Tinian's west gate let Daemon out and the guard warned him rather kindly to stay out of the forest. He added that the forest was nothing to do with Tinian and no one from town was going to rescue him. 

Which was awful nice of them. Daemon wasn't sure what to make of it as he paced down the stone road to the only-just-visible path. The narrow dirt trail went into the thick woods and vanished. The trees were young and close together right here, and it made it hard to see through them.

Daemon hesitated. The giant, the little girl, the lioness, and the murderer. Famous enough on this side of town to warrant warning even a tiefling. 

Of course, Luci had paid him up front and while he was sure he could fight her for a while, she had threatened to rip his arms off, and he believed she'd take the payment back even if she didn't do anything else to him.

The path in the forest was cleared and marked by lighter dirt that he assumed was placed by the family he was approaching. He wasn't sure he was looking in the right spot, anymore. Someone that Luci wanted to hire was bound to be a nightmare of a person, and Daemon couldn't imagine anyone wanting her help raising a child. 

Daemon smelled the cottage before he got close enough to see it. It reeked of magic; fae and a very distinct scent that Daemon recognized as similar to his own, as well as a third and fourth kind that he was not familiar with at all, something cold and dull and… if 'ache' was a scent, it would have been this magic. The fourth was, he thought, spirit magic, but he couldn't be sure. Probably the Ro one, it was very well tied to the forest around him. He wondered vaguely if they were strong enough to compare to him. If any one person was the source of the smell of his own kind of magic, then they were actually stronger than him and would be a danger. He doubted only one person could hold that much power, but nothing he'd heard indicated any of them had magic aside from Ro, who was faerie. Maybe Eupa was the child's mother, and it was her and the child both producing that smell? Would that be a source of Brotz's size and strength, and he'd given it to his child?

Well. Either way. Daemon decided he wouldn't be approaching the child if he could help it. He tried to tell himself he was the sort of person that would murder someone in front of their family member, and he was deciding not to for his own safety, but he was lying and he knew that.

Daemon heard a booming bass voice carry through the trees and decided to skirt around the house. It was soon accompanied by a child's pleased chirps and a high pitched squawk that reminded Daemon of a crow. 

He didn't get far off the path, and he tried to keep the cottage in eyeshot, catching glimpses beyond the trees, so he'd be able to avoid it properly. It looked very normal for a place so condemned by the townfolk. The simple stone cottage faced the road, and there was a smaller round house behind it. Outside the round one, a laundry line hung with several dresses in two distinct styles and sizes, trousers of all length and size, a tent of a shirt and several socks. A late-autumn garden stood with pumpkin and cornstalks in a patch of sun (neat trick in a forest.). The little girl was there with the giant and standing on his shoulders while he worked.

Well. Damn. What was he going to do, knock on the door and ask if she could come out and play? Spy on the house, hope that Ro never found him, and kill Eupa in her sleep? Was she home at all? Did she really live here? Really? Could wicked murderers live in faerie cottages in sunlit groves with thriving gardens and giggling children? 

Damn. Damn. Shit. Damn. Shit. Fuck. 

Daemon made his way north to the river, and eventually curved his way back to the pounded out path. He passed a blooming peach tree (it was too late in the year for those and the wrong temperatures here). He passed a small grove of trees that had clearly been destroyed by magic. He saw normal forestry things like birds, deer, and rabbits. The faerie wasn't so bad here.

He could see why the path went to this spot. The swimming hole was perfect, a deep inlet lined with enormous stones with a row extending into the water to disrupt the flow, smoothing out the waves. The river was wide and long, and Daemon liked seeing it. He found the low roar of the water settling. 

He checked up the path to see if anyone had followed, and he took up a perch on one of the flat rocks and looked out over the water. 

Well. Spying wasn't something he couldn't do. Daemon was more of a reader, he liked finding his information like that, but it didn't seem likely that anyone had written about this one. And she was protected. And had a child in her house. He really didn't like that, he didn't have many principles but kids were off limits. Murdering even just a housemate made him uncomfortable, let alone any actual relationships they might have had. He wouldn't want to murder anyone's mother, even if Luci was trying to hire her.

Even if he was willing to try that, he hadn't even begun to consider the threat of the mysterious Ro. Daemon had never really messed with the Fae, nor the spirits, and they had never really messed with him. He was not sure whose power would be greater and he didn't want to find out the hard way. He'd heard too much already, and the fae were respected as formidable, especially in magic. 

So. Wait in town? Eupa clearly comes through the west gate. Or climbs the wall. Would anyone tell her how to find him, or that he'd been looking? If she came after him, would he be able to stand up against her and get the job done that way?

The sound was small, but close behind him, and Daemon spun to cast at the source. He almost didn't see her, as low to the ground as she was, and it saved her from being blasted. 

The little girl from the cottage clasped her hands in front of her quickly, and the huge mis-matched eyes stared up at him. She was smiling bashfully. Blushing, round features, curls, freckles, it was the epitome of Cute Human Child before him. 

Except for the purple eye. That was making him feel very uncertain of his place in the universe, as though the ground were going to slide away and leave him to fall into the sky. 

The magic smell coming off the little girl was potent. It was all hers. Gods, and she was a child, she couldn't have broken through long ago. She was a bomb and she couldn't even help it. He pitied anyone that was unfortunate enough to catch the brunt of an explosion. If she was lucky, she'd kill herself instantly instead of making a mess she lived through. 

She was barefoot and her purple dress hung to just above her ankles. Her coarse dark brown curls were braided to the back of her head where it puffed into a cloud, and aside from the eye, she looked very normal for a living bomb.

"Hello," the little girl said quietly. Her voice was a sweet singsong, and she was making disconcerting eye contact with him. He held it, but it was strange. She swayed nervously where she stood and she was staring, but a normal child's stare, rather than examining him and his appearance. He wasn't used to that. 

"Hello," he managed awkwardly. 

She unclasped her hands for a moment and bounced, and her face lit up with a brilliant smile. "My name's Brina!" she chirped sweetly, and she curled back into herself. "What's yours?"

She wasn't going to run away? Maybe she did live with the murderer. Was she bait? Did she just look like that and wasn't actually a child? She acted like a child--the nervous sway, the closed in shoulders, but that could have been faked? 

"I'm Daemon." He looked around the forest for anyone that might have been with her. If she wasn't a threat to him, she was with someone that was, he was certain. To buy himself time, he decided to go ahead and talk to her. Maybe if he was nice, she wouldn't be a threat on her own. "Do you live here?" 

At least she seemed pleased with his question. She bounced on her toes with an affirmative squeak and swung her arms. "Yep! Me and Daddy and Aunt Eupa and Ro-Ro and Uncle Peck all live at the cottage." She pointed into the forest and down the path, but then put her finger to her lips in thought. "Well. Ro-Ro doesn't live at the cottage, we live in her forest," she corrected. "Do you live in Tinian? I've never seen anyone like you before."

Daemon shook his head and tried to decide what to do. Aunt Eupa. Well. At least it wasn't her mother. Ro-Ro would be the faerie. 

He didn't want to spy anymore. He didn't want to get caught. He didn't think he could ask her to keep a secret, and he certainly didn't want her catching him murdering her household member. He was increasingly sure that she was truly a child and genuinely only here for curiosity's sake.

"I like your tail. And your skin," she said unprompted, and her sweet, confident smile fell to a nervous one. She wasn't sure she had said the right thing in addressing his skin, even with the compliment. That was. Cute. "I thought it was clothes, then I thought it was fur, but it's skin, isn't it? It's really pretty, especially the black part on your arms, all shiny like wet ink." She rocked on her heels as she continued swinging and swaying. Daemon marveled at her helplessly. He'd never met anyone like this. At best, even children found him frightening. She wasn't afraid of him. She actually liked the way he looked and said so? This was bait. Were tieflings worth more in the feywild or something?

Suddenly, the little girl stopped moving and she clasped her hands in front of her again. Her mouth maintained the hopeful smile. "Do you want me to go?"

Daemon took several moments to realize that it was his turn to talk to her, and he hadn't. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to say. 

Actually, the eye. But. 

"I am simply slow to speak," he explained after a few moments. Daemon was not sure what he wanted to do anymore, what he wanted out of this conversation, or out of this entire day. He was half-sure the girl's eye was doing it to him, but the turmoil of his given task (murder Eupa) and the complication (Eupa had a ten-ish year old niece who was being nice to him for no reason) was certainly not helping.

The little girl said, "Ohh" with a big nod of her head before she cocked it to a side curiously. "Are you like Ro-Ro?"

