Raven Chapter 33 Foundations and Frustrations 411 #3
“And Anik. Everyone sees a growly prickly bear who hates when someone interrupts his strict schedule. That’s just his armor.
His real self is in the way he cooks—the patience, the precision, the need to provide.
Every meal he's ever made me wasn't just food.
It was him saying I've got you. You're safe.
You're mine to take care of. His aura's probably all deep earth tones—browns and greens—with flashes of reds only when something threatens what he loves. Oh, and gold flecks when he purrs, obviously.”
I finally look up from his elegant hand when the spinning stops completely. Em’s just… staring. Pen forgotten.
I keep going because apparently my brain is on a roll.
“Kieran’s obvious. Chaos on the outside, fear on the inside.
All that glitter and noise is him running from the quiet.
But the real him—the one who brought me my snacks mid-panic, who sang ABBA alone in his room before I crashed in—that part's probably this warm, steady glowing coal.
Constant. Even when he doesn't believe it himself. "
Em’s breathing has gone shallow. I should probably stop, but the words keep coming.
“Dre’s the easiest. Everyone thinks he’s just the healer, the nice one, the martyr.
And yeah—all those sad, self-flagellating gray tones.
But underneath? Underneath he's hungry. For connection. For touch. For someone to finally see that his need to care isn’t because he doesn’t need care himself.
I think he does. I think he desperately needs someone to take care of him too and let him know his needs aren’t weaknesses.
His aura is probably all warm pinks and golds that he keeps behind layers of sad grays and blues. ”
I just blink up at him a few times like an engine sputtering out. “I think your nerd is rubbing off on me.”
Emerson is utterly still. Not his usual “I’m looking for an excuse to stab you” kind of frozen—this is different.
His eyes are wide, pupils blown, pen now clutched in his hand like a lifeline.
He looks like someone who just discovered a whole new continent and realized he’s the first person to ever map it.
“You just…” His voice cracks. He clears his throat and tries again. “You just described them. In detail. Without seeing a single aura.”
I shrug, suddenly self-conscious. “I mean, yeah? I’ve been watching all of you for literal years. You kind of pick things up when you’re invisible and have nothing better to do than study people.”
“For years that data was inaccessible to me,” he confesses. “It took me years, decades, to understand half of what you just laid out in a few minutes.” His eyes go all hot and obsessive again and I have to stop myself from licking him.
“I observe. I record. I analyze. But I can’t…
I don’t feel the connections the way you just articulated them.
The subtleties. The contradictions.” He sets his pen down and leans forward.
“This is why you’re my anomaly. Not because you’re unpredictable.
Because you understand things I can’t, and you make me want to understand them too. ”
Well shit in my shoe and call it a spell. I have zero words for him. Just a dumb blank stare as my brain gives me a giant neon error message.
My body starts to move toward him—no idea what I’m going to do but I do know it’ll be filthy—when Numbra announces the study session is over and drags me off the bench and away from my delightfully unhinged elf.
I shake my head at him with a smile as he pulls out a massive knife from nowhere, his eyes focused on Numbra. Sadly, we can’t just stab everyone that gets in the way of our desires.
Or can we?
Godsdammit, Barbara.
Clearly my efforts to smother that unhinged bitch with a pillow were temporary at best. Really need to work on my follow-through.
I shake off the thought and begrudgingly start in on the magical training Numbra has cooked up for me. Sadly, I wouldn't call it a success.
Flare makes sure it doesn’t end in disaster. She deftly snuffs out all fires I start before they can even burn anything. It makes me feel better not to be destroying Miriam’s stuff, but the frustration mounts at every attempt that fails. As the frustration mounts, the fires grow.
“Och!” Kieran says, striding into the middle of our training session. “She’s never going to learn anything if there’s no fun in it. Gotta keep those neurons loose, aye?” he says before pulling out a deck of cards. “Come here, Wisp. I’ll learn ye something.”
In the next fifteen minutes, the pressure evaporates. I throw myself into learning a silly card trick. Kieran’s obviously a genius, because it works better than any advice Numbra’s given me so far.
Within an hour of picking up training again, I’m able to perform a new evasion maneuver and maintain a low-level magical shield for an entire second. Not simultaneously—I’m not perfect. But, as Dre reminds me every morning, progress is more important than perfection.
