towerofanimus | ❝trying to talk my way out of this❞

Characters: Willow and whoever. OPEN.
Setting: Sixth floor (the forest).
Format: I slightly prefer action over prose, but I'll match whatever you want to do!
Summary: Willow's been doing a lot of magic lately, and tries to meditate to help manage it. Unfortunately she picks the worst place possible. Run into her in A or B, just let me know which one in the subject!
Warnings: Grief. Addiction recovery.

A.

[Since she got here, she's been doing magic almost nonstop. Well, not really, but it feels that way. Casual, advanced, ritual and on the fly-- she's even been teaching it, a little. Willow desperately needs to meditate and feel the Earth beneath her before it catches up with her. She can feel the temptation, feel how easy it is, to just solve everything with a burst of power and a hand gesture, maybe a well-placed word...

But it doesn't solve everything, and it won't bring Tara back. Tara, who had just wanted the best for her; who had wanted her to use magic for good things, as an expression of compassion toward the world. Not for selfish reasons. Willow feels intensely ashamed that she still struggles with this, but that doesn't mean she doesn't. She needs the grass under her hands and trees above her head to recenter herself. To find peace.

She shakes out a circle of ash about five feet in diameter, within sight of the stairs. It's a magical perimeter, intended to stop anything with malicious intent from crossing in and harming her. She hasn't had to use one in years, but Eridan had warned her about the monsters lurking in the woods. Willow uses one now, and settles herself cross-legged in the middle.]

B.

[Some time later, just as she'd really been settling into her inner space, the part of herself that stays calm and undisturbed no matter how much black magic roils through her... she hears a voice, and her breath catches. She could've sworn her heart stopped.]

Tara? [she whispers, and a moment later, she hears another trace of it echoing again.

No. She's dead. Willow lurches to her feet, leaving the small bowl of ash behind, forgotten, and rushes over to the stairs. She's breathing fast, almost hyperventilating, as she races down them.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Not exactly. Just me.

Come have a seat and I'll show you what I'm talking about. [She gestures to the grass in front of her.] Just don't break the line of ash on the ground, okay?

[She sits cross-legged, staring down at the ash circle, careful not to touch it.] A witch thing? [She couldn't help it, she was curious.]

It's all witch things, [she admits.] The circle is protective-- it'll keep out anything that wants to harm me while I'm meditating.

I've been doing a lot of magic lately, and it gets kind of... overwhelming. So every so often I commune with the Earth, or, well, whatever planet this is, and try to recenter myself. It's so alive.

[She cranks the screw in her head - her own little kind of meditating] What if the thing trying to harm you simply stepped over the circle?

It can't-- it's like a force field that reads intent. It can't keep everything out, I mean, it can be broken because it's just a little ash circle, but it'd at least give me a few seconds to get on my feet and blast them into a tree or something.

[Stein nods, falling quiet for a minute or so.]

Could you teach me? The blasting-them-into-a-tree-wall-what-have-you spell? From what I've seen of it, it seems very useful.

Geez, everyone wants me as a teacher lately, huh? No one asks me about this at home.

I could teach you, but it took me like, at least a year to even get to pencil floating stage. And to get to the point I'm at now, I took several shortcuts that I in no way recommend and would in fact be morally obligated to stop you from taking.

So the short answer is, if you don't mind waiting several years to accomplish anything useful, sure, I can give you a starting point. But somehow I think you have other things to be doing with that time.

[She glances down at the ground] It worked on Medusa; that's really my main concern. And my own abilities obviously aren't enough.

I'm willing to be patient, if I must.

[There's a resulting inner conflict that is not easily resolved in her. On the one hand, she empathizes completely, and would never want to leave anyone defenseless-- especially not someone that she's friendly with, and seems to be trustworthy despite her own avowals to the contrary. But on the other side is the fact that Willow is still shaky and scared of her own magic, is only just learning to trust herself with all of this power, and doing more things with it... well, she is a recovering addict.]

I don't know what to tell you, [she says finally, uncertainly.] What are your abilities, exactly? I know you can see souls, but... [Maybe they could build off of what Stein can already do instead of teaching her something completely new. That would go way faster and make Willow feel less consumed in guilt.

She might be teaching Eridan a couple things here and there, but she has her own dilemma about that, and adding to it, potentially compounding that mistake, doesn't seem wise. Not that Willow always or even usually does things that are wise...]

I can also attack people's souls directly with my own, and change the wavelength of mine and a few other little tricks. [To demonstrate, she lays her hand on the ground, glowing white threads stitching her palm to the floor.]

I'm really fine with offensive abilities, it's defense I have less experience with on my own. Hm, how about healing magic, does anything like that exist?

[Willow watches with interest as the white threads appear, undeniably curious.] Wow, okay, that's pretty neat. [Definitely not something she'd think of herself. And direct soul attacking? Altering her own soul wavelength? That's intense stuff in her book.]

Healing magic exists, but it's advanced any way you play it. Trying to manipulate someone's body or life force leads to major consequences for minor mistakes. Defense would be a lot easier to start with, and flubs just mean it doesn't work, not that someone hemorrhages.

We could try. [And if she still seems unsure, well, she is. Being responsible is a hard, new, scary thing.]

I don't mind starting small. I'm definitely no expert in this area. [She clears her throat] Though I suppose by "healing" I meant in a mental sense. I'm a doctor; I have an admittedly more boring, but equally effective method of healing. Though if trying to cure someone of their insanity might just make them worse, I definitely shouldn't start with that.

[Ohhhh gosh way to hit on all of the topics close to her heart, Stein.] Oh-- oh, well, definitely shouldn't start with that, no. I've... I had someone close to me that I had to try to-- do that with, and it eventually turned out alright, but playing around with the mental landscape is, is big. Very big.

Let's just start with... seeing if you can get a physical barrier to go up, like a force field. Okay?

[Stein was confident enough in her own abilities that she knew she'd be able to get there eventually. She'd probably end up going straight into exile if anyone ever found out about this, but... Well, desperate times and all that. But it was possible and that gave her hope.]

You're the boss. Let's start with force fields.

[She was the boss? That was very new.] Right. Force fields. I guess you could use some basic magic theory first? [she asks, mostly to herself.]

In general with magic, the longer you have to prepare to do a spell, the easier and more reliable it is. The way I do things with waving a hand took me a long time to get to. Ritual magic, which involves the standard pentagram painted on the floor with candles set around, and herbs and other stuff, is really a lot easier. You can set up some pretty hefty defensive barriers if you have the time.

[She nods toward her ash circle.] That's why I used a physical representation there, because it creates a permanence that the mind can relate to. Without something physical, you have to concentrate and focus on your effect continually, which-- is doable, but not that great for the long term, and I was planning on being here for a while.

Edited 2011-12-27 09:06 (UTC)

[Stein nods, listening intently. She'd only very rarely run into witches doing ritual magic before and she had always found it a little fascinating, if impractical for combat application. It was a little scientific in a way, though, so she at least could relate to it.]

So this would be considered a step down from the full gamut of candles and such?

Yeah, this is me skipping steps. The effect I was going for is pretty simple, anyway.

But I still do rituals when I need to do something delicate or long-lasting. You never completely grow out of it.

❝trying to talk my way out of this❞

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