Getting Into Trouble (Storm and Starr) | A Gaia PMRP

[Nara-pyon]

Storm and Starr didn't know a lot about magic, despite their having quite a powerful magic of their own to command. Time and again, they got into trouble for using it, until it finally came to a point where their mother had forbidden them to even try until they had learned more about it and learned how to be responsible. Being responsible, Storm reasoned, meant trying to learn as much as they could on their own, showing that they wanted to learn to control their magic safely.

He had convinced Starr to come down into their grandmother's workshop with him before, but all they had done was look through a book that had been sitting open on her desk. Of course, being the size they were, they really didn't have much of a choice - they simply weren't strong enough to move half the books in the room. Storm thought it was an excellent idea, since of course their grandmother was the headmistress of the magic students at the school where she and Mama and some of the uncles worked - and most of their aunts and uncles attended - and since it was her workroom, then of course she would have books there about magic. It was the most logical place for them to start educating themselves, since they were too young yet for school.

Starr had her misgivings, as always, but she wanted to be able to use her magic just as much as Storm did, and he was very persuasive, and so now, as always, she was tagging along behind him. She was curious, of course, but more wary of the danger of getting caught and getting into trouble.

"We'll be fine," Storm grinned as he opened the door, then flew down to join his sister. "We're just gonna look for something to help us!"

Starr nodded warily, and together they pushed the door open and headed inside.

Despite the fact that Cinderella had long stopped needing to use Kara's workroom Kara had never put a lock on the door. Even when Yukito and her son-in-law Ayce well... she did not know to be fair, but she had noticed some potent energies floating around the room days afterwards. At any rate, Kara did not ever lock her workroom, since that was also where much of the medical supplies had been created and kept as well. Near the window before them was one long worktable where shelves mounted on the wall kept rows and rows of jars. Ingredients she used to create her potions, some recognizable, and others were not so much. The burner she used was kept close to the window incase of fumes, and the high work stool she used was unoccupied at the moment. There was another table against the left side of the wall near the main large table, creating a sort of corner desk.

That table had finished potions all lined up neat in a row, along with notebooks full of her work, ink and quill for writing. The shelves above that desk were full of talismans, jars and other magical trinkets she collected.

On the far right wall was the bookshelf where she kept all manner of books, whether it was her journal about her family, to books about runes, potions, and of course magic itself. Some of the books were magic, she kept because they were useful and slightly out of the novelty of owning some of those books.

There was a cabinet right next to the door, where Kara kept more of her finished work, and medical supplies.

"This way," Storm whispered, beckoning for Starr to follow him in the direction of the bookshelf. "There wasn't anything in grandma's book on her desk, so we gotta look at the ones on the shelf! Come on, I can't take them off without you."

Starr followed her twin reluctantly, full of misgivings about what they were about to do. "We're going to get in trouble," she murmured as she tiptoed after him. "Mama's going to be so mad ..."

"No she won't," Storm grinned. "We're ed-u-cat-ing ourselves! That's a good thing, right? Besides, she's not going to know until we show her how much we know, and she'll be happy then!"

"But what if someone comes in?" Starr asked worriedly.

"They won't," Storm assured her, looking at the spines of the books on the lowest shelf. "Everyone's at school except us and Mama and Celebor and Skye and Serenity and Idhril and some others, and Mama's busy with Celebor!" He frowned and looked up. "I don't think these ones are the ones we need. Why don't we start at the top shelf?" And he flew up to the top shelf of books, choosing one at random. "Come on, help me get it down!" he called down to Starr.

Starr did as she was told, but she felt uneasy about it. She had a bad feeling about all of this ...

The top shelf was nearly out of reach for someone Triton's height, for Kara it was completely out of reach, she often used a chair to put books up there. To most people this was inconvenient, which it was, but these were books Kara rarely used. In addition, after the incident with Were and Triton when her son was little, she had turned to having a taller bookshelf as a storage space for books she didn't want people to get into to.

There was her own copy on a book of Guardian Magic, otherwise known as Self-Sacrificing Magic, which was the branch Kara had purposely specialized in. Beside that was a book on summoning, something she had deemed too dangerous to keep on the lower shelves. There was, next to that, an old tattered and singed book on Fire Magic, which Long had given to Kara as a child. The poor headmistress though was a complete failure at casting offensive magic that she tended to set fire to everything but the thing she wanted to set fire to. After her graduation, she had decided to put that book away, lest she get into more trouble trying.

