“Close enough for tonight’s lesson,” came a voice I knew with a name I could now remember where I couldn’t before.

                “Celestine,” I whispered, turning to him.  His form was a rippling shadow in the room we stood in.  It was a bit taller than my perception of myself but beyond that, it was a shifting thing that gave no hint of my teacher’s true form.

                “As your power grows, so will your strength to perceive more of me,” he told me.  “I see you as you are now.  You’re running on a power high currently and so can sustain a longer visit.  I have modulated our time here to take less than your time on your home world.  Took me a while to find it, rather far from civilized space.”

                “Why did you look up where I am,” I asked, bewildered.  I still wasn’t sure why he was willing to help me with anything.

                “You remind me of someone dear to me who is no longer of this realm,” he admitted to me, his shadowy form darkening for a moment.  “Helping you feels in some way as if I’m helping them.  Plus, you need to learn to do many things.  There are rather large nexus points forming ahead of you that will ripple to even my home world.”

                “Are you on your home world,” I asked, curious.

                “I am in the Garden of Skies,” he said, his mind showing me a vast star station circling a trinary star system.  The station shifted its orbit to intersect one of the massive pods that I could feel the raw power of.  “These are Seeds.  Your sister will soon acquire a grown Seed of her own.  I’m rather surprised its first bondmate was willing to give it up.”

                “And what does the seed do?”

                The vision zoomed closer, focusing on the pod and within it I could sense individual energies, seeds packed into a pod much like a snow pea.  “They become the ships of your Family.  There has not been a call for a new vessel in many years and I am now the only one with the power to grant them.”

                “That must be lonely,” I said because why bother filtering my brain to mouth connection anyway? 

                “I can Gaze as you do, there are other minds I meet with for companionship,” Celestine told me, bringing my perception back to the tiled room we’d started in.           

A thought trickled across my mind, and I could hear softly playing music.  It was Industrial-like with a heavy base line accompanied by melodies in instruments I had no name for.  I couldn’t see colors or really even walls in the room I was in but there was music now.

“An interesting melding of our tastes,” Celestine said wryly.  At my look, he explained.  “This is a room I use to assist in my projections.  It keeps me safe while I Gaze and helps me shape environments that are tolerable to various minds.  As the AI observes more of you, so will the space adapt.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about a computer reading my mind to be a better damned holodeck but whatever.  “So, why am I here?”

“You’ve got enough of a power high to learn how to slide moment to moment in the same slice of time,” he told me, which made no sense.  “Like your brother, you can open a pathway from one space to another in the same segment of time.  Like standing in New York and Los Angeles at the same instant.  With practice, you can bring other beings through with you.  Your familiar can also learn this ability from you.”

“Dani?  Okay,” I said doubtfully.  “And how to I learn that?”

“I believe the term is infodump,” Celestine stated before doing something that was not one damn thing like that.

Knowledge slammed into my mind, slicing its way to my memory to cave itself on the bleeding walls of my psyche where I could never forget it, even if I forgot all else of what I was.  I screamed as I lost my vision, everything just mental touch like plunging my skull into a vat of liquid gold. 

                “Your sister wills start training for her ship soon,” Celestine told me as I lay panting on the floor in the aftermath of bathing in liquid gold.  “Should I send you a seed for your own?”

                “A ship?”

                “Yes, though it will take a while for the seed to reach you for I must culture it to your specifications first,” he said, sounding distracted as he laid his hand on the console next to him.  “Ah yes, I can have it ready and to you in three quarters of your home world’s rotation.”

                “So, what, nine months?”

                “Equivocally.” 

                “Sure,” I said, pushing myself to a sitting position with my tendrils and one arm.  “Do I need a ship?”

                “If you wish to travel the stars in your own flesh, then you do,” he said.  “And I gave them to other children of the Elder Gods, so it is fair that you receive your own.”

                “Shiny,” I said, letting him skim the reference from my mind.

                “Your make many cultural references,” Celestine informed me, and I could feel his eyes on mine.   “It is acceptable with me, for I can see the truth of the reference on your mind, but it is unadvisable with beings who are not gifted with telepathy.”         

                “Noted,” I said, knowing I’d probably mess it up but I’d try my best.

                “As your power grows, so does your control of those around you,” he went on.  “You will be able to shift the minds of those around you, especially if you’re running on a full fuel tank.”

