"So I just... I put my hand like this and then, uh... oh gosh, eep, eep, EEEEEP!"

The air is filled with the sounds of panicked flailing as Yue learns (again) that you can't perform complicated gestures with your hands while also holding an ancient, slightly worn down scroll of magical wisdom. She holds it in her trembling hands for another minute or two and then flops over onto the ground with a loud and maybe kinda-slightly-just-a-little-whiny-if-you're-really-gonna-call-attention-to-it-and-be-rude-like-that sigh. 

"When the lady said it had detailed instructions I didn't think she meant [i]this[/i] detailed!"

To her left, Hyra flops down on the ground next to her with a judgy-sounding snort. Cyanis giggles and takes advantage of the new angle to snap another dozen selfies. Just look how great the lighting is from down here! Ooh, ooh check it out Yue! If she holds the phone like thiiiiis it like Hyra's tail is one of hers!

"I... w-well I [i]know[/i] it's better for it to be too detailed than not detailed enough, but... still! Y'know? I get to the end of one page and I can't remember how the first one started! Seriously you must be some kinda genius if you figured all this out..."

Point of fact, this is technically not Yue's first time learning a spell. It's actually her third! Although in a much more real sense, this is so much her first brush with learning magic that it might as well be her zeroth. That makes sense, right? See, 'cause Yue's first magic was learning how to prep stones for holding sunlight. She found the book describing it gathering dust when she was looking for something to hold up the leg of a wobbly chair one day and, well... it just looked too interesting to not try it. Then of course the second thing she learned to do, obviously, was actually capture the sunlight. 

And those two things are definitely magic! There are, like, circles and stuff! Prayer slips and words you haveta say to get it all to work! But they're also not... th-this. This is more... actually does the scroll have a name for, oh gosh gosh gosh goshies [i]gosh[/i] no. Nope! It is a mistake to go looking, believe you me. Ok, uh... words, a word, what'd you call it? Let's call it "You Magic", how about? Y'know, like, magic that's about, uh... [i]you[/i]. And stuff. Where you do the gesturing with your own body and the, y'know, the uh... the chi is drawn from inside yourself instead of the earth or the air or the water or something sensible like that. Truth is? She'd always thought she didn't have anything like that. 

Well... no, that's ridiculous. If there was no energy inside of her, how could she be alive? Doesn't make any sense. But, like, if you think about it another way, it's pretty easy to look around and see that not everybody grows up and becomes a wizard. Right? Honestly most people don't. If Yue's ever seen people practicing You Magic then she definitely didn't realize it at the time. And definitely nobody's ever flown, or even jumped a little too high. And maybe it's just 'cause it turns out this stuff is annoyingly complicated and it's too big a pain to put in the effort for what could easily turn out to be a party trick, but the way that [i]she's[/i] always seen it is, the fact that there aren't flight scrolls sitting around all over the place is proof that only special people can learn it in the first place.

And it's not like she's ever had a very good reason to think she was one of those special people! Most days it feels like a lot of effort just lifting a tiny little fox! She's never [i]felt[/i] the mystic energies of the world flowing through her muscles. Sometimes she get cramps, is that close enough? So until now, until these last couple of days...

"Aaaiiishya! I'm goin' about this all wrong, aren't I? What if I just... hmm. So I move like this, and then my thumbs... brush my fingers? How in the world? Ummmmm, well, never... yeah, never mind filling all the conditions. Today let's just see if I can get these hand sign thingies down. Or at least the first one! Yeah. Yeah! I think I can do at least that much. Hyra, could you... hmmm, oh! Yeah, I know! Bark if I do it wrong, ok? No? You... oh. Ooohhhhhhhh. Right yeah, sorry. W-well, what if you shook your head? Ok, great! Thank you, you're the best!"

The simple joy of fluffy hugs brings meaning to this autumn afternoon that the drudgery of learning magic simply can't fulfill. A moment later the hugs become slightly fluffier when Kat realizes there are snuggles going on and she's not getting any, and the moment after [i]that[/i] it gets plain awkward when Cyanis squeezes her way into the middle of everybody by way of rewarding herself for being so helpful! And it turns out? The real magic was--

"Hm! Ok so in the first picture I put my hands together and put my thumb... here?"

"No no no no, Yue you dummy you have to bend it the other way! See, it's going [i]behind[/i] the hand!"

"I, huwha? Um, but that doesn't... oh! Oh yeah you're right! Haha, thanks, Cy! Ok, so I just--"

Three. Two. One.

"OWWWWW! Owowowowowowow owwiieeeeess! Cyyyyyyy, my thumb doesn't bend that way I'm not double jooooooinnnteeeeeed~"

"Ahahahahahaha, you should see the look on your face! Actually, ooh! Here!"

Click! This one's going in the scrapbook for sure! Or at least the cloud! Yue can't help but giggle as Kat tries to kiss her poor mistress' hand all betters, but the really funny thing about it all is that even in the middle of the pain, she can't stop smiling. She tries to match the pose for two whole hours before tummies start getting too growly and it becomes necessary to break for a meal, and in those two hours Hyra never got to nod her head in approval even once. She got close, once! There was a bit where it looked like Yue really had it and she tilted her head half in amazement to see it. But then it turned out she'd cheated by folding her pinkies together and she had to switch quickly to another shake of disapproval. 

And still, Yue was smiling. Because, like I was saying, the real magic was that Yue believed in it. The miracle was not the promise of flight (or at least crazy hops), but the willingness to hope that all this work was going somewhere, after all. And after all, why shouldn't it? Hyra believed in her. Kat [i]super[/i] believed in her. And Cyanis? Well...

"Wow Cy, you've [i]really[/i] mastered your duckface! Could you teach me sometime?"