There was a blood red book tucked securely into the line of books, it had a golden circle with an upside down star on it. It was wrapped in a blue ribbon, Kara had long ago put a seal on it using magic so people would not open it accidentally.

After that was the book on Glass Magic, it wasn't that dangerous, but Kara had never gotten around to attempting to use that magic and she was running out of book space. There was a book on alchemy, naturally as she was a potion maker, and another book on old runes.

"Hurry up," Storm urged his sister, tugging at the top edge of a book that looked as if someone had tried to burn it.

Starr blinked as she joined him on the shelf. "Why this one?" she asked him curiously. "It might fall apart on us, and then we'll get into trouble!"

Storm just scoffed at her. "It's gotta be about fire! Don't you get it? That's the one Mama's most worried about us using, playing with fire! This one can tell us how!"

"They why is it all burned?" Starr challenged him, crossing her arms stubbornly.

"Because," Storm explained, with all the patience of a guru, "they didn't know how to use fire right at first, so it got burned, but then they learned how, so that's why it's not all completely burned up!" He stuck his tongue out at her. "Silly!"

Starr stuck her tongue back out at him, too, but she had to admit that he was speaking logically. "All right," she agreed, also getting a grip on the top edge of the book. "Ready? Pull!"

Together the two tiny angels tugged on the top of the book, and it started falling towards the floor. Storm moved quickly to fly beneath it, but it was so heavy that it pushed him to the floor as well.

"Storm!" Starr gasped as both book and boy hit the floor. For a moment, there was no movement; but then Storm wriggled out from under the book.

"I'm okay!" he assured Starr with a cheeky grin. "I flew and made it fall slower, so it didn't hurt too much!"

Be that as it may, he had the beginnings of a bruise on one cheek. "Come on!" he grinned at Starr. "Help me read it!" And he opened the front cover and sat down in front of it.

The book itself was in English, Kara had been young then and Japanese was her second language. She had tried to learn Chinese, but she had no one to learn with, it was only now as an adult she was learning with Donovan.

Still, the book was a very good translation, it was a basic Fire book for any learner, there was no doubt that Long had a copy in the original language. Long, like many of his people believed in the use of chi, or ki in some societies. It was the internal life force energy that ran through all living creatures, depending on the form and the person it could do nearly anything. In a spiritualist, it could help them calm the dead, in a fighter increase their strength and in a mage help them cast magic. In a way, it was not too different from Kara's own branch of magic.

As usual there was the basic introduction into the life force of all things, and then proceeded to explain how one may tap into that power to create something like fire.

Starr read each and every word slowly, painstakingly, knowing that if she accidentally left something out and Storm found out about it, she would never hear the end of it. Every once in a while Storm would make some sort of noise to indicate his agreement or disagreement, and once in a while he would make some sort of comment.

Like when Starr read out that bit about chi, he said, "That must be what we got, or maybe we just see what the world has since it's not inside us."

Starr had to agree with that.

And when she got to the point where it started talking about tapping into powers, Storm grinned and folded his arms and nodded, saying, "I told you we got the right book!"

The first exercise was to hold one's hand out before them, the idea was to focus using the meditation exercises (see meditation as the book said) to gather the chi up to one's palm. Then using visualization exercises (see visualization) to imagine something hot and then 'see' the chi burst into flames upon one's hand. The idea since it was a person's own chi, it would not hurt them, unless they did something self-inflicting which was always possible.

When Starr had read through that part, Storm didn't look quite as convinced. "That's more how Mama would do it," he mused. "She just kinda holds her hand up and it goes poof and it's there ... but that's not what we do, is it, Starr?"

Starr shook her head, agreeing with her twin. "No," she agreed solemnly, "it's all around us, everywhere ... we just have to play with the threads a bit."

"Man-ip-u-late," Storm pronounced carefully, correcting his sister. "Cos Mama says we're not allowed to play with them." He frowned down at the book and turned a few pages ahead. "Maybe there's something about that later on."

Starr slapped his hand away and flipped back to where they were. "Well if you skip ahead like that then we're going to miss it!" she pointed out logically. "Now stop it and let me read!"

