a person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts.

[portalling]

WHO: Ennaris Tavane & Stephen Strange, with Gwenaëlle Baudin
WHAT: Telepathy training
WHEN: Nowish
WHERE: The houseboat outside the Gallows
NOTES: None as of yet.

In terms of witnessing magical training, this isn’t the flashiest.

It isn’t cracking quarterstaffs in the training yard, it’s not flinging fireballs at each other, it’s something much quieter: Stephen Strange sitting cross-legged in the main parlour of his and Gwenaëlle’s shared home, hands loosely splayed against his knees and back straight in the recessed seating area. Relaxed, meditative. His eyes are closed and his mind a gentle hum along the mental link to Ennaris seated across from him, practicing her telepathy, while a cat behind them thrashes about in murderous circles fighting a ball of yarn, and somewhere in the further background, Gwenaëlle is puttering about.

He tunes it out for now, focusing instead on Ness’ mind.

It’s like any ordinary day featuring the couple comfortably working in their home, except that Ennaris has been invited into it for these sessions. The doctor is more guarded about the living space than Gwenaëlle is, but it fits the purposes for this lesson: it’s a more comfortable and private area for practicing mind-reading, perhaps too similar to blood magic for others’ comfort, and they can work on it discreetly.

Comments

[portalling]

And it starts, slowly, to work.

Stephen Strange’s mind is a puzzle-box of interlocking gears and cogs and nesting parts; the complicated inner workings of stubborn clockwork mechanism, all bound into a tightly-wrapped compartmentalised package. It takes time and careful, meticulous attention to unravel. He tries to hold the door open for her as best he can, but it’s also best to not make it too easy: not everyone is going to welcome the intrusion, and part of the training is learning how to do it on the fly. Sometimes she will indeed have to know how to wriggle her way past the defenses, delicately pick a lock, pry through a keyhole.

As Ness unpicks and erases the glyphs, it’s like hearing a muffled voice in the next room over, distant and quiet but getting louder. Someone turning the volume up on a record player. Spinning through a radio-dial, trying to hone in on the crackling reception, resolving into a voice, into his thoughts.

And it is, unsurprisingly, a litany of to-do lists still ticking over like a background hum in the doctor’s mind, some of it fading in and out of hearing. Antiseptic for Ennaris’ eventual ampu—— need to get the infirmary prepped for B——— write to — about giant spiders’ webs as bandages — —hink the houseboat’s almost out of coffee, wonder if I can send Guilfoyle to pick up some more without shitting my pants —

[elegiaque]

It’s more difficult than Gwenaëlle had imagined, sitting quietly while they practise — in theory, something familiar. In practise, different enough to be distracting, and her own restlessness is there in the way she shifts as if she can’t quite get comfortable enough to settle, frowning down at her sewing as she loses the thread of what she’s doing. The difference, of course, becomes obvious to her: the companionship of separate occupations has always been important, ordinary, easy—

but it’s quiet, a conversation occurring that she has no ability to join, and any interruption a distraction that defeats the purpose of the practise. The moments where she would speak off the cuff must be swallowed purposefully, leaving her hyperconscious of her usual propensity to dip in and out of her own stream of consciousness, vigilant against making a mess of it before they’ve done anything.

It’s impossible to tell if they’ve done anything, and it’s not only Ennaris’s anxiety that Hardie’s keyed into. Gwenaëlle’s restlessness in the silence distracts him, tracking every movement as she readjusts her sewing or shifts her weight from one side of the armchair to the other and then back again, as deliberate as Small Yngvi.

After the third time she must unpick the same stitch, she sets her sewing aside and leans her head back against her chair.