on a lark

[alicornucopia]

She combs and combs the world aside and there is another world, just ahead, and she steps in.

The combed-away hole closes behind her. She puts her comb in her pocket.

Thanjen (Unbitwise)

Blueberry (kappa)

Hivers (Rockeye)

Comments

[wind_on_my_face]

“If you made sure to push back enough so it went down gently rather than bouncing, then you'd have all of the energy that was used to lift the heavy thing up. That's the simplest way to use a waterfall, actually — fill a big bucket at the top and then lower it down.”

[alicornucopia]

"Oh."

[wind_on_my_face]

“Your control looks fine, so here's the next practice technique. Take your glass and wrap it all around your body. Keep it ready to move the same way you do when you're going to reshape something. Then just move around like you normally would, and keep the glass with you — don't let it stop you from moving or come away. This will be tricky to get right, but I promise it's the last thing I'm gonna just tell you to do.”

He demonstrates on himself, walking around while the glass covers his body like an extra layer of clothes. His head is still exposed, and the glass has gaps and arrays of holes in it in various places, which experience will quickly show are needed to reduce the feeling of being in a personalized greenhouse while exercising.

[alicornucopia]

She slowly draws her own glass over her in a thin gappy layer, then stretches her arms up, takes a few steps.

[wind_on_my_face]

He does the same kinds of things and adds more for her to follow along with if she wants to. Assorted silly walks. Arms all directions. Stretches. What might be a yoga routine if he ever held a pose still.

[alicornucopia]

Okay then, weird slow dancing it is.

[wind_on_my_face]

Slow to start, but speeding up as she gets better at not tangling up herself with her new parts of herself. It's like she has to use twice as many separate muscles to operate the same set of limbs.

But if she wants, she can use just those new muscles and let her arms and legs be pulled along by the glass — until she runs out of stored energy and has to work just with real muscles.

[alicornucopia]

Well, she doesn't have a lot of energy stored.

Can she shove all her stored energy into one part of the glass, or does it have to be spread out?

[wind_on_my_face]

She can!

[alicornucopia]

So that's nice.

Maybe handling all this glass and herself at the same time would be easier if she just... divided up the work...

There is a sudden jump in her fluidity.

[wind_on_my_face]

(Improvement is good, but he's looking more for lack of significant mistakes than the height of skill.)

Eventually he stops leading, and stops moving, and waits for her.

[alicornucopia]

It doesn't last long, anyway; she finds a comfortable way to stand and stops. "Now what?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“Now that you have practiced the motions of your body, it is safe for you to claim it.”

[alicornucopia]

"Without getting any weird bruises?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“You could still give yourself weird bruises if you tried. The difference now is that you aren't going to do it by accident because you know what is a normal kind of motion now.”

[alicornucopia]

"What can I do with my body once I have it?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“You can connect yourself to your other stuff, instead of using stuff you wear like your bracelet. This allows you to support your weight comfortably.”

He demonstrates by rising off the ground a few feet.

“You can reinforce yourself to prevent injury.”

He hits himself on the head with a piece of glass. It goes clank.

“And you can move yourself using stored energy rather than your muscles. That's a bad habit, though, because you want to keep your muscles fit and adding to your stored energy instead.

“Want me to show off a bit?”

[alicornucopia]

Nod.

[wind_on_my_face]

The birds, which have turned into fully human-seeming bodies instead of just having faces, throw him some more glass. He makes a completely unnecessary throwing gesture and scatters small spikes that bury themselves over a large area of the beach.

Now he's flying without benefit of wings, like the beach is a racetrack and he's doing his qualifying lap.

Back in front of her, he makes as if to jump — and he's a speck in the sky.

Now he's falling down again, head first.

[alicornucopia]

She watches raptly, trying to figure out how the tricks he's shown her add up to all that, slowly claiming her body.

[wind_on_my_face]

While falling, he flips over, forms spikes on the soles of his feet, and hits the beach without slowing down.

A complimentary glass wall to catch the spray of sand has been provided for the comfort of spectators.

He takes a bow while buried up to his hips.

[alicornucopia]

"How did you land like that without hurting yourself? Is that all reinforcement?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“Yep! You can't go completely rigid like I did for that all the time or you wouldn't be able to move, or breathe, but you can do a gentler reinforcement that you keep up all the time.”

[alicornucopia]

"What about like how you did the fancy chair with the links, where they could move a little but not very much, can you do that and then really strongly reinforce yourself?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“Sort of. Your body doesn't have a specific shape, and it doesn't have any rigid parts except for bones. If you want to say things stop after some motion, you have to say they stop relative to something else in particular, and the only way to do that that doesn't lead to hurting yourself or being unable to move is "this part of your body can only move so much relative to the part right next to it" — when I say part I mean like this patch of skin and the patch of skin next to it — and the result you get when you do that all over and smoothly is what I called a gentle reinforcement. It still makes you really tough, but if you did just that and tried to hit the sand like I did, you'd bend and flop instead of smashing the sand. You'd still be safe.”