It was a week before we were able to take Rhiannon home. Her mother had called my school and got me excused so someone would be able to remain with my sister. Some of the bandages had been removed, such as those over her eyes. The trauma had caused her normally perfect vision to degrade a bit, which meant that she had to wear glasses now, but she didn’t seem to mind.

When we got home I told Jennifer that I wanted to show off my surprise before we had the upcoming talk. She gave me a curious look but followed her daughter and I into the girl’s bedroom. I whispered instructions in Rhi’s ear to push the glyph at the bottom corner of the poster frame. As she did, the ceiling of the room was covered in darkness speckled with stars. The array I had created took an image of the sky above us from far enough up to avoid the pollution and clouds around New York and then projected it onto the ceiling. I watched as both women gazed up at the ceiling in awe as the tapestry of stars, seen more clearly than was available even from the roof on a clear day.

Rhi turned around and hugged me tightly, “Thank you, thank you, thank you. It looks beautiful.”

I gently patted her back and said, “I’m glad you like it. The glyph works like an on/off switch for the array that is hidden underneath that poster of yours.”

“This is impressive,” Jennifer said, “but how did you manage this?”

“After Rhi pointed out that I was missing the obvious with my experiments I was able to complete the prototype for the light array. All this is doing is capturing the light that can be seen from four hundred miles straight up. I was looking at the runes as an engineering problem, but it is more of a programming language.”

“Explain?” she said, affecting her lawyer voice again.

“Glyph based languages each have a meaning for the symbols, unlike the alphabet we use which is used just to represent sounds. When using the glyphs in combination I can spell out what I want the effect to be, it is just a matter of knowing which glyphs to use. After that it just requires willpower to tie the glyphs to the ambient energy around us. As Einstein said ‘Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another’ because of that the energy just flows through the array and causes the indicated effect. Then at the terminus it goes back into the world around us. That’s why I was thinking of engineering, because it flows through a rune array like electricity before exiting out the other side. My problem was that I didn’t have a terminus for the effect, so it kept gathering energy into the object until it burst like a blown fuse,” I explained.

“So you can create an array that someone without magic can use?” she asked.

“Yes and no,” I said, “Anyone with the knowledge can create the array. It takes a touch of your own power to connect it to the energy field but after that it can be used by anyone that knows how to activate it. I would think that precautions from anyone using it should be included though.”

“We will need to explore this a bit more, but not at the expense of your current school work,” she said after taking a minute to think about it.

“Okay, and that leaves the talk. Let’s go back to the living room for this,” I said.

We trooped into the living room and sat down, Rhi and I sitting next to each other while Jennifer and Sean sat on recliners across from us. I patted Rhiannon’s hand and said, “We discovered at the hospital that Rhiannon has a Talent, a potentially dangerous one.”

Both adults were laser focused on us and I continued, “From what we’ve been able to tell she has a sensitivity to air, and at least a minor Talent for Aerokinesis.”

“How dangerous are we talking about, and dangerous for whom?” Jennifer asked.

I shrugged, “Danger is relative. I think it would depend on power and control. If she can only sense fluctuations in the air then it isn’t that dangerous. However if she can manipulate air on a scale more impressive than a hand held fan then it could be dangerous to herself and anyone around her. Magic responds to your emotions and intent.”

Sean got out of his seat and came over to hug his daughter and said, “What can we do?”

“Well there are a few options as far as I can tell. One, ignore it and hope her talent is minor enough that it won’t cause any trouble,” I said, which brought a snort from Jennifer.

“Yeah I didn’t think that was going to be the option picked, but it is an option. Two is to see if anyone at AEGIS has begun some form of training or experimentation with Talent, but that requires trusting someone with the information,” I continued.

Jennifer was already shaking her head before she said, “No. I trust a couple of people in that organization, but the only way they will get to my daughter is over my dead body or an actual necessity.”

Rhiannon brought up the third option, “The other option is for us to practice and experiment with what I can do to find the limits. We don’t want to do it in the apartment.”

I caught Sean’s grin before he said, “Actually I might know a place. I was planning to take Michael to my old gym so he could practice his ability with room to move. We can just make it a group outing instead of just him.”

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“That isn’t a bad idea, but wouldn’t there be other people there?” I asked.

He shook his head and said, “No, he usually lets me use it on Sundays when they are closed to the public. He gave me a spare key to the place.”

Jennifer nodded, “Let’s go with that until we need to involve anyone else.”

I smiled and said, “Well tomorrow is Sunday, how about a family outing. We can come up with a training and testing plan tonight, and then take notes on other options tomorrow.”

The next day we arrived at the old boxing gym owned by Sean’s friend. It looked like it was a remodeled warehouse, but was close to home and had plenty of open space to work in, including a center mat that could be used for martial arts or grappling practice. We set our bags down, and a cooler filled with bottles of water. Sean spoke up, “I’ll unload the other coolers, why don’t you two get started.”

