Sparrow felt different today. All pretence of joviality was left in the grass yesterday, and Theo was face to face with a stone in the shape of a teacher. They didn’t even look in his direction as they began to speak.

“Today we’re tackling the second step of both Endless Song and Striding Wind. It’s easy to grasp how to do them now that you know both the first step and Meditation, and I expect you to cycle them constantly.” Sparrow turned to face Theo.

“The second step is strengthening. Endless Song strengthens your lungs and throat, increasing your lung capacity and improving what they can handle. Striding Wind strengthens your muscles, increasing their output and durability and reducing the recovery they need. These are permanent effects that stay from truly infusing mana into your body. Even if you are stuck in a place with no mana, and there is nothing left in your body, these effects will not leave you.” Sparrow walked up to Theo, looking up directly into his face, punctuating their last statement.

In an instant, the ground shook and Theo lost his footing as Sparrow shot into the sky, landing back down in a crater a few seconds later. Before Theo could find his bearings or any respite, a wind started to whip up around Theo and coalesce into a twister, as Sparrow ran around him at speeds he couldn’t begin to process, more blurry smear than human shape.

As the leaf litter around them was drawn into the budding hurricane, Theo heard the alarmed voices of students who didn’t see this very often, but still often enough for this to only be interesting and worth commenting on, and not something to investigate or report.

Just as suddenly as it started, it stopped. Sparrow stood in front of him. Around him, leaves still floated in rings around the, slowly fluttering back to the ground. The dirt in front was now a crater, with Sparrow standing in the centre. And around him was a moat of churned mud, dug in from fast footsteps.

Somehow, in today’s all-purple outfit, Sparrow hadn’t gotten a single speck of dirty on their clothes.

“That is what Striding Wind alone is capable of. This is why internal magic is often called body strengthening, because it can truly make you strong with or without mana.” Sparrow looked away from Theo, turning their back to him.

“There will come a day where Striding Wind will be the only reason you are still alive, so I would practice it every chance I got if I were you.” Turning back to him, Sparrow sat down in the mud moat they’d created, and motioned for Theo to join them. Sitting with eyes closed and legs crossed, they continued.

“Now, to do so, you need to not only pull mana in through your body, but infuse your body with that mana. You are reinforcing parts of yourself.” Theo started to drift into meditation, Sparrow’s voice floating in the void.

He took a deep breath, and focused on his muscles. He’d used the mana before in the first step to massage his muscles and his throat, so how much harder could this be?

---

It was a surprise to Theo that he could open the door to The Pub. Every muscle in his body was aching and twitching and on the verge of giving up entirely (the way someone is on the verge of giving up drinking after a particularly heinous hangover).

“You’re looking shit.” Commented Alan. Theo didn’t respond, he simply just plopped himself down onto the left-most barstool as always, and groaned as he sat down.

“What gave it away?” Theo quipped, as he utilised the first step of Striding Wind again to reduce the fatigue lingering around his body like garlic breath. Unfortunately, Striding Wind was best suited for reducing recovery time and addressing muscle soreness. The self-inflicted mana-related injuries that he was now intimately familiar with were not as affected by its use, but at this point Theo would take anything at all that helped even the tiniest bit.

On the bright side, this was definitely helping with his understanding and ability to use Striding Wind. On the (overwhelming) side, he wished he wasn’t this sore in the first place.

“Can you talk about this one, or is it going in the secret pile?” Theo flushed, and mumbled his first “sorry” to Alan that evening into his beer.

People were allowed to keep secrets, especially regarding their abilities. But that didn’t mean Theo was used to it. This was new to him. He was used to not having anything worth keeping secret in his life. Then again, he wasn’t used to having a famous bard as a mentor either, or going to the Inner Ring of Union City, or having said mentor almost entirely change personalities.

Theo didn’t like it. He hated keeping secrets. But he also understood that this freaked Sparrow out. And, as someone who didn’t understand why or how this was serious, he deferred to the opinion of the people who should know and understand what’s going on. So, if Sparrow was treating this seriously, so would he.

It still sucked to hide things and not be able to talk about what he’s been doing. Rick and Sean understood why quite well, but even so it still didn’t sit right with him to avoid certain topics when they had been so supportive.

“I can talk.” Theo paused, just mentally running through things to make sure that that was still the case. “We’re tackling the second step of Striding Wind, and then once I get that down we’ll move onto Endless Song.” Theo answered. Alan nodded, hands occupied with another stein to wipe. Theo grimaced, before continuing.

“But I don’t feel like I’ll get to Endless Song anytime soon.” Theo said, in a low almost-whisper. If it wasn’t the quiet oasis before the regulars rushed in, Alan probably wouldn’t have heard it clearly. Theo stared at his reflection in the top of his drink, lost in thought.

