"I thought I was doing it right," she protested.

"You were, but you did it too fast," he told her. "You have to do it slowly, so the power you have inside you has a chance to go back into the Weave before you break the connection. If you have power inside you when you break the connection, it causes a backlash, and I just told you that they hurt."

"Boy, do they!" she said. "That was worse than Mama spanking me!"

"And that was a mild backlash," he told her. "That's as weak as they come. If it had been a real backlash, I'd be scraping you off the ground. A backlash can kill if it's strong enough, Jasana. This isn't a game, and magic is not something you take lightly."

"I noticed, Papa. You always take it so seriously."

"That's because I don't want to get killed, cub," he said dryly. "Remember, a backlash can kill you, so you have to be very, very careful when you let go of the Weave."

"Can they hurt worse than that?"

"Oh, yes," he said with a steady look. "Remember, that was a mild backlash. Trust me, cub, you do not want to find out what a strong backlash feels like. Take it from experience."

"I don't want to feel that again!" she said emphatically. "I'll do it slow this time, Papa, I promise!"

"That's a healthy attitude, cub. Alright, let's do it again. Remember, touch it, feel it for a few seconds, then let it go."

"When can I do real magic?"

"When you can touch the Weave without trying, and let it go without hurting yourself, every single time," he said adamantly. "Not a second until then."

She nodded, and her little face took on a very serious expression and they began again. Tarrin put her through her paces, having her touch High Sorcery, hold it for a little bit, then let go, over and over and over again. Just as he had done when he started, at first she had trouble touching the Weave, even for High Sorcery. She failed the first three times she tried, until she composed herself and remembered what she was doing. But just as he had done, she learned the art of touching the Weave quickly. Once she knew where to look for it and how to reach out to it, it began to respond to her much more readily than it had before. He realized that that first time, she had reached out instinctively to the Weave, where the three attempts after that were conscious attempts. But after a little instruction, she learned how to touch the Weave consciously, and it became easy for her. Every time she touched it after that, he had her draw in just a little more power, and then a little more, then a little more, slowly introducing her to the way it felt to hold the power inside her. He knew that they'd not come close to her limit, and he didn't want to get anywhere near that. He just wanted her to get an understanding of how different it felt to hold different amounts of magical power, and how to sense how much she was holding at any one time. When the time came to weave spells, the ability to know how much power one was holding was critical for efficient weaving. Trying to weave a spell when one didn't have enough power to finish it or release it could cause a fizzle, or even worse, a Wildstrike. A Wildstrike generated from someone of Jasana's power would be something he did not want to see. She was still having trouble letting it go, however, and for the first half an hour, she generated a backlash every single time she let go. He observed her both physically and from the Weave, sensing her ability to draw the power, and gauging how it responded to her. She became more and more comfortable with it, and by the time he decided that she was too tired to go on, she was at the point where she could release it without causing a backlash about half the time. Jasana came to dread the part of letting go, but to her credit, she didn't shy away from the exercises. Jasana was one determined little girl, determined to learn how to do magic.

After letting it go for the fourth time in a row without causing a backlash, Tarrin knelt in front of the bench and put his paws on her shoulders. "Alright, cub, I can see that you're getting tired," he told her gently, wiping sweat from her forehead. Sorcery was physical exertion, and it was showing on his little one. That caused his fatherly instincts to rebel against what he was doing to her, but he knew that it had to be done. She had to learn, and it wasn't going to be easy, and it was going to hurt. But having her sting a little now was far preferable to her Consuming herself later. "I think we should stop now."

"Aww, I can do a little more, Papa," she protested.

"You could, but it won't do you any good," he said firmly. "We can practice again tomorrow, alright?"

"Can I do magic tomorrow?" she asked hopefully.

"We'll have to wait and see," he told her. "You definitely need more practice with this, cub. Touching and letting go of the Weave are the most imporant lessons I can teach you. They're even more important than making spells. Because if you can't touch the Weave every single time without fail, and you can't let go of it without hurting yourself, then you'd be better off not trying to use the magic. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Papa," she sighed in disappointment.

"It's always good to stop when you're doing well," he smiled at her. "That way, you have something good to look back on when you're done."

"I guess so," she smiled, a smile that made his heart soar.

"That's my girl," he said with a loving smile, collecting his daughter up in his arms. "Now let's go get something to eat, and then we'll go to bed."

"I am a little sleepy," she admitted.

"Doing magic is alot of work, cub," he chuckled. "It takes it out of you. When I learned, all I wanted to do after I finished my lessons was drag my tail into bed."

"But Mama wasn't there. It must have been lonely."

"Well, not entirely," he told her, walking towards the choked entrance to the courtyard. "At that time, I shared a room with Dar. You remember Dar, don't you?"

"I like Dar. He's nice."

"Well, he was my roommate at that time," he said as they disappeared through the hedge. "We used to stay up half the night and talk, even when we were so tired we wanted to sleep."

Spyder did not call him out the next day, or the next, or the day after that, but they were busy days nonetheless. The mornings and afternoons were spent with Jasana, usually in the courtyard, as he continued to train her in the use of Sorcery. She was a very smart little girl, as he knew, and she proved it by grasping the basics of Sorcery in a very short time. Despite her inability to use regular Sorcery, he taught her its rules and laws anyway, if only because they would form the base of what she would learn when she eventually crossed over and started using Weavespinner magic. He didn't teach her any spells until she mastered the arts of touching and letting go of the Weave, and he was always drilling it into her that she should never draw more than she needed to do what she wanted to do. By teaching her that, he hoped to put off the possibility that she would face being Consumed any time soon. She did master the basics in another two days, so he began teaching her simple spells.

The rest of the day was spent with Jenna. It was a bit of a realignment of his thinking to go from teaching little one and two flow spells to working with the full six and seven flow knots that Spyder had taught them, as they practiced the multitude of spells that the Urzani had taught them in that single night. It was slow going, because even though they had learned how to weave the spells, there were always subtle ways to alter them to make them best suited for a particular situation. That meant that they had to practice weaving them, to understand which flows could be adjusted that would change an aspect of the spell. They also needed to practice for its own sake, to be able to weave the spells quickly and without having to stop to think about what to do. Just because he knew a spell, that didn't mean that he was proficient with a spell. He wanted to be able to use any of the spells that Spyder taught him before the ki'zadun came, because he very well may have to use any one of them in the course of defending the city. Even at his level of power and his formidable ability, he still had to practice, and every once in a while, one of the new spells he had learned fizzled on him as he practiced using them. Jenna had a slightly worse time of it, probably because she didn't have as close a connection to the Weave as he did. Where the Weave would silently and gently urge him in the ways to use his magic, sometimes without him knowing it, Jenna had to rely on her memory. But they methodically went through each and every spell Spyder taught them-Jenna wrote each of their names down, so they didn't forget one-practicing it over and over until the weaving of it was automatic and efficient, and they had puzzled out the ways the spell could be altered on the fly to make it more effective for the given situation.