My first day as a new moon of Lun Arcancil had gone better than expected.

  Achieving that had not been a particularly difficult pursuit. It came down to the fact that I had not run away with tears streaming from my eyes or thrown a tantrum that ended with someone getting hurt.

  Precept Seram had taught me more about using my aura in a single class than I had ever been able to learn through The Well, on my own, or with Coach Anna.

  After putting Anna to bed properly, I had fallen asleep with visions of what I would accomplish in my second class. I had dreamed of the little metal square succumbing to my will and sliding smoothly to the line of my teacher’s power. That simple dream had bloomed into a fantasy of hundreds of the weights circling around me under my complete control. I had worn white gloves like Seram, there had been no silk in sight, and Tana had been standing in front of me with her jaw dropped.

  If only that dream had found a way out of the darkness of my mind.

  My second Implementation class had not gone nearly as well as the first.

  It had not gone at all.

  Anna had fallen asleep before me because she had been waiting up for me all night. Not an hour after I had fallen asleep, she had woken me up to get ready to start the day that had crept up on me without my knowing.

  She had dressed me in my horrid uniform and pinched me on the back of my arm until I had been briefly awake enough to put on my glamour of Underwitch Ire. I had been so out of it, that Alexei had walked me all the way to Seram’s class room before I truly realized I was no longer dreaming.

  Before I had been able to hang my cloak or pull off the silk dress of my uniform, I had leaned my back against the wall of my place and fallen back to sleep.

  It had taken far more than Precept Seram’s voice calling down to me from her bubble to get me to open my eyes again. She had come and taken me to my place in the covery and encouraged me to rest as long as I needed to.

  My curtained off section of the blue room had been too much for me to overcome. There had been a padded table like what had been in the tent during the trial, but it had been pulled high with blankets and pillows that were cool to the touch. In the dim light, I had taken the bottles of wine and hairbrush from the table and placed them on the floor before crawling up and laying down.

  Sleep had taken me before I could cover myself with one of the blue blankets.

  I did not wake until Alexei had come and told me it was time to return to my quarters. The night sky outside the windows we passed as my guard led me back to my room had told me just how long I had been asleep.

  Somewhere in my sleep-addled mind, I had known just how many more questions I had for the white haired man, but I could not bring myself to care.

  All of me had felt much more tired than I should have. There had been countless nights that Anna and I had stayed up until the sky began to brighten. When we had lived at the manor, I had watched the sun come up from my perch atop the roof almost every morning. It could have been due to The Well or all my attempts with the weight the day before, but I had spent much more time in my mind and done far more with my power before and had not been half as tired.

  I had thought that it might have been because of the little sleep I had gotten. If I had been starving and someone gave me a single bite of food, it would have done nothing but make me even hungrier.

  Anna had met me at the door, and had done nothing to stop me when I threw off my uniform and crawled straight into bed.

  She had offered me dinner, but I had been too sleepy to eat. I had told her that I had many things to tell her, but that it would have to wait until the next day, and she had understood.

  Then, I had fallen asleep for the last time that day with her reading quietly beside me.

  My first day had gone surprising well.

  My second day might as well have not happened.

  When my third came, I had been lying in wait for hours to take it by its throat. Anna had barely managed to open her eyes before I had kissed her good morning and goodbye in one fell swoop.

  Alexei had been waiting for me as he always was, but when he had asked me why I was up so early, I could not help but see him as he had been with Katarina. When I had learned that my guard was the son of The Mother in Blue, it had not crossed my mind that he would have power.

  I had never seen him use it with my own eyes, but his ability to suddenly appear out of thin air and hear things that should have been much too quiet made a little more sense. Despite what Katarina had said to him in her memory, I had been unable to think of him as a sorcerer.

  Sorcerers were evil. They lied about what they wanted and tried to take it as soon as someone dropped their guard. Alexei was a lot of things, most of them scary or intimidating, but he was not evil.

  But, he was in love.

  There was a black haired precept that wore feathers within her downy waves and he wanted to marry her.

  Or, there had been a time that he had wanted to.

  I did not know. She had seen my true face after I had slain the arrogant tree. He had asked her to escort me to my quarters when the storm had ended the new moon ball early. There was obvious trust between them, but they did not seem to be together. Not in the way Anna and I were, at least.

  Still, I had not been able to help the wondering that had filled my mind on our way to the classroom. What I had then known to be Caerulus's lullaby had rang in my ears as we climbed the singing stairs and I imagined Alexei and Jasna together.

  Did they sleep together like Anna and I did? Which one of them needed the other to calm their nerves and cast out their fears? Did she know how much the white haired man missed his mother?

  There had been no answers for me to find, but it had taken far longer for me to push the questions out of my mind than it should have.

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  Precept Seram had already been floating within her bubble, her hands and feet pressed against the faintly blue surface, when I entered her classroom. I had closed the clean white curtain of my place behind myself and hung the unwanted parts of my uniform on the silver hooks before the thoughts of my guard's love life had finally quieted.

  The sight of the square weight had taken all of my attention as I pooled my aura within myself and raised my left hand towards it.

  I was too well rested, too prepared.

  I had thought about it, dreamed about it, far too much.

  With all that I was focused on the side of the weight that faced me, I had slowly brought my will against it.

  The weight had begun to slide towards the pastel blue line at the back of the wooden table.

  "Yes!" I had shouted in excitement and lost control.

  That was when the weight had promptly thrown itself into the stone wall behind the table with so much force that only one of its corners could be seen.

  After a long moment of my stunned silence, Precept Seram had spoken.

  "It is good to see you with your eyes open, Underwitch Ire. If you are not sleeping well in your quarters, please let me know and we will make other arrangements. I see we have made some progress?" The bubbly sorceress called down to me from the little bubble that hung above my head.