He didn't know Ro-Ro, but he could assume he wasn't. "What is Ro-Ro like?" he asked her. He felt his shoulders slowly relax, and he knelt and put his staff on the ground near his feet. He curled his tail so that he could rest his weight back on it, and she smiled even wider when she noticed, but her gaze returned to the staff quickly. The more he watched her for a sign that this was a trick, the more he saw that she really did just think he was more than a new sight that she enjoyed seeing, and that she wanted to get to know him. She might even have enjoyed sensing his magic, similarly to the way he liked the smell of the nature magic in the forest.

"Ro-Ro says she's distracted," Brina said with a shrug of one puffy-sleeved shoulder. "She's just weird and kind of slow to talk sometimes, and her face doesn't do much." Brina hopped on her toes again and twisted in place. The purple skirts swished as she played with them, twisting her hands and swinging her arms gently with the motion. She finally got her gaze back up to Daemon's face, and the smile grew. 

"I am not distracted," Daemon said, but that wasn't entirely true. Killing Eupa had slipped his mind entirely, now, and he kept getting lost in her eye.

Brina didn't seem to care about the answer, however. She was looking at his horns once more, and he waited to see what she was going to do when she finished.

She caught herself, and she redirected to look at his eyes, meeting them easily. "Are you a sorcerer, too? Natural mage? I don't know what they call us where you're from." 

Well, that was a surprise. He expected tiefling. Or evil. Or a devil. Something. But instead she--wait. "Can you see my magic on my horns?" he asked, touching at them thoughtlessly. 

She nodded happily and swayed again. He was learning the difference between her pleased motions and her nervous motions. "And your arms! It's really pretty, and 'cos they're shiny, it makes them look like they're. Um. Mirrors? Does your magic change like mine? You've got fire, I can see fire, but mine goes hot-cold when I have fire, and I can't see any cold. Do you get two? I get two. What's your other one?" She had folded her hands again and was twisting them nervously to her chest, and she rocked from side to side. He wasn't sure what that motion indicated, but she was being very still for someone so excited.

Oh, gods. The thoughts Daemon had about her being a bomb came back. Little and adorable she might be, but she was holding a sun's worth of energy. He was adapting to the smell but that just made him wonder if he'd ever notice it again. 

"It does change. I am only attuned to one force a day. And fire, but that's not real fire," Daemon explained. "It's infernal. I carry it around with me, I can't use it much."

She scrunched her round nose adorably. "Infernal?" She sounded it out carefully. "That's a fun word, what's it mean?"

He wasn't sure how she'd respond, but now he was curious. He kept his tones light so she wouldn't be able to guess the expected response. "From hell."

"Ooh." Brina looked clueless, despite the response clearly intended to indicate she knew what that was. He didn't elaborate, and she didn't ask anymore. He was relatively certain that she had no idea what it meant.

"Why is your eye purple?" She mentioned his arms, after all. He tried to think of a nice thing to say about it, but 'pretty' felt cheap and he couldn't think of anything else. 

She did seem to mind his asking, because she stopped moving and her hands in front of her mouth. "It's my chaos," she mumbled into the soft brown fingers. "Uncle Peck says it's important for the story." 

Daemon gave a big nod. He had no idea what that meant. 

That seemed to be okay, she started to rock again, albeit nervously, and she started swinging her arms with her posture remaining guarded. "Can you cast magic?" 

"I can," he confirmed. That was an odd way to pose the question, and it was deeply unsettling when he considered why she would ask it like that. "Can you?" 

Brina shook her head. "Not on purpose. I can kinda fling stuff when it gets in my arms, but most of it's on accident." Oh, she's a bomb that explodes, that's great. "I melted my desk in school in spring, and we had to take me out until I can learn how to stop things like that from happening." A sad look flitted across her face before a crooked smile crawled its way back up. "But I'm getting used to it! I'm learning! I've got one thing I can do with my voice where I shout really really loud! I can do that on purpose most of the time, and I don't do it on accident much anymore!"

Daemon tried not to flinch for her and he returned the awkward smile. Brina liked his teeth, too, he noticed, or at least she smiled a little wider when his were shown. Odd child. "I can do something like that," Daemon agreed. "Did you teach yourself?"

She nodded with another affirmative chirp but quickly lost her enthusiasm. "I can't get it right all the time, though," she admitted haltingly, and the smile got weaker. She slowed in her swaying, then got still.

Daemon opened his mouth to ask her if they were trying to find a way to educate her, but he was cut off by the distant bellow of the redhead. Brina gasped and spun to look through the forest. "Um!" She spun again to face Daemon, innocent eyes wide and mouth hanging open as she thought about what to say. "Hey, do you wanna come to lunch?" she asked, but she lunged to grab his hand without waiting for his answer. Daemon barely grabbed his staff before she tugged him forward. She was surprisingly strong. It was easier to just walk with her, he supposed.

"Thank you?" he managed to mumble as he let the little girl drag him off the path and eastward into the forest. 

"We have to pretend we weren't at the river, okay? I'm not s'posed to go to the river by myself." The round features peering over her shoulder implored sweetly. "Okay?"

Daemon nodded solemnly. Not gonna snitch on the child, he decided. Probably should, but that would be a horrible precedent to set with her. 

The boom came through again and Brina smiled awkwardly at Daemon. "That's my dad. He's kinda big and scary to a lot of people, but he's not gonna hurt anyone. Without a good reason."

Daemon wondered what that meant, and he was afraid to ask. 

A third bellow sounded throughout the forest. He sounded annoyed, now. Brina let go of Daemon's hand and groaned, "Oh, hang on!" She moved far enough away that Daemon wasn't sure she wasn't abandoning him for a trap, but then she turned to face what he guessed was the direction of the cottage. He watched her take a deep breath, sensed her stirring her magic, but when she shouted back, she released a perfectly normal, "'KAY!"

She blushed furiously and glanced at him before she took another deep breath. He saw her center that one pretty well, and she stirred the magic more successfully, but still only managed a perfectly normal little-girl shout.

"Put the magic in the center of your chest, not your throat," Daemon suggested, gesturing with a hand where his belly met his ribs. "And push your air with it."

Brina's face lit up, and she did a cute wiggling dance before she took another deep breath.

He was impressed with how well she took the instruction, centering it wonderfully and giving the impossibly loud, "'KAY!" that echoed like thunder and disturbed several birds. He was glad he had the chance to cover his ears before she did it.

Brina's self-satisfied smile was broad and toothless, and she skipped merrily back to his side and hugged his waist. "Thank you so much! That was so much better, thank you!" 

That was the last thing Daemon needed, dammit. He already felt himself preparing to be foolish. He knew what he was going to do, now. He wasn't sure if he should give up dealing with Luci entirely or pretend he was buying time to get close to his target or what, but he'd already decided that Brina needed help and he could offer it and he wanted to try.

Before he could recover from the hug, Brina took his hand and began to lead him back to her home once more. "What kind of armor is that?" Brina asked, completely oblivious to Daemon's dilemma. She hardly glanced back at him, and was careful to lead him around the trees and obstacles. "What kind of leather? What do you call that, anyway, the big belt-thing and the skirt-thing?"

Daemon put a hand on the broad belt over his abdomen, from which hung the strips he had hanging front and back to help protect his legs. "I don't call it anything. I just need to protect the weaker skin with what I could harvest. It's demonskin."

If she cared, she didn't show it at all. "Oh, demons, I do know about that one, that's the one that eats souls, right?"

He was surprised at this, both that she had heard of them and that she knew no details. "Among other things."

"Daddy called Aunt Eupa that one time," she explained. "That was all they told me."

Daemon was silent again and let the child drag him through the forest, arcing back to her house from a position satisfactorily east from the cottage and south from the river.

They were still on the north side of the cottage when they approached. Daemon saw the clothesline again, and the garden, and the thatched roof. There were a few pumpkins stacked into a wheelbarrow, now. He really hoped he was wrong about the murderer Europa. Brina dragged him to the path near where the girl's father was standing. 

They weren't kidding. The man was huge. His hands were huge, his head was huge, and his torso was easily four times the breadth of Daemon's. His long arms and long waist probably lent well to the throwing they said he did at the tavern. The red hair was done in cornrows, his plain wool shirt was dirty and the sleeves were rolled up.

Daemon felt foolish, but he didn't know what else to do. Brina let go of his hand and trotted up to the big fellow. Daemon stopped walking on the path near the garden. He was on the wrong side of the big man to get back to the road. He could run east, he guessed, back to Tinian and follow the wall?

