Ok I can work with this. Sui now tried to keep her thread all bunched around her, even getting up onto the dining table so that she could run the thread around her. Grandma would complain… but it’s for the highest cause so its fine.

Sui continued to wind the thread around and around and was now certain that as it got further away from her the strain increased. The problem was, it wasn’t consistent. Something else was also causing the increase.

It’s safe to say that it’s also probably the amount of thread. Though perhaps if I… Sui tried to tweak her control a bit. Rather than pulling it from the end, she tried to ‘grab’ the entirety of the thread like she had with her outfit (may it rest in pieces) and hoped it wasn’t one of the main reasons she crashed

As soon as Sui switched her control method it was like she was stepping up a gear. This is weird… it’s not… not quite harder? That’s sort of the wrong word… it almost feels like I’m working an underused muscle.

Sui kept this up for a few moments more before having to drop the connection. There wasn’t so much of a building pressure as before, but it was like she’d just started using an atrophied muscle.

Something weird is going on here. Sui stared at the offending thread. For those few seconds ‘pulling’ the whole thing at once was infinitely easier than trying to tug from the end. So much smoother.

Then it was like it was all slipping through my hands. Sui pursed her lips and examined the thread closely. At this point she had managed to remove around half of the spindle’s contents, and she had a good pile of thread surrounding her.

She took a deep breath and started to wind it all back up. Trying to use her ‘everything at once’ method. This very quickly failed. It turned out to be much more involved putting the thread back on.

Ok, so much for that idea. Seems that’s a bit too complicated. Trying another approach Sui sat the spindle down in the centre of the table and then moved herself to be underneath the object in question below the table.

This however made it really hard for her to focus on the thread in question. She could almost feel her connection to it, and she felt like if she just pushed hard enough, she’d be able to connect. Or she’d break something in her mind.

Grimacing and not willing to risk it Sui started to wind it around her hand lightly and then let it dangle. Ok let’s hope this isn’t a horrible idea. Sui slowly let the thread wind itself back up. Letting her hands feed the thread towards the spindle, gravity pull it down and then her thread control wind it.

It was… somewhat taxing, but certainly not the instant knockout she was afraid of. Ok, so it’s the lifting that is the real problem then. Is it a matter of weight? Or is there some property of the skill that finds it exceptionally hard to fight gravity.

Sui pursed her lips as she finished up her winding. Now that she new she could easily return the thread to its spindle she was willing to try out some other thread. First though, she cleaned the table.

Removing the place mats and the flowers in the centre and depositing them on the bench, Sui set about wiping the table down as best she could. Once that was done, she returned her thread to the drawer and looked for some new test subjects

Sui settled on three. One was an exceptionally fine clear thread for inlays and minor corrections, and the lightest she was testing. The next was some of the thick knitting thread she was using when this all started. It was one of the thickest she had on hand and would work perfectly for the other end of the weight test.

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The final one was a little different. Sui had retrieved the fishing line from where it had fallen. Sui could feel that it only sort of counted as thread for some reason. She could feel it, but not well and was unsure how that would affect things.

##

And so, Sui spent the next hour testing the threads in various ways and cataloguing her findings to confirm a few things. Sui was looking out over at the table and sighing, because what she’d found didn’t make a tonne of sense.

Firstly, weight was hardly a factor. Or, if it was, the difference was much too small to notice when comparing her knitting and mending threads. Perhaps is she had some steel wire and that counted it would be a different story, but as far as she could tell the weight wasn’t the problem.

The problem, as it turned out was length, but, it was a little weird about it. Sui stumbled on this partly by accident when she felt a little creative. Sui had originally thought weight did play a role, but while testing the knitting thread it started to come apart

As a test of her abilities Sui had split them up and tried to control them separately. It was a little tricky, in the same way that controlling the full length of the thread was. It was easier than the full length, managing just three ends, but it brought something else into question.

Once Sui was manipulating the three individually, it seemed to be no harder then it was before. In fact, it was actually a little easier on the mental strain, doubly so once accounting for the difficulty of controlling multiples.

This set off a whole new wave which lead Sui to finding some old rope in a corner of the garden and testing her powers on that. What she discovered was that her power wasn’t a fan of rope at all. It seemed to count it as, say, six strings of thread, rather than one rope.

So to test this properly Sui went and soaked the rope in water You think I’d waste good thread by drenching it?! Before testing her control once again. It felt different in her mind, it was slippery instead of the clean tug of her power.

Once she got the handle on it though, it was no more difficult than before despite the extra weight that the thread should have possessed. This then led to Sui tying multiple different objects to the end of various pieces of string but found the results even more confounding

It was much harder. Just adding weight to the end of it seemed to fairly drastically increase the strain it took on Sui, and by the end of her testing she was starting to get more than a little lightheaded.

That was the sign to call the testing to a halt.

Sui took a slight break from the over use of her powers to clean the floor. Testing with the fishing line hadn’t been as interesting as she was led to believe. It was a little harder to start moving the line, but once she had it ‘in her grasp’ there was hardly any difference.

Ok so what do I really know.

One, my power gets weaker the further away it is from me

Two, my power gets weaker, but slowly, the longer the thread is.

Three, my power hates lifting thread against gravity

Four, weight is basically not a factor

Five, rope is actually the worst and gives such horrible mileage.

Sui let out a long breath. Ok. At least I have some understanding. I think I can begin work now. Right Ito…?

The little spider that had been perched on the nearby chair turned to face Sui from where she was playing with creating various lengths of spider thread, seemingly doing her own testing. When Sui met Ito’s eyes Ito crossed her legs over each other.

“Why not!” asked Sui.

Ito then summoned and dismissed various threads, before pausing, and twisting them around a few times until she had a not then dismissing them ‘You should actually practice with your ability’

Sui tsked at Ito but nodded. Packing up the thread, throwing the fishing line and the rope back outside Sui dived into her sewing supplies to find some of her black thread. If I’m going to be getting some practice I might as well be making progress as well. Worst comes to worst I can scrap it or treat it like I do my knitting.

Sui sat down with her spindly and thread spread across the table and started her practice. Ito watched from the side as Sui very rapidly fell into a state of flow. Her eyes almost seemed to glass over but they had a shine in the back, and Sui had a creepy smile on her face.

Sui’s hands danced as she made minute corrections with her fingers while the bulk of her concentration was on tightly weaving her thread into a very fine stockinette pattern.