"Oh." Fiona scratched her head. "Well... I've got a talk with my aunt and uncle to look forward to about moving here. I'm not sure they'll be happy about that. I guess that counts?"

  Lin held up one hand, and a sphere of jade colored energy formed over her palm.  She said softly "You see the sphere?  It is there because I will it to be so.  My will is powerful enough that the energies around us are bent under it's force, as light, and matter, and even time can be bent by gravity.  The will can be even stronger than gravity, as you can see in my daughter.  She can command gravity itself, albeit in a localized area only right now.  The most powerful force that mankind in general knows of is the black hole.  Make your will as powerful a the pull of a black hole, that inescapable, inevitable thing which all men know is the final fate of space.  Once you have honed your will to this, you can do anything."

Fiona watched the sphere with fascination. It looked beautiful. But Lin's speech captured her attention, and by the end of it, after a moment she nodded. "I'll give it everything I've got." Curiously, she reached out to touch the sphere in Lin's hand.

  The sphere was pure energy, and it TINGLED as she touched it.  Making her FEEL the power within that sphere.

"Whoa..." The hair on Fiona's hands - as well as on her tail - stood up as she felt the energy from the sphere. It didn't hit her like an electric shock, but she could feel a strong tingling sensation. The feeling was invigorating, in a way. "You're... incredibly powerful, Miss Lin. It's an honor to be allowed to learn from you. It's like getting private lessons on physics from Stephen Hawking."

 Lin smiled, and said "Take into account, I've probably got the most magical experience of anyone still living in the world, simply because I'm that old.  You grow in power as you age.  You also grow in strength of will.  I am well over four thousand years old."

"Oh." Fiona's face fell a little. "Does that mean I won't be able to do a whole lot for the next few... decades or so?"

  Lin shook her head, and said "No.  It just means that I'm really freaking old, so I can do a lot more than you'd expect.  Have you seen what Ozzy can do?  He's only sixteen.  What you first need to do is to determine what your talents are.  Then you specialize in those magics.  Now, first, what I want you to do, is sit there and close your eyes.  Feel the mana within you, and then concentrate hard on making a tiny dot.  Just the size of the head of a pin, on your fingertip, glow."

Fiona nodded softly. After being taught how to fly as a dragon earlier, she already had some idea how to find her inner energy, but being asked to imitate E.T. still made her chuckle. She raised her index finger in a fashion like the little guy from the film, then imagined a tiny dot of light forming on that fingertip, and focused on that image as strongly as she could.

  Lin smiled as she watched the mana moving slowly to Fiona's will.

Fiona could feel it working, the warmth flowing into her fingertip, but she still wanted to see. She opened her eyes again, though she tried her best to maintain focus as she looked at her glowing finger.

  Lin smiled, and said "This is why I said you need to practice focusing your will."

Fiona quirked her head. "What do you mean? I managed to do it, didn't I?"

  Lin tilted her head.  The spark had gone out while Fiona lost her focus.  She said "This is why we have new mages practice.  A lot."

"Well... does it get easier over time? Or do you always need to be fully focused to do magic?"

Fiona concentrated once more, feeling the magical energy inside her and guiding it to make her fingertip glow; this time, however, she kept her eyes open, so she could see what was happening.

In reply to Halkor (msg # 236):

"I will fetch her then," Azrith said. "If it wasn't for her, we would be lost on this world."

The exiled prince soon went off and found Regina.

"We....we are going to find those bounty hunters we encountered. We could use your help."

In reply to Azrith (msg # 259):

Regina set down the two large bags she was carrying, and concentrated, "shimmering" in her "costume."

"Ready when you are, Azrith."

  Lin smiled, and said "It does get easier with practice."

After a moment, Fiona dropped her concentration again. "Hmm... do you think it'll be easier if I let myself slip into my... 'natural' form? So I don't have to concentrate on maintaining my form at the same time?"

  Lin nodded, and said "That might help you.  It's not like a different shape will freak me out."  She sat back, smiling at Fiona.

"Alright, here goes..." Fiona closed her eyes, sighed softly and relaxed, letting her body assume whichever shape it wanted.

Within moments, her body began shifting. She dropped to all fours and started shrinking, her wings shifting from feathered ones to leathery membranes. But something odd was going on - she groaned loudly, feeling a momentary headache coming on. But it was less than a minute until the change was complete. Where Fiona had stood, a dark blue dragon was sitting, about the size of a housecat, and resembling the western image of a dragon, unlike the ones that were common around here. But there was something very unusual about it - it had two heads, each attached to its own long, serpentine neck.

Both heads opened their eyes, and blinked simultaneously, looking rather confused.

  Lin smiled, and said "Excellent.  Now, hop up here and concentrate on making the tip of your talons glow again."

"Um, hold on..." both heads said in unison. It was quite strange, seeing everything from two independent perspectives at once. Fiona turned first one head, then the other, trying to get used to the strange sensation. "Wow, this is weird..."

  Lin didn't rush her, she had plenty of time.

It took Fiona just a few minutes before she seemed to have little trouble with the two heads anymore; she was remarkably adaptive when it came to strange new forms, it seemed. With a few flaps of her wings, she flew onto a table and sat down. Her foreheads furrowed in concentration, she tried to summon up her magical power once more, focusing it into the tips of her claws.