Brotz stood on the path and watched Brina leading a tiefling with three different skin colors, what amounted to a leather loincloth (at least he was wearing trousers) and no shirt, with black eyes and black horns and a white tail. The befuddled expression on the man's face told Brotz that he had been trying to hold conversation with Brina and that it had gone well for her. 

"Daddy, this is Daemon, I met him in the woods! He's a mage like me!" Brina was clearly pleased with herself as well, energetic and giggling. "He even taught me to do the shouting on purpose! It worked! I got it wrong again but then he helped me and it worked!" She hopped around Brotz happily, obviously excited to have made a new friend.

Brotz glanced up at the man named Daemon, then glanced at Peck's raven, which was on the roof over the garden. It was staring, but not in a bad way. 

Daemon was unsure what to do and missed the comforting guidance of the excited child. Brotz approached and held his hand out, but Daemon wasn't sure what that gesture was. The people in the city had mostly bowed to one another.

"I'm not from here," Daemon managed. 

"Eh, me, neither," Brotz said, and his light accent indicated he was telling the truth. His voice rumbled in the tiefling's lungs. The half-dwarf dropped his enormous hand to his side only to have it snatched up by Brina, who jumped with it in tow. He let her wag his arm like that and lifted her as though she didn't weigh anything, letting her dangle by his fingers.

"Daddy, can Daemon eat lunch with us? Please? Since Ro-Ro's hunting?" she asked, swinging her feet gently. 

"I guess," Brotz agreed amicably. "Go on inside, your Aunt Eupa's at the table already. Wash up."

Daemon saw the blood drain from Brina's face, and she very stiffly dropped to the ground and shambled into the cottage. Was Eupa a threat to her? She didn't seem to mind talking about her before...

Brotz turned back to Daemon, who felt like he might be in over his head again. He was not facing this one with any intention of fighting him. 

It was quiet for a while, and Brotz finally gave something of a smirk. "You can't be all bad, the raven hasn't pecked your eyes out. I'll tell Eupa to leave you alone if I think she's posin' a threat. Come on in. Do you need me to invite you through the door?" he asked before Daemon stepped through. The consideration surprised him. 

"Brina already has," he explained, "but I thank you." He got into the doorway well enough.

"Nah, I get it. Ro's same way in certain places." Brotz smiled at Daemon kindly, but Daemon was distracted.

He wasn't even sure what it was at first. His heart just went cold, as though ice had begun to form on the bottom of it and was moving up into his lungs and throat. He was going to die. That's what that was. That feeling was his death, and it was standing right behind him, and it was staring at his throat.

Actually, she was in a chair across the room, but she was staring at his throat, and Daemon had never felt so small and weak in his life. 

"Thaaaat's Eupa," Brotz said simply, and he helped move Daemon by placing a massive hand across his back and guiding him to the chair next to Brina. "She can't knock that off--"

"Fuck you, yes I can" she snapped. Daemon found her voice to be terribly normal for someone that made him feel like his personal grim reaper was standing around and waiting for the inevitable.

"Swearing," Brotz grumped. "Be nice, he's been nice to Brina and the raven didn't try and eat him."

Raven? He'd mentioned that already, and Daemon remembered to look around the rest of the room. It almost hurt to take his eyes off Eupa, like she was going to pounce as soon as he looked away. 

How could anyone make him feel like that? Daemon was one of the strongest magic sources he'd ever heard of, he held the strongest magic others had heard of. His range was huge, his destructive capacity could hardly be matched by anything alive, dammit! I'm the flesh-crafted hellspawn of nightmares! Why does she make me feel… vulnerable?

And the more he looked, the more annoyed with it he became. Her appearance was normal! She was a little darker than the average werekin, but she was even small for a cat-kind! 

Finally, a squawk caught his attention enough that he could drag his eyes from the fiend at the lunch table. The source of the sound had a seat on the windowsill with his raven. Well. Spirit that looked like a raven if ravens were two feet tall. The ravenoid himself was gray and bald with clawed hands and eating his own fish with the bird. He made the squawking sound again, apparently a laugh, and Daemon blinked at him. The one eye in his head glowed with the light of the Death Realm. The staff propped against the wall featured leather cords that held beads, raven bones, and feathers; and it had the other eye perched atop it, held in place by a raven's claw. 

"Ha, yeah, guess you thought you'd be the one that looked weirdest, huh?" Brotz chuckled, patting Daemon with a hand that spanned his entire back and part of his arm. "Or not like humans, at least. Tinian's got me a bit more used to dragonkin, but nothing looks quite like Peck."

Peck gave a cheerful wave from his perch and smiled far too wide. It split his head and made him look unnervingly corpse-like. It didn't help that he was dead. Daemon could spot a dead construct. He'd never seen one before, but the tell-tale glow in the eye was plain.

"I. Uh. I suppose that's correct," Daemon managed. He tried not to look at Eupa as he swung his gaze back around to the fish he'd been given for lunch. Brina had placed the plate in front of him while he was looking at Eupa. Asparagus and fish with a creamy white cheese. He tried to forget that death was sitting at the table. 

"What's he doing here?" Eupa demanded. Her voice was still sharp and angry, and Daemon wished Doom didn't sound like a petulant child. It was embarrassing.

"Be nice!" Brina shouted. His concern for the child was almost enough to break the fear spell, but when he looked, Eupa seemed to be backing away from her. She was checking Brotz, and Daemon dared glance to see the redhead glaring at her in a way that would probably have worked on him, too. Brina seemed unaware of this exchange and she continued to address Eupa. "I met him in the woods! He was near Tinian and I said hello 'cos I liked his tail!"

Daemon would have blushed if he could, and he tried not to feel bad when he realized that Brotz was watching his response to that. He decided to distract himself with a bite of the asparagus. "And he's a mage," Brina insisted. Daemon wished she'd stop provoking the beast but he dared not say anything. Perhaps Brotz was keeping the child safe? Was she a guardian, honestly, of Brina? In spite of being doom itself? It was hard to think there was any good in anything that could produce that aura. "He taught me how to do the loud shout on purpose!"

That did change the mood. There was an exchange of looks between Brotz and Eupa. Daemon wasn't sure if Eupa's expression changed in a good way, but it definitely changed. Brotz's broad face had gone blank, and Daemon really hoped it meant what he thought it did. Eupa settled further into her seat like a cat, and Brotz leaned against the table. Interest. 

"She took the instruction well," Daemon supplied, testing the reaction carefully. Brotz let his arms rest on the table, apparently still interested and open to the idea, and Daemon wondered who was getting luckiest. He couldn't stand the idea of leaving Brina at the mercy of her own power like that. He couldn't think of anything else to say to convey interest, however.

Brotz put an elbow on the table. "Yeh? We've been looking for a tutor or a school, been having a hard time with it 'cos we don't know what we're doing."

Daemon was in the middle of a bite of fish (which was delicious), so he didn't get to say anything before Brina said, "S'cos I'm too strong and they think I'm gonna hurt someone."

Daemon almost flinched for her, and he gave Brotz a glance to see him frowning at his plate. "She never would on purpose," Brotz said quickly when he saw Daemon looking. "Just a couple people said it, really, maybe three, can't remember. They got to meet 'er and said it was too much for them to handle." The sour look on Brotz's face indicated that it went even worse than he was letting show, and Brina got quieter and picked at her plate.

Who would do that? "She's obviously a sweet child. But they're certainly right, she's strong enough to do some damage if she doesn't get some education. It was terribly irresponsible of all of them to refuse to teach at least some meditation." He glanced at Eupa to see if she had anything to do with it, but she wasn't there. Daemon tried to stay calm. Nothing quite like seeing the monster, and then not seeing the monster.

"Would you?" Brotz's expression had softened into something hopeful, and it was very much like Brina's when the conversation was going well for them. "Teach her some meditation?"

Daemon nodded quickly, already grumpy with his haste and unwilling to stop himself. "I will, yes. Meditating isn't much, but it's usually a good gateway for us to learn the rest, or at least to access it and make it stop."

"What?" Brina squeaked. "You'll teach me?"

Brotz patted the air in Brina's direction. "Be patient, baby girl, he only said meditation, that's that thing Ro-Ro couldn't figure out how to tell you to do."

Brina slouched back into her chair hard and crossed her arms. Apparently, meditation lessons hadn't gone well for her. "Oh, with the being quiet and not thinking." She slumped forward against the table and poked at her food with a pout. "Is that it?"

"Sort of," Daemon chuckled. "I think you will like it more if I can tell you how to use it to control your magic, but you will need to learn to do it at all first."

Brina huffed quietly and continued eating her fish.

