The Problem With Pink Hair and Cat Ears

The mana theory classroom was small and relaxed, nothing grand, just desks and afternoon light and a teacher who spoke about the mana soul, the Eidra with the quiet warmth of someone who had spent a long time loving something most people took for granted.

Most of this I already know, Elayna thought, settling into her seat. She's just describing it better than anyone has before.

The basics first — mana existed in every living person from birth, seated in what the teacher called the Eidra, the mana soul. Most people carried it their whole lives without ever learning to draw on it properly. A farmer might figure out, through years of hard labour, how to push a little warmth into cold hands on a winter morning. A soldier might learn, through enough intense or desperate situations, how to push a little strength into tired muscles. Small things. Instinctive things. The kind of magic that happened because the person needed it or thought about it badly enough.

Real training was something different.

Drawing mana out deliberately in the right amount, at the right speed, with enough control so that it didn't simply dissipate was a skill. One that most people never developed properly because most people just never had anyone to teach them how to form it into something specific. A spell, an intent made real.

Visualization, the teacher said, and Elayna nodded slightly without meaning to.

That was the part she understood best. You simply decided what you wanted, for example an ice spear, a wind slash, a bolt of lightning and you held the image of it in your mind with complete clarity. The weight of it. The shape. The way it would move and all of the finer details. And then when you drew the mana out, your intent shaped it, the spell formed around the idea you'd committed to. Too vague an image and the mana quickly dispersed. Too rigid and it broke under the pressure of something unexpected. The balance between clear intention and responsive control was what separated a good mage from someone who could occasionally produce an impressive accident.

The more you used a certain 'type' of magic overtime, the easier it would then be for someone to visualize that type of magic and the intent behind it. People often stuck to one type in order to become more practiced and better at it.

The mana soul itself, the eidra, grew with heavy use. Slowly, incrementally, almost the way a muscle did. Heavy use depleted it. Depletion followed by recovery made it somewhat slightly larger than before.

The lessons, the teacher said gently, were the scaffolding.

Real growth happened in fights, since the best and quickest option to effectively deplete your Eidra was by fighting earnestly. And finally, the absolute best growth came from fighting for your life. Experiencing and going through life-threatening situations, exhausting not only your eidra but your entire self.

Yes, Elayna thought. That part I definitely already knew. Thinking back to her fight with the thronback. Which she privately admitted, had been the case when she'd fought the thornback. She probably really would have died if she hadn't gotten healed quickly after. She'd felt a clear difference in her strength and how she fought after.

She had been doing a standard control exercise. Drawing her mana out slowly, holding it steady, not forming it into anything, just practicing the draw itself, into no specific shape. When the teacher paused beside her desk.

She looked at Elayna for a moment with the attention of someone who had noticed something strange and interesting.

"Has anyone ever commented on or talked to you about your mana?" she asked, quietly enough that it stayed between them.

Elayna looked up. "No," she said. "Not really."

"Your family's lineage, do you know it well?"

"I—" Elayna considered this. "Honestly no, not as well as I probably should."

The teacher looked at her for one more moment, not alarmed, just thoughtfully and with the expression of someone thinking about something carefully before deciding to set it aside for now.

"Hmm," she said, and moved on.

Elayna watched her go and put whatever that was under things to think about later. Which went alongside approximately everything else that had happened today, she still didn’t know how to feel about the fight with Caitlynn, and how to feel about how strong Cait apparently was.

Just how strong is Cait really? Elayna thought, I didn't sense her using any mana at all...

For most of the remaining time of class Elayna spent thinking about all the fights she'd watched earlier, and spent even longer thinking about her own fight with Cait, and Cait almost landing a knee on Voss.

After class she had to use the bathroom, and after that walked back to her dorm. All three of her roommates were there when she arrived. Kiri was at her desk. Sitting on the chair upright and utterly expressionless, her white fox tail curled neatly beside her. Evelyn was on her bed with her boots off, calm blue eyes lifting when the door opened, warm and attentive when looking at Elayna. Zyvara was at the common table, sitting sideways on the couch with one leg hanging off the edge, her large red eyes were fixed on Elayna the moment she walked in.

