[Sanctuary] Manipulating Water [Solo]

[Raiha]

Closed.

16th of Spring, 511 AV.

Springtime brought a certain sense of relief to her that it was the end of a rather brutish winter. The weather was very, very different from what she had gotten used to on Konti Isle, but, well, you learned, adapted, progressed. it meant multiple layers, staying warm, and saying goodbyes, in a way. Asim had up and left, the last Kelvic to do so, and Raiha found that while it stung, some things were never meant to be forever. She’d had the blessings of their company for a while, and the bear paw prints had gone off a few hours earlier and disappeared as the bond broke. She’d let him. There was nothing else she could have done about it.

This is what happens when you let others in, Kanikra told her. They just take advantage of your heart and crush it.

Better to have loved than never loved at all, she told her sister soul, looking out at winter’s last freezing hurrah through the open shutter. The windows to the mews lacked glass, which had been an oversight of the two girls when they had made them, but Raiha hadn’t really minded. Between auristics and infravision and the hearth, if it was that dark, well, that was why they had lamps, wasn’t it? And what it had been between her and her Kelvic friends she wasn't sure she could classify as love. It was a gruff friendship with Asim, a light-hearted partnership with Laeraix, and something wild and exciting with Akasha that had stirred her body in ways she hadn't felt before.

Stop sulking. Get off your widening ass and go do something. I don’t give a blind damn that it’s snowing, put your layers on and mitts on and and take the dog out. This moping is getting on my nerves.

Raiha sighed, knowing Kanikra had a point, and gathered her cloak, putting on her boots. “Come on, Diallo,” she told him, opening the door and going outside, looking at the fat flakes of snow as they came down. She whistled for Diallo, who had been relaxing on her bed before she went down the stairs, her feet crunching into the snow. It was coming down hard enough that she couldn't hardly see ten feet in front of her, and every breath she released produced a puff of fog in the freezing air. Her exposed skin immediately started pricking, and Raiha let it. It wasn't bad.

You know what would be fun? Kanikra sounded thoughtful.

What? Raiha humored her. Anything to get out of this brown study she was in.

We should have made a slide. Soaked the snow with res and froze it smooth. See how far we could have gone.

Maybe next year. Her boots crunched the snow, and she looked out over the frozen landscape. Just when the weather had been getting nice again, it was snowing like crazy and coming down even more. I suppose we could practice anyway, she admitted, licking dry lips and catching one snowflake, than two, on her tongue. It was nice to just be a kid, sometimes, even when expectations of everything else ran high and mighty indeed. Sometimes, being an Akontak just sucked. But as Kanikra was quick to remind her...it was better than the alternatives.

She headed out to the pastures, wading through the snow, crouching and beginning to shape the snow into a large, square seat, packing it down and crouching in front of it as Diallo scoured the pasture, occasionally lifting his leg on the outer perimeters of the fence line to warn off predators that he was here and if they wanted to try something, well, they’d have to deal with him first. Raiha sat back on her heels, eying the sham of a throne she had made. It looked ridiculous. And yet... Taking off her mittens, she inhaled slowly, taking in great lungfuls of frosty cold air and more than a few snowflakes, and relaxed, lowering herself to her knees, tucking her toes under and sitting back in order to find a good balance as she focused on meditating and finding that inner core that she used to help produce Res. She found it easily - meditating had helped with the spring cleaning in her head, and it made it near effortless to find that core again. She touched it, putting her hand in it in her mind’s eye, and closed her hands on the strands of pure light.

She breathed out, concentrating on that Djed, focusing it to turn it into res. It oozed from her hands, and she let it drip off onto the crude seat, absently smoothing it... though her hands were a few inches off of the surface as she unconsciously leveled it, urging it vertically as well along the back, her eyes wide as she took all of this in. In some ways it was like it wasn’t part of her that was doing it, and yet, it was her. It was all her, as Kanikra watched appreciatively, and (un)helpfully informed her when she missed a spot. Without argument or complaint, Raiha covered that spot in, weirdly at peace with this. Diallo had come to watch her, tongue lolling as she raised her hands and sat back, releasing the res a little bit at a time as it gathered the cold moisture in the air, slowly freezing from the top down. When she mastered air, then that would be a different story, but as it was, the cold chills in the air did the work for her as Raiha made the water as cold as she could make it. When she stood back, she was surprised to see it glitter like crystal, hard and solid and thick to the touch as she knocked on it with her knuckles.