Brotz cleared his throat and got Daemon's attention back. "If that goes well, would you think about teaching longer term? I know you didn't say anything, but it's kinda." The big man hesitated and put his other elbow on the table. "Eh. We're worried," he finally admitted, holding a massive hand out palm up. "Heard nothing but how strong she is, heard nothing but how bad it can go when the powers come in. There's a grove of trees she'll throw her magic at for fun, it's a mess. We thought it was normal, but Ro said whole trees were a bit more than usual." He shrugged his massive shoulders as if rearranging a heavy burden. "We've got money, and we can promise that nothing'll mess with you here or in Tinian if you take the job."

Daemon felt his face twitch and the thought of Eupa made his stomach twist. He didn't look at Brotz, but the bass laugh shook the table. "She won't, either, if you're on the task. You know who she is?"

"Who, Aunt Eupa?" Brina asked. "What's she not gonna do? Mess with Daemon?"

Brotz chuckled again, and the rumbling bass made the plates rattle. "Kinda, baby girl. Eat your lunch."

"I don't like asparagus," she objected, but she ate obediently. 

"You can eat this, right?" Brotz said. "Didn't ask 'cos the plate wasn't yours, we just make a spare for Ro in case she comes back."

Daemon nodded, again surprised by the consideration. The food was good, though Daemon's stomach preferred raw red meat if he let it. The lunch continued in quiet. 

After lunch, Daemon and Brina went outside to the grove of trees that Brina had indeed destroyed. They were supervised by the raven and by Peck, the ravenoid corpse with the unnerving face-splitting smile. 

Brina did take the instructions well, but it took some work because she was impatient. Brotz reminded her to breathe like Eupa taught her and she did better, though Daemon did teach her a couple more breathing forms to help.  He really only had to teach for ten minutes or so, the rest was simply nudging her as she went along. After roughly an hour of nudging, she hit a relatively centered state. 

"'Kay, so if I can find this centered thing, I can feel the magic like that? It's like a bubble in my heart." No sooner than she opened her eyes to look at him, she lost it and the shocked, hurt look on her face was pitiful. "Oh, no!" Her tears welled up immediately and she curled up on the ground and buried her head and face in her arms. "Oh, that was so good, though! I had it!"

"You did," Daemon agreed, heartened by the success. "That was excellent. Would you like to try again?"

She immediately stopped crying and sat up again. "Yeah, I can do it again."

The second time was much more difficult than the first, and it took Daemon a while to remember that she, being a child, would have very little in the way of willpower built up and these exercises were just that. She got it, but it was weaker, and he could feel her focus on it wavering until she lost her grip on it entirely.

"That was very good," Daemon reassured her, and she smiled and rocked side to side happily. 

"Are you going to come back?" Brina asked, lunging to her knees. Daemon realized that this was the end of the "lesson" and he needed to decide if he wanted to come back tomorrow, and how many tomorrows that included. 

"I think I will," Daemon said. "I am going to talk with your father about it. There are grown-up things to be discussed."

"Like money?" Brina asked curiously.

Actually, that slipped Daemon's mind for some reason. "Yes, like money," he said, and Peck squawked and flapped as he hopped ahead of them.

"No one exploded?" Brotz teased hopefully as they got closer to the garden. "I expected at least one bang."

"No. She managed to connect more thoroughly with her magic, and she will need more practice at that," Daemon explained simply. "I think that she needs a break, however, as even that much is difficult for a child."

Brotz nodded slowly, and he stood up to brush himself off. "Alright. You staying in Tinian?"

Daemon nodded. "I'm between tasks," he lied. "I was looking for more demonskin," he added, which was what he'd been doing before his sister contacted him. 

"I'll pay room and board as long as you're teaching Brina," Brotz offered. "At least tonight."

Daemon nodded and worked a smile up, as he had been trying to do for Brina. Brotz did not like Daemon's teeth. Ha. 

There was an awkward pause as Brotz and Daemon stood while Brina and Peck dashed around  in a high pitched game of tag, and finally Brotz said, "Eupa's got work, so I'm gonna 'scort you back to Tinian early, alright?"

"I was under the impression that Ro was the danger of the forest?" he asked, but he was already following Brotz to the dirt path. "The hunter? I believe that is what Brina said."

Brotz's rumbling chuckle shook the air around him and Daemon wondered if he was going to get used to that. "S'kinda all of us. Eupa's the real threat, she's the one that kills people. Most of the 'disappeared' are washed to ocean by now, I'm sure, but she's not allowed 'til Ro's warned 'em a couple times. She marks 'em. You'll see coupl'a fellas in the locals tavern I like, they've got her claw marks on their arms. S'how she does that. One scratch means they've been once, two scratches means they've been twice, and if someone with two scratches comes in, Eupa's got permission to kill 'em. Ro will, too. I don't unless I think I need to. If anyone's that foolish, they're not gonna make it long anyway, I just send them back to the forest."

Daemon frowned slightly and looked back to the cottage, and then he looked back to Brotz, and then the cottage. Brina was not close enough to hear when he whispered, "Why does she feel like that?"

"Which one, Eupa or Brina?" Brotz laughed. "Brina's her eye, Eupa's just like that." His face hardened and a grim glower took over his face. "She really will kill you, don't think that's just an aura, that's her, she'll kill you, soon as she thinks she can get away with it. That aura… We don't know what it is. She doesn't know what it is, either, and she lies and says she can do stuff with it. She says all kinds of things, I've got all kinds of theories, but none of us know."

Daemon glanced back again. "You let her watch your child?" He kept his voice cordial, but Brotz seemed to understand his concern, by the crooked smirk on his face. He looked bitterly amused.

"She loves Brina," Brotz said with a shrug. "I get it, she's terrifying, and you're just feeling the aura, you're not seeing her evil. You're right, you are. She's scum, she's bad scum, the kind that ruins almost everything it touches. But she loves Brina, and Brina can't seem to get the scum on her. And if I'm really lucky, she might even get some of Eupa's to stop being there."

Daemon didn't like the sound of that at all, and Brotz seemed to catch that, too. He was still smiling kindly at Daemon with the grim light in his eye. "I wouldn't leave 'em in the same room together for too long when I found Brina," he admitted. "Didn't believe she wasn't a threat until she demonstrated. Had just been hoping she was gonna get sick of us and wander off."

Daemon looked back at the cottage, now inspired with more questions, but he figured those could wait. He wasn't sure what to say, but he wanted to get the conversation back to Brina and maybe keeping her from exploding.

Brotz did, too, apparently. "Alright, but you gonna come back? I'll pay you directly, too, plus the room, we have money, never buy anything but alcohol and clothes and we did good with adventuring, plus Eupa and Ro bring in money and supplies."

Daemon hadn't considered that they would have any substantial money, either, and he hadn't considered payment. "That will suffice, until we work out something steadier," Daemon agreed. "I'm not sure what tutors charge."

"Depended on the tutor," Brotz said. "I expected to pay more, but education's harder to get where I'm used to. Twenty gold a day?"

Daemon could have fallen down, and he looked to Brotz with his eyes wide. "Ah, that kind of money….? Or were you expecting me to leave tomorrow…?"

Brotz laughed. It made Daemon's lungs itch. "Ha! We do have that kind of money, but I didn't expect you to last long, don't expect random strangers to drop their lives and join ours, especially wanderers and especially us. Ro can probably help you find demonskin if you're still on that hunt."

Daemon touched his fingers to his thumb and clicked his claws together, studying the reflective flesh so recently attached. "In fact, I had recently concluded that search," he admitted. "As I said, I am between tasks."

Brotz's hopeful look was very much Brina's and Daemon liked seeing it. The caution was sad, but he could understand that.

"That's good news. I'll keep you as long as you'll stay, unless Ro or Peck starts to tell me not to. Peck liked you, which is good news for you, but Ro'll need to sniff you before I get to really trust you. I like you, too, but I don't trust myself like that. Made too many bad mistakes. And Eupa's just not gonna trust you, she's an asshole like that."

Daemon had no doubt. "Can Ro smell devious intentions?" he asked. He didn't mind the idea, but he hoped not. 

"Yep!" Brotz chirped in his bass voice. "Can hear even the smallest lie, can smell even the slightest fear, can see even the invisible. It's madness, is what it is. She's real odd, but she's. Uh." Brotz suddenly closed his mouth, pressing his lips together as if uncomfortable. "Well, I was gonna say decent, but she ain't that. She's. Uh. Just don't hurt us and don't try to burn down the forest."