I keep waiting for Forrest to chime in with a correction, a critique, something—but he just stands stoically and watches. To Dre’s reminder. To my training. To the fact that I’m not setting the carriage house on fire.
I’m starting to worry he’s been body-snatched.
The training continues for the rest of the day and the next.
By the time I’m done with training on day four, I’ve accomplished some things, but most of me is just tired.
Dual training is taking its toll. My muscles ache, my brain feels scraped raw, but at least there’s some decent progress being made.
Everyone goes in for dinner, and I slip out the back to just puddle in the setting sun. When I find a little hidden patch of sunlit grass, Selena happens to already be lying in it.
I waste no time throwing myself down beside her with a long, commiserating groan. She’s been training, too—not physically, but shut in the library with Izzy and occasional members of her team, trying to tap into her newfound abilities.
Selena reaches over and squeezes my hand. “Numbra keeps telling me to ‘feel the magic in my bones.’ I think I just sprained my aura. You’ll have to check on that later.”
I snort. At least I’m not the only one she’s terrorizing.
“Flare tried to teach me to concentrate fire. I succeeded—by destroying those old lace curtains.”
Selena does a weird laugh groan at that before complaining, “Ugh, my head hurts. Make it stop.”
The sound of footsteps sound before I can reply.
“Consider this a mutual aid meetin’,” Kieran says, dropping a blanket over us. A plate of pilfered cookies from Miriam’s kitchen follows. “Agenda: doin’ nothing.”
He's backlit by the afternoon sun filling the meadow and for a second I forget to breathe.
The light catches his hair, turning that reddish-auburn mess into something that looks spun from copper and fire. It's rakishly pushed back from his face, the waves tumbling past his shoulders like he just ran his hands through them.
His eyes, usually crinkled with mischief, are soft now, watching us with something tender underneath all that chaos.
Even the scruff along his jaw catches the light, stubble that should look rough but somehow just looks right.
It’s like he was assembled by someone who knew exactly what they were doing and decided to make him unfairly beautiful just to spite the rest of us.
He glances around, worried. “Also, don’t tell Anik I’m spoilin’ your dinner. He’s still mad about the sugar incident this mornin’.”
I decide not to ask since I'll hear about it over dinner—probably in the form of a Forrest Lecture.
The next day, Enra and Numbra run a collaborative session. They teach me how to use my size to my advantage, weaving magic into movement without letting it replace skill.
It takes a few hours, but finally, blessedly, I’m able to channel magic into a strike—not a blast, but a focused push.
I just stand there, stunned into silence.
A shadow falls beside me. I look up—Emerson is already holding out a page that’s been torn from a sketchbook.
“For you,” he says, his voice low, almost swallowed by the soft noises around us.
Then he turns and is gone, back up into the shadowed loft before I can even blink.
I look down.
It’s me—but not how I’ve ever seen myself.
He hasn’t drawn me fighting, or burning, or even smiling. He’s drawn me thinking.
My brow is furrowed, my eyes are sharp, and my body is coiled. It’s so detailed that I can tell it’s not tension holding me, but potential.
He’s captured a moment before any decision has been made and shown me a part of me free of error or success, just… me.
My throat tightens because this isn’t just a picture. It’s a lens. He’s taken everything he’s seen so far and rendered it into something else.
Something that makes me feel seen.
He sees me. Not the mess, not the liability. Me .
I fan myself because there's a fifty-fifty chance I'm about to cry or do something drastic—like let my body start moving toward him without a plan again. And we all know how that ended last time.
As the gods laugh—because of course they would—Forrest clears his throat somewhere behind me.
Right. Not happening today. Third time's the charm, though.
Or so they say.
“I’ve been informed that… shared media consumption can be a bonding activity.
” I can practically sense Kieran in the background, silently goading him while also cheering him on.
“Due to your previous interest in a certain book series, I’d like to introduce you to something widely regarded as foundational. Would you… like to watch it?”
He’s clearly trying , even if very stiffly and awkwardly. It’s incredibly endearing.
I nod, giving him a smile, and promise to find him after a quick shower.
It doesn’t take me long—I need to know what the man considers foundational in terms of shared media consumption.