The book went on to explain that the fire was chi, only in a more physical form, in a physical form it could be changed and channeled much more easily because one could see it instead of visualize it. The next exercise was to take that fire that the student had created and to form it into something, the book suggests something simple for beginners say like a square or triangle. With practice a person could make more complicated shapes out of fire.

"Hey!" Storm grinned. "Maybe we could try that!"

"How?" Starr questioned. "Make the threads into different shapes?"

"Maybe," Storm shrugged. "We could try it anyways." He paused, then added, "I will. You get some water ready just in case."

"But there's not enough fire threads in here!" Starr protested. "You couldn't do anything with them!"

"And there's not enough water, either," Storm mused, "in case we had to put out a fire ..."

He looked around the room thoughtfully, searching for something to help them. He brightened when he spotted a collection of vials and bottles sitting on a shelf on the other side of the room, and beckoned for Starr to come with him. "We can try some of Grandma's potions!" he said excitedly, spreading his wings and heading for the shelf. "I can see LOTS of threads in them!"

"But won't Grandma get mad?" Starr asked warily, though she followed her brother right away.

"We'll only use a little bit!" Storm assured her. "We don't have to move the bottles at all, just take the lids off to get to the threads!"

"If you say so," Starr sighed.

They landed on the shelf without any mishap and started searching for potions of fire and water.

There were plenty of water-based potions, her freezing potion which needed water in order to freeze, and then there were the waves potion, and there was even a cleaning potion she sometimes used (after all how else does one keep a whole inn clean). Kara, was not fond of the more violent potions, depending more on lights and illusions and plants, but she did keep with her two bottles of fire eating potion that had been created by Cindy, and three bottles of sparkling, fiery liquid in the colours of red and gold, blue and silver, and purple and gold for a special occasion.

They were firework potions.

Storm spotted the purple and gold potion and headed directly for it. "This one has lots of threads in it!" he exclaimed triumphantly. "Let's use this one!"

"No!" Starr said firmly, shaking her head. "That's got some weird stuff in it, you have to use one that ONLY has fire threads in it!"

Storm pouted, but he knew that when his sister used that voice, she meant business and he better listen. He moved away from the purple and gold vial obediently and headed instead to the bottles that had pure fire threads in them.

Starr on the other hand was still looking for water potions. She could see some weird things that looked as if they might work with water, but that didn't have water in them. She frowned thoughtfully. Well, this wasn't going to work ...

"What if we took the fire potion to the sunroom?" she suggested to Storm. "Aunty Feng and Uncle Ryu's fountain is there, there's lots of water for us to work with!"

"Sure," Storm agreed cheerfully. "Just ... let me grab this bottle ..." He wrapped his arms around the neck of the bottle (which was about half his height) and lifted it. He grunted with the weight and hoped that he wouldn't drop it anywhere. It was heavy ... and slippery.

"Go open the door again," he told Starr, "so I don't have to hold this for so long."

Starr nodded and flew down to the door, opening it wider so that her brother would be able to fly out with the bottle.

"Hurry up!" she urged him. "Before somebody comes!"

Storm nodded and tightened his grip on the bottle, then spread his wings and headed towards the door. He bit his lip in concentration, trying his best not to drop the bottle. Who knew what would happen if he did?

Wish yawned from where she slept in a sunny spot in a corner where the couches hid her large form. She felt old, even though she still had a place as being Kara's dear angelic cat. She murmured to herself shifting over to sleep so her back was to the fountain, she trusted the mer twins to keep out of trouble, besides she was sure they weren't in the fountain today.

Perhaps she thought they were off training again, or Feng was visiting that boy or another.

In the end, Storm decided that it was safer just to fly to the floor and carry the bottle by walking, rather than flying. That way, if he dropped it, nothing would happen - in theory.

When he got to the sunroom, Starr was already seated on the edge of the fountain, waiting for him. He could see that she was already preparing threads of the water to throw at him in case anything happened, and he nodded and smiled approvingly.

Neither of them said a word, as if there had been some sort of unspoken agreement that they wouldn't, so that they wouldn't be caught. Storm chose a spot right next to the fountain to sit and open the bottle of liquid fire.

Hmm ... if only it weren't so tightly shut, he thought. He was having trouble opening it.