Daemon considered this information against what he'd heard in town, but it wasn't that inconsistent. "That sounds very. Feral. Brina did say she protected the forest." Daemon narrowly resisted the urge to mention what the townfolk had said, remembering that he wasn't supposed to have been looking for these people at all. 

"Yep. She wishes she was more feral than she was, but I think that'd just be an excuse to stop wearing clothes," he chuckled. "Said you're coming back tomorrow? Know when?"

The road was coming into view, finally. "I suppose in the morning, after I've broken fast."

Brotz's pleased expression was much like Brina's as well. "S'good to hear," he hummed. Brotz checked over his shoulder, then, and he leaned closer to whisper, "Just so you know, if you need to run from her. Without me around, she skirmishes--she'll swoop in, hit, and run away. Give her about eight seconds after she hits you, then hit… I can't tell you where she'll get at you, but if you can blow up in a circle around yourself, blow yourself up, do that. If you have to aim, go for your back left, she leans over that way for new challengers 'til she learns your habits. You won't see her, so don't bother looking."

They really had no idea he was here to kill Eupa? None? And Brotz was telling him how to escape the monster? That was kind of him. 

"She goes for blood, she targets necks, but she'll find all the veins she can and open them. Cover your neck if you can. If you can make copies, she's no good at figuring out what's not an illusion."

"I cannot create illusions," Daemon admitted. "Thank you." 

"I don't want you dead. Hope it stays that way, but I can handle you myself if I change my mind. She's just awful."

Daemon grunted softly to acknowledge the sentiment. "So she's a murderer?"

"The worst," Brotz agreed.

"And your child's guardian?"

"The best," he agreed with more cheer. 

Daemon could understand that, he supposed. Brina probably needed it. She would likely have killed any typical people long ago. Brina complained of her deafening them with that shout, but Daemon had concussed a demon with it, and Brina's was not much weaker than his, despite her youth. 

Daemon's chosen campsite had been on the wrong side of town, and Brotz lumbered along behind him unnervingly the whole time he walked through the city to get to his backpack, and then back to the west side of town. 

The tavern that had been so helpful in his search was the place Brotz chose to go, to no surprise. Daemon was fairly well-received, but he was afraid they'd tell Brotz about his previous visit.

Fortunately, it was a different barkeeper and different crowd. Daemon hadn't realized how long he was in the forest. Perhaps that was part of its danger.

Brotz paid for a week and promised he wouldn't make Daemon stay a week if he didn't want to. Daemon headed to the room with little ado and locked the door and closed the shutters and buried his head under the cheap wool-and-cotton pillow. Oh, gods. Oh, wow. That was fast. That was overwhelming and fast. What the hells did he just do?

As the winter passed, it got too cold for Brina to spend long periods of time outside, so they spent a lot of time learning to meditate and learning the roots of what was going on with the energy so that she may better learn how to guide it. 

There was motion, which was, simply enough, the energy of movement; there was corrosion, which was the acidic one that ate through things and dissolved them; temperature, which Brina said didn't sound like much, and she was surprised to discover that it meant raising temperatures of things to combustive levels, or lowering them to shatter; magnetism, which did not work on Brotz's armor because of something their blacksmith did; death, which was the consumptive one; light, which, if focused properly, could be a beam so fine that it would burn things, but could also be illusory; electricity, which Brina insisted on calling lightning; corruption, which petrified trees and soured milk and responded to venoms and toxins in the world; sound, which looked like what it was. The final one was difficult for Brina to explain. Daemon couldn't either. They agreed that they could feel reality a little stronger, but near Brina that only meant that they were more aware of the warp. 

As spring came on and they could spend more time outside, they did just that. The spell ball returned easily, though sometimes she got bored and would lose control when she was 'juggling' it… As she learned to work with it, it learned to work with her. Daemon told her often that he would not be able to directly teach her any spells like the shout again. He simply had the same ability she had, and this was determined when she told him she had it. 

He was surprised to find that he was wrong. She learned the Storm from him quite well, and how to 'fly'. It wasn't truly flight, it was simply putting the motion and energy under your feet and carrying yourself. Brina was better than Daemon at it, due in parts to her size and her grace. He could give a hop and carry himself forward, where she could give a little hop and backflip through the air nearly as far as Ro could teleport. She was faster than Eupa and Brotz like that, too.

Fortunately, she revealed herself to be capable of working with it on her own. It was actually a day off, but Brina knocked on his screen and peeked over without permission, then quickly stopped herself. "Sorry. Hey, Daemon."

"Hey, Brina," he responded with a wry smile. He pushed the screen back with his tail. "How may I help you?"

"Can you help me try something?"

Daemon did not expect this to go well, but he was not going to tell her not to try. "Outside?" he asked, as that was where the magic was allowed to happen.

She nodded and trotted out before him. "I'll leave you alone tomorrow, swear," she said quickly. "But I think I got an idea and I wanna try but I know I'm gonna get it wrong and if you--"

"You're going to have to tell me what it is," Daemon said quickly, hoping to interrupt her before she really got going.

Brina stopped walking and got small for a moment, then said all at once, "Iwannatryputtingwingson."

"I wanna try put what?" Daemon tried and he crossed his arms. "I'm not going to think anything less of you, this is an experimental phase. You should be doing a lot more messing with it on your own already." They hadn't been because Brina was too powerful and ran the risk of hurting herself, but if she wasn't being too enthusiastic, she was being too cautious.

"Wings," Brina said. "I know I can already kinda hop around, but I wanna see if I can fly for real. The magic likes that idea, it really does, I can feel it." She bounced happily, holding her hands to her chest, where she often said her magic originated. "It's all warm and… and… like…. Lumpy," she tried, and she giggled helplessly. 

"Yes, Brina. Go on to the grove."

Brina skipped halfway there, and the second half was spent meditating as she followed Daemon. He let her hold the tip of his tail to guide her while she hung back and got her focus together. He was proud of her, she was doing so well. He hoped it was something he was doing right as well. 

Daemon and Brina sat across from one another, and Brina closed her eyes and folded her legs and hummed.

"Do you want the wings on your arms at first? To see if you can do them?"

"I think so? They want to be on my back," she reported. The idea made Daemon smile. He did know that feeling, the gentle confirmation of the magic when you guessed right. 

"But I think on my shoulders might count, I'll put them on the back of my arms," she decided, and Daemon saw the beginnings of its manifestation floating at her hands. 

She opened her eyes and looked at the misty, bubbling cloud around her fingers with a frown. "No, no, no, you go back here," she said, and she placed the clustered bubbles of absence on the back of her arm. She continued 'smearing' it, spreading it out as though it were solid, and she eventually started poking dots into it and drawing stripes. Daemon watched silently, not sure what she was doing but deeply interested. He'd never seen anything like it. He hadn't had much exposure, but that was still fascinating.

He was almost annoyed with himself for this, and he was annoyed at the necessity. "Magic is not a toy."

Brina blushed as she lowered her head and looked up at him from the corners of her eyes. "Sorry." Daemon was relatively certain that she knew how pitiful she looked when she did that, but he was not sure she did it on purpose. 

"As interesting and fun as that looked--because I would have done the same at your age--we must remember not to be careless with our power," he continued. She did recover smoothly after his admission, and she continued 'painting' the wings into place on her arms, calling more of the strange bubbles into her hands. It was corrosion and the one that Daemon called 'void', for lack of a better word. Little warps in reality, mostly small scale, that allowed for teleportation and translocation. 

The wings came into shape effectively. Brina eventually asked Daemon for help at her shoulders, but he couldn't touch it, not even with her help. He could guide her hands at best, and he did, placing her fingers along in a smooth line along her shoulder blade to help keep it even. 

"Do you think you can move them?" he asked her as she stood up. She was now 'wearing' what amounted to a pair of bird wings as drawn by an eight year old onto an eight-year-old body over her arms. It was very clumsy, but it didn't have to look good to work, it wasn't as though they were trying to obey the demands of aerodynamics.

Daemon hoped.

She moved her arm, first, and then nothing, and then her arm again. She finally picked up her right arm to look at it, and she watched the wingtip lift slowly from her arm at the elbow and straighten out to match her upper arm. "Hey!" she squeaked. She looked to her other arm and did the same in even better time, then she closed her eyes and lowered her arms, leaving her wings spread out off her shoulders. Now she looked like a faerie with child-drawn bird wings that stuck straight off her back. Perhaps feathered dragonfly wings, Daemon thought distantly. The shape was slowly changing, he realized as he looked closer. They were becoming more Brina's idea of them, rather than what she had clumsily painted, and were being more and less winglike. The structure became stronger, Daemon could see the arc of the wing along its top, and the 'feathers' became less substantial, more streaks of the green and ripples that floated and swam in the air in a flat plane.

