but also an incorrigible troublemaker so Father killed him and started over', so he's just going to move on. Here is a bad drawing of the house where he grew up, on Ember Island surrounded by lots and lots of lightly tended wilderness. Here are father-stick-figure and Sora-stick-figure standing next to the house.

New page: Sora-stick-figure doing various badly drawn tasks like cleaning his room and reading books and learning firebending katas for no reason except that his father wished he'd been born a firebender instead. Father-stick-figure watching approvingly as long as he gets it right. Sora-stick-figure dropping a plate and breaking it. Father-stick-figure yelling. Father-stick-figure throwing fire blasts at cowering Sora-stick-figure.

He looks up from the page and over at Pradnakt - is this a sufficient explanation?

- hard to tell. She certainly is having some sort of reaction to it, though; the doom aura isn't back, but it really might as well be.

She reaches over, stiffly, and a tiny bit of lightning plays over her finger, and the instance of his father who's throwing fire at him smokes and chars under it.

—if that means she wants to kill him, well, Sora already did that. But he's still not sure if she's reading his mind so he's not sure if he needs to figure out a way to draw 'faked suicide via bloodbending'.

She relaxes a little, at least, and nods. "Good."

She takes the pad back and flips forward a few pages to get to one without a scorch mark, on which she draws a cloaked stick figure holding a red line. "Sith," she identifies, then flips back to his last drawing and identifies the instance of Sora's father watching approvingly as 'happy', the burnt one as 'angry', and the cowering Sora-instance as 'scared'. Back to her page, she draws little faces for all three emotions and identifies them.

Next, the Sith figure is repeated, zapping a bolt of lightning this time. Below that, the stick figure with an angry face next to it and a larger bolt of lightning, and then one with a scared face and a lightning bolt between those two in size. Finally, one with a happy face, and a smaller (but not much smaller) bolt of lightning than the original. Then, three more Sith figures, with progressively larger angry faces and lightning bolts to match.

...hm. The lightning is emotion-based somehow?

"Mmhmm," she nods.

She adds another symbol up by the faces: a blue half-circle, which she identifies as 'think'. Then, at the bottom of the page, a Sith figure, again with an angry face and now with a think symbol as well, and lightning, now hitting a second, uncaped figure. She traces her finger from the Sith, through the angry face, along the lightning, and to the other figure, then back toward the Sith. She pauses as she nears the Sith, and draws a larger angry face and a much smaller think symbol, then continues tracing the path back through both of them to the Sith figure, making a disapproving "mm" as she does.

...the lightning is emotion-based and makes you feel the emotion more strongly and think less? That sounds terrible??

She makes a woggly hand gesture and taps the zapped figure.

...makes you feel the emotion more strongly and think less specifically when you murder somebody with it? Otherworldly powers are so weird.

"Mmhmm." Next page.

A Sith figure again, this one with long brown hair, identified as herself. A second one, larger and in a slightly more elaborate cape: Pritruth. The two of them fighting with lightsabers; Pritruth looking on while Pradnakt sits at a table working on something; Pritruth looking on while Pradnakt produces a series of increasingly large lightning bolts; happy signs - small ones - all around this. A dividing line.

She pauses to identify some things from the previous page, 'lightning' and 'kill' and 'more' and 'less', and then flips back and continues her story aloud. "Pritruth scared Pradnakt," she starts, tapping the page once below the dividing line. "Pritruth talk Pradnakt kill. Pradnakt not think Pritruth scared, not think..." she goes back to the previous page and waves at the 'the Force is kind of fucked up' drawing. "Pradnakt kill. Pritruth talk more, Pradnakt kill more, Pradnakt think less. Pradnakt think," another gesture at the drawing. "Pradnakt think: Pradnakt not kill, Pritruth kill Pradnakt."

...so Pradnakt was - learning? from Pritruth? and Pritruth was afraid of her, and... Pritruth told Pradnakt to do more of the fucked-up murder magic... because that would make her less scary?? And she - didn't know, or didn't realize, what it would do to her? And then she realized? maybe? and concluded that if she stopped doing fucked-up murder magic then Pritruth would kill her? He is really not sure he has that right.