First Daughter (Hadrian)

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock's eyes went wide at the unfamiliar display of magic. She didn't know the first thing about how this kind of magic worked, but now that she was seeing it, she wanted it. Magic that could shape stone? Hell yes! She held her hands up over the third dimension to show him another two inch depth. "Like 'is," she said, watching the green energy without blinking. "An' jus' keep it... wait, ya can make any stone?" she glanced briefly back up at him, then looked back down at the magic. She considered quite a few possibilities, but granite or marble would be too hard for carving molds. "Jus' keep it what she is," she said. "Ain't gots ta been nothin' fancy fer 'is." She held her breath, watching and waiting. She wanted to know how this worked, and then she was going to have a million questions. And if it was anything at all like she imagined it, she was going to demand he teach her how to do it...

[Hadrian]

He nodded, and with force of will, drew the rectangle of energy out into a perfect prism. It began to darken in patches, where a stone skin grew over it, spreading like lichen, and he reached out to hold it as it gradually transmuted into pure stone. It settled into his grasp, his arms and shoulders straining just a little to hold up the weight, but he hefted it up for her inspection. It was unnaturally smooth on all sides, as if it had been cut and polished like a gem, but it was merely stone. "How is this?"

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Eyes wide, she snatched the stone from his hands, looking it over. She ran her expert fingers across it, knowing it would have taken hours of hard work for her to shape and polish a stone this well. And imagine if it could be taken a step further, applying the carved grooves of the mold itself, by magic rather than chisel. Imagine how much more she could get done, how much more she could build, if she had this kind of power. And here she had thought reimancy was just about useless stuff like throwing fireballs around. Eyes wild with excitement, and giggling with giddy joy, she started poking Hadrian and said, "Ya gotta teach me 'ow ta does 'at, mate! C'mon, c'mon!" She tugged on his sleeve, bouncing on her toes like a child, a huge grin on her face. Nothing got her worked up the way magic did. "C'mon, shows me! Please? Pretty pretty please wit' all 'at stuff? I's teachin' ya... Fair's fair, aye? C'mon, ya gotta! I's do anythin' fer ta learns me some stone-makin' magic! Anythin'." She knew some people were hesitant about sharing their magic knowledge with others, but she WAS going to help him with his Animation ability. She looked up at him with big, pleading eyes, her fingers clinging to his shirt, her lower lip jutting out in a pathetic display of hope. She'd swallow her pride, get down on her knees, and BEG if she had to.

[Hadrian]

"I..." Why did they always want to learn? One of these days he was going to have his own tower (and possibly a lady friend with long hair to use as a rope ladder) to use as a sanctuary from everyone who wanted things from him, but Tock had a point. He was learning from her, and he ought to teach her something. And she seemed the sort who would use it for constructive purposes. If she was a bit nutty, well, she seemed harmless. Than again, so did he, or so he thought. Finally he nodded. "I can try, but I can't guarantee the initiation will take, or that Earth will be the element that answers you." In fact, were he to guess, she would be most akin to Air.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock bounced on her toes, giggling with excitement. "Oy, at's good form, aye mate?" she said with exuberance. She then grabbed Hadrian by his shirt and planted a firm kiss on him, overcome by her excitement. She released him and turned to her babies, redirecting them to new tasks. The first tree came down with a crash, and she set Choppy on another one. The first tree would likely cover most of their needs, so she picked a smaller one and set Choppy to chopping. She then carried Cutty over so the saw could start slicing up the fallen tree. She lined him up by hand, since he didn't follow directions well, and then with a bit of difficulty started him cutting through the wood. He'd be fine without direction during the cut... though getting him to STOP when he was done was the difficult part. Once her babies were set to their new tasks, she hurried back over to Hadrian, laughing eagerly. There was a fiery passion in her eyes at the thought of learning new magic. She rubbed her hands together, itching to start, and asked, "Oy, so's 'ow's she goes, aye? Let's git 'er done!"

[Hadrian]

The kiss left him stupefied. There hadn't been a kiss since Kendall, and those had dried up before they ever reached Zeltiva. The passions that had welled up in him, then, he blamed on Kendall's Azenth gnosis. When Kendall had no longer wanted Hadrian, his feelings had gone back to their coolness. But all the same, a kiss was a kiss, and he just blinked for a while. His mind registered her at her work, but then she was back and asking for magic. "Wait. Here?" He blinked again, glanced around nervously. "Now?"

