Andalon seemed well-rested when I summoned her from the not-here-place. With the little blue spirit along for the ride, Yuth, Ibrahim, and I waddled over to the sitting area across from the Ward’s reception desk, where Tira was waiting. Yuth coiled herself on the floor and Ibrahim splayed himself over the couch, while I sat on a chair, with Andalon sitting cross-legged on the floor beside me.

I’m not gonna lie: looking at Tira’s changed form definitely gave me the willies.

Tira’s neck cast a long shadow over the wide, brown carpet in the indentation in the floor. She must have been fifteen feet tall, at minimum, and almost two-thirds of it was head and shoulders. Her neck was half and again as thick as her mostly human torso—a graceful monster of a swan, scaled in twilight colors. Though Tira’s mouth was completely lost to wyrm-pores, her face had only just begun to stretch into a muzzle. Her visage was almost spider-like, with five eyes scattered across her face. They glowed like setting Suns. Her fifth eye was still in the middle of emerging from the side of her head, erupting from the desiccated rinds of what had once been an ear. Her legs were gone, though her tail was only about as long as a human arm, stubby and thick, though I had no doubt it would grow.

The former receptionist expressed surprise that we’d come to talk to her. Her mouth, teeth, jaws, and tongue were all gone, and only transformees like Dr. Finster, whose heads had gone wyrmy, seemed to be able to understand her, and they were busy helping to “translate” for more recent, mouthless arrivals. Tira made wheezy, staccato sounds when I told her Ibrahim had suggested she could help advise me with my powers, and that Andalon would take care of the translating for her. The noises were almost like a half-diminished chord. Had Andalon not been there beside me, cross-legged on the floor, I wouldn’t have known the sound was one of joy.

Nurse Costran adjusted her position, uncoiled and recoiled her tail in fidgety spurts.

Tira “spoke” up; Andalon turned to face me as she translated.

We’d been in the middle of explaining my situation—my “neglected power development,” as Dr. Rathpalla had put it.

“Ms. Tee asks what can you do, Mr. Genneth. And what have you been doing?”

So I told them. I told them about being able to move objects at a distance, and creating psychokinetic surfaces to grab onto or push off of, and anchoring myself in place to keep myself from getting knocked down. And I told them about my many, many failures, as well as abilities I’d seen others use—principally Letty.

When I finished, little spore plumes were wafting out of Tira’s face-holes. I didn’t need Andalon to know that it was laughter.

“You should have just asked Greg for help,” Yuth said, “or Dr. Horosha. Greg figured out half of it, and Suisei figured out the rest.”

Of course they had.

There was at least one surprise in store for me: they all stared at me in shock when I told them I’d had wyrmsight for several days now.

“Only Tira and Dr. Finster have that ability,” Ibrahim said. “It seems we normally get it only after our heads have changed most of the way. You’re damn lucky that Andalon gave it to you just like that, and at such an early stage in your changes.”

“Andalon,” Yuth asked, “can you give the rest of us wyrmsight?”

Andalon shook her head. “No, not yet. You’re too far away.”

I told them what she’d said.

Tira spoke up next.

“Well,” Andalon translated, “if you can sees the shimmery-wimmery plessuses, she says, then this should be lots more easier.”

Tira continued, puffing out spores as she gestured with her claws.

“She says, you know how you needs to run on a tread mill in ordler for it to power up?”

I nodded.

Andalon blinked. “What’s a tread mill, Mr. Genneth?”

I hyperphantasized one into being, complete with a generic-looking person running on it.

“That’s silly,” she said, as I made the tread-mill vanish.

Tira sang once more.

“She says the plessuses are kind of like that,” Andalon translated.

“Let me guess,” Yuth said, “Tira’s giving you the tread-mill analogy?”

Tira nodded her head.

As part of her duties as a nurse in the Quiet Ward, Yuth also worked with the Quiet Ward’s sleepers who managed to awake from their vegetative state. The tread-mill was just one of many devices used in the intensive physical therapy needed for the patients to regain control of their bodies after having spent so long in motionlessness.

“We push energy into the threads,” Yuth said, with Tira nodding along, “and that’s how we make the psychokinesis happen. But the effect stops once the energy gets to the end of the threads.”

The SHG called the plexuses “threads”.