I looked at my little sister and said, “Do you want to start with what we know you can do, or try something new?”

“Let’s start with something new. I can practice the sensory trick at home,” she said.

I brought out a back of red plastic cups and set them on top of the cooler we had brought in and said, “Okay, then first let’s see if you can make the air move how you want it to.”

I walked her through the basic training exercise while her mother sat next to her with a notepad in hand. She had the notes for things to try while we were here. Sean however tugged me away so we didn’t crowd Rhiannon’s practice. We both moved to the center of the sparring ring and he said, “Now, we should probably figure out a way to train your Talent as well. From what you explained before it is more physically oriented than Rhiannon’s.”

“It moves me and when I come out of it I have the momentum that I would have had if I had crossed that distance myself in the time frame. Depending on the distance and how quickly I move it can be painful at the end,” I explained.

He nodded and asked, “And you can only move in straight lines with it?”

“As far as I can tell,” I said, knowing that this was the truth from my previous life, “I can take shorter movements that have less built up momentum, or contract the time it takes to increase it. My body has to deal with the strain though.”

“What about your direction, can you move and come up facing the way you came from?” he asked.

I blinked, I hadn’t considered that in either lifetime. I answered as such, “I’m not sure.”

“What about an aerial exit? Basically using the Talent to springboard yourself over an obstacle?” he asked.

Once again I shrugged, in my previous life I had always wanted to use the momentum to hit a target hard, not move through an obstacle course. Sean however got a smile on his face that made me dread what the former athlete had in mind. He spoke his thoughts though, “Okay, we are going to start with that. Start seeing if you can get some air time and I’ll set up a course for you to run.”

I groaned, This was going to hurt. I could only blame myself though, I had brought up the idea of training our Talents after all. While he set up a small obstacle course I tapped into my magic and took a few steps before I began a jump. I would keep it as a short two foot jump at my usual one eighth of a second shift that I used for rapid dodging. I came out of the shift with a weightless feeling, moving far faster than I was expecting and managed to fling myself across the sparring ring and into a hanging heavy back with a grunt on impact.

Sliding down the bag I landed on my butt with a startled curse. I could hear Rhiannon giggling as she saw me flat on the ground. Jen had an amused smile, while Sean was shaking his head again. I stood, my ego as bruised as my butt, and tried again aiming to come down on the mats. This time I aimed for a single foot of movement and managed to not overshoot my target. I still landed awkwardly, but was close to where I intended. Before I tried again I considered the difference for a moment. There had to be a difference between an aerial shift and terrestrial shift. Turning back to the heavy bag I triggered a standard shift that I had used often in combat. Twenty feet flashed in half a second, and I was shoulder checking the bag at the same rate as I would expect. Going back to the original spot I started from and then a few more steps away I took a slight running start before jumping and triggering the shift. When I hit the bag this time the impact was much greater, actually making the bag swing enough that I had to duck aside after landing to avoid it coming back and hitting me.

Sean stopped his organization to ask, “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, it just seems that when I’m airborne that I somehow move faster. I can’t figure out why though,” I answered while I thought.

Rhiannon called over, “Occam time big brother. Remember the array.”

The simple solution huh. What was the simple answer to why I moved faster in the air than on the ground? When I did a shift from the ground I was still pushing off the ground, but in the air the only thing that affected me was drag. Wait a minute, when I shifted the intervening distance didn’t have an affect on me. When I shifted at a run I was still in the same motion when I exited the shift such as running. There had been times that I had left a dirt trail as if I was drug across the ground rapidly.

“Friction and drag. There is less of it when I’m in the air,” I muttered.

A test was needed. I took a few of the plastic cups and set them up along a line I would move to hit the heavy bag and returned to my starting point. Then I triggered another shift into the bag, not intending to impact it hard. When I turned back around to look at the path I had traveled I noticed that the cups were moving around as if something had bumped into them. With a smile I said, “That’s interesting.”

Sean clapped his hand on my shoulder and said, “Glad you figured it out. Now for training exercise one. Time to use the tires.”

I looked at his makeshift course and saw a paired line of tires, like those that football players used for a running exercise. These ones were spaced further apart than the standard exercise though. He explained, “You will need to do a controlled shift to step between those. Start with that to get used to motions before we move on.”

I could already tell this was going to suck, and as I looked at the other points along the outer ring of the sparring field I could figure out the intended exercises. The corner actually had movable mats layered below it like he expected me to fall at that point. While I dreaded the exercise I couldn’t help but be intrigued at the possibilities. Sean didn’t know about my previous life’s training regimen, and had managed to come up with exercises that were outside of my existing knowledge, but that might actually be feasible with my abilities. I moved to the tires and began, looking forward to conquering this new challenge.