To my intense frustration, the psychic damage that Brenna did to me during our fight back in April had left me emotionally unstable for several months. During that time, Dr. Morgana MacMoran - my mind healer/psychologist - had done her very best to undo the damage and teach me better control over my emotions. I'd never had a quick temper before, but I did now, and even eight months later it sometimes took an effort to control it. Likewise, I was still suffering from what amounted to a mild bi-polar disorder, resulting in the occasional fit of depression. Often after experiencing intense happiness.

As such, I'd gotten into the habit of spending a few minutes in the morning and evening meditating to center myself for the day and put it all away at night. Unfortunately, I was in such a good mood (and we were all so tired after the drive and fun afternoon) that I forgot to do my evening meditation before going to bed.

The result was waking up feeling off-kilter and down, and my usual quick morning meditation wasn't sufficient to re-center myself. So, after a light breakfast, I retired to the sitting room, making up the excuse of having a headache and wanting to take a nap.

From the way Artemis, Athena, my mom and Ben watched me as I left the kitchen, I didn't think any of them bought it. Actually, I knew that Artemis and Athena didn't…they could sense what was wrong, but played along because they also knew that I didn't want to make a big deal out of it. Having bought myself a little alone-time at the cost of a small and harmless lie, I settled into an overstuffed chair by the fireplace, stretched out my right leg, stared into the fire and let my mind go blank.

“Alys, take a walk with me.”

I looked up to find Jonathan standing over me, already wearing his heavily mantled black coat, his red scarf looped lightly around his neck. In his left hand, he held the broad-brimmed black fedora he often wore when going out.

Draped over his other arm was my coat, my boots dangling from his fingers. His face brooked no argument, and I knew the tone of voice he’d used from days gone by – he was speaking Master to Apprentice, and I was expected to comply immediately.

For a moment, I actually considered saying no. I was comfortable. I could feel Athena and Artemis nearby, amused about something, and knew that Ben probably wasn't far off either. I didn't want to go outside. It was cold, there was a ton of snow on the ground...

I'm not a naturally surly or contrary person, and I'd always enjoyed taking walks with Jonathan when I'd been his student. The fact that I was even considering saying no told me enough about my state of mind that I knew refusing would be unwise.

Jonathan cleared his throat, startling me. "Alys?"

Again, I was startled. That wasn't like me at all. With a little grunt, I rose stiffly and stretched. "Sounds like a good idea," I agreed, picking up my cane from where it was leaning against the arm of the chair.

He helped me into my coat without a word, dropping my boots so I could step into them. In moments, we were ready to go. "Let me get - "

"Just the two of us," he interrupted me gently. "Athena and Ben are helping your mom bake cookies, and Artemis is absorbing all of the warmth thrown by the kitchen fireplace. Let them be."

"All right," I nodded and followed him to the front door, pausing long enough for him to get his staff and for me to grab a thick woolen cap to pull over my hair and ears.

We went out into the chill of late morning. The day was gray, heavily overcast and threatening snow again at any moment. To my surprise, rather than heading for the street he turned and started to walk along the front of the house. I hurried to catch up with him, putting a little extra weight on my cane.

Jonathan led me around the side of the house and into the snow-filled back yard. He went ahead of me, easily clearing a path through snow that was almost thigh-deep on me.

He stopped just short of the middle of the large back yard and turned to face me, and even with his scarf wrapped around the lower part of his face, I could tell that his expression was serious.

"You know I've always been very proud of you," he began, speaking quietly. "You were the best student I could have hoped for, and I've come to love you like a daughter."

I blinked. "Is something wrong?" I asked, alarmed. This was entirely unlike him. Not that he was ever cold or distant, but he wasn't the type to speak his feelings - he had always preferred to show them through his actions.

Jonathan nodded. "Something is wrong. You and I are going to fix it." He lifted his right hand and held it out towards me.