Not for the first time, Daemon wondered if he'd gotten himself in over his head. That was too much. 

Brina's wings crawled along her back, down her sides and over her shoulders over her chest, creating what Daemon imagined was a substitute musculature and skeleton to pull on in the absence of one on the girl's physical shape. Brina still had her eyes closed, and if Daemon had to guess, she was merely telling it what effect she wanted, and letting it determine how best to give it to her. Dangerous tactic, but that would be why he was here to help. As long as it didn't end up impaling her or something… Maybe crushing, but she was strong, and he doubted she'd be able to accidentally crush herself by trying to flap her wings too hard.

He hoped.

I do not like this frequent uncertainty.

Fortunately, he didn't have to stay worried. The magic did not stay that shape. Daemon watched as Brina formed a skeleton around herself between the wings over her shoulders. The wings shrank to roughly half her arms' length and grew much taller, more like a butterfly's in single segments. That continued to grow until she had a belt as well as a shoulder-harness of magic. It seemed to settle with that harness, but a wider wingspan with narrower wings. 

Finally, she opened her eyes and tried to look at it. "Oh, okay," she said brightly. "It kept trying to argue with me," she told Daemon. "I said I didn't want it to be all over and it wanted to be all over and it says it wants to be a shield, too, but I want wings right now. So we need to work on a shield later, okay?"

Daemon made the mental note and gave her an affirmative. There would be nothing but encouragement in this development, if he could help it. He couldn't call his into solid shapes, and if she could, that could only be tested the hard way.

"Okay," she said brightly, and she turned away from him and continued her work with flexing and stretching the wings as they'd shaped on her. They grew a little, the features substantiated at the arc, the arc stretched and narrowed and solidified as she flapped the wings experimentally.

"Do you think you need to flap them like that, or are they meant to be manifestations of the power you're using?" he asked her. (They had to spend an entire day talking about what a manifestation was and what it meant when he said it about the magic.)

"I don't know? I feel the wind on them," she said. She gave a hop into the air, pushing under her feet to give herself a boost, and she accidentally put herself into the air well over Daemon's head. 

The wings helped her glide forward, rather than fall down, but they carried her into a tree, where she grabbed hold and clung around the trunk with her arms and legs and whimpered. "Oh, okay," she whimpered. "Okay." Daemon saw her put her head on the tree trunk, resting her nose and brow on the bark. "Daemon, can you catch me?"

"You're too heavy for me," he had to remind her. He could, but she was used to 'catching her' being the kind that her other family members could do, and she was likely to hurt him if she went plowing into him with the solid sixty pounds of Brina.

"Okay. So. Okay."

"Can you turn? Lean to turn like when you're doing the little flying trick?" he asked her. 

Brina blinked down at him and looked at the grove, found a good path for the attempt. "I can try," she said softly, and she let go of the tree to let herself down. 

Her legs swung a bit too much for good control, but she didn't have far to go anymore. She tried to get her legs to go, but she didn't have a good spot on her frame to get a good leverage point. She finally led with her arms and shoulders. She barely figured that out before she hit the ground, and she huffed with irritation and started trying to find another tree to try that from.

"Brina, slow down," Daemon called at her. He knew what she was doing. "Did you get hurt?"

"I'm fine," she objected, and she gave up finding a tree and instead went to find a better open spot with a path she could try to circle. 

"Do you think they'll be mad at you or me if you hurt yourself on my day off?" he asked her idly. If she was going to be determined to hurt herself, she might as well know what she was in for.

It worked. She did hesitate for a moment. "Me," she decided. "I probably should'a seen if Ro-Ro was going to help."

"She said that she was no good at helping you with your magic, and that the best she could ever do was give you a safe place to practice. So how about we pretend she's here and we find you a safe place to practice, and then we can go on being by ourselves again?"

Brina huffed irritably and stomped a foot, and she didn't look at Daemon as she stormed past him. The wings stung when they hit him, but only a little, and it left a charred singed spot on the black skin of his arm. "Ow," he reported. "Those hurt."

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she cried, spinning to look. "I didn't mean to, I didn't know!"

"I don't blame you, I just thought it best you know before you damaged something that didn't heal." He brushed off his arm and she watched to make sure that she didn't hit him with it again when she turned back around, but that just led her to take a small chunk out of a tree as she brushed too close to it instead.

Of course, things weren't always so successful. In fact, one was such a success it was a complete failure. 

That was also summer. The trees were fruiting and green, the forest was alive with chatter and chirping, and Brina's ninth birthday (or at least the day they had chosen to celebrate her birth, rather than her 'finding', which was not the same thing) would be on the next new moon. 

Brina had proven to be something of a prodigy, but she could not manage her magic. Between the sheer potency and quantity, she simply couldn't stop it. It was almost as though it had a life of its own, and that life was utterly unreasonable. Daemon suspected it was the eye, and what Peck referred to as "chaos", but he was not certain and Brina didn't know. She had learned some degree of 'communication' with it, but it was fickle and inconsistent. 

Daemon had never been so grateful that his magic had started so tame. His magic was so tame (and in fact, stubbornly refused to be channeled properly until the graft), he had learned a good way to get control of it, and he was hoping the success would extend to Brina. It was one of the only things he could use to drag it out of hiding when he was a child himself, and one of the first things he did after the red graft healed. The second event had caused quite a mess, and so the lesson was taking place in a grove that Ro had helped him pick out. He was relatively certain that she was keeping watch over them somehow, but he wasn't sure how her senses here worked. She wasn't nearby, which was good, because this could be dangerous.

The path to the declared practice ground was marked with flowers that Ro had bloom for him, little bursts of pink and purple emerging from the dead leaves on the forest floor. Daemon had gotten used to the smell of this forest, and he rather enjoyed the cool, dry scent surrounding him in the warm woods. Ro had been careful to pick out an easy and scenic path for them, which was considerate of her. 

"Where are we going?" Brina finally asked, trotting up to walk alongside him and nudging his arm. He caught her looking at his arm for a few moments, and she blushed with her sweet toothless smile. Daemon's magics were void and lightning, today, and she had frequently said she liked lightning, as it crawled on his arms and between his horns. "This isn't to the practice grove," she explained sheepishly. 

"It is not," Daemon agreed. She knew that a while back, but probably expected to be there by now. "We are getting far enough away from anything I think you can break."

A slow grin crawled onto Brina's round face. "Break?" she asked slowly. She sounded too excited at the prospect. She was not often allowed to 'let loose' due to risk of breaking things, so being allowed to take the chance pleased her.

"Break," he confirmed. "I nearly blew myself up the first time I used it after the graft. It helped me get a firm hold on my magic, allowed me to control it. I hope it will do the same for you."

Brina giggled and bounced merrily. "Oooh, I hope so!" She stopped suddenly and put her hand on his arm. He gave her a curious look in response. "Do I need to meditate?"

"For at least an hour," Daemon replied with a firm nod. 

She slouched heavily into her shoulders and stomped a few steps away. "Damn."

"I'll tell your father if you cuss at me again," Daemon reminded her. She had developed the habit and Daemon was not going to have it. If she wanted to swear during her free time or family time or with Eupa, that was on her family, but lessons were lessons, and he wanted to take this seriously.

"I didn't!" she objected, but he thumped the ground with his tail to end the objection. Her family wasn't strict enough with her concerning authority, either. Her efforts to be a good person were good enough, as far as they were concerned. He was not going to argue about the rules. 

"Oh-kay." Brina continued pouting and eased a few steps back. The attitude… It was all he could do not to grumble. "Can I start now?" And that was why it was worth allowing the attitude. Daemon offered his tail for her to take and hold while he led her the rest of the way so that she could meditate.

The grove was just that--a ring of cleared ground, surrounded by high trees. This part of the forest was fairly young, but the stone under their feet had prevented any trees from taking root. The oak and elm and pine surrounding them were varying degrees of grown, the youngest no taller than Brina and the eldest were bigger around than Brotz and stretched to the sky. A swath had been cleared at some point and the younger trees grew in a line to fill the gap. The sunlight filtered through the shade, and Daemon picked a good spot to stay out of it. The stone was cold in spite of the summer sun on it, and he smelled some magic in it. Brina seemed to notice, too, because she crinkled her brow.

"This is it?" she asked Daemon before they stopped. "The ground feels funny. I'm gonna stay on the dirt." She let go of his tail and checked to see if he was going to agree. He gave her the nod, and she picked a spot in the sunlight to curl into a ball and hug her knees. She claimed to meditate better that way. 