Wish's ears turned and twitched, but she didn't pay much heed to the little ones that she was sure were playing by the fountain. Unless one fell in of course, but to her knowledge no one had fallen into the fountain, beside it wasn't like the fountain was completely devoid of life. The pet fish that Feng and Ryu kept lived there and whatever creatures where there.

The bottle was tight for a reason, after all, it would be bad form to accidentally burn a hole into something, like her sleeves. That and it was probably hard to pull out because compared to Storm's height it was a big bottle.

Starr saw the trouble her twin was having and hopped down from the edge of the fountain to help him. She took the bottle end while he took the stopper end, and each of them pulled as hard as they could, using their wings to give them a bit of extra strength.

Finally, they fell back, panting.

"It's not working," Starr frowned, letting go of the bottle.

Storm fell backwards, and the bottle landed on top of him. "Oof!" he grunted, then sat up and glared at Starr. "What'd you let go for?" he demanded crossly, pushing the bottle aside and crossing his arms. "We gotta get it open if we're going to do anything with it!"

"What do you think you two are doing?" a melodic voice purred from behind Starr.

It wasn't as if the twins were trying to be quite, and Wish was grateful she had enough sense to check to see what the two were up to. Honestly, she had thought, she had not seen any one so mischievous since Yue and Yukito were children. A fuzzy blue nuzzle nudged Starr softly out of the way so she could see, even though at her height it was very clear what they were doing.

"Where did you two get that?"

Starr jumped a bit when Wish nudged her out of the way, and ran and hid behind one of her enormous paws. Storm, on the other hand, was caught out on the open with the potion right next to him. He looked at it, then at Wish, then at the potion again, then back at Wish again.

"We found it," he told her with a nod, his eyes widening innocently.

Wish chuckled, ah how young the others were at that age, she knew Kara well and Kara well she tended to be a bit absent minded at times would have noticed if she dropped a bottle. Besides, she knew it was not there before.

"Storm... child.... I have been resting here for over an hour," Wish murmured to help bending down so that her nose was only inches from his chest, "It was not here an hour ago."

He smelled of wood, sweet powder, musty books with a touch of... aloe. Kara must have been making balm again Wish deducted from all those mingling scents. Which only meant that Storm and Starr had been in the workroom.

Wish added, "You were in the workroom."

Storm smiled and nodded, his angel face looking as innocent as ever. "That's where we found it!" he agreed. "I didn't say we found it here!"

Starr remained silent, thoughtful, and her eyes were fixed on her brother's wide eyes. If Wish wanted to help them bring it back, she would see that they were reading one of their grandmother's books, too, one that was teaching them things they weren't supposed to be learning about ...

"Potions.... belong in the workroom, or up the sleeves of your eldest aunt or your grandmother," Wish replied back patiently.

Storm was an imp, Wish thought to herself and didn't know whether to be annoyed or amused at such an impish nature. Poor Elnara though, she thought, no wonder why she rarely let the twins without someone to look after them.

"And what were you doing in the workroom?" she asked, for she did not want to give Storm a chance to worm out of this.

"Learning," Storm nodded wisely. "And we wanted to try what we learned so we came here to where there's water so we could practice safely. Isn't that good of us?" He grinned brightly as if he expected to hear that it had been a very wise decision.

The boy could be... what did those humans call them? Lawyers, she thought to herself with some light amusement, though she was deadly serious about this. She knew his about as much about potions as Kara did, and knew that this was not wise at all.

"Storm, do you realize the liquid in that bottle can burn a hole in wooden log?" Wish looked at him through narrowed eyes, "What did you think would have happened if you accidentally spilled a bit of it on yourself?"

Storm's already wide eyes grew even wider, but this time it was with fear instead of innocence. "I didn't know that," he murmured, his tone filled with awe. His eyes shifted towards the bottle, and he blinked at it slowly.

Starr ventured out from behind the relative safety of Wish's leg and put her hands on her hips, glaring at Storm. "I told you we weren't supposed to be in there!" she scolded him.

"Then why did you not walk away?" Wish inquired of Starr gently.

Since it really was not fair for Storm if Starr didn't get into at least a bit of trouble for helping. She padded forward using her mouth to pick Storm up by the back of his shirt like he was a kitten. Only she was using the back of his shirt instead of the collar so it wouldn't hurt him. This way, she could put him on her back before turning around and doing the same with Starr.

