Elise fished around in the pockets of her apron. She was sure she had a cloth in there somewhere.

"You can come down you know," she called softly to the person lingering at the top of the stairs.

Willow descended into the shop, tears in her eyes and hands by her sides. Her footsteps were slow and hesitant. Willow was upset and only the most foolish could say they didn't see it or see why. Finding the cloth she'd been seeking Elise wiped the spit and blood belonging to Willow's father from her face. If it wasn't okay to do what she did while Willow was in the room why had she thought it would be okay to do it when she wasn't. It changed nothing besides giving Willow the opportunity to pretend it never happened. Thoughtlessly Elise had put Willow in a very difficult situation.

"There were a dozen ways I could have handled that better,"

Willow studied the floor. Her head held low. It was almost as if she thought Elise's mistakes were somehow her fault. She stood there braced for blame.

"Willow?"

"Why did you do that?" her voice was a whisper so quiet that you had to strain yourself to hear it.

"It is because I am not a good person Willow. I lost my temper. The way those people looked at me, the way they looked at you, it made me want to prove them wrong. It made me want to take their arrogance and rip it from them. It made me want to shove their faces into how wrong they were. Like I was disciplining a dog,"

"They're not arrogant. They're my parents. You didn't... I kept screwing up and they didn't get rid of me. Not till recently, not till I was old enough. They tolerated me when I was useless. They were good to me. You didn't have to hurt them,"

"No, I didn't and I shouldn't have. I am no stranger to making enemies but that's when I bear the consequences alone. It's alright to offend when the only one who suffers for it is me. I didn't spare a thought for the position I was putting you in. I'm sorry. I just couldn't hold it in. I guess I am living proof that wisdom doesn't come with age,"

Willow still stood there, looking down, still waiting. Elise watched her waiting for a response or even just a gesture or movement.

"Why are you acting like I'm about to scold you? None of this was your fault. You're the most blameless person in this whole incident!"

"It is my fault. It's because I was here that-"

"Bullshit. That could very well have happened just the same if I'd never met you. If your mere presence is causing other people problems and you're doing nothing wrong then those are other people's problems. Not your problems, not something you need to fix, change or even worry about. So stop acting like you're the guilty party here. There's no logic in the world where that makes any sense,"

Finally, Willow looked up from staring at the ground.

"If...if they come back are you going to attack them again?"

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"I'll try not to but I will defend myself if I have to. If I do end up defending myself though it will not be something caused by you. It'll be between me and them,"

With that, the conversation lapsed into an awkward silence. A little too much time would pass before either of them did anything. Wanting to lighten the mood and break the silence Elise fished around in her pockets once again, displacing tools and other objects in her search. This time instead of a cloth she pulled out the small ring she had been working on and handed it to Willow.

"Here. I mentioned I was making you a focus before, didn't I? I've finished it and I didn't want to interrupt you when you were so focused on what you were doing. I...eh...may have overdone it a little. Its got almost exclusively illusion spell patterns in there. But there's a lot of them. Some are for realistic textures some are for common shapes. You can mix and match them to an extent but I was only able to get so many in such a small object but having lots of overlap. Some of them use the same channels and can't be used simultaneously. It's a bit on the complicated side of things. If you have difficulty with it tell me and I'll make you a simpler version," the moment Elise started talking about focuses all her tensions and worries began to ebb away from her, replaced by a childlike joy. It was like a switch had been flipped.

Willow took the ring carefully. A touch of her old wariness had returned. Brought back, perhaps, by another glimpse at Elise's more violent side. Despite it, she slipped on the ring. Her spell thread made its way through the narrow confines of the ring's channels, through gates that were for once not too large for her. Light appeared above her finger. It was a faster cast than she'd managed casting the same spell with her old wand. All the wariness and tears left her face, supplanted by a growing sense of wonder.

"It's so much easier" she whispered "It's so much easier to use,"

"Well, your old wand had gates too big for your thread. So you were having to control your spell thread at the gates to stop it slipping down the wrong channel. Basically, if the gates aren't sized right for you it's not even worth having them and the gates in the old thing you had before are way off. It's a common problem. The less common problems with your old wand include having way more gates than needed and shoddily burnt channels. You may have noticed your spell thread snag on obstructions left by the craftsman. That can have nasty effects, like causing your spell thread to hit itself, or deflecting your spell thread into the sides of the channel causing unintended burning and damage. The channels are far larger than you need which contributes a little to spell jitter. In fact, your old wand makes for a great case study in what not to do when making wands. With the ring, you'll notice your spell thread has less physical distance to travel and won't have any lazily burnt channels in it,"

"Ha-has my wand been holding me back this entire time?"

"Yup. Though to be fair there's not exactly very many people around with lines quite as short as either of ours. So wands don't tend to get made for outliers like us. I had to make do with a truly terrible wand until I first made my own. It's great having a focus that fits you but having one that doesn't can really hobble you,"

Tears reappeared in the young girl's eyes. This time they didn't stay confined to the eyes and they flowed down her face in little rivers.

"It wasn't my fault. I kept failing and it wasn't my fault. All this time it wasn't my fault. I kept trying. I kept trying. All my spells were bad, they were messy and I kept failing and miscasting. It isn't fair. It was never fair. I thought I couldn't. It wasn't my fault," Willow wailed.

Of all the situations she'd faced none had stumped Elise as much as this weeping girl. She didn't know what to do. Most problems she'd encountered could be viewed as a kind of puzzle. This wasn't like that. Approaching this as a puzzle with a right answer was the completely wrong way of thinking about it. But she felt like she needed to do something. The more she looked at her crying apprentice the more she needed to do something. She embraced Willow in a hesitant and awkward hug. A moment passed before the crying girl returned the embrace.

"It's alright Willow, it's alright,"