Elsie woke before the fifth bell most mornings now, dressing in the dark and slipping out of West Hall while the rest of the dormitory still slept, and made her way to a quiet, unused stretch of the training grounds where nobody else had any particular reason to be at this hour. She had not told anyone she'd started this. Not Arthur. Not even Yseult, who noticed most things. It was easier, somehow, to fail privately.
She stood in the empty yard as the sky lightened by careful degrees from black to deep grey to something approaching morning, and raised both hands, and called the wind the way she'd been calling it since she was four years old, the familiar, effortless gathering of it around her palms, and sent it curling outward in the same simple spiral she'd been able to manage since childhood. It was not enough. It had not been enough for weeks now, and the knowing of that sat heavier in her chest each morning than the last.
She thought of Yseult's easy, flawless mastery of Alchemy, complex theory rendered simple by pure natural aptitude. She thought of Arthur, whatever strange and formless thing lived inside him, capable of turning aside a killing bolt of lightning with nothing but instinct and six years of sword forms behind it. She thought of her own wind, competent and pleasant and, for the whole of her life so far, entirely, comfortably ordinary. She was tired of ordinary.
ELS: Again.
She said it to no one, the particular quiet command she'd taken to giving herself these past weeks, and called the wind again, harder this time, forcing more of herself into the shape of it, and felt the familiar strain arrive too quickly, the effort outpacing the result the way it always did lately, the wind obeying but refusing to become anything larger than what she'd always been able to produce. She lowered her hands, breathing hard, frustration climbing hot behind her ribs.
ELS: Again.
Rowan found her an hour later, on his way to his own early combat session, and stopped at the edge of the yard, watching her for a moment before announcing himself.
RWN: You've been out here every morning this week.
Elsie startled, lowering her hands quickly, the particular guilty flinch of someone caught at something private.
ELS: How long have you known?
RWN: A while. I wasn't going to say anything. I figured you'd tell me when you were ready.
He crossed the yard toward her, tall and easy in his upperclassman robes, and Elsie, looking at him, felt the old familiar mixture of comfort and quiet inadequacy that had followed their relationship since childhood, her brother who had never once had to struggle for anything his ability offered him.
ELS: I'm not getting anywhere.
RWN: With what?
ELS: Growing. Getting stronger. I do the same spiral I've always done, and it works, and it's fine, and it's not enough.
RWN: Enough for what?
ELS: I don't know. Enough to matter. Enough to be more than the person who's simply good enough to keep up.
Rowan considered this, his usual easy confidence dimming slightly into something more thoughtful, and settled onto the low stone wall at the yard's edge, watching her with real attention.
RWN: You know I didn't earn mine. My ability, I mean. It arrived when I was barely old enough to walk, and it's simply been getting stronger the way a tree gets taller, without any particular effort on my part beyond existing and getting older.
ELS: I know.
RWN: I say that because I think you've spent your whole life measuring yourself against something that was never a fair comparison to begin with. I didn't work harder than you. I was simply given more, earlier, and it's compounded ever since. That's not skill. That's luck, mostly, dressed up to look like something else.
ELS: That doesn't make it feel any less like I'm behind.
RWN: I know it doesn't. I'm not telling you the feeling's wrong. I'm telling you the comparison is.
He stood, brushing off his robes, glancing toward the sun climbing properly now over the eastern wall.
RWN: I have to get to my own session. But Elsie. Whatever you're chasing out here, alone, before anyone else is awake to see you fail at it. I hope you find it. I mean that. You've always had more patience than I ever did. Patience builds things luck can't.
He left without further ceremony, the particular easy, unhurried exit of someone who had said what he meant to say and trusted it to settle on its own time, and Elsie stood alone in the yard again, turning his words over slowly, patience builds things luck can't, and found, somewhere in the turning, a small, stubborn ember of resolve that hadn't been there a moment before. She did not call the wind outward again.
Instead, she stood very still, and turned her attention inward, toward the particular quality of the wind itself rather than its shape, the way it moved through her, the specific texture of the essence she'd been bending outward her whole life without ever once considering what it might do if she asked it to move differently. She thought of Yseult's duel weeks before, the careful precision beneath the flashier displays, technique refined until it looked effortless. She thought of her own wind, always sent outward, always projected, always aimed at something beyond herself.
What, she wondered, standing alone in the brightening yard, would it do if she asked it to stay closer instead? If she asked it to wrap around something, rather than strike outward at it? She raised her hands slowly, and called the wind, and instead of sending it out in its familiar spiral, she drew it inward, close around her own arms, feeling for the shape of it differently than she ever had before, testing whether it could hold rather than simply move.
It resisted at first, the particular stubborn refusal of habit reasserting itself against a new demand, and she pushed through the resistance with the same patient, quiet stubbornness that had carried her through every difficult thing in her life so far, adjusting, failing, adjusting again. Something small and unfamiliar finally gave way.
The wind settled around her forearms in a tight, controlled current, holding there instead of dispersing, and Elsie stood very still, staring at her own arms in genuine astonishment, the particular disbelieving joy of discovering, after weeks of frustrated failure, that the thing she'd been chasing had been waiting, the whole time, in a direction she'd simply never thought to look. It was small. It was nothing like Arthur's impossible parry, nothing like Yseult's flawless Alchemical mastery. It was entirely, completely hers.
ELS: Oh.
She said it quietly, to the empty yard, to the brightening morning sky, and felt something in her chest loosen that had been tight for weeks, replaced by something warmer, something that felt, for the first time in longer than she could properly account for, like the genuine, unhurried beginning of something worth continuing. She would tell no one yet. Not Arthur, not Yseult, not even Rowan, who had, without quite meaning to, given her the exact patience she'd needed to finally find it. For now, it was enough that she knew.
She stood in the empty training yard as the sun finally cleared the eastern wall properly, the wind held steady and controlled around her arms, and allowed herself, for one quiet, private moment, the small, fierce satisfaction of having built something entirely her own, one patient, frustrated, stubborn morning at a time.