I didn't see his first strike coming. Didn't sense the gathering of Anima or even suspect what he was about to do until the blast of invisible force lifted me off my feet, knocked me through the air and deposited me roughly on my back in the snow several feet from where I'd been. I grunted as I hit the snow, the wind knocked out of me by the impact.

Instinctively, I began to roll to the left, only to be scooped up by a second force spell and tumbled sideways through the air to land in the snow again. Face first this time.

I came up sputtering and spitting snow. My face felt half-frozen by the stuff, and some of it had worked its way into my coat and down the front of the tunic I was wearing beneath. "What the bloody - "

My startled, angry cry was cut off by yet a third force spell. This one launched me straight up in the air a good five feet before dropping me back into the snow. Face first again.

"Are you going to fight back sometime today?" Jonathan taunted from somewhere nearby. "What happened to the strong, active, self-sufficient young woman I helped raise?"

"She had the crap beaten out of her," I shot back, feeling my anger rise as I struggled to my feet. I'd lost my cane and was trying to put most of my weight on my left leg while assessing the situation.

I found my cane almost immediately. Jonathan was holding it in his left hand, his hawk-headed staff pointed at me from the other. "I need that back," I said quietly.

"Then take it," he challenged flatly. As he said it, a bolt of fire leaped from his staff and shot towards me.

I lunged to the left, tumbling into the snow and coming up on unsteady legs. Across no more than ten yards of snow-covered ground I faced him, my temper making a strong bid to boil over. But I was not going to let it get the better of me. I needed to keep my wits about me.

Two more bolts of fire zipped through the air and splashed against the shield I threw up in front of me with my left hand. The heat from the fire bolts melted the snow around me, clearing away some of it and making the ground more slippery at the same time. A fourth bolt of fire came towards me and I stepped to the left to avoid it, retaliating with a cry of "Fulmen!" and sending a bolt of lightning crackling through the air towards him.

Jonathan caught it with my cane, using a bit of Anima and the metal of its head to attract the electricity. It arced across the space between my cane and the metal hawk-shaped top of his staff...then lanced back towards me.

I stepped to the left again and let it flash past me to gouge a steaming, hissing furrow in the snow and the ground beneath. My right knee ached, and I knew beyond any doubt that it wasn't in any condition to take my weight right now. He had intentionally put me at an enormous disadvantage by taking my cane away from me - not only in terms of mobility, but also because it was as potent a tool for spellcasting as his wizard's staff. I was hampered by my knee, missing a tool I relied on - maybe too much - and covered in half-melted snow.

I felt a brief stab of frustration and despair. At my best, I'd never come close to winning one of these practice duels. I'd never even managed to fight Jonathan to a draw unless he let me. Even though he'd frequently commented during my apprenticeship that I had more raw power at my disposal than he did, he had two decades of experience on me, and had always said that the focus and control I needed to channel Anima - my own and that drawn in from the world around me - would come with time and experience.

Control...

"Master," I called, falling back on old habits without meaning to, "I'm not ready for a duel! It's too danger - "

I was cut off as he threw his own bolt of lightning at me. It went to my left, forcing me to either dodge to the right or try to deflect and diffuse it with a shield. The first seemed like a non-starter, so I threw up a rough shield and angled it towards the ground off to my left. The bolt struck it, skittered along its surface with an intensity that made my fingertips tingle, then burned through the snow and blasted a small hole in the ground.

My relief was premature. His second lightning bolt blew through my hastily erected shield and struck me squarely in the chest.

Practice duels can get out of hand, so one of the first things every spellcaster learns is how to moderate the amount of power going into a spell. The worst I'd ever gotten from one of our duels had been bruises, small burns, scrapes and scratches - nothing that wouldn't heal in a day or two. So it wasn't much as lightning went, a lot more flash than bang. But if you've never been electrocuted, you can't imagine how painful even a little is. The muscle spasms knocked me off my feet as I cried out, the pain arching my back and leaving me lying on the ground, panting and shuddering.