Cooooooooooool...

[Raiha]

She seated her leather-covered butt on the throne, then, and held her hands out for Diallo to plant his head there, rubbing and massaging his ears as he buried his face against her belly. “You’re a good dog,” she told him quietly. “Tireless and true, that’s what you are. When all others leave... you remain.” He lifted his head at that, looking up at her with the same big brown eyes that had made her melt when he was a wriggly pup, and she pressed a kiss to his cold nose. “Ever get that feeling some day? That it’s you and me against the world. Kavala’s busy and preparing for the arrival of her child. People leave and go... and, that, Diallo, is the difference between Kelvics and animals. Animals, treated right, won’t leave you. Kelvics will.” He licked her face suddenly, causing her to laugh, and she grabbed a snowball, packing it up, and threw it. He raced after it, and Raiha grinned as he bought her back a melted mouthful of snow. Another snowball was thrown, and as he chased it, she had an idea.

Relaxing on her chair, she reclined back, lightly touching her thumbs and forefingers together, making a circle, concentrating on relaxing and meditating again in order to produce more Res, drawing strands from that wellspring of light. Res began to cling to her arms, slowly rolling over her skin to gather in her cupped fingers, and she formed a bowl with her hands, letting the Res grow in volume before she began to dissipate it, even as she churned out more and more, letting it gather in her hands, only to become gaseous, mixing up and in with the thick flakes falling down from the sky above her. She tried to move one, gathering the airy Res into a ball, going more by instinct and a sense of where a part of her was than actual sight, since with the weather like it was, it was nigh impossible to see. She found that it wasn’t anywhere near as hard as she thought it would be, guiding it overhead through the snow, gathering up the moisture in the air, making the ball bigger and bigger. Diallo went running as a snowball dropped from the sky, landing with a splat on the ground. He had no more time to digest what had happened before another one happened a good thirty feet away, and he rushed after it, catching it in his maw just before it hit the ground.

She couldn’t help it. The laughter began, and as the laughter grew longer and lustier, the snowballs got bigger and bigger as she stopped paying attention of just how big she was letting them grow as she gathered the moisture in the air, forcing it together before transmuting it. Sometimes they were more like slushballs than proper snowballs, but soon, they were raining from the sky as Raiha got the hang of what she was doing, half bent over, arms wrapped around her middle, laughing. The snowballs kept coming, getting bigger and more like proper snow until Diallo finally gave up on this, plopping down on his rump in the snow and let out a howl.

Until a snowball landed on his head. He was up, then, frustration forgotten, as Raiha began to work on her timing and control, giving him more of a chance to chase them down successfully. “Get ‘em,” she urged him, pointing him towards the snowballs, the res attracting the snow that was coming down in heavy white clumps, binding it into one center and adding more onto it. She tried to do it simultaneously, adjusting the speed of which she gathered snow, though that led to snowballs dropping from the sky like flies. Clearly, this took practice. Lots and lots of practice.

Nothing worth having comes easily, you know, Kanikra commented after a little while, surprising Raiha. Her sister-soul had been meditating quietly, it seemed, watching her progress and gauging her successes compared to her failures, and wisely having the sense to keep her sarcastic mouth shut for once and just let her work. Kanikra wasn’t stupid. She knew there was only so far she could push Raiha anymore before she would go and do something else. You don’t always get what you wish for... but you get what you work for. You know something else we should do next year?

What? Raiha was all for humoring her. First the slide, now what?

We should make something to skate on. Take a big barrel, fill it full of water, and flatten the snow down, really pack it. We can get a horse to pull or push it, something... just pack it down good, then flood the place with water, and freeze it. Get some ice skates, and learn how to skate. Good exercise, good coordination, and good practice.

Practice?

You never know if you might have to skate on the Blue Vein River.