Storm squealed as Wish moved him up to her back, but Starr remained still and let Wish do as she wanted. She knew they had been doing something wrong, but really she hadn't been able to argue against Storm's logic. But still, she didn't want to get her twin into too much trouble, blaming all of it on him, and so she remained silent and said nothing.

Wish did the same to Starr, also putting the girl on her back before picking up the bottle carefully between her teeth. She padded off to look for Kara, Kara was probably hidden in one of the more magical rooms where she tended to go for privacy reasons.

Up the stairs she went and down the hallway towards Kara's room.

"Uh oh," Storm muttered. He knew where they were going. He didn't want to get into trouble, and he tried to slip off Wish's back so that he could run away.

Starr grabbed the back of his turtleneck as he tried to slip away. He struggled against her grip, trying to get away.

"Let go," he grunted. "Lemme go lemme go lemme go ..."

Wish briefly put the bottle down, "Don't make me carry you in my mouth Storm and have Starr hold the bottle. Stay right where you are."

Honestly, if one was going to do something as reckless as go and read about magic without the supervision of others one might as well live up to the fact they made a mistake.

Starr's eyes grew wide, and she shook her head violently. "I don't want to carry it!" she said quickly. "Not if it's going to hurt me! I don't want holes in me!" She trembled, remembering what Wish had said earlier about the potion.

Storm paused. He didn't want Starr to be scared ... With a sigh, he settled on Wish's back, crossing his legs and folding his arms stubbornly, and pouting.

Wish gave a slight shrugging motion, she didn't think they managed to get the cork off, but if it made Starr feel like that... but at least Storm cared to stop trying to get off her back, so with that she picked up the bottle again and made it the rest of the way to Kara's room.

Kara's room was unusual in that it too had portals inside, but they were not to the school, but to an empty plane she had created for herself. The 'door' if one could call it that, was hidden in the corner, it's form blocked by the vanity table and the dresser on either side. There, was a small door with a butterfly on it, it had no handle and looked for all purpose like a drawing on the wall. One would have to crawl through to get in, it was that door that Wish nudged open and walked in, holding her wings over the twins to fit through.

On the other side was what looked to be a floating island, though there was no beginning nor end to the limitless sky, though in the distance one could see a few other floating islands here or there like black stars against the sky. This particular floating island was small, but covered in flowers where butterflies of all shapes and sizes flew from flower to flower. Floating over the plants as high as an average person were orbs that had plants growing on them, which bobbed in the air like apples in water.

The center of the island was not hard to miss, for there was a tree so large that it rivaled perhaps the tall buildings back in Gaia's cities. It was there that Wish headed towards the massive roots tha required her to climb and jump on occasion. Near the base of the tree was Kara, nestled against the trunk in a naturally formed dent in the roots.

She was reading a book, while bouncing Jin on her lap. A few meters away Donovan was shirtless on a raised root doing katas with his knives. While at the same time trying to keep an eye on Lin who was determined to try and copy him.

Storm looked around in awe as they entered this strange but wonderful world, his admiration obvious. Starr was just as impressed, but was far too nervous about the trouble she knew was going to be coming that even this beautiful place couldn't distract her.

As Wish neared her mistress Kara looked up from her book, the invisible wind tugging playfully at her tresses. Kara looked upon the trio in surprise, more so when she noticed one of her potion bottles in Wish's mouth. With once graceful leap, Wish landed on the edge of the nest beside Kara dropping the bottle gently in her lap.

Kara curiously picked up the bottle, it seemed like one of the finished works from her workshop, it looked alright. Though she made sure the cork was on tight, she didn't like using this potion for that reason, of it's potential for danger.

"Wish?" Kara waited patiently for Wish to explain herself.

"These two were in your workshop, and by the fountain trying to open that bottle. I do not know what other objects were moved in the workroom, but I do know they took the Fireeater potion out of the room."

Kara mused on this as she tucked the bottle into her clothes, where it disappeared until it was needed.

"Care to explain?" she referred to Storm and Starr.

Starr lowered her eyes ashamedly and fidgeted with her hands, too guilty to be able to look her grandmother in the face. She knew that what they had done was wrong, and she felt terrible about it.

Storm on the other hand just smiled at Kara innocently. "We were getting ed-u-cat-ed," he told her matter-of-factly, nodding seriously, still grinning. "Learning."