I heard a bang as the kitchen door slammed open, followed by Ben's alarmed "Alys!" and Athena's strained, "Ben, stop! It's just a practice duel!"

I struggled to my feet, aching all over from the jolt Jonathan's lightning had given me.

"Why is it dangerous?" Jonathan asked me. "Because you lost control of your emotions and magic while you were fighting that creature back in September? Because you think your knee's not healed enough?"

"Yes!" I cried, staggering a little as I regained my balance. "I don't..."

"You don't trust yourself," Jonathan finished for me. "Which isn't like you at all! In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never backed down from a challenge! Any challenge!" He cast another lightning bolt at me, then a second and a third in quick succession.

He was right. It wasn't like me, not at all. After all the intervening months, we still didn't know precisely what sort of spell Brenna had cast on me at the end of our fight. All we really knew about it was that it was of Sidhe origin, and had produced crippling psychic pain and debilitating despair.

Despair. That wasn't me either. That was the lingering effects of her spell, and I had vowed not to let it control me anymore.

I clenched my jaw and deflected the first bolt of lightning with a roughly cast shield that shattered under the impact, cast a force spell straight down to help me jump up over the second, then lunged to the right and cartwheeled away from the third through the melting snow.

Wait, what?

I landed lightly on my feet. My whole body still ached from the bolt that had struck me...to the point that I'd momentarily forgotten the ache and weakness of my knee. I'd acted instinctively and was now standing with my feet apart, legs braced...and felt no unusual amount of pain from my right knee.

Jonathan grinned wolfishly. "I knew it!"

I gritted my teeth, contained my anger, and gathered Anima to me. I used my anger to focus and channel the energy, but didn't let it take control of me as I cried "Ignis celer!" and began throwing bolts of fire with both hands. Back and forth, one after another in quick succession.

Jonathan was laughing with genuine delight as he held his staff out in front of him, calling up a glowing blue shield that deflected the firebolts away from him into the ground. "That's my Alys!"

He dropped my cane and spun his staff in front of him, sending a spinning vortex of wind straight at me. I retaliated by spreading Anima before me, creating a matching vortex and sending it twisting in the opposite direction. The two whirlwinds - spinning counter to one another - struck and dissipated.

He threw chunks of ice. I threw fire.

He was simply too experienced for me to gain the upper hand...but that wasn't the point of the exercise. The point was that I was successfully countering his spells with my own. My knee wasn't bothering me anymore, and I reveled in the restored freedom of motion, dodging and ducking the spells that I wasn't sure I could counter.

I had done this before. And even if the lesson had hurt like hell, Jonathan had shown me beyond any doubt that I was still perfectly capable of doing it now.

I didn't take another hit, though there were a couple of close calls. I'd let myself fall out of practice and gotten rusty as a result. Such duels are a vital part of every wizard's training, and while precautions are taken to keep them from being lethal, they can still be harmful. This one didn't hurt as much as some I'd fought, but I'd have bruises tomorrow.

That was fine. I'd earned them.

Finally, we stood facing one another, both of us out of breath. Jonathan grinned at me, and my temper finally boiled over for a moment. "What the bloody hell! That was stupid!"

"Was it?" He stooped to pick up my cane, then came towards me, smiling warmly. "I couldn't stand the shaken girl who came to visit. I wanted Alys Kinnear back. Sometimes all it takes is a good sharp shock. Pun intended."

Athena and Artemis appeared on either side of me. Athena looked annoyed - she was doubtless feeling a dull echo of the ache that suffused my body - and the fur of Artemis's tail was bristled out, making it look twice as large as normal (which is pretty impressive). Jonathan held up his free hand palm outward in a gesture of warding. "Don't hurt me. You know it had to be done."

Athena glanced at me, and I could feel her taking stock of my mental state. After a moment she nodded. "I don't like it...but it worked."