A colossal clump of snow crashed down on top of Diallo, then, covering him from head to toe as Raiha absolutely lost it and laughed, the helpless laughter developing into exhausted hysterics as he dug himself out and came over cuddle beside her as she climbed off of the ice throne and hugged him while he wagged not only his tail, but his whole body. “Okay,” Raiha hiccuped and sighed once she was finally out of breath. “I think we should probably go back in. I could use a na-a-a-ap,” she yawned, using the dog to get to her feet, rubbing his ears. “Just a little one. Then we’ll do more tonight.” Diallo barked at her. “Yes, you get a cookie. One of those sounds pretty good to me, too.” She was too tired from her morning adventure to run through the snow, just trudging through it with the big white dog at her side, and she swatted at his rump playfully as he bounced, before starting the last few steps up to the mews and passing him a cookie before filling up his water bowl before draining the last of the waterskin herself, picking up a couple pieces of bread and cheese that she’d gotten from the kitchen the other day, and nibbled slowly on them as she heated more snow in the hearth or water. If you drank it cold, after all, it only used up more energy as your body warmed it to a temperature you could digest. A good draught of that later, and she was out like a light in the bed, the dog dozing on the woven rag rug beside it.

[Raiha]

Raiha woke up in time for dinner, helped cook, and stuffed her face almost mechanically. She was distracted, and left the warm hearth of the kitchen after cleaning up and making sure Kavala was settled and not needing anything, taking a dented metal mixing bowl with her. She was too restless to return to the mews, where the birds would be a wonderful deterrent to practicing. She had the particulars of making water down pat, it seemed, and gathering it from the atmosphere. So the next step, for her, was manipulating the element itself. She walked and paced before filling the bowl half full and headed for the stables to help Aweston get the horses in and settled for the evening. That served to help work that restlessness away and settle her down. Sometimes, Raiha just had more energy than she knew what to do with.

She took the bowl to the mews, setting it by the hearth and starting a fire with the flint and steel, the sparks catching on the tinder before beginning to crackle merrily. That worked for her. She didn’t need a big fire - the lamp could be lit next, and that was all the light she, the birds, and Diallo needed. Next year, they could get glass in the windowpanes, and then she’d be able to open them and keep some of the cold out all at the same time. She checked on the melting snow perched on the edge of the hearth, giving the bowl a quick swish to rotate it and slosh it around a bit. Getting there. She lit the lamp, and checked on the few hawks that she had in flights, feeding them some scraps of raw meat and fish before getting comfortable on the rug that Diallo usually lay on, setting the bowl in front of her, its contents melted by now. That was good. She’d try playing with temperatures later, testing her ability to influence that in a more neutral atmosphere than the cold outdoors.

She settled down, taking up a meditative posture for the greatest ease of practice, her back straight, her legs crossed, her arms resting on her long legs. She didn’t touch the bowl. She knew better than to think she had to touch it - this would be able fine-tuning control and testing it. She breathed, and focused on herself, letting the whispers of the shadows and the soft calls and feelings of the birds fade into the background. She cleared her mind, and began to draw upon her Djed to form res. It was thick and gelatinous to start, as she wanted it, and she focused on it, cutting off the supply rather than keep producing, clinging to her skin and clothing before she lightened it into air, directing it into the bowl.

She pushed the res in her mind around in the bowl, thickening it once again once it was on top of the water so that it could sink in, bdrops of it trickling down like pearls as she played with the consistency, letting it spread throughout the melting snow. The other half of it she left as a filmy gas over the bowl, for now, keeping it as gathered as much as possible. Multitasking was a challenge, but it was one Raiha was determined to get right out of the gate. She held onto that res with an iron fist, letting her concentration trickle back to the pearls of res in the bowl. Her lips thinned as she pressed them together with concentration, finally grasping the bowl to hold it still as she tried to push the res around in her mind, like she had earlier in the day, when gathering the snowflakes to make clumps with the water crystals in the air. In some ways, it was easier, because it was visible, and much closer, and at the same time, it was harder - she was constantly moving it, forcing the liquid in the bowl to go faster and faster, lapping at the edges as she gradually started transmuting it, releasing the res into water, pushing still pushing at its speed.

