She twirled the pipe between her fingers, blowing steadily, but the glass didn't form a globe like it did when Keth did it; hers was turning out egg shaped. Sighing, Tris turned and reheated the glass for a moment before taking it out of the furnace and starting the pattern over. As it cooled, the clear material flared from the lava-like reds to oranges, and she moved back to the furnace. A few more twirls, but the glass was still shaped all wrong. Sighing, she placed the pipe down on the table and etched into the glass where it should break, then tapped it smartly with the blunt end of the iron etching tool. The egg-shape broke neatly off into her palm, still faintly orange in colour, but only pleasantly warm to her skin. With a heave, she opened the stone lid to the annealing oven, and placed it gently inside on the warm bricks, then closed and latched the chamber.
Keth watched her, arms folded, and smiling. It was time to get the teacher back, he thought.
"Do you know where you went wrong?"
Tris dusted her hands off on her apron, and pressed her lips together. To her distaste, the half-glare didn't seem to bother Keth at all; in fact, his smile widened. She muttered something distasteful under her breath.
"I didn't hear you...perhaps you should speak up," he prodded.
"No, I don't know where I went wrong, and stop looking so smug. I'm still your teacher."
Rather than dignify the latter with a response, he took up his own pipe, and dipped it in to the crucible, twirling his gather expertly. "Your problem is that you aren't keeping the shape uniform when you have the gather started, and then not spinning it near fast enough to rebalance the shape once you have it in the air. You need to concentrate less on blowing the glass, and more on keeping what you have even." He lifted the pipe, and demonstrated. "Try again, and we can go to lunch."
With the promise of imminent food in hand, she turned back to the crucible.
*****
"You look exhausted." Tris didn't have to look up to know that it was her own teacher, Niko, and that he was concerned. She closed the book she had been reading, and let out a half-sigh, half-yawn.
"You wouldn't think that blowing glass would be quite so hard. I didn't have trouble like this with molding it, or pulling it! And he never lets up, we never take breaks until I'm about to fall over."
"I think I said something equivalent about you, Madame mage," came Keth's voice. Glaki, who had been with him, crawled into Tris's lap, and smiled.
They had all been together for just over a year, and were now back at Winding Circle, though well ahead of Trisana's foster siblings. Keth was working with a variety of mages in the temple itself and in the city to learn investigator's magics, though he had-luckily-very little cause to use them yet. Glaki's training had been given over to some of the healing mages in the temple, who worked well with children, until she was old enough to go to school and learn to do beautiful and magnificent things of her own. She had taken over Tris' old room in Discipline Cottage, leaving Tris to move another bed rather than be kicked out completely. Keth adopted Briar's room. Daja had taken up her room downstairs again, though she spent more time at the forge than in the house.
"Yes, well, as this is for my own pleasure, I give up. I will go back to being a semi-respectable mage and my books, thank you very much." The look on her face practically dared him to contest her decision. Wisely, he did not.
*****
The moonlight was faint, but Tris didn't need it for what she was doing. After a long moment's decision, she chose a medium sized pipe, and dipped it into the glass, already spinning it to keep the blob something close to a sphere in shape. She had already laid out her colouring agents on the metal table behind her, and, ever rotating the pipe, she pressed the molten glass onto the specks of dirty-looking glass and chips of rock and sand, making sure to get a semi-even coating. She turned back to the furnace and reheated her work.
She worked slowly this time, watching the swirls of colour take form as she blew the glass, careful not to get excited that the shape was forming correctly. In a moment of excitement, though, she forgot herself, and the liquid drooped.
"No, here. Like this." Arms came around her, taking the pipe from her hands, and twirling it much faster than she had been. Smooth muscle strained against the skin on his forearms. "