Artemis hissed. >

Ben came up on Athena's other side. "That's not exactly standard psychiatric procedure, sir."

"It isn't," I agreed, then took a deep breath and let it out, purging my anger with it. "But I needed it. Maybe not quite so emphatically painful," I added. "But I needed the push."

Jonathan tossed my cane to me. I caught it my right hand and held it loosely at my side. I didn't need to put my weight on it, at least not at the moment. My knee was definitely in better shape than I'd thought, though it was probably going to be sore later.

And I was in better control of my magic than I'd thought. I'd never managed to successfully cast and control that rapid-fire fire bolt spell before.

Jonathan walked the last few feet to us and rested a hand on my shoulder gently. "Point taken, apprentice?"

I smiled up at him and nodded. "Point taken, Master."

Mom came up on Artemis's right and looked us over. "Are you two done tearing up the back yard? It’s a good thing we hadn’t had time to clean it up yet."

Jonathan nodded. "At least for now. Still fancy that walk, Alys?"

I stared at him incredulously for a moment, then took stock of myself. My boots and jeans were covered in quickly-freezing muddy water. The front of my tunic was soaked where the snow had gotten down the front of it and melted. I'd lost my woolen cap at some point, and my hair was probably a mess. One corner of the hem of my coat was blackened and still smoldering a little.

Most disturbingly, there was a charred hole in the center of my coat and a roughly circular blackened scorch mark on the tunic beneath where his lightning bolt had struck me. I fondled the charred cloth, feeling the pain of what was probably a burn underneath it, and looked up at him. "That was a bit more intense than your usual assaults."

Jonathan nodded. "It was, but I needed to make a point. Do you feel I was unnecessarily harsh?"

It was a question he'd asked after almost every practice duel we'd fought over the years. Before, I'd always thought he'd been asking to make sure he hadn't really hurt me. Now, for the first time, I understood that the question was as much a lesson as a way of checking on my state of mind. As always, I shook my head. "No, sir. I'm sorry I've been - "

"Shush," he said, cutting me off. "You have nothing to apologize for. Brenna roughed you up like a pro, and you've discovered what it's like fighting a real duel against a dangerous opponent. You were hurt, badly, both physically and mentally. We've been patient and done everything we can to help you heal." He smiled. "This was just another step. Right?"

I'd taken stock of my physical state. Now I took stock of my mental state. Athena and Artemis had found it improved...what had changed?

I could tell immediately. There'd been a darkness hanging over me for the last few months, one which I hadn't been able to shake and wasn't sure I'd been consciously aware of until now.

Self-doubt.

But I had no reason to doubt myself, and Jonathan had shown me that beyond all question.

I smiled. "A big step. But I don't think I'm interested in that walk. I think what I want is a hot shower, some burn salve and a change of clothes. And you owe me a new coat and tunic."

Jonathan laughed softly. "Consider it done."

"I've got water on for hot chocolate or tea," Mom said. "By the time you get out of the shower, I'll have lunch ready and the cookies should be done. Come on, Ben, you can help me in the kitchen while she gets cleaned up." She caught him by the arm and tugged him back towards the house.

Ben looked a little bit mystified as he paused to give me a kiss before following her. Athena smiled after him. >

>

Artemis huffed and turned to follow them inside, her tail still lashing with fading agitation. >

I watched them go and Jonathan came to stand beside me, his hand still on my shoulder. "You're the common thread in this family, you know. You brought us all together."

I nodded a little. "I know."

He squeezed my shoulder gently. "Incidentally, I don't think I've said as much before, but you found yourself a good partner in Ben. I've never seen a young man be as patient as he's been the last few months. He has my respect."

I looked up at him and smiled teasingly. "Are you that eager to marry me off, Dad?"

Jonathan buffeted my shoulder lightly with his fist. "Imp. Go get cleaned up. We'll do this again tomorrow."

"I'd like that."

Athena, who had stopped to hold the door for us, smiled warmly. >