“Why’s that?” Alan asked. He put the stein away, and started wiping down the bar top while it was quiet before the regulars arrived. Once they got in, there would be no time to clean in the chaos.

Theo mulled over that question, stirring it around his head. It was obvious, and honestly quite simple, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept.

“I don’t get it.”

---

Theo had finished his set, and gone back to feeling sorry for himself with a drink. He was alone with his thoughts, at least, until he heard someone pull a stool over. And then someone else pull another stool over.

“You okay, boy? Sounded a bit out of it today.” Rick and Sean were seated on both sides, not looking at him, just holding their drinks and leaning on the counter and staring at nothing in particular in front. It was pretty comforting, that level of casual companionship, Theo had to admit.

“Yeah, sorry. Fingers are just a bit sore from training.” He tried to force a smile, and he felt his cheeks starting to twitch from the strain, before it just dropped entirely. Shaking his head and scrunching up his eyes, Theo just took long drink from his beer.

Theo sat in the silence, staring dead ahead. He was zoned out looking at a particular spot on the wall, above Alan’s left shoulder, where a deep knot in the wood sat. His staring contest was interrupted by the slightly-hollow sound of chair legs scraping across the hard dirt floor.

Rick and Sean had slowly inched closer to him, but both of them were surreptitiously not looking at him. In fact, they were looking at exactly the opposite sides of The Pub. Theo resumed his staring contest with the knot across from him.

“So what’ve you been doing in training?” Rick asked, chin resting on his hand. His elbow was casually propped against the edge of the countertop in a way that looked like it was physically impossible to be comfortable. Theo sighed.

“We started on the second step of Striding Wind today.” Theo paused, unsure how to continue. He felt like a half-built road going to nowhere in particular.

“And?” Sean chimed in, gently nudging him forward once it became clear to both Sean and Rick that Theo wasn’t continuing what he was saying. It took another minute (and a few almost-simultaneous sips from their respective beers) before Theo broke the now-comfortable silence they shared.

“I don’t know what I’m doing.” And with that, the seal was broken and conversation flowed out of Theo like urine. He took his hands off his drink, and placed his head there instead. Rubbing his face for a moment, he sat upright, stretched out his back, and turned his head towards Sean, on his left.

“I don’t. At all. The first step I could understand. Move mana around yourself. But infusing yourself with mana?” Theo raised his hand, and waved it around, exasperated. “Nah. All I managed to do was pull multiple muscles and nearly injure myself over and over.” He turned to Rick on his right.

“And thanks to actually asking the person who should be helping me for advice, I managed to get past the first step of Meditation. And I saw myself, I saw all the mana inside and around me. I could move it easier once I understood that. But,” Theo paused, turning back towards the countertop to grab his drink,” Moving around something I saw was pretty easy. Taking something and figuring out how to integrate it into my body? Not even close.” With his non-drink-holding hand, Theo banged his fist against the countertop, and immediately regretted it once Alan stared in his direction with a peeved look on his face, and when the sensation reached his nerves and his hand started to sting.

Theo sighed, and let his arm flop onto the counter, managing to restrain the urge to swear from the combination of stinging and sore muscles. Glancing between Rick and Sean, he joked, with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Any chance either of you knows the answers that I seek?” Theo chuckled weakly. If looks could kill, the look he gave right now could bring someone back to life. Rick and Sean shared a look, and then nodded before Rick responded.

“I don’t think you need answers right now. Let’s take your mind off of that, and you can talk to your fancy mentor tomorrow. Have you ever tried wine?” Rick still stared ahead, but with his peripheral vision he could see Theo’s face.

“Nah, isn’t that rich people booze?” Theo still had never seen anyone drink wine in The Pub. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise him if they didn’t even have a bottle. Union City didn’t have the kind of pleasant weather that would help grapes thrive. It had the kind of weather that you suffered through until you got used to it. So, there wasn’t much of a supply of wine flowing around, unless you counted merchants, which definitely would not help keep the prices low enough to not qualify as a luxury good in The City.

“True, but don’t knock it til you try it. Plus, with the college you’ll soon be attending, I wouldn’t be surprised if you soon become a hoity toity poser who forgot their roots.” Sean teased. Theo huffed, and opened his mouth to reply. Their conversation got more heated as they drifted by less important stories, and by the time Theo was about to leave for the night, a crowd had formed (which, admittedly happened on every single point of interest ever celebrated/noticed/committed in The Pub), very vocally showing their agreement and disagreement.

As his mouth worked overtime, Theo’s brain quietly switched itself off, and his frustrations were forgotten, like the knot in the wood opposite where he sat.

Rick was right. This was much better than an answer.