“I figured that out on my own,” I said. “I just wish I’d realized the trick of making the plexuses into a circle or a sphere, so that the energy could keep traveling around.”

“Ms. Tee says that’s right,” Andalon translated. “But there’s other stuffs to know, too.”

“What other stuff?” I asked.

Tira answered: “Making your thinks slow down makes it super easy to change to the threads, or dealin’ with stuffs that’s gone out of control. That’s what she says.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that definitely would have made a difference in my power-training session the other day.”

“Other thing,” Andalon translated, “you use circlees and stuff when you wants your powers to last a long time, and you use the pasta threadsies when you wanna be short and sweet, like a punch to the face. The circlees don’t need comstant keep-up.”

“Keep-up?” I asked.

Tira made a confused sound.

I closed my eyes and shook my head. “Of course.” I turned to Andalon. “Up-keep,” I said, “not ‘keep-up’.”

Suddenly, I had a realization, and slapped the side of my hazmat suit’s headpiece. “How could I forget?” I said. “I’ve also been using my powers to help myself stay upright and run, especially as my legs have been getting weaker.”

Tira nodded.

“She says that’s the kind of thing you want to do with circlees,” Andalon translated. “Just mem-lo-rize the threads, and use them when you needs them.”

Then, Tira said something that made Andalon’s eyes go wide with excitement.

“She says: can you float yet?”

“Float?” I asked.

Yuth, Ibrahim, and Tira exchanged looks with one another—and, in Nurse Costran and Dr. Rathpalla’s case, grins.

Yuth turned to Tira. “Tira, do it now.”

She turned to me.

“Do what?” I asked.

“She’s gonna show you the way she weaves her threads,” Dr. Rathpalla explained, “and you’re gonna copy it.”

Tira tooted playfully.

“She says she’s ready,” Andalon translated.

I relayed Tira’s message to the others.

A moment later, Tira turned to Yuth, who turned to me and said, “Alright, Genneth, turn on your wyrmsight, and speed up your thoughts.”

I imagined a (very) squeaky chipmunk of a voice chirping the word “faster” over and over again in my head at a blistering pace.

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The effect was as profound as it was immediate. At first glance, it seemed like time had stopped all around me, but, like watching clouds on a windy day, a couple seconds of concerted attention showed that wasn’t quite the case. Things were still moving, just slowly. Really, really slowly. Uncountable numbers of microscopic fireflies zig-zagged across the room in sheets and drifts, like aurorae in the dark of the Night.

The spores, I realized.

Like the eerie wyrm-song, the sight of the spores’ chaotic dance in the slowed time was almost beautiful. Andalon sauntered about, oohing and ahhing at museum-worthy displays of transforming humans and conjured ghosts going about their days, seemingly frozen in place.

Scintillating pataphysical threads spooled out from Tira’s clawed hands as she sculpted them into being. It was astonishing to see the blues and golds weave together into a basket-shape below Tira’s body, and then arc up behind her to form a closed globe.

Out of force of habit, I called out to Andalon with my mouth. My flesh moved like half-dried clay. I could feel the tightening of the individual muscle fibers bunched up within the fascia and the tugging on my tendons as my jaw, lips, and tongue started to form the word “Andalon.” The experience made my body’s lag seem pleasant by comparison.

I felt the electrochemical gradients crawl through my motor neurons, as the action potential trickled down my ganglia, conveying the cease-and-desist order the language center of my brain had issued to my speech organs.

Andalon, I thought.

She jauntily scampered over to me.

“Haha,” she smiled, “you look really silly, Mr. Genneth! You’re all stucky-stuck!”

I stopped the action potential en route to my mouth. There was no point in speaking a reply.

Could you tell me what’s going on inside Tira’s thoughts right now? I asked. I want to know how she’s manipulating her powers.

Tira’s weave was now about as long as a human arm. I had a feeling she’d begin the process of shaping it into a ring at any moment.

Pressing her fingers to her temples, Andalon hummed softly before looking back at me and reporting her findings.

“She’s thinking of…” not knowing the word, Andalon tapped her right pointer finger on the first three fingers of her left hand, “she’s thinking of these things—”

—Fingers, I thought-said.

