Eletheria woke up with a start. She had sensed that someone was in the room and immediately grasped for quan. The air was full of static, so she must have started gathering it before she had woken up. She sat up quickly with both hands outstretched, prepared to defend herself. While the room was not dark, it wasn’t fully lit. The sparks jumping between Ele’s fingers gave it an eerie glow.

Back against the wall, as far from Ele as she could go, stood Felicia. Her eyes were wide with terror, and she had a long knife in one hand. Her other hand held a notebook. Ele gently let go of quan and slowly placed her hands in her lap so she didn’t seem as threatening. Light from outside leaked in through the covered window, preventing the room from being thrown into complete darkness.

“Ma’am, you were yelling in your sleep, so I came to wake you,” Felicia stammered out as she took some deep breaths and put her knife back in its sheath.

“I am sorry, Felicia. I had a bad dream. Thank you for waking me,” Ele replied as she tried to slow down her heart. “What time is it?” she asked as the shades were pulled over the window, allowing her to sleep during the day since they did much of their planning at night.

“Midday, Windmistress,” Felicia informed her and took a step forward. “If you are ready to start the day I do have some information already.” She offered the notebook to Ele. Ele reached for it but the blanket started to fall down revealing her underclothing. Ele looked down and quickly pulled the blanket back up and blushed a little. Felicia also blushed some and quickly turned around so her back was facing Ele. By the time Ele looked back at Felicia, she saw that Felicia was turned around. Ele scrambled off the bed and threw on pants and a blouse. Ele had gotten dressed in front of Dee often enough that she was used to getting dressed in front of someone. Felicia’s discomfort while odd was pushed aside as they had more pressing things to attend to.

“I am dressed,” Ele said quickly to let Felicia know she could turn around. Felicia turned slowly and then, when she was certain it was okay, looked at Ele and handed the notebook over to her. Within the notebook were several loose pages held between other pages. The loose pages marked where the information was with the intent that if someone was stopped, they would accidentally drop the book, and the loose pages would fall out. This way, someone scanning through the book would unlikely see the plans and instead see a poor romance story between a Windmaster and a talented sailor. Ele opened the book to one of the marked pages. There, written on a blank page that was inserted to look like it was a real page, was the message she wanted. “All large bars of metal are being requisitioned by the Council for building more of the Tres Clavo ship design. I found some bars; they’re small but will work.” Next to the message were the dimensions of the bars they had found. “4 x .5, 5 x 1, 3 x 2, 8 x .25”, the different sizes caused Ele to sigh as they were probably more like scraps.

“Is there a problem?” Felicia asked, observing Ele’s frown.

“We are going to need more wire. While I am certain we can make it work, it will be difficult,” Ele replied.

“Why?” asked Felicia with an honest tone to her voice.

“Lifting requires quan channeled through a wire that is wrapped around the metal. Usually the larger the piece of metal, the more powerful you can make the magnet. With four little pieces, we will have to split the quan among them and we cannot push the same amount through each as they are different sizes,” Ele said and sighed and hung her head low.

“So, you are saying it will be like juggling four different balls of various weights?” Felicia stated.

“Aye, juggling multiple bits of quan is difficult. My aunt reportedly can do 4 different streams but I have never seen it. I struggle with two, Lex can’t do more than one.” With a sigh Ele said.

“It is something that is trained through, isn’t it?” Felicia asked looking with interest at Eletheria.

“With practice and time,” Ele replied. As she studied Felicia’s face, she realized what was being hinted at. “Do we have some wire with varying gages?”

“No, but I can get some,” Felicia said as she jumped to her feet and ran out the door. Ele watched her leave the room and wished she could have joined her in buying supplies for training. While Ele wasn’t sure they would have enough time to train herself in managing three different strands or to train Lex in manipulating two she was willing to give it a try. The other option was they only used three magnets to lift the ship from the bay and fly it over to the sea.

Ele pondered out the best placement for 2, 3, and 4 magnets within a ship that they take. With a pen and paper, she was able to come up with a couple of solutions. After an hour, she stopped and sighed; it would be easier if they knew which type of ship they were going to steal or buy. Trying to calculate and figure placement for ten different ship designs was difficult. There was no guarantee they would get one of the designs she had been working on. While most ships had the same general layout, the placement of the metal bars wrapped in copper required a snug and secure location. It would not do to have one of them slip out of place when the ship was in the air.

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Felicia returned late in the afternoon. The triumphant smile on her face told Ele that she had acquired various bits of wire. While Ele’s room did have a desk to work at, she needed to catch Lex as soon as he returned in order to have him practice some as well. So Ele and Felicia sat at the small table in the common room setting up their little training project. Ele sorted out the thick wires from the thinner ones and arranged them in degrees of thickness. Once they were sorted Ele took one of the thick pieces and cut it in half. Then she showed Felicia how she twisted a much thinner piece in-between the two thicker pieces. Leaving her with a wire about as long as her forearm. Felicia started repeating the task; this allowed Ele to take some strips of cloth and tie them around the thicker part of the wire.

Though she needed direct contact with the wire when channeling quan, she wanted the cloth to insulate if the wire got warm. The idea of how to practice was to use the wire and channel quan until the smaller wire glowed hot. While G’Aeris were immune to their own quan, they were not immune to getting burnt by a hot wire. Then, while holding the wire with one hand at the end, Ele channeled quan, enough to make the thinner wire in the middle glow.

