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Aaron listened intently to Daun’s critique until Varis stood, at which point the Count got his full attention. He stood almost a little too straight as Varis spoke, and bowed a little too quickly, but he couldn’t help it; after the emotional roller coaster of this evening so far, hearing something [i]positive[/i] from Varis had him strangely on edge, like there was another, much less pleasant shoe just waiting to fall. But aside from a brisk reminder about his conduct, none did; he bowed his affirmation and Varis quit the place, leaving both Aaron and the Professor intact. At the risk of getting too confident, Aaron would call that a success. 

Daun’s joke brought a guilty smile to his lips, but the very concept of invisibility snapped his mind back to the lesson – it would take diligent work on the fundamentals for him to manage those kinds of feats, and he was all too eager to get started. 

Turning his attention to the butterfly in the Professor’s hand, Aaron tried to do as he was instructed, studying the form and gentle movement of the butterfly until he thought he had a pretty good idea of the key features. Two overlapping wings on each side, six long legs, a strangely mechanical way of moving, and of course that iconic pattern… It would take a long time to memorize all the details, but he had a suspicion that if he captured the gist, he could probably convince most people it was real, even if the fine details were wrong. 

[color=f0d705]“Should I consider my audience?”[/color] Aaron asked absently, eyes still locked on the butterfly. [color=f0d705]“Say, there’s probably less room for error if the person who’s supposed to be convinced by my illusion has more knowledge of the model, right?”[/color] The questions were almost rhetorical, the wheels in his mind turning as he looked over the model. What if he needed to replicate a person? He’d probably need to be near-perfect to fool someone who knew that person well, but could probably get away with some mistakes to fool strangers. And he’d probably have more room for error if he was trying to fool something like a camera system over human eyes, right? Not to mention [i]vampire[/i] eyes – it beggared belief any mage could possibly fool them, but there must be a way. The possibilities stretched out endlessly before him, growing exponentially with every new variable and situation that came to mind. How on earth could anyone perfect illusions with that much to consider, let alone move on to the myriad more complicated applications of Light magic?

Ah, but he was thinking too big. Right now, he needed to think [i]small[/i] – about the size of a butterfly. Without waiting for an answer, he closed his eyes and tried the exercise again, making sure to stay more conscious of the process. When his magic tried to go its own way, he reigned it in. Guiding the process “manually” was more difficult, but soon enough he had an orange and black butterfly perched in his hand, moving its wings up and down like clockwork. 

It certainly wasn't perfect, but at least it wasn't glowing. [color=f0d705]“A few more tries…”[/color] 

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