"I see," Kara looked thoughtful, "And you were getting educated how?" she asked him patiently.

Somehow she had a feeling this was going to be one of those moments where Storm was going to try and talk himself out of it. While she supposed a person could commend him for trying to learn by himself, the fact was he was trying to justify what he probably knew was not right.

Storm's smile widened, and he couldn't have looked more innocent if he actually had been. "Starr was reading to me from a book," he said brightly, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of his sister. "She's a good reader," he added solemnly. "She can read all the hard words."

Starr's head snapped up and she stared at her twin, aghast. "I only read it because you said I had to!" she protested with the tone of the unjustly accused. "You said I had to!"

Kara looked down her nose at him, a long considering look and did not say anything. She felt sorry for Elnara more than anything else, no wonder why this little one was so difficult to manage. He was just as bad as Donovan nearly.

"Storm," she finally spoke in considerable tones of seriousness, "When I ask you how you mean to educate yourself, I mean everything. Not simply that your sister read to you, you must tell me your part in this, you must tell me what you have done, and if I have found out you left anything else I shall consider it a lie, and say that you have lied to me, for leaving things out can be just as bad as a lie."

Storm's smile wavered momentarily, then faltered completely. He hadn't heard Grandma talk like this before, and it kind of scared him. He swallowed a lump down from his throat and said, "Well ... she read me a book. It was a old book, really old, and it was all burned ... and ... stuff ... it was a good book though, it taught us lots of things!" His smile returned and he nodded seriously.

He fidgeted again, looking uncomfortable, then burst out, "We were just gonna make shapes!"

Well, at least that answer was considerably more informative than his first answer. Still she couldn't imagine which book it was, for she had a lot of books and it had been a long while since she looked through some of them. Kara put a finger to her chin, tapping against her mouth trying to remember. The only burnt book she could think of was the one she put on the top shelf because she never used it.

"Storm, are you talking about my book on Fire Magic?"

Out of all the magic types, when it had been Yue and Yukito it hadn't been so bad, water damage she could deal with, this whoever was something completely different.

"Maybe," Storm shrugged uneasily. "I didn't see what it was called but it was all burned and old and we were reading about how to make fire like Mama does and then how to make it into shapes ... 'cept we didn't get to practice because we couldn't get the bottle open ... but it had lots of fire threads in it, and we just wanted to practice!"

He blinked up at Kara. "Practicing is good, right? Mama says practice makes perfect, and that means if we practice then we can do magic safe, right? Isn't that a good thing?"

Yes, it was that book, Kara mused thoughtfully, well that answered her question.

"Practicing is good," Kara agreed, But practicing magic should be done in the presence of an adult who also knows magic. You can't simply practice magic by yourself, Storm, yes if you practice magic it means you can do it safely, but what about before?"

She tilted her head, he was a good kid, but he didn't seem to understand how serious this was.

"What if you lost control, what if you set fire to something and burnt it, or yourselves?"

"That's why we were going to the sunroom," Storm nodded wisely. "Starr was sitting on the fountain, that way if something happened she could put water on it and put the fire out. See? We were being smart!"

He pouted. Mama never had the time to teach them, it seemed. She was always with Papa, or teaching Skye sign language, or now going around with Silvrendir. Storm didn't want to wait for her, he wanted to learn how to use his magic now.

"You forgot about yourselves though," Kara replied back dryly, "Storm let me tell you something about that book. That was my book given to me by your grandfather's father as a birthday gift when I became old enough to learn magic. When I finished learning, I put the book up on the shelf, and you know what? I never learnt how to use Fire magic, I had managed through over ten years of learning to set fire to everything but the thing I wanted to set fire to. Fire travels far Storm, you could have set fire to the floor, to the couches, to yourself and even your sister."

There was a bit of impatience to him, and she could hear that.

"Further more, I never gave you permission to use my books, nor my potions. I'm sure Wish, has already told you what that particular potion does."

Storm fidgeted uncomfortably and looked over his shoulder at Starr, who was sitting, curled up in a tiny ball, then looked back at Kara, though his gaze wouldn't meet Kara's eyes again.

"Well," he said softly, "we weren't gonna make fire ... just learn how to use it safely so Mama would let us use it ..."