Time passed as Ele amazed Felicia with the simple tricks of quan. Most of these were things Ele learned when she was a child. With each wire, Ele described to Felicia the general amount of quan it took to make it glow a little. Once Felicia was educated on the different amounts Ele channeled while holding two different wires. One needed a lot of quan to glow and the other needed little. As she channeled, the smaller one glowed quickly and got bright red, while the other wire was barely glowing at all. Since Ele didn’t want to burn the wire out, she stopped once Felicia noticed the difference.

Once the demonstration was over, Felicia asked, “So, we can’t push the same power through all the metals, or one could burn out.”

“Correct,” Ele replied, smiling at how Felicia was catching on. Ele realized she smiled a lot more when Felicia was around.

“Also, if they didn’t burn out we would end up with one side of the ship listing to one side.” Felicia expounded upon what she had learned. Ele hadn’t mentioned anything like that in the demonstrations or when she was teaching. Ele filled with a little bit of pride for Felicia figuring that part out on her own. Before Ele could say anything further, the door to the apartment opened, and Lex strode in. His sudden appearance was a bit more shocking than Ele was expecting. Lex was wearing a torn jacket and pants where one leg was too short and the other too long. His hair looked like part of it was cut short and the other part was growing long. Ele stood up to find out what happened but the pain in her injured leg stopped her halfway. Ele sat down back in her chair with a thump.

“Ele, are you okay?” Lex asked as he approached Ele and Felicia, who were sitting at the table.

“I am okay. You look like someone dragged you through faex,” Ele replied once she had overcome the pain in her leg and backside from falling back onto the chair.

“Yeah, the doc does a good job at disguises. What are you two up to?” Lex began to slowly remove hair from his head. As he pulled clumps out, Ele could see the grime and dirt in his hair doubled as glue to hold the extra hair in place.

“I am practicing managing three different flows of quan.” Ele picked up three of the wires they had and held them with both hands so a finger touched the tip of each wire. Ele closed her eyes and lit up all three, but the smallest of the three was glowing brighter than the others. “Well, I’m still practicing. If we are going to get a ship into the water, we will need all four metal bars to lift.” Ele handed two of the wires to Lex.

“I am not good at splitting my quan,” Lex pushed the wires back at Ele.

“Lex, I am unable to control three so we will need you to learn.” Ele pushed the wires back towards Lex. Lex sighed and picked them up holding them the same as Ele did, with both hands and a different finger touching the exposed wire. The hairs on Ele’s arm raised as Lex channeled and it was obvious that he was channeling the same into both. One wire looked like it was going to melt and the other was only faintly glowing. Lex stopped and then swapped out the smaller wire with another one so the hot one could cool. Another attempt and the same thing happened where the smaller wire was heated almost to the point of melting, and the other was barely glowing.

“I’ll practice it later; I am not focused on it now,” Lex set the wires back down on the table. He then looked towards Ele and leaned forward. “Can we talk in private for a minute?” Lex whispered. Ele nodded, picked up her crutches, and they both went into Ele’s room with Ele in the lead. Lex closed the door after he entered.

A moment after they entered the room, Lex appeared to be thinking about what he was going to say. Much of his face was easy to read as his brow would furrow when he was thinking, and once he decided on something, no matter how trivial, his lips curled upwards a tiny bit. Ele marveled at Lex’s inability to hide his emotions when he had some. Ele sat on the bed so she didn’t have to support her weight with her crutches and waited for Lex to ask his question.

“When you returned, I asked for your hand in marriage.” Lex paused for a moment and cleared his throat. “I ask if you have come to a decision.” Ele was unable to feign surprise, she had known he would ask this question at some point. She had thought about it some but had not come to a conclusion. Lex was nice, just not… Ele thought for a moment thinking not upon Lex’s question but what she thought about Lex. He was nice, loyal, and supportive, though conversations with him didn’t have much depth. It was like conversing with a creature that is taught all the right things to say, but if you stray from the script, it halts. He was safe and he had always been her friend. Ele briefly remembered them hunting dragons in her parent’s garden.

“Lex, before I answer, I want you to know that I do not have a family name behind me anymore, and chances are I never will.” Ele stalled by stating the obvious as she considered her feelings for Lex.

“Ele, I didn’t ask for your hand because of your family. Even if we never amounted to more than poor fishmongers I would still wish to spend the rest of my life with you,” Lex replied.

“Lex, I would be doing you a grave injustice if I stalled anymore. I just do not have an answer for you,” Ele said as tears started to form in her eyes. “I release you of all commitments to me. I give you my blessing for you to find someone who will marry you. I want you to be happy, and I know my indecisiveness in this matter will cause you further harm.”

“Why can’t you tell me yes or no?” Lex replied, his voice low and distant as he looked towards the window.

“Because, because, I’ve lost so much already. I worry my choice will be based upon the fear of losing you, too,” Ele said through a stream of tears.

Lex looked like he was going to say something, then stopped, stepped forward, and bent down to hug Ele. The act had all the actions and moves of a caring embrace, but within Lex’s arms, Ele felt alone.