The stone sits comfortably in the palm of her hand, still warm from an evening spent in her pocket. It’s a small thing, light and oblong and more purple than grey when the light hits it, but only barely. She raises it to eye level, peering at the faint twist of imperfections inside.
Attunement is still a strange thing—to sit with an item until boredom sets in and then a little longer still. A study in learning the intricacies of a magical item, she assumes, though there’s only so much to learn about a rock. Its heft she had understood as soon as she’d first held it; its warmth is a mutable thing. The color and shine are perhaps more nuanced, but even then, a stone is a stone is a stone.
The sword had been easier. Even mundane blades require care and cleaning and practice, and taking oil and whetstone and polish to a magical weapon had been no different from honing and tending any other sword she’s ever owned. There is, she will admit, a strangeness to the faint lingering hunger that seems to coil in her throat whenever she draws it, but even that is little different from the thrill of a good fight—or at least she can convince herself there’s little different from the blade's hunger and her own. The bleeding is the same, either way, and so is the relief that comes after, and so is the gut-clench desire to drive her fist through something solid and alive and let the hurt echo up her own arm. She’s no stranger to viciousness, no matter what form it takes.
(It is, perhaps, a relief to wield something that seems to desire the hurt as much as she does.)
The stone, though—the awareness of the pure magic of it—sits differently. It puts her teeth on edge. A part of her wants to look away, but she can't let herself.
Up on the top bunk, she stretches a leg out, leaning back against the small mound of pillows she's accrued as she settles in for an hour of careful focus. She’s pilfered the pillows of the lower bunk too, almost guilty for the comfort of extra support at her back and beneath her knee, which aches a little from the fight. But—no. She isn’t meant to be thinking about the unnecessary comfort of an extra pillow; she’s meant to be thinking about the stone. A tiny thing, heavier than it looks but lighter than gold or steel.
If she concentrates, she can feel it buzzing against her fingers, ever so faintly. Like the feeling of being outside before a thunderstorm, maybe, or standing too close to Cleo. The impulse to drop it is nearly overwhelming, but she’s meant to be using this. This is a protection against future spellcasting—meager, certainly, but protection nonetheless. She cannot throw away a tool this useful over a modicum of discomfort.
(She grows tired of reminding herself that she cannot throw away a useful tool over the discomfort it brings. But comfort is for the rich and the powerful and the useless. She is meant to be a soldier—for a different fight, perhaps, than the one she thought she was made for, but a soldier nonetheless. It is not for her to refuse a tool over the discomfort of using it.)
She sighs and lowers her hand, letting the stone rest warm and tingling in her palm, curled in her lap. An hour of this. Well. She has spent hours focused on worse tasks than one that leaves her sitting in a comfortable bed in a comfortable room in a comfortable lodge oceans away from the Empire. She can, she thinks with a thin smile, manage this much.
And—and there is a small, stupid, childish part of her that holds onto curiosity and wants to know what it will feel like to know how to use this object. To be one step closer to magic without fear.
Kol sighs and rubs faintly at her aching knee, then steadies her breathing and focuses on attuning—whatever that means—to the stone.