Elayna walked to her bed and sat down.

There was a short silence, the kind that meant everyone had been waiting to talk about something specific.

"So," Zyvara said, in the tone of someone who had apparently been patient long enough. "The spars today."

"Yes, let’s talk about today," Evelyn agreed.

"So almost everyone in our group was good," Zyvara said, those red eyes steady and assessing. "All better than average, sure. But some of them significantly better." She paused. "That Lizardboy, Zett... his movement is unusual. Strange, but efficient in a way that's pretty annoying to deal with or work around."

"And Nyx," Kiri said, from her desk, not looking up, her voice carrying exactly as much weight as the words themselves. "Her movement technique combined with that magic. She's difficult at range and difficult up close."

"The nodachi user's lightning was interesting," Elayna said.

"Different from yours?" Kiri said, glancing at her briefly, those flat pale purple eyes resting on her for exactly one second before returning to the desk.

"Very different. But... good."

"Everyone was good," Evelyn said, her blue eyes moving to Elayna with something warm and slightly proud in them. "But Cait—"

"Is something else," Zyvara said immediately, a frown forming between her red eyes. "That dual sword style. I've never seen anything, or anyone move like that. It makes no sense. You can't predict or understand her. Every time you think you understand what her swords are doing everything changes. And it is as if she has endless of attack-patterns... she has no patterns..." She frowned as if this last part offended her, "she's also ridiculously skilled."

"The way she shifts her weight and stance," Kiri said. "You can't read her next move from her feet either. She's unpredictable in every way."

"And Elayna," Evelyn said while her ocean-blue eyes settled on her with genuine warmth, "you held your own. Properly. That footwork especially — whoever trained you, has trained you very well Elayna."

Elayna felt something warm move through her chest. "Thank you." She said, feeling extremely glad Vaelithra was getting indirect praise.

"I mean it," Evelyn said. "Against someone like that, on your first proper spar keeping up as long as you did with Cait is not nothing."

"She still kicked me twice," Elayna said dejectedly, "... and cut me twice," she added with a frown.

"She put you down hard twice and you never touched her," Zyvara said flatly. "And given how you were moving and fighting out there. That says something about her strength specifically."

A short silence.

"Actually," Evelyn said, sitting up slightly, something careful settling into her eyes. "Anyone else thinking about the Voss thing?"

Everyone looked at her.

"She grabbed him," Evelyn said. "Twice. And nearly landed a knee in his back." She looked around the room. "Nobody else got close. Nobody got close, not even once."

"Hm," Kiri said, from her desk.

"Me and some others from our year ran into some second years in the corridor after mana theory," Evelyn continued. "They asked who we had for combat training and apparently almost everyone starts with Voss, it's kind of a tradition. The 'try to hit me thing'." She paused. "I asked if any of them had ever managed to touch him."

"And?" Elayna said, sitting up straighter.

"A few of them had. In their second year." Evelyn's blue eyes held hers steadily. "No one of them ever managed it in their whole first year. Not once. Not a graze."

The room was quiet for a moment.

"It's the first day," Kiri said, still looking at her desk, her voice carrying exactly the same tone it did for everything.

"Yes. On the first day she did that," Evelyn confirmed.

"So she's—" Elayna started.

"Seriously strong," Zyvara said, staring up at the ceiling with a strange expression. "Genuinely and truly, seriously strong." A pause. "And not only for a first year."

They sat with that for a moment. The conversation drifted back to the fight about how intense it had gotten, how the courtyard had gone completely silent when Cait had grabbed Voss the second time, how the exchanges between Elayna and Cait had looked from the outside and then Elayna said, almost to herself:

"When she kicked me the second time, I lost all my air. I could barely get back up. I was trying and everything felt slow."

"We saw," Zyvara said, the frown settling deeper between her brows.

