Danny left his sanctuary and opened his eyes to a dark room with his mother lying next to him. Night must have come while he was exploring his expanded sanctuary. His mom must have carried him upstairs without him waking. He felt tired and realized that visiting the sanctuary could not replace sleep. Yawning, he turned on his side and went to sleep.

In the morning he awoke to the sounds of his mother leaving the bedroom. Most days his family, besides his mother, were gone for the majority of the daylight hours. He hadn't figured out where the other children went. Before his mother came to check on him he decided to try out a little magic.

*Alright, baby steps Danny, baby steps*, he thought, before laughing. Danny's little baby giggle filled and echoed in his empty room. Hearing him, his mother came in smiling.

After breakfast, and some changing, Danny was left in the main room near the hearth. He could not only hold his head up but he could sit up as well. Looking around, he could see farther than a few months before but it was still blurry. Frowning, Danny instead focused on the mana within his body. How much did he have? He could feel the mana coursing through his body and assumed it must be a huge amount! Raising his hand he... didn't know what to do.

Trying again he raised his hand and thought about fire. Fire! Danny quickly stopped thinking about fire, as he realized he couldn't even crawl, let alone run away should something catch on fire. He raised his hand and thought about something safer, like air! The speed, the movement, the flow, the... Nothing was happening. His mana wasn't even leaving his body. It always felt to him as it was about to leap out of his body at a moment’s notice, so why not when he wanted it to?

Danny decided it was time to bring out the good old scientific method. What he wouldn’t give for a good composition notebook to write down his ideas. Even though he had photographic memory, sometimes looking over his ideas brought up new ones. He had already eliminated one theory, it was now time to eliminate a bunch more. He expected, like with all experiments, his discoveries will more than likely come from his failures. History was a long list of discoveries that were not followed by “Exactly what I predicted!” but by “That wasn’t supposed to happen…”, or the more popular “Oh shit! Wait, what?”

His knowledge about mana manipulation was all internal. Maybe he had to learn to move the mana out of his body before he could cast any of the elements. Focusing on the mana within him, he once again gathered a small amount with his will and pushed it out of his hand. This was different than his attempt to unlock his mana, as this mana was constantly in motion. It was like trying to pluck a fish from a moving river, not that he had ever tried that. He occupied himself this way until it was time to eat. One can't focus well on an empty stomach. He called to his mother in the other room in the only way he knew.

Later, Danny continued to try to manipulate his mana. One time he slowed the flow of mana through his arm. It scared him at first but there were no obvious negative side effects. Instead of trying to grab and pull the mana he just redirected it. This worked and, as the mana flowed to his hand, he felt the total amount in his body drop. This continued until he felt dizzy and he quickly stopped redirecting the flow. He had to fall over sideways from his sitting position in an attempt to make the room stop spinning. Lunch threatened to come back up. No, wait... it did. It's surprising what you learn to tolerate when you’re used to sitting in your own half-full diaper, but this really stunk. He let loose another round of skull-rattling screaming and crying, that must have spooked a horse outside because he heard it also cry out. Then he heard a stranger’s voice cursing at it. Danny stopped screaming and scowled.

He couldn't help but think, *Wow, is our house right next to a busy road?*

After she got him cleaned up, his mother chose to bring him into the backyard. There was a small shed out back and he thought he could make out a wall around their modest backyard. Danny considered it modest because his limited eyesight could just barely tell where it ended. The inside of the shed smelled funny, and he was placed in a basket in a relatively empty corner. He sat there and watched his mother work on what appeared to be some type of leather. After some time had passed she showed him the piece she was working on. He pulled himself up on the corner of the basket and saw that it was a landscape with fields and a mountain. It was pretty good. He made sure to do the smiling thing while trying to grab it. Appeased, his mother went back to work.

Inspired by her diligence, Danny returned to directing mana out through his hand. Turning his back to his mother, he held out his hand and began. This time he didn't wait till he felt dizzy but stopped right before. Well, right before turned out to be right before he almost lost whatever was left in his stomach. After waiting a bit the dizziness passed and he could feel the mana spreading through his body again from the presence above his stomach. He had thought earlier that these were his mana reserves but he was beginning to understand his whole body was the storage. The presence must be like a connection to the source of all mana, or something like that. So his body draws from this source through the lines that seem to follow his circulatory system. Then the mana is distributed throughout his body like a reservoir. So, as long as he didn't empty his body completely he wouldn't lose his lunch.

His body seemed to recover mana very slowly, and after waiting a while he could tell it would be some time before he could try again. It appeared his interruptions from before helped stop him from overtaxing his new abilities... and losing more of his lunch.