Vincent had said she could learn to force the power of a river into one razor-sharp sword point to puncture armor, and Kanikra had a very vested interest in being able to so. That would come in time. First of all, they needed to learn control, and what was easier than moving water in a circle in an enclosed space? That was something she had practiced in waterskins before, but those, at least, had had the advantage of being enclosed. This one, not so much. She brought more res down as the amounts in the bowl were absorbed, though she’d had to regather it as it had drifted from where she had tried to keep it in place overhead. With only a little more to go, her rug and pants were beginning to get wet - there was too much water in the bowl, and it was spilling over the edges in waves. She sighed, and brought the rest of the res down into the mixing bowl, moving it in the opposite direction of the contained current she had created, turning it from gas to bubbly, frothy liquid water, bringing it to an uneven, sloshing stop. She watched it as it finally settled in the bowl, and helped herself to a good draught of it before setting it in front of Diallo to finish, leaning back against him and feeding another driftwood stick into the fire.

She could always make more.

[Raiha]

After another break and a snack of dried apple slices and some cheese and - ha - water, she changed her clothes into her dry set and left the mews, standing there on the landing at the door, and rested her arms on the wooden rail, her hands together, fingers loosely linked, as she looked up at the sky. It was late, very late, and that was okay by her. She didn’t feel like sleeping, after all. She was not tired. She looked up at the snow drifting down, and sucked in a breath before lacing the bottom three fingers of each hand together, pressing her pointing fingers and her thumbs against each other, the tips connecting, and she rested, letting her mind drift, the thoughts melting away like the snowflakes that were beginning to land on her hair, melting from her body heat, turning into little droplets of moisture.

She focused on herself, on her djed, on her core, and breathed, letting the djed ease out, from her nose and mouth, a cloud of translucent white res. She watched it, looking at the snow in the courtyard, and exhaled before beginning to shape it, making it into a thin wand, not much longer than her father’s lakan, and worked on carving her name into the heavily-frozen snow bank. It was slow going - she didn’t want to be sloppy, and it was a very good exercise in control. It would be long and fancy and allow for loops and holes that she could, in fact, fill in later. It might look funny in the morning when the sun hit, but it would be pretty, at least.

It was a different kind of control from what she had just practiced in her room. This required her to transmute the edge of the wand, and to continue to feed it, gathering res and producing it, putting it together, and keeping it all together. Slowly, painstakingly, she carved the letter “R”, with a flourish to the little line at the bottom, and set about widening it until the line was almost as wide as her hand. Pleased with herself, she began to start on the “A”, rounded and styled much like her “R”, leaving the round flourish at the middle right, where the little line connected on the right. She knew it was easier to carve in snow and ice than it was to carve rock, but it certainly felt like she was taking the same amount of time to do all of this.

Compared to the first two letters, the “I” was laughable in the time it took to do, as she etched slowly, not even noticing as her fingertips, where they pressed together, were white... and not from the cold; but from the pressure she was putting on them. Soft, rounded lines continued, carefully shaped, the point of the res melting against the cold snow as the end was continuously transmuted. The next letter, the “H” was as fun as the “R” and the “A”, in that she got to get curvy with it, adding more little pools for emphasis, spirals and plumes and twists. The final “A” was a repetition of her first. “There,” she let out a quiet laugh in the twilight sky, only now realizing that the sun was preparing to rise and bring light to the world again. She didn’t mind that either. As much as she loved the Night-Mother’s bells, the beauty of the daylight was not something to bemoan.

The Akontak released her hands, shaking them out, wiggling her fingers, straightening from the position in which she had been locked for a while, using the rail as support. She was almost a snowperson herself - snow had to be shaken off in clumps, and she smiled down at her ornamentation. Now for the final step. She gathered up the clouds of res that had been leaking out of her, that she hadn’t used in the creation of the etching, and began to move it over the letters, guiding the gaseous substance into the cores she had made. Once it was filled in, she gently, slowly, strenuously turned the res from gas to a thick gel, and began to transmute only the outermost layer, keeping the new water as cold as she could, letting it freeze before transmuting the next part, as sweat beaded her brow, moving in slow layers, only enough at a time to freeze it. She moved between the letters to give each layer time to freeze before doing the next, and the next...