"She got faster then. Like she used something — magic maybe, but I never sensed—"

"Elayna," Zyvara stared hard at her, impatiently.

Elayna looked excited talking about the fight, "—her feet should've been unstable, I mean her stance was off, she had no right to kick me that hard standing like that on one—"

"Elayna." Zyvara interrupted, patience running thin.

"... What."

Zyvara looked at her, those large red eyes drilling straight through her with the patience of someone waiting for a penny to drop.

"Are we going to talk about that?"

Elayna blinked. "What?"

Zyvara gestured exaggeratedly with her hands, hinting broadly at the general concept of Cait.

"That," she said. "How Caitlynn was looking at you. During."

"She was—" Elayna started. "She's just competitive." She continued with a slightly confused tilt to her head.

"Elayna," Zyvara said with a dry look and with enormous patience. "I watched her face when you got up after the first kick."

"She was enjoying the fight, I kind of was too—"

"No." Zyvara interjected flatly. "She was enjoying putting you on the ground," red eyes steady and unblinking. "There's a difference between enjoying a good fight and enjoying... that. The way she watched you go down on the ground." She paused. "That expression wasn't competitive satisfaction about winning a fight. That was something completely else. Something personal... something not right"

"Yeah that honestly concerns me as well Elayna," Evelyn said quietly, her blue eyes were soft but steadily studying Elayna's face. "Not that she's strong. Not that she won. But the way she was looking at you while she was doing it." She met Elayna's eyes. "Like beating you were the point. Not winning the fight."

"I don't even—" Elayna stopped herself.

Everyone in the room noticed.

Her big, warm amber eyes moved nervously between each of them, the eyes of someone who had not quite caught up to what everyone else was already seeing.

"I just," she said, after a moment, "I don't fully understand. What you guys mean when you say she looked a certain way. I saw her face during, but I still don't really get it. To me it just looked like she enjoys fighting."

A short silence passed between them.

"... Tomorrow," Zyvara said, red eyes narrowing slightly. "The training session. I don't want Elayna fighting Cait again."

"We can't exactly stop that from happening," Evelyn said practically, "and eventually the teachers will decide the pairs"

"I know," Zyvara looked annoyed by this. "I'm just saying I don't want it." She looked at Elayna and crossed her arms, red eyes staring very bluntly at her. "She very clearly enjoys putting you on the ground. Something about that feels like it could go somewhere bad if she gets excited enough."

"She wouldn't actually hurt me," Elayna said. "and I don’t mean that the enchantments would prevent that,"

"...You don't know that," Zyvara said flatly. "You've known her for barely two days."

Kiri looked at the ceiling, thinking, “...What we mean is..." she trailed off, "is it could get indecent.”

A short silence. No one commented on that.

"Just be careful around her," Evelyn said quietly, looking strangely at the Foxgirl who was currently staring blankly at the ceiling. She looked back at Elayna with warmth and worry in equal measure. "That's all. Just — be careful."

"Seven years," Zyvara said, to the ceiling.

"...You still have my permission," Kiri said, looking down from the ceiling.

"Kiri!—"

"I'm just saying."

The knock came approximately twenty minutes later.

Three sharp confident raps. The kind that didn't ask or care if it was a good time.

Elayna was sitting on her bed, still slightly flustered, still thinking things over and then she looked at the door with the expression of someone who sort of already knew who was knocking on it.

She walked to it, opened it.

Cait was leaning against the doorframe with one shoulder against the wood-frame, feet crossed, already smiling and completely at ease. And she was — Elayna registered this with the clarity of someone seeing something in a new light. Very tall. She had known this, obviously. She had been standing next to Cait quite a lot these two days. But somehow with her leaning there in the doorframe right in front of her, looking down at Elayna with those green eyes and that easy expression, the difference in height suddenly felt very notable and significant.

Cait's gaze moved briefly past her to the room. At Zyvara at the common table, Evelyn on the bed, Kiri at the desk.

