Gogo showed Sharna around the rest of the first floor.

Anna and Myra’s bedroom doors were shut and they didn’t go inside, and she’d already seen Eliza and Gabby’s room, but the remaining rooms were for them all to share. There was a large bathroom with a huge bath, a separate toilet with a sink and a cosy sitting room with a fire and a couple of bookcases. Gogo also explained that there was a large shower and sauna downstairs for them to use.

As they toured, Sharna asked Gogo about her name.

“I hate my real name, I’ve been Gogo for as long as I can remember. My parents called me Gertrude. GERTRUDE! It’s the worst!”

“I had a neighbour called Gertrude, she was really sweet..”

“It’s the most old lady name I’ve ever heard, she was old right?” Gogo raised her eyebrows questioningly.

“Well..” Sharna mused mischievously.

Gogo batted Sharna's arm and shook her head. “See? Old lady's name. Gogo suits me much better.”

Sharna thought this was probably true. She was constantly moving and the name worked well with her dynamic nature.

“Let’s go talk with Eliza and Gabby, we all finished our work early today so we'd be ready when your assessment was done.”

She knocked on their door and Eliza opened it almost immediately with a welcoming smile.

“Come in, come in, how are the two of you getting along?”

Gogo charged in confidently and threw herself onto Gabby’s bed, Gabby pushed her feet over so she could sit beside her. “We're going to be besties, I can tell!”

Eliza quirked her eyebrows at Sharna.

“I think we're going to get on really well, I hope all of us will.” Sharna agreed, looking at all three of the women in turn as she spoke.

Eliza sat on her bed opposite Gogo and patted the space next to her, inviting Sharna to take a seat.

“Do you have any idea what you want to work on with your extra reserves?”

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Sharna bit her lip. “I'm not totally sure yet, I do have some ideas but want to chat with Myra and Anna first. I had no idea that so little was expected of us!”

Gabby chuckled at this. “None of us did. But don't think you'll be allowed to slack off! Myra and Anna really push us all to use up all of our magic each day to ensure that we keep progressing.”

Sharna was pleased to hear this, she had worked hard under her grandmother's tuition and had enjoyed the daily challenge of pushing against her limits.

“Gogo told me about your specialisation Eliza, but what are you working on, Gabby? I couldn't guess from your equipment.”

Gabby stood up and went over to her desk. “I'll show you.” She opened a drawer and pulled out some beautifully crafted colourful flowers and a small brown mouse.

“They're beautiful.” Sharna enthused. “You've manifested them from clay?”

“They're actually icing. I decorate cakes. But image manifestation only works to decorate the outside of each sugar sculpture once I have shaped them. I wish I could sculpt them with my magic, but that's not possible.”

Sharna was confused for a moment, she tried to hide it, but from the thoughtful way that Eliza was looking at her she had not been completely successful.

Before her grandmother’s death, Sharna and Evelyn had kept themselves relatively isolated from the rest of the world and Sharna knew that her instruction had been somewhat unorthodox.

When her grandmother had discovered the scope of Sharna’s power, her enthusiasm had been boundless. Her grandmother had worked to teach Sharna everything she knew and when they reached the limits of her knowledge, she had found her a limited pool of trustworthy tutors who were able to push Sharna further. She had also written to several of her contacts to obtain texts that were not easy to find and of obscure origins in Sharna’s areas of interest. Sharna had managed to smuggle out a few of the most important with the rest of her belongings, but had to leave the majority behind when she left.

Because of all this, and also fear of her family finding out about her, Sharna knew she had to be careful about revealing too much too quickly. So she prodded Gabby and Eliza with questions to draw them out about their chosen specialities instead.

She quickly learnt that all three women were intensely passionate about their image-manifestation, and worked hard to improve wherever they could. Sharna knew that she would be able to help them out with this but wanted to move as slowly as felt safe.

Gabby had a regular rotation of loyal clients that she decorated cakes for. The person that Sharna had felt in the kitchen earlier was Marjorie, their cook. Marjorie didn't have any magic, and she was the one who baked the cakes that Gabby decorated. Between Marjorie’s deliciously light baking, and Gabby’s decorating skill, they were never without buyers for their confections.

Eliza was still building up her client base, unlike with consumables like cake, Eliza’s dolls lasted a long time, giving her less repeat customers. She had sold many dolls locally to families with young children, and was now starting to build up a business relationship with a local general store. The owner of this store had connections across the kingdom and they were looking forward to a consistent growth partnership as Eliza grew her skills.

Eliza currently could only make a doll every three or four days, as she handmade her dolls and only used her manifestation to outline and decorate each doll and their clothing from plain fabric, then hand sewed each component together. Sharna felt that in time she would be able to help Eliza speed up this process.

Most people tended to focus directly on ‘image-manifestation’, instead of looking at the overarching area of manifestation. Sharna knew that it didn’t actually take much more power to convert a flat medium into a decorated three-dimensional object than it did to simply print onto the surface of the medium. But what it did require was a significant change in perception. Image-manifestation was frequently seen as ‘women’s busy work’, so less focus was put into education and furthering the field than in other areas.

Manifestation was closely related to other areas of magic including illusion and soul magic, precognition and foresight, among others. In fact, many of the processes that worked in any of these individual areas, worked well in all areas, but this again was not widely known.

With a combination of her grandmother’s pursuit of excellence and Sharna’s natural magical gifts and curiosity, Sharna was in an extremely rare position, almost that of a cutting edge magical researcher.

While Sharna was excited to share her knowledge with her new colleagues, various interactions with her family had led her naturally open nature to become more wary. It would take her time to determine what information she was willing to risk sharing.