Andalon nodded. “She’s thinking of her fing-hers grabby-grabbing the plessus. She’s thinking like this,” Andalon pinched her fingers and grabbed either end of an invisible string, which she then curled into a circle.

That was simpler than what I’d been expecting.

Is that all? I thought-asked.

Andalon nodded. “Yep yep.”

Remembering what Yuth had told me, I followed her instructions for bringing the world around me back up to speed.

Slowwwwwwwwww—

—And then everything snapped back into its proper rate of motion. The whole experience left me feeling a bit lightheaded.

The lines of energy in Tira’s grasp separated from her as she wove them into a circle.

“Well?” Yuth asked. “Did you do it yet?”

“Yeah, but, this is definitely going to take some getting used to.”

The nurse chuckled. “What doesn’t?”

— — —

“Genneth,” Ibrahim said, nervously, “I think you’ve practiced enough for now, especially considering how little you’ve been eating.”

Dr. Rathpalla was right. I was definitely getting hungry. Very hungry—and, perhaps, in more ways than one.

Though I’d first learned the idea of “closing” the plexuses when my wyrmsight had shown me Letty’s technique for floating around, what with Ileene and the demons and Yuta waking up, I hadn’t really had the time to play around with it. Getting used to my newfound mental abilities had taken priority.

If I could go back in time, I’d slap myself for not trying Letty’s technique sooner. The hindsighted frustration was really eating away at me. The only parallel I could think of was the frustrated indignation I’d felt after having spent nearly all of Time Sea II looking for the optional (but totally awesome) Dragon Sword, only to learn it had been hidden in plain sight, in a secret cave behind the waterfall in Everton. It was right there, the whole time, but I’d missed it completely. It was such an irritating experience, even Pel had gotten pulled into it. My wife was incredibly patient with me, and did me a very big kindness by attentively listening to all my complaints about it while we laid together in bed.

It was that frustrating.

I had a similar relationship for this new trick, which I’d taken to calling the “circle method”. In hindsight, it was so obvious—so natural! Again, it made me want to hit myself—and in the present, no less!—but Andalon had managed to talk me out of it. Instead, I took my frustrations out by making objects—such as Dr. Rathpalla, two chairs, and a table—float mid-air.

It was easy and effortless as my training session out in that aerial garden was frustrating and life-threatening.

Step One: conjure plexus threads.

Step One-and-a-Half: imagine invisible hands grabbing the plexuses threads, curling them into circles, or disks, or rings, or spheres.

Step Two: imagine it doing what I want it to do—in this case, create a persistent floating effect of controlled, but variable amplitude.

Step Three: Let the power flow.

Ibrahim—who was currently floating on his side several feet off the ground—flailed his legs and tail in an attempt to free himself, but that only succeeded at making him rotate side to side in an awkward, wobbling fashion.

My delight with my success was loud enough to have attracted Suisei’s attention. He was currently looking over Ibrahim with what, by Suisei standards, seemed to be a great deal of amusement.

“You are only making your situation worse, Dr. Rathpalla,” he said. “When you do that—”

“—Do what?” Ibrahim asked, curling his neck to look Dr. Horosha in the eye.

The motion made his body gyrate yet again.

“That,” Suisei explained. “Radial movements change your moment of rotational inertia, which triggers an equal and opposite rotation to balance out the forces.”

“Can you say that in Trenton, not physics?” I asked.

“The more he flails and kicks, the more he wobbles,” Suisei said.

“I didn’t like physics as an undergraduate, and I don’t like it any more now!” Ibrahim grumbled, as he continued to spin.

“Same,” I said, with a smile. “But… let me just do one more,” I added.

With but a thought, I whipped up a fresh batch of psychokinetic strands. Speeding up my thoughts to slow down my perception of time made shaping the strands a piece of cake. I could take my sweet time, and if I ever sensed something was amiss, I could slow the passage of time to methodically analyze the situation and then calmly implement a solution.

The most satisfying part, I think, was that I no longer needed to keep pouring power into my plexuses. When the threads were closed, the power I put there stayed there, and for a quite a while—“set it and forget it”. In the event I needed to modify things, I could increase or tamp down the power flow to augment or diminish the pataphysical forces I was creating. In doing so, I realized just how wasteful I’d been with my powers by not using the circle method. It was the difference between filling a bathtub with water and bathing in it, and doing the same, but while the plug was removed. The latter would send your water bill through the roof.