She was not visibly concerned about any of them. She looked, if anything, like she'd expected to find them all here.

"Hi," she said pleasantly and turned an amused gaze down to Elayna. "Can I borrow her?" she asked the room.

"No," Zyvara said immediately, her red eyes fixing on Cait like a targeting system.

"She's not yours to borrow," Evelyn added as she sat up on her bed, blue eyes steady and assessing.

"I'll bring her back in one piece," Cait said, with great reasonableness. A slight pause. "...Probably."

"Probably," Zyvara repeated flatly.

"Almost certainly," Cait said, with a smile that was doing its best to be reassuring and knew exactly how reassuring it was being.

Zyvara glared at her. "You're not funny."

She smiled and then looked back down to Elayna, she reached out one finger and poked her once in the center of the forehead, a small precise tap that wobbled Elayna's head slightly. And then she straightened herself properly, to her full height. And Elayna looked up at her and had a very specific moment of registering just how far she had to crane her neck to meet Cait's mirthful eyes.

... She's so tall, Elayna thought, with the clear-cut clarity of someone stating a obvious fact to themselves out loud for the very first time.

And then, immediately something happened low in her stomach that she had absolutely no idea what to make of.

Why does that make things worse, she thought, with great distress.

"Say, Elayna," Cait said, looking down at her with patient cat-eyes, pupils slightly wide, "Why don’t you just take this as a chance to get to know me? ...Hm? Sweetie?"

Elayna's brain produced several responses simultaneously and delivered none of them.

"So, you coming?" Cait said simply. "Yes or no, sweetling. Although we all already know what you’ll say."

Elayna was aware of her three roommates watching her. Aware of everything that had just been discussed for the last twenty minutes. Aware of Cait standing there, very tall, completely unbothered, looked down at her with an annoyingly attractive, confident smile.

"...Yes," she said, feeling slightly guilty to the others for some reason.

She’d said it quietly. But clearly.

"You still have my permission," Kiri said, from the desk.

Cait glanced at her. Something in her expression shifted, brief, unexpected appreciation.

"Why thank you," she said, looking as if she’d found an ally past enemy borders.

"It stands," Kiri said flatly.

They walked out into the corridor together. The door started to close behind them—

"Caitlynn."

Evelyn appeared in the doorway, leaning out from the doorway. She looked at Cait, not hostile, just steadily and very directly, blue eyes doing their quiet measuring thing.

"Don't abuse her naiveness," she said. "She believes things too easily. She trusts too quickly. Don't take advantage of that any more than you already have. I'll ask Elayna all about your time together after."

Elayna looked up from where she’d been shyly looking at the floor while walking.

"More than she already has?" she asked, glancing between Evelyn and Cait with wide golden eyes. "What has she already taken advantage of?"

Evelyn looked at Cait. Then at Elayna. Then back at Cait.

"See what I mean," she said. "She has absolutely no idea."

Cait pressed her lips together into something that was trying very hard not to be a smile.

And Elayna blushed, realizing she'd yet again, not understood whatever everyone else clearly did.

"I won't," Cait said to Evelyn. Genuinely. No smile.

Evelyn held her gaze one more second. Then nodded once, seemingly satisfied and stepped back inside.

Cait held out her hand.

"Take my hand this time, sweetling?"

Elayna looked at the hand. Then at Cait. Then back at the hand.

She took it.

Cait's fingers closed around hers tightly, but gently. Her hands were rough, calloused. Elayna noticed this with a small private surprise and found, somewhat against her will, that she kind of liked it.

"Where are we going?" Elayna asked, sounding like she had only just realized she had no idea what she'd said yes to.

"Just some place I found," Cait said, while walking a bit faster. "You'll like it."

"How do you know?" Elayna said, with some suspicion.

"I know," Cait said simply, and Elayna decided not to argue with that.

Cait led her out of the dormitory by the hand, into the evening air outside. Elayna had no idea where they were going.

She found, somewhat against her better judgment, that she didn't really mind at all where they'd be going.