But he knew Kara was right ... and it bothered him. He frowned and hugged his knees to his chest, his white eyes staring unseeingly at Lin, his thoughts on what Kara had been telling him. He was feeling a bit empty inside, and he felt another lump growing in his throat. Finally, he croaked, "I just want to learn ..."

"The most difficult thing about magic, is that you have to make it to learn how to use it, and I remember those exercises, the first requires you to make a ball of fire and then the second is to shape it into different forms."

Those parts of fire magic was easy, it was the process of setting things on fire afterwards that Kara had issues with.

"There's nothing wrong with wanting to learn, but why do you want to use fire magic of all things?"

Donovan had been ignoring the twins, he didn't think they needed anymore people getting into it than there already was. At this point, he had given up getting Lin to stop, but instead was helping her make the correct forms, nudging her body with the hilt of his knife every time she was out of place.

It was kind of a strange site since Donovan had to crouch down to watch Lin.

Storm shrugged one tiny shoulder, still watching Lin. "Because it's so pretty, and it's the only thing we don't know how to use," he told Kara quietly. Finally he dared to look up at her again, his large white eyes filled with sadness. "We made the fountain at the cafe work again, and Mama said that was a good thing, and we know how to make the wind go and stop, and we can make flowers grow, but we don't know how to use fire. But it's so pretty!"

Of course, by 'fire' he was referring to the threads that controlled the dangerous element. They were his particular favourite, both because of their colour and their form. After all, the threads for each of the elements were different. Starr's favourites were the threads for earth, for nature, for growing flowers.

"Pretty, but deadly," Kara replied back.

She had only heard a bit about what the twins could do, and knew it was linked to the elements, for that reason it interested but worried her.

"I understand your need to learn," Kara replied softly, "But you must also understand how dangerous a force both of you are working with. This is not a toy to be played with on whim just because it is pretty. Mages better than your twin uncles have died from misusing their magicks. Further more, you went into my workroom, opening books and trying to open potions that could have done you a lot of harm."

Kara paused, letting this sink in, as a grandmother, but more as a teacher, she could not let this slide.

"I will talk with your mother, my suggest to her is to send you to Yukito for an hour everyday, and to myself for another hour."

Yukito didn't deal with a wide variety of elements and she was not going to have Tsubasa teach her grandchildren, he had less patience for his students these days and she didn't want to add Storm to the list of students he was going to have issues with.

"Until then, you are to not use magic without an adult with magic present, if you do, I will have your grandfather seal your magicks until you learn to listen."

Actually she didn't know if that was possible, and she hoped she didn't have to bother Donovan to find out.

Both twins stared at their grandmother at that announcement, their eyes wide with shock. Was that possible? To take their magic away so that they couldn't use it at all anymore?

"Don't take it away!" Starr cried, putting her hands over her ears as if they were hurting her.

Storm was entirely in agreement. "No, don't take our magic away!" he begged, bursting into tears. "We just want to learn how to use it! It's not our fault!" He sniffled and rubbed his eyes.

Starr looked up at Kara, calming only slightly. "Will you really teach us?" she asked, her tone halfway between anxious and hopeful.

"Yes," Kara replied.

She had taught her children magic before, she could do it again, she was still after all a teacher first, so this venture was not something new or scary to her. She only hoped that the twins understood what they were getting themselves into.

"In return, you two must consider everything you are being taught, even if it isn't something you can use," Kara replied back seriously, "This is a study for both of you."

And it would be good for both of them to treat it as such, she thought absently.

Both twins nodded vigorously, eager to learn and glad they weren't getting into more trouble than that. "We promise!" they chorused, grinning. Storm's tears had disappeared now, and he added, "And we promise not to do any magic unless we're with you or Yukito or Mama!"

Even he knew how to behave when it mattered.

"Good," Kara smiled, at least that was more or less one problem dealt with, "So, I shall talk to your mother later on tonight."

And she hoped she could arrange for Yuki to help as well, she really hoped she wasn't cutting into more of his time.

"Which means you two are free to go," she added.

At that, the twins' faces fell. It was good that they weren't in trouble, but still ...

"Can we stay here with you for a while?" Starr asked hopefully. "It's pretty here ... we promise to be good!"

"Please?" Storm begged, eyes wide.

"Of course," Kara murmured, "I won't be leaving here for a while yet."

Besides, it was nice to have people here every once in a while she thought, as she went back to her book.