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Her face dropped in shocked, hurt disappointment when he asked her if she meant 'now.' "'COURSE now, mate," she protested, throwing her arms up in the air. "Whatcha gonna, tease a girl, git 'er all excited, 'en not deliver?" She gave him the most pathetic, adorable pout possible, her big brown eyes pleading with him. She stepped up and took his hands in hers, rubbing the backs of his hands gently with her thumbs. "C'mon," she whispered, leaning close and gazing up at him pleadingly. "Ain't nobody out 'ere but us, aye? S'nice'n... private..." She slid one hand up to his chest, fingers gliding up, firmly massaging through his shirt until she reached his shoulder, then clinging lightly to him. She slid her other hand up, both hands lightly gripping his shoulders, fingers tickling at his neck. She gazed into his eyes and whispered, "Please?"

[Hadrian]

And another thing: whatever womanly wiles Kendall had learned before Alander Jin swapped her body for a man's had been somewhat mitigated by the new body. It had been a long time since... Had a woman ever shown him such interest? "I, ah..." He fidgeted. "Well, all right, but... um... it hurts some. You might end up... you know, incapacitated for a while. As the magic changes you." But if she wanted to do that out here in front of the gods and whoever might pass by, that was her business, right? She must know some caution with regard to her animation; she took the creatures out with her, but she didn't animate them in public. All the same, he reached for his carving knife. One of these days he was going to have to make himself a proper athame.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

"I can 'andle a lil pain," Tock said with a dismissive wave of her hand. She had been beaten, bruises, nearly drowned, suffered three broken bones, and fended off rapists before. No way this could be worse than all that. She arched an eyebrow when he pulled out the knife, though she wasn't all that surprised. Blood was a common component in magic. It was needed for Animation and Alchemy, and her research showed her it could sometimes be used as a reagent in Magecrafting. So this was nothing new. She grinned wide and asked, "Where ya needs 'er?" She pulled off her gloves and offered her hands to him, rolling up her sleeves. She usually took a drop of blood from a finger or her forearm. Her heart was racing, and her stomach filled with butterflies at the thought if what was about to happen. It was more exciting to her than her first kiss. It felt like such a personal moment. She almost wished it was with a man she knew better, and felt closer to. But to get what she wanted, well, she'd do this with just about anyone. She at least felt like she could trust Hadrian. They might not be close, but she felt like he was a decent guy. And somehow, she knew he'd be gentle.

[Hadrian]

He really did hate this, initiating someone he hardly knew into a discipline that he had taken such pains to master. But he had been initiated similarly, paying that bully Zan for something for which he had not truly been ready. At least she seemed to take her work seriously, and that was something to her credit. "I don't actually know yet," he admitted, tucking the haft of the knife between this thumb and index finger so he could use both hands to explore her hands, her forearms, seeking that specific confluence of her body's energetic meridians where the res would find its most harmonious link to her blood. "It's different on different people, and there's no sure way I know to give you the element you desire, but I'm looking for the best place to infuse your blood with earth res, which is the name for the type of energy you use to manipulate the elements. "What I'm going to do," he explained distractedly as his fingers danced up and down the pattern of her veins and less visible strata of energy, "is open a vein most likely, and then I'm going to produce a good deal of res, and send it into your body. Through the cut, through your pores, and generally through every other orifice of your body. The energy has to cocoon you, and then move into you, and I'll hold it there while it changes what needs changing within you. Then I pull it out and you should have the ability to call and work one element, though it takes a good deal of practice to manage much of anything. There can be pain, headaches, nausea... any number of reactions. I have not seen any that have been truly life-threatening, or even long-lasting." Finally his thumb pressed gently against the vein that curled around the inside of her elbow just below the crease in the skin caused by the joint. He wondered then at the mechanics of human anatomy, and of course he could sense the structure of her bones beneath, their own magical resonance different from flesh and artery, organ and energy. "Do you have any questions?" he asked, chlorine blue eyes, far too bright to be entirely human, met her own.