Daemon read to pass the time. He was waiting for Brina's magic to 'swell' like it did when she attuned herself. Sometimes she could manage it quickly, but more often than not, it took at least thirty minutes. She wasn't bad at it, but her magic was uncooperative, as she frequently complained. It did take about twenty more minutes, but the smell was strong enough to pull Daemon from the book. "Don't stop," he commanded, first. "Now, rather than bringing the magic out, you go in. Make your Self as small as you can and burrow."

The air around Brina began to ripple and swim, giving the trees odd waves and warping his sight. Daemon had to stretch his neck to make sure it was around her and not himself, and make sure it was only visual. He'd never seen that happen before and he was concerned that she might truly warp reality if they weren't careful. 

But it was just a visual effect. The real effects had begun on Brina, however. Her hair was beginning to float, and he could see her leaving the ground as well. A small strand of her hair had begun to turn purple close to the top of her head. "It's like I'm swimming," Brina said in a voice that echoed into depths unknown before they got to her mouth. "It's beautiful." She sounded possessed and far away, as though she were calling through the other end of a canyon that stretched a galaxy away. "It's so much. The stars. The lights. It's beautiful." 

He didn't want to interrupt, yet, but the ripples were getting stronger, and lightning was beginning to crackle around her. This was probably not a good idea after all. A burned smell wafted off her and the wind picked up, swirling around both of them. It wasn't too much, yet, but Daemon was far too aware of the risk he'd taken, now.

"It's like the sky… and the ocean..." she breathed. "Like looking up from the bottom of the sea into the sky at darkest night. And swirling, and moving. I wish you could see it…"

"I think you've done enough swimming," Daemon said softly, and he stood to put himself level with Brina where she floated. "If you've properly gotten yourself 'in', you should be able to come out of meditation and carry that state with you."

Brina opened her eyes and Daemon was hit hard with a shockwave that pushed out and rippled the ground around them, reeking of her magic. She grinned toothily at him. The purple eye glittered, a turbulent ocean surface backed with twinkling stars of all colors. Her hair floated like a cloud behind her and the round cheeks were flushed. "Can you touch down?" 
 
Brina let her legs fall, but she didn't touch the ground. Instead, floated straight up into a graceful arcing backflip.  "I don't want to," she said in a soft singsong. She circled two laps like that over his head, gliding gracefully with her arms held to her sides. "I want to see what I can do."

Another pulse of magic changed the world around Daemon. Brina was gone and the trees were different and the stone circle wasn't there anymore. Brina was gone--and he was--She relocated him. She forcibly teleported him without touching him? Did she teleport? How far did she go? How far did she move him? The flowers were nowhere to be seen, and neither was Brina.

The sound of warping steel and ripping fabric screamed through the forest and sent a chill into Daemon's lungs, and turning to look at the fist-sized hole in reality only made it worse. An empty void that was now attempting to fill itself with the ground and trees around it, sucking in leaves, dirt, and stones.

Where was she?

A haunting giggle echoed through the trees, and Daemon spun to narrow down the source. He couldn't see anything! "Brina!" he called sharply. "Get back here!" Maybe that would work…? Daemon's heartbeat rose into his throat. He couldn't defend himself against Brina, and he didn't want to attack her, even to just pin her down until the immersion wore off. He didn't have any spells that could grab, and he wondered now if he shouldn't have brought Brotz along.

"Brina!" he barked again. "Get back here!"

The giggles resounded again, the sound bouncing through the trees as though from multiple sources. As he the giggles continued, they coalesced into a single sound from a single source. Daemon spun in place to discover the child floating right in front of him, nose nearly touching his, little brown befreckled face lit with a smile that looked far too like Eupa's. The floating hair and dress swam in the air much as she was.

Daemon held his ground and kept his voice firm. "You need to ground yourself." 

Brina shot into the air with another shockwave, and Daemon felt a magnificent pulse of magic from the air above the trees. He moved to watch as the pulses became solid rings that orbited around her, sorting themselves by color. The rings spun like hoops over her, seemingly random, all different sizes. She seemed to be enjoying the pulses, sending them out from her core. The trees swayed, and Daemon saw more than a couple of the stricken ones take the damage and begin to rot from the ground up.

"Magic is not a toy, Brina!" Daemon barked. He hoped the familiarity and reason would help, but he had apparently just lit the fuse of the bomb he often considered her to be. Gods, this was a terrible mistake. He could hope it wouldn't kill either of them but that was about it.

"I don't care, you can't stop me this time!" she giggled. "It won't hurt me this time, either!"

"That's not true, you can still hurt yourself!" Daemon shouted, but then he was somewhere else again and he couldn't see her. It was very strange to him to teleport--it wasn't something he could normally do, and he didn't like it. "Brina, get down and let the immersion go!"

Gods, where did she go? Daemon searched the green canopy overhead, hardly remembering to watch where he was going as he stalked around the woods to find her. 

"No!" she giggled again, and he could hear her descending. The magical rings she'd created around herself had taken to looping unevenly in a pattern, but never a single pattern for long. They were roaring to Daemon's ears, and the smell was overwhelming, burned water and acrid sky hitting him in waves.

She had descended below the canopy and Daemon spotted her floating well above him, arms wide and legs relaxed, but she couldn't see him, yet. He wasn't sure what she'd do when she did.

The rending sound of a tree being ripped up at the root cracked the forest air, and Daemon spun to watch as Brina's hole to nothing started folding the tree like a piece of paper and stretching it thin enough to drag in.

Lightning struck six times in rapid succession so close that Daemon could feel the power in the ground, stinging as it shot up his legs, and the light was blinding. He heard trees burst into splinters and felt the flying mud flecks strike his face. The thunder shook the trees and made the tiefling's lungs tremble.

"Brina!" Daemon tried again. "I'm going to get Ro!"

"She can't stop me either," Brina giggled, but no sooner than she found him and started flying at him, she disappeared.

And then she reappeared on the ground behind him. The hole in reality snapped shut, and Daemon spun to see Brina lying still and unmoving, but breathing. 

She still had all her fingers, but her shoes hid her toes. She was sweating and breathing heavily, as though she'd been working (she had) and she was beginning to stir. Daemon breathed the weight off his chest and knelt at her side to continue his looking over her. 

Ro appeared next to them and scooped Brina into her arms, cradling her over the strong legs. She blew into Brina's face and rubbed her back. "Hey, hey, dearheart, can you hear me?"

Daemon looked around while Brina stirred back to real life. The damage to the forest was… not as bad as it could have been, but Brina had ruined the whole grove. Several trees had been burned or had their life sapped, many of them were blasted into pieces by the lightning, dissolved into mess. The tree being pulled into the reality hole was conically shaped and stretched twice as long as it had been. The hole had cut it off when it closed, leaving it folded into itself on the ground.

"Ro-Ro?" Brina mumbled. No hint of the previous madness remained. Only sweet little Brina, exhausted after using too much magic. "What happened?"

"We all learned a valuable lesson about Brina getting to swim in her magic," Daemon muttered to himself. 

Ro kissed the girl's head and said, "We'll tell you when you're older." Ro glanced up at him and smiled toothily. He managed a toothless wince in return. "Didn't go like you hoped, huh?"

"Indeed, it did not," Daemon agreed, struggling to keep the bitterness from his voice. "How much do you remember, Brina?"

Brina's huge mismatched eyes peered at him and the purple one still glittered with the stars of the infinite void. It took Daemon several long moments to look back to the brown one. "Nothing, huh?" Ro supplied for her. Brina blinked at her, too, and stared. Ro stood carefully and held Brina to her chest as though she were a toddler. She was obviously tired and out of herself, so the question went unanswered.

"We can write that one down for her to find later," Ro said simply, and she cradled her not-niece. "She needs a nap for now."

"Yeah," Brina mumbled, and she peeked at Daemon over Ro's shoulder. "I'm sorry. I wanted to learn."

"You did learn, and it did not go well for you," Daemon chuckled. They were just walking past the original grove now, and Daemon was surprised to see his book still on the ground where it had been. Of course, upon further inspection, he found that the pages were now blank in varying colors. Dammit. Maybe that would wear off.

"Okay," she mumbled, and Brina curled into Ro's chest and closed her eyes. Ro glanced over her powerful shoulder at Daemon and smirked slyly. 

"They said this might happen. I decided I wanted to see," she explained. "Thank you for your efforts."

He was never sure if she was being sincere when she said it. Daemon grunted at her in response.

