"I can imagine."

Breathe in. Breathe out. Center yourself. Who are you, and who were you yesterday? What do you feel? What did you feel yeserday? How much of what you're currently feeling, doing, being, is yourself, and how much is the magic?

He nods. "I think I can do that. There are worse things, from how you describe your magic, to be shoving around one's self and sanity."

The scars are not immediately visible, but once she looks they're everywhere; running across his face, across his features, across the one hand that rests comfortably on the the table between them. He wears a high-collared shirt and no other skin is visible. He doesn't appear to have any ears; his hair rests flat against his head.

"Do you, um. I can do healing. Even of wounds that have already scarred."

Her face betrays only srprise and concern, but across the Osanwë channel he can feel an abrupt, bubbling, piercing rage.

He goes very very still for a second, then places the other hand on the table. It ends in a stump. "That kind of healing?"

"Yes. I--yes."

"Interesting," he says. "It's been four hundred years. I'd rather grown accustomed. How long does it take you?"

"Um--it depends. A few moments each, for the superficial ones. Longer for the ones where there's structural damage."

"Not a priority, then," he says lightly. "Perhaps later." The remaining hand is balled into a fist on the table. "How was magic discovered by your people? How was it first learned?"

"I don't know. We've had it for longer than our historical records go back."

"All right."

"Most people don't get their ratios and resistances worked out for years, and it's customary to learn a roughly equal amount of each until then. Can you think of any mechanically trivial tasks that it would be valuable to be able to accomplish through force of will? You can't really do very much for the first bit."

"Tying a knot would be useful, is that complicated?"

"Tying a knot would be straightforward, but I meant...a lot of what mages learn is how to leverage magic. When every use of it carries a price in pain and personality, you want to put it where it will do the most good. Tying knots can be done by hand fairly trivially, in my experience. Given that this is a war zone, a more efficient use of magic might be deflecting projectiles."

"Tying knots can be done by two hands."

...

...

"Yes. Um, I actually know how to tie a knot using one hand and my teeth, but. Um. That was...thoughtless of me, I apologize."

"I'd much sooner people forget it," he says, "and I can also tie knots with my teeth but not conveniently in public, or on belts and shoes and so forth. If deflecting projectiles is similarly trivial it is a better choice."

"More trivial, actually. It's easier to convince an object in motion to go in a different direction than it is to convince a limp, at-rest object to undergo a series of contortions."

"All right. How is it done?"

Like this, she sends via Osanwë, after a moment of completely failing to generate words for what it feels like.

Hmmm.

Can you send it again? That's a lot to take in.

Of course. More of the same.

"All right. How do I know if I'm doing it? I can't fire projectiles at myself to check -"

"Well, you might not get it right the first time, so we probably shouldn't start with actual live fire. I can throw something at you and you can try to deflect it."

"Go ahead."

So she takes off her necklace, spins it a few times by the chain, and flings it at him.