Hilana had hoped that they might have known, but it seemed that it wasn’t so. She simply had to content herself with the knowledge that she wasn’t going to find out from them, either. She would just have to keep her ears open and see what came from it. But he was right, it seemed awfully strange for a vanity project, and certainly brutal on the land. There had to be a connection somewhere, especially since the other sun was hidden in the sky. The Vastiana didn’t know, but it worried her all the same.
That little spirit absolutely tickled Hilana to no end, and she couldn’t stop smiling at it. Some part of her wanted to reach out and cuddle it, but this wasn’t the time or place. No, she was going to have to acquire Summoning. Then she could have a whole bunch of little elemental and nature spirits hanging around that she could love on and pamper... Oh, she had to be going mad with the endless sun. That was the only possibility. Now that she was getting used to hearing the elemental spirits everywhere, to having them throw dirt everywhere when she stopped the practice she was doing in order to continue on with her day, or learning to channel aether for the first time in her life... She could understand now why Dominus Æros loved it so much.
As Palaemon demonstrated with fire, Hilana’s eyes were positively enormous. This was different than the way he had created paper, but no less masterful as she glanced from side to side before her gaze returned to him. Oh, Founders. His control was impeccable, as while she felt the heat, and she wasn’t unfamiliar with it, the way he had done that was something else. Well, it was what she needed to learn. She had to become a friend to flame, as the Crownwyrm had said to her, and that meant that she was going to have to be abundantly comfortable with this element. Caution was wise, but confidence was going to be key. She wouldn’t always have Phocion on hand as her Silver Steward, or be able to take others around so easily; and the only way forward was through.
His cheerfulness, so much like her own, was reassuring. As was his encouragement. “Remember that you are fire,” Hilana reminded herself. “Burn. Tame. Adapt. Ignite.” Burn, tame, adapt, ignite. She could do this. She would do this. Hilana held her right palm up, the molten gold rune shining in the sunlight, and she focused on it. While his fire had been massive and quick, the girl’s looked like naught more than a candle flame to start. There was no rush, not yet. She just had to do it properly. Her ruddy sister could do this easily, both of them, and if they could, then she could. Ignite, done. Now she needed to burn. Hilana heard the song of the spirits, the familiar hunger and desire of fire. And as she had in their last lesson when she had fed the air spirits to make the orb freeze, she was now offering her aether in a steady strand to the fire in her palm. But she also realized that it wasn’t enough to make it grow, not with the way that fire needed to grow as it consumed whatever it could. She adjusted, letting out a little more. She extended her arm further away from her body, letting the fireball grow. The heat licked at her palm and forearm almost seductively, and she reminded herself to breathe.
Burn.
She kept on feeding it. He had said to see how big of one she could make, but there was also the unspoken fact she needed to be able to do her best to control it. She didn’t want to have to make him do it all for her, not if she could. But for now, her breathing adapted, and once the fireball was certainly large enough that it was the size of one of her heavy-duty soup cauldrons, she decided to try to maintain it. That seemed to be a good, comfortable size. Tame. She drew back a bit on her aetheric flow so to try to keep the size where it was, and to keep the fire exactly where it was so that little crackles couldn’t go anywhere and try to incinerate something or catch. Those tendrils of flame needed to stay right where they were.
The girl was starting to sweat, though. She was lasting longer than she had with the last lesson, so perhaps those little impromptu practice sessions that she was doing were paying off. Or maybe the fire was just deciding to behave. But at one point, the fireball wavered on her hand, and Hilana shook her head - the pressure was starting, and it was coming faster than it had last time.
Tame.
She had to crush it, making the fire smaller and smaller until she closed her hand and it was gone. She certainly looked flushed, her chest rising and falling. “That came on faster,” she admitted. “Last time, I could feel the pressure and the warning point was slower to come. This time, it went from the warning to a full on pounding in my temples in about three breaths,” Hilana added, sitting back on her rock seat. She was just glad she hadn’t set one of her books on fire, because then she really would have been upset.