But where was I?

Oh yes.

Through the slightly slowed time, I moved the strands underneath me, wrapping them around in a circle several feet in diameter, outlining the circumference of an imaginary dais. I felt what I can only describe as a click as I snapped the disk of power in place around my lower extremities, and then another click as I took a second disk of plexus threads and it around me, arcing it around my torso and over my head like I’d draped a towel on top of myself. This way, when the forces activated, they’d apply from all sides—though with a bit more heft on the part directly underneath me—and keep me airborne without crashing into something. Also, as Tira had explained—through Andalon, of course—it wasn’t enough to just make the threads into a circle-sphere-ting, I had to attach the plexuses to something; to a spot on the ground, to a person or an object, or even one another; that, or carry them with me as I moved.

Now came the cool part.

Ever since my first encounter with a timpanist in high school orchestra, it had boggled my mind that they often had to re-tune their timpani (or, to use its cooler name, the kettledrum) in the middle of a performance. The rest of the orchestra could be belting out an exhilarating passage with a battlefield’s worth of counterpoint flying this way and that, and at the back of the stage, there was the kettledrummer, bending over their instrument with their ear hovering just above the kettledrum’s head, their finger ever-so-softly rata-tat-tapping the membrane to check the pitch as they altered it with a push of their foot on the tuning pedal at the instrument’s base.

In ye oldene times, before the invention of the tuning pedal, changing the kettledrum’s tuning required you to fiddle with the screws that kept the kettledrum’s membrane taut! It must have been nerve-wracking as heck!

And yet… that’s pretty much exactly what I found myself doing with my levitation weaves. In this analogy, the glistening wrap of pataphysical energies were the kettledrum; the tuning pedal, meanwhile, was the amount of oomph I put into the wrap at any one moment raising or lowering the intensity of the psychokinetic force emanating from the sheets.

As for why I made two pieces instead of one? I’d figured it would be easier to control my levitation if I had one weave dedicated to upward motion and another dedicated to keeping me on the upward motion weave.

“Alright,” I muttered, “here goes nothing.”

From where she stood, Andalon clapped and cheered. “You can do it Mr. Genneth! You! Can! Do! It!”

Carefully…

While the energy flowed through the wave, I tuned it up, increasing its intensity. I could feel the force pushing from underneath me, but it wasn’t enough. For lift-off to happen, the upward force needed to be slightly stronger than gravity’s opposing pull.

A bit more, I thought.

I shot up a foot and a half. Any momentary panic I should have had dissolved in the simple truth that I was floating!

And not just floating; I kept on rising.

Too much.

My numb legs flailed beneath me. Everyone nearby raised their heads to look at me.

I brought my rising under control by damping down the strength of the levitation effect, only to overshoot and suddenly plummet two feet down before tuning the up-weave yet again to catch myself. This time, though, it held me steady, floating several inches above the ground. The pataphysics above and around me jostled me back in place over the up-weave whenever a harmless twitch or two tilted me to one side or the other.

It was easier to do the tuning when my perspective wasn’t moving along with it, though that was probably just my inexperience showing. Yes, the whole process was somewhat complicated, but I felt like, with some work, I’d be able to get it down to an almost instinctive reaction, much like I had the “send things flying” feat that, even now, occasionally went off in a moment of passion or anger.

At this point, my wyrmly memory was like a cheat code. This would have taken much, much longer to master without a wyrm’s perfect memory—assuming mastery could even be reached.

The thought stabbed a hole in my elation. Would the person I had been recognize the half-human creature I was becoming? And would either of them recognize the wyrm at the end of the fungal rainbow?

I pondered this as I floated, only half-aware that I was licking my lips in hunger. Dr. Rathpalla must have noticed it, because he frowned at me from where he floated a few feet above me.

“I think that’s enough for now, Dr. Howle,” he grumbled.

Nodding, I sighed.

“Wait.”

I turned to Yuth.

“How do I make the weaves go away?” I asked. “Do I just wish them away?”

“No!” Ibrahim yelled. “Don’t!”

Too late; I already had.

All the floating things fell to the ground with a rather loud thud—myself included.