Soha had been doing magic from the moment of awareness, as it transpired; magic for the loop-bound was almost automatic, in a way that it was not for the other djinn, and Soha had used it to manipulate orientation as soon as orientation had entered into the conceptual library that Soha was still constructing. Which is not to say that magic was easy.

"Heat. Light. Mehr found it helpful to think of fire as intense motion, see if that helps." Anaz watched Soha patiently, holding a thin hand aloft, flickering red and gold hovering over the palm of the thin hand.

Anaz was thin in general, almost like a djinn made of the staves used in the practice yard, with six delicate horns growing from a pale red scalp, and four more growing on the corners of a face that was almost a square. Anaz wore a simple blue wrap, which wound across the shoulders and torso, tied so that it fell over the hips down to the knees in a strip, leaving the sides exposed, with a sash about the waist to hold the front and back in place; as Soha understood fashion, this was a rather rude garment to wear in public.

But Anaz was the only instructor available in magic, and was considered somewhat odd by the other djinn; Efre had warned Soha not to use Anaz as a role model for behavior.

Soha lifted a hand, focusing on the idea of motion; what would intensity even mean? This gave rise to a breeze, as the idea of motion found purchase. Anaz nodded slowly.

"Right, right. Now contain the motion into a small sphere."

Soha did so. It ... didn't do anything. Anaz reached over, waving the hand not currently occupied with holding a fire aloft through the space over Soha's hand.

"Right, right." Anaz said those words a lot. "Now, make it move more. Focus on small movements, and create a lot of them. Be intense about it!"

Soha tried this, focusing on the idea of small motions. The air in the rest of the room stirred a little bit again.

"Right, keep going, right."

Soha tried closing both eyes, focusing more ... intently, on the idea of contained motion, avoiding the idea of light - that just made the space glow, which Anaz had explained made it difficult to tell if fire had been properly conjured.

"Smaller motions, and more of them."

How small could motion even get? Soha tried thinking of smaller lines and curves. And tried to make the lines and curves more ... intense.

"Right, smaller, right."

A pause in the thoughts, as Soha tried to figure out what Anaz was getting at. It was pretty clear Anaz didn't know, however. Lines clearly weren't right; while Soha could feel the air stirring against the uplifted palm, it wasn't right. This was just moving the air around.

Small motion. Could Anaz mean vibration?

"YES! That's it, right right!" Soha's eyes opened, and then immediately blinked at the blue flames burning intensely over the hand. What?

"Fire is vibration? Is anything not vibration?"

"No idea what you mean." Anaz then flicked the red and gold flame against a stone wall, where it exploded outward, flattening against the wall in a blaze of light. "Now, throw it."

Soha threw it. It immediately disappeared.

"Right, right. Now, think of ... "

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Soha left the lesson with an unexpected energy - energy to be leaving. Anaz was ... not ... pleasant, to be around, although Soha couldn't place why, only finding an agreement with Efre that copying any of Anaz's behaviors would be a bad thing.

The trick to fire was a conceptualization of a sphere of air vibrating very quickly. Throwing it was harder, and required conceptualizing the sphere as contained - Anaz had said sticky, which hadn't helped until Soha had again tried to figure out what idea Anaz was trying to communicate, instead of what idea Anaz was actually communicating.

Lightning, as it was called, was a line of synchronized vibration, with an emphasis on connecting the two points. Anaz had insisted it was a flow, a circle, with no vibration at all, but had desisted in arguing the point as soon as Soha managed to create the odd loud light, which had attracted a couple of people to peek into the room before seeing what was going on and promptly fleeing.

There were two lessons today, the lessons on magic coming before the lessons on martial practice, and Soha walked to the outdoors training area to strip slightly singed clothing and prepare for this other practice.

Hvare had begun having most of the class practice line formations; Soha was exempted from this practice, and was instead being taught to fight with hands and feet, as well as elbows, knees, and even the head. "Any part of the body can be used as a weapon", as Hvare repeatedly stated.

It was difficult, however, to remember that all the different parts of the body even existed, and Soha hit the ground a few seconds after beginning each spar with Hvare, which were intermixed with shouted instructions to the other students.

"Firouz, stay in formation, you're not here to hit your opponent the most." Hvare ducked a kick, catching the leg over a shoulder and tossing Soha to the ground. "Roka, it's a spear, not a club, quit hitting Roshe with the haft and jab over the shield, you are putting your shield out of position and exposing Sidou." A spinning backhand evaded an elbow and caught the back of Soha's head, causing the yard to spin vertically three times before the ground caught up.

The bath was welcome, and Soha spent some extra time washing out the smell of smoke from the robes. Fan and Sidou were relaxing in the corner bath, chattering as they waited on Soha to finish.

"Formations are more fun, aren't they? It doesn't matter so much how strong you are, you lock shields anyways, it's more thinking ahead and stabbing over the shield. Wish I was a little bit taller, though, it's hard to get a good angle."

"Mm."

"What was even the point of all the one-on-one training, anyways? We shouldn't ever not be in formation, and Harabi says most folks die when the formation breaks, so we should just stay in formation and not get caught up in fighting like that."

"Practice, and formations break."

"True enough. Hey Self, how was, er, hey Soha, how was that hand fighting? Looked painful. Did you ever hit Hvare, or did you just hit the ground a lot?" Fan couldn't keep from laughing during the delivery, and even Sidou cracked a smile. Soha looked over to Fan, setting the robe on the hot stones beside the bath that helped with drying. There were djinn who handled laundry, but Soha didn't want to return to the room yet.

"Mostly the ground."

It took Fan a moment to respond, still struggling with laughter. "That's what it looked like, yeah. Still two hours until the evening meal, either of you up for sex?"

Soha considered the question briefly. "No thank you."

"No. I just finished bathing. Maybe before the bath next time." Sidou looked down at the bath, legs kicking idly. "Also I don't want to be pregnant when the peri come north, I won't be permitted to fight. Maybe after we push them out of our lands."

After Sohu's robes finished drying, still singed but at least not smelling like it anymore, the three dressed and left the hall, heading towards, on Sidou's recommendation, the library. Books were precious, so there weren't spare copies of anything. Sidou had pushed Fan, who liked talking anyways, into reading for the rest of them.

"... and the order closed the hall, never to be reopened, all the treasures locked inside, and Efre locked away forevermore in the vessel of sky-iron." The story had been slightly distracting to Soha, as it was difficult to mentally disentangle Efre from the real world from the Efre from the story, even though the impetuous trickster was nothing like the Efre that Soha knew.

Fan closed the book, setting it aside, adjusting spectacles. "And that, my stalwart companions, is why you don't agree to shit when peri are involved." Sidou smiled at that.

"Indeed."

"Why did book-Efre keep doing whatever was asked?" Soha had been annoyed for half the reading over this. "The second request could have been twisted into an excuse to end the geis." Fan's head shook slightly back and forth, a bit too emphatically, and the spectacles required another adjustment.

"It's a story. Sometimes things have to happen in particular ways for the story to end the way the creator wanted them to. But yeah, that was kind of obvious."

They continued speaking, until Sidou went off and found another book, and Fan resumed reading aloud. Soha found another kind of magic in the books, surprised by the power the author had to shape images and story, even if it wasn't always perfectly crafted.