I slept surprisingly well, and woke up ready to work, or in this case ready to work on a letter. I wanted to get it in the mail today. I didn't have any ideas I could share at this time without checking with my advisers. Fortunately, my head won out over my desire to impress the girl with my awesome cosmic powers, especially since I still had the itty bitty living space, with the parents no less. Time for impressions later.

Dear Lunette,

I'm sorry that I sent you something already researched, I didn't know at the time that it was a previously known technique. I had just found out that it was a little used technique that I had rediscovered, and was intending to tell you in this letter about that discovery when I received your correspondence. I have a few more ideas, however with what just happened with the last idea, I will be needing to do my own diligence in research here before I feel that it would be right to share them with you. I'd hate to send you down a similar fox trail again. Again, I am deeply sorry that I wasn't careful enough with the last idea, and glad that you did not spend too much time on it.

I'm thrilled to hear that the electro snap research paper is almost complete. I have some chance of being in the City at the end of this season for at least some time, so if that timing works out for me, I'd be delighted and honored to attend the lecture as your guest. As ever, I remain

Respectfully yours,

Grint

As letters go, it covered all the main points that I needed it to: mea culpa issued, my serving of crow was eaten, and my other new discoveries tantalized but no indiscretions committed. Better to get those handled up front and not leave the apology unsaid. That stuff can fester unnoticed if you ignore it. That she had mentioned it in the letter meant I needed to respond in kind. I still hadn't disclosed the buff system to anyone else. I was saving that for my hidden wildcard. I wasn't trying to keep it from my parents specifically, but it took so much more energy than minor healing or moving a few ounces, that I didn't think it would be something they could do any time soon.

Work was simple, but busy. The constant stream of customers made the day that perfect blend of busy where we were never overwhelmed but didn't sit around bored either. I always loved days where I was just on the edge of too busy, they kept me on my toes. Plus if you've ever been around bored boys like I have been, you understand why they say "idle hands are the devil's playground." Let's just say, we were never allowed in that chemistry lab again, even if nothing was permanently damaged.

The rest of Sixday, Sevenday and Eightday were consumed by training at work, training at home and even training in my dreams. But at the end of the work days, I was confident that one more tenday would see the two new hires trained enough to concentrate solely on personal psionics and physical training.

I'd dropped my habit of exercise, because I was doing something physical all day, but if I didn't pick my habit back up, I could lose progress in strength gains. I just now hit what I think is average for the population, which likely still leaves me behind the average for healthy adult males. All my free time has been focused on psionics. If I split my new free time up, I'll have half again the time to train psionics and still more than enough time to work on the physical aspects.

With the upcoming sponsorship and position at the Omniology from Wilhena, I'm not worried about income. That should be sorted in a tenday before I quit the general store. Large amounts of money have a way of energizing the normally slothful academic bureaucracy, an observation that appears to be true in any world that has both money and bureaucracy. We also have more than enough food to last until the spring, although the variety will suffer a bit in winter as it often does. My spoiled modern memory longs for more selections in flavors, but there's not a lot of exotic variety available locally, at least not that fits in the budget of the middle class. I mean I just found chocolate after almost 18 years, because it was shipped in from outside of both Blawenwald and probably didn't grow anywhere in the Federation. World exports wasn't on my list of interests, but it clearly should have been!

After days of solid training and constant mental, physical, and even psionic drain, I was frazzling around the edges, so I took some time off to just rest and relax Nineday with my family. Since I'd be moving out again soon, spending the day just hanging around with my parents wasn't a big hardship. I helped with the cooking and cleaning, even if I skipped out on the market run to sleep in.

After relaxing through Nineday, I spent Tenday doing concentrated bursts of high intensity interval psionic training, going full out Colossus mode for as long as I could hold it without passing out. Then, following the standard training method, do it again. And again. And again. Every fifteen minutes for 8 hours. If it didn't burn energy without creating heat from muscle use, I'd be a big pile of sweat and sorrow. At the end of the day, though, when I checked my progress, it was worth every second of the work.

{Status:

Name: Grintel Coddlestahl

Age: 17

Mental:

Acuity:

Perception:

Memory:

10

8

10

Psyche:

Wisdom:

Insight:

Willpower:

9

9

14

Physical:

Strength:

Coordination:

Endurance:

8

8

12

Skills:

Energy Conversion

3.007

Energy Emission

2.607

Energy Control

2.245

Channeling

0.097

Instructor

0.068

Meditation

2.631

Walking

5.023

}

I had done it. Broken through to the next level of energy conversion. That gain right there was probably the only reason I made it through the whole grueling day of practice.

Decent gains elsewhere, even a stat point in Wisdom. Excellent!

I wandered into the kitchen and ate everything I could get my hands on, then cleaned up after myself, and headed back to practice on the telekinesis while holding Leatherskin. I need to get more work in on complicated simultaneous actions for channeling to improve. The other two energy skills could use some focus, too.