She felt like she’d been used hard and hung out wet by the time it was all done. But in the twilight, as the sun rose over the buildings of Sanctuary, Raiha’s name was carved in the snowbank, each letter filled with a core of ice that was frozen solid. Sure, stone lasted longer, but water had been her first element, for now, and this would last the season. To her, this was the seedbed of all life. Nothing survived without water. It was the most versatile - it could wash away earth and put out fire, and even though the wind could lift and move it, it couldn’t carry all of it. It couldn’t move it all. And water could run deep. Now, more than she could remember needing in her life, except for her initiation, she wanted a nap. That bed was looking really good right now...

[Raiha]

She slept most of the morning until late afternoon, when she finally emerged from her room in the mews to visit the kitchen and stuff her face. Raiha was a typical teenager in that she would eat anything and tackle a meal at any hour of the day or night. She picked through the ice box, finding the leftovers, and helped herself to them, eating almost ravenously since there was no one up there to stare at her as she made food, well, disappear. With her belly full and energy restored, she felt like a million gold mizas as she rolled her head on her shoulders, and got up to wash the dishes and put them away.

With water that had been heated over the hearth in the basin, Raiha quickly scrubbed the plates and bowls of debris, along with the utensils, and dried them off with a scrap of cloth before putting them away in the cupboard. She was a bit like Asim that way. Opportunistic feeder. Ate whatever happened to be there. It worked for her.

She made her way outside to the chicken coop. The plank was down so that they could get a bit of air, cold as it was, and Raiha unhooked one door in order to look and see how it was doing in there. It was warm and, well, birdy, for lack of a better word, and despite the smell of chicken poop, she didn’t mind it as she checked the water. It was rock solid.She exhaled, considering what she had done with the well before eying the water bowls. A mixed approach would be better, maybe, because otherwise she would just flood the coop. She concentrated on producing res, just a little bit this time, in her hand, starting with a thick gel in her palm. She began to roll it, not with her hands, but with her mind, though the urge to do it with her hands was strong. But it began to take shape - like she was making a thin ice pick or a screwdriver, as long as one of her hands, and began to apply the point of the res-pick to the ice in the nearest bowl, transmuting the outer layer in order to make a small hole in the ice from top to bottom, though her implement was completely dissolved by the time she had melted the hole.

That meant she had to make more, and repeated the action once more, working on controlling her res production. Her artistic endeavour last night hadn’t required control for continuous production - she had just kept making it and making it and making it, rather than generating an exact amount and only that much. Finesse. She reshaped the gelatinous res into another res-pick, and started to apply it, drilling down to make another hole. A third and fourth followed, before she let out a breath, clapping her hand over her mouth as she burped up res, even though there was no one there to witness that, and guided it over the frozen bowl. She smoothed it, like she would ice a cake, before transmuting the thin layer into hot water.

The other bowl at the other end of the coop would be a bit harder than the first one, which was bubbling merrily as the ice melted. She puffed her cheeks and considered, moving another cloud of res over the other bowl, and shaping it into a bundle of long pine needles, like the ones she had seen in Syliras on her trip through there. She moved them, lining them all up, and tried to push down on all of them at once, transmuting the tips as she went on dozens of little points, forcing them through. With more res, and more points of entry, she didn’t need much more to help start melting the contents of the far bowl - it was doing that for her.

Still.

She checked on the first bowl, lifting the remaining disc of stubborn ice, cored and chipped as it was, and tossed it out onto the courtyard. The water’s temperature was still fairly warm, which was what she was aiming for. “Water’s here,” she told the birds, who looked at her with vague disapproval as they pecked at the corn and grains that had been scattered for them. Another smoothing of res over top of the second bowl, and that was that. She forgot herself and stretched, banging her head on the wood, only to duck her head and utter an oath, rubbing at her skull.

She was such a birdbrain!

[Gossamer]

. Character: Raiha Experience: Reimancy +5, Planning +2, Observation +2 Lore: How To Make A Snow Slide, Snow Throan, and Snowballs with Reimancy, Lazily Watering Chickens, Making Ice with Reimancy Additional Notes: Nice Solo  .