  "I didn't do that," I said in denial as I shook my head. "I scared it when I came in and the poor thing hurt itself trying to run away."

  Precept Seram's light laugh floated down from the ceiling as the weight shook within its partial tomb. Her pastel blue power began to glow around the exposed metal before it tore back out of the stone and settled back onto the table neatly.

  "Explain to me what happened. It is not in pieces and it moved in the direction you have been tasked with moving it. You are very close, Underwitch Ire. I will help you find the next step." She said from her bubble once again.

  I had enjoyed her teaching far more when she had actually been behind me, but I felt like what she said was true.

  "I started to move, but I got too excited and kind of lost control." I answered, feeling my shoulders slump as I spoke. I knew I could try again, but I had been so certain I would stride into the classroom and complete my first assignment with no trouble at all that I could not help but be disappointed.

  "I see. The larger the bubble, the more likely it is to burst." Precept Seram said.

  "No," I shook my head in confusion. "I didn't make a bubble."

  She laughed again. "It is a metaphor, Underwitch Ire. Which is precisely what I believe you need. Understanding your power and all that comes with it is a life long pursuit. With the sheer amount of aura you seem to have, control will take time. In the interest of your progression through your tasks, there is a practice you may implement to assist your implementation."

  Sorceresses lived for a very long time. Easy sounded much better than taking on that indefinite pursuit.

  "Take a moment and think of your life and what you have been through. Find a memory that you can picture clearly. It does not have to be being pushed or pushing something exactly, all that matters is that you feel a connection between what you are envisioning and the working you are trying to perform. Let me know when you have something in mind." My teacher told me.

  I did as I was told.

  She had said it did not need to be exact, but the first memory that came to mind was one of my uncountable games of points with Arthur. I had not actually been pushing him, but the aggressive series of strikes I had aimed at his chest had driven him back towards the front doors of the manor.

  I shook off the small sadness that came from missing the tall man and squared myself with the table once again. I could think about him later, when I would be able to ask Anna if he had been in touch with her or her mother.

  "I have it." I said as I let my power build against my upraised palm and kept Arthur in my mind. We had eaten dinner not long before our game. It had only been a day or two before he had left for Rhiannon's mansion, and I had known I would not see him for some time. We had played long after Anna and my mother went to bed, but I had never found the words to tell him goodbye.

  "Root your intentions in the memory, if you can hold it in your mind as you perform your working, it will shield you from distractions or sudden changes in emotion," Seram explained through her bubble. "For example, there is a very powerful sorceress that I once knew that needed to draw a circle around herself before she could truly use her power. The circle itself did nothing, but by feeling like she was contained within it, she could find her balance and let go of all that distracted from her goal."

  I thought about the weight atop the table, the line, and my pointed fingers jabbing towards Arthur. With the memory held in my mind, I attempted to complete my assignment once again.

  The metal square did not burst into pieces.

  It did not fly off the table and bury itself into the broken stone of the wall like it had earlier that morning.

  Like it was being pawed around by a bored Samsara, it lurched towards the line before jerking to the right. A final sudden movement sent it spinning off the left side of the table where it knocked against the floor with a metallic clink.

  "Ahhh." I growled in frustration as I released my working and felt the small loss it had taken from me mix with my disappointment.

  "You are nearly there, Underwitch Ire. I have been doing this for a long time. I know this. What you have just done will bring you success, I am sure of it. Think of a different memory. One that is more constant and gradual than what you selected the first time." Precept Seram said as she brought the weight back to the table with nothing but her aura.

  "No," I muttered as my stomach gave an empty growl. The afterglow was slight, but the amount of time it had been since my last meal felt like a true tragedy. "I don't want to. I'm hungry."

  Precept Seram's voice became even softer than it usually was. "Once more, with a more fitting memory, and then you will be able to eat whatever and however much you wish. Agreed?"

  "Fine." I sighed, somewhat wishing I would have argued against it, but I had a bad habit of being persuaded easily by beautiful women.

  "Spotless. Remember, constant. We are looking for something that flows and runs, not something sudden." She said happily as I brought my hand up once again.

  The new memory came to me without much thought. It had not been that long ago and something I knew I would never forget.

  Weight, line, memory, I channeled my azure aura and thought about the metal square being carried along by the frigid waters of The River Eae. Not the bitter deeps or the waters beyond them, I thought about the shallows that the little silver moon on my necklace had been hanging over.

  The weight moved.

  It did not jerk or lurch, there was no shaking or breaking, it slid across the table gently and made its way towards the pastel line in an orderly line.

  "Yes!" I shouted, unable to stop the excited word from slipping out of my mouth.

  The weight began to move faster, but unlike before, I knew what to do.

  I remembered the cold water trickling over the river stones above the violent rapids where I had become a new moon and kept control of my working.

  And just like that, the weight met my teachers line and my first assignment as an underwitch was complete.

  "Well done, Underwitch Ire! There is another new moon outside the classroom that means to go to the dining hall. I have asked her to wait for you. Go celebrate your success, you have earned it." Precept Seram cheered as I took a breath through the loss that came from my victory.

  "Thank you!" I shouted through a sudden sob as I threw the white curtain of my place open and made for the door.

  I had never been one to celebrate quietly, and if my teacher had not called me back, I was fairly certain I would have ran all the way to wherever the dining hall was.

  "Wait, Underwitch Ire. You must put on your uniform." She reminded me.

  I groaned in displeasure.

  What difference did it truly make if I was wearing the dress or not?

  Still, I did as I was told because without her pleasant and patient instruction, I would have never achieved the impossible task of pushing the weight.