                “What?”

                “The energy you gained from- yes, I see, from dancing with those humans,” he reminded me.  “A mass of people united to one common intent is a powerful thing and many beings can feed off that energy.  In turn, they can also manipulate it.  This can be used to sooth grieving masses or incite war between two civilizations with no real reason to quarrel.  It is a matter of power and scale of intent.”

                “So, I could make the changes I want in my city,” I asked.

                “That would deeply impact the free will of others,” Celestine said gravely.  “That is not a power lightly taught nor nurtured.  You can already do this to some degree, the crowd you danced with raised your energy higher as you encouraged them to move with abandon.”

                “Needles said something about energy,” I muttered.  “Wasn’t aware that I was feeding on it, though.  Did I hurt anyone?”

                “They may be a bit more tired than usual but they also felt the music more keenly, so it seems a fair trade to me,” Celestine told me pragmatically.

                I wasn’t sure that was the right answer but fuck, if I could hype people up to have a better time and get what I needed, it wasn’t the worst way.

                “True, others kill sentient beings to achieve similar results,” he said, answering my thoughts as I sat up.  “Your genetic donor was fond of females and young for such purposes.  Distasteful but effective, I suppose.”

                “That’s barbaric,” I hissed, sitting up to glare at him.  “I won’t kill to power myself up.”

                “Never say never,” he quipped before moving to a different topic.  “So, to use a phrase from your world, ready up, Buttercup.  Time to learn a new skill.”

                I would learn that any time he used phrases from my world, it meant he was going to bust my ass.  But I did learn a lot.

                As I came to on the roof, I saw Michelle kneeling over me while she argued with someone I couldn’t see.  But I could hear them.

                “Michelle, I have to call an ambulance if she OD’ed or something hon, you know that,” a male voice said. 

                Over my dead body, Michelle thought but she said, “She’s not on anything.  She’s got-um what’s it called…”

                “Epilepsy,” I supplied, rubbing my eye.  “No ambulance, not paying a bill to be told I’m fucking fine.  God, I hate those trips.”

                “Are you sure,” the male voice said, and I could see him leaning over Michelle’s shoulder. 

                “Positive,” I said, letting Michelle help me sit up.  “I need something to drink though.  Didn’t even get an aura on this one.  Sorry if I scared anyone.”

                Apparently, that was the right soothing thing to say and the male left to get me some water while Michelle backed up so I could get off the chilly roof and onto a couch.  I leaned back into the cushions and sighed.  “Damn teachers could at least give me warnings when we’re about to have class.”

                “What was that, Cass?”

                “I learned a new trick,” I evaded.  “We can talk at home, I only want to go through this once and…”

                A flutter of something above us was the only warning we got before Zothie dropped from the sky, landing onto the couch by me as if he’d been there all along.  He wrapped an arm around me.  “Little sister, are you all right?”

                “Just a mild seizure,” I said out loud while giving him a quick playback mentally.  “We need to talk at home about preventing them when I’m in public.”

                “I see,” he said darkly.  “Pesky seed keeper but if he gives you one, I suppose some meddling is tolerable.”

                “I’m so confused and who the hell are you,” Needles muttered.

                “Zothie, this is Needles,” I said.

                “Sir, this is Luna,” Michelle said.

                “So, which is it, little ‘pather,” Zothie asked, eyes on our new friend.

                “I go by Luna mostly,” she said, not meeting his eyes.  “What are you?”

                “Impressive,” he answered with a wicked grin.  He shifted his attention to the club below us.  “Ah, I see why he said you had a power boost.  Clever girl, figuring out how to feed and be fed by the crowd without teaching.”

                “You knew I could do that?!?”

                “We can do it,” Zothie pointed out.  “Luna, take a seat hon, I’m not going to harm you.  While I’m fine buying off the rack, the Psyche here can’t.  So she needs your help and having done a thorough psych scan on you already, you’ve got my approval.  You girls need anything else?” 

                “Invasive much,” I growled, pairing a tendril slap with an elbow to his ribs.

                “Yup,” he said without remorse.  “Now, there’s a police rally tonight and I’m going to go play.  Have fun, little Psyche.”

                He kissed my forehead and launched himself up into the sky. 

                How?

                No idea.

                Think Celestine could teach me that trick next?