The wings were something they did decide to pursue. The shield, too, which was much akin to the knife she could make on her hand. The wings would use the magic attunements of the day in their shaping, and Brina got good at 'putting them on' so to speak. She could hover with them, and fly for short distances. She even learned error correction with the gliding spell she and Daemon shared. And it was good that they got the practice, because a few weeks later, Brina needed it.

Daemon had taken the day off to enjoy the summer weather and the shade. The sounds of summer were pleasant as well--Brotz's idle humming from the garden and Ro's cleaning of hides and Eupa's scrubbing laundry and Peck and Brina squealing and screaming as they played an absurd game of tag. Daemon could hardly stand to watch them as Brina had gotten quite good at tumbling and would therefore use any excuse or opportunity to add a cartwheel, somersault, or headfirst leap into anything. She had not yet managed to really hurt herself, or even do much worse than roll on the landing (Daemon had been there to see an entire day of 'falling lessons' from Eupa), but he still had a hard time watching her do the more dangerous parts.

It was almost funny, watching all four of the adults responding to the emergency "HELP!" scream from Peck's raven. Eupa leapt from the laundry room window and Ro appeared on the other side of the garden and vanished again within a moment. Brotz was faster than Daemon, but Daemon could glide over things Brotz couldn't.

Daemon caught up to see Ro and Eupa both looking into an enormous tree. "Oh, for fuck's sake, Ro, why is that here?!" Eupa demanded.

A living plant of some kind had Brina by the wrist, dangling from a treebranch. It was having difficulty hauling her up and holding itself up at the same time, but its answer was to twist Brina in place while it got a better grip on her arm.

"Brina, what have I told you about climbing trees!" sighed Ro.

"Wait a moment," Daemon said as Ro lifted her spear. She stepped back and let Daemon come forward. 

"Daemon!" Brina squealed. "Come on, it's got me!"

"And if it drops you like that, you'll fall pretty hard. I have no doubt one of them can catch you, but don't you think it'd be smarter to use your wings?"

Brina moaned, and her wiggling made the plant slow in its attempt to haul her up. "Why do you have to make everything a lesson?" she demanded, but he saw her closing her eyes and beginning to concentrate.

Daemon felt every pair of eyes on him, including the raven. He could only hope that Brina came through on this, because if she got hurt, they were all going to take turns making him wish he was dead.

It started at her shoulder in two solid balls and stretched out, then spilled down into the 'feathers', from a plain white arc 'bone' to the orange translucent ends. The plant, in a burst of energy, reached with another tendril to get hold of Brina's head, and there was a blinding flash and boom as Brina's magic lashed back at it.

The plant released her all at once and fell to the ground, dropping Brina. Brina released a short scream, but she only fell about half the distance before she managed to stop herself entirely and hover.

"Well done," Daemon cheered, and he felt the collective relief from everyone around him. "Can you come down?" 

She had no trouble aligning her shoulders and then tilting forward to move, doing a smooth, even spiral the remaining twenty feet to the ground. She flew into Brotz, who threw his arms around her when he caught her. He didn't seem to mind the damage the wing did to his sleeve. Daemon noticed with some envy that it didn't seem to hurt his skin at all. 

"Daddy, did you see me?! I can do the wings, I said it, and you got to see them, did you like them?!" she shrieked excitedly. The aftermath of the fear fading. Daemon tried to find somewhere to run before she remembered he was there.

"Daemon!" Damn. Brina plowed into him with the force of an excited and sturdy eight-year-old and made him stumble. "Thank you so much, thank you! I did it!"

"You did," Daemon agreed, but when he looked to Brotz, he saw the same smile he felt on his own face--badly disguised dread. Daemon had gotten somewhat used to the feeling, but it was still pleasantly reassuring to see Brotz still had the same one, even after all his years with Brina.

The celebrations ended abruptly when Eupa's voice barked, "BRINA!" She had gone to investigate the living plant, and now she was apparently done, and was stomping closer. 

Brina ducked as if she'd been struck, and Daemon narrowly resisted the urge to get between his student and her murderous guardian. He knew she wouldn't hurt Brina, not in front of Brotz for certain, but the threat she exuded just couldn't be reconciled.

"Sorry, Aunt Eupa," Brina said softly. It stopped the rage on her face for a moment, and Eupa threw her head back with a groan. "Sorry," she said again, but that just led to Eupa putting her brow to her palm. 

"Kid, stop that, you don't even know why I'm mad!" she cried. 

"'Cos I was climbing the tree and wasn't careful," Brina mumbled. 

Eupa badly fought the smile. "No. Well. Yes. But that's not why I'm going to yell at you. Do you know why I'm going to yell at you?"

Brina shook her head, and tears welled into the shining eyes.

Eupa pointed at the monster on the ground well behind them. "You killed it yourself!" she barked. "You didn't even attack it, you just used the magic in its general direction and it fucking died!"

Brina was silent, obviously not understanding the problem. Daemon checked to see if Brotz was going to stop Eupa from cussing at Brina, but he was silent and still. He was still a pale yellow color as the blood had drained from his normally bronze face.

Eupa's voice rose to a volume that almost matched Brotz. "Why the fuck were you hanging in its fucking tentacle if you could just kill it like that?! Why is Peck screaming for help when you're made of magic, you little shit?!"

"I forgot!" Brina squealed, but that just led into a lashing, stomping, flapping fit that made Daemon want to duck away and become a smaller target. 

"NO!" Eupa snapped, ending the tantrum with an extended finger at Brina. "No, no, no, no! You're not allowed to forget! You're not allowed! You are not allowed to spend every day learning to stop blowing shit up just to forget how to blow shit up! Especially when you actually need to blow some shit up! You're not allowed to waste Daemon's time like that! You're not allowed to waste your own power like that! You could've gotten your ass killed because you--" 

"Eupa, ease up," Brotz commanded, and she did, dropping her arms to her sides and rolling her head back. She visibly tried to calm herself down, blowing several breaths through pursed lips before she managed to get the count right. 

"'Kay, sorry, shit. Actually. No, no, I'm not sorry, what the hells! You can't just--you're-- Ugh. That's when you need the magic! You can't panic and forget!" Eupa cried.

"I think you scared your Aunt Eupa," Daemon said softly. "I think that's why you should be sorry."

Daemon had never regretted speaking more in his life. The yellow gleam of death narrowed onto his face and she drew a knife when she pointed at him. For some reason, the loud bellow was better than the quiet rage she put into her voice for him. "Excuse the fuck out of you, you don't get to tell her what to be sorry for until I say so," she snapped. "You're the one fuckin' up here, you're the teacher. Teach. She's forgetting her lessons in a panic, then you're not putting them in hard enough. We're feeding you, dammit, don't stop at 'got it right', you should be putting this shit so far into her head that she not only can't forget, but the accidents are because she forgot not to use the shit."

Daemon nodded obediently and tried to keep himself from showing anything besides the normal terror she induced. 

The skinny woman redirected back to Brina, put the knife away in a fluid motion that Daemon barely saw, and held her hands out. "Come here." 

Brina did approach Eupa slowly, and Eupa hugged her shoulders and kissed her head. "He was right, you did scare me. But I'm right, too. You need to know this stuff so good you can't forget. You need to practice doing it so much that you can't even get it wrong on purpose. You need to practice this stuff so much that you can do it in your sleep, so that you can do it upside down and backwards."

"I can do some of them backwards," Brina objected, but Eupa chuckled and kissed her head. 

"I know. That's not what I mean. You know what I mean. And if you don't, you'll figure it out or I'm going to eat Daemon's ears for not teaching you right."

Daemon refused to touch his ears, but he wanted to.

"I like those wings," Brotz said softly as Eupa released Brina. Brina ran to Brotz and hugged his legs, and he picked her up to hug her to his chest. Eupa stomped off with no ado.

"Why's she so mean?" Brina whimpered, and she sobbed into Brotz's chest. "Aunt Eupa's an asshole!"

Brotz and Daemon both laughed, and Peck squawked around their waists and Daemon had to shuffle out of the ravenoid's way as he tried to flap up to Brotz's shoulder and check on Brina.

"She's a correct asshole," Brotz said gently. "You gotta get so good you can't forget. The whole point of you learning to use it is to keep you safe. If you don't do that right, we're gonna have to change lessons and stuff. Probably make them harder. Bet Aunt Eupa would love to make you an obstacle course that made you do flips and shoot stuff with magic. She and Daemon might get together and do that to you when you're older."

Daemon watched Brina's eyes go wide with mock fear, and he laughed to himself, more than certain that whatever education he had for her, her guardians would indeed want to do exactly that. All of them brought up the difficulties "Chosen One" stories had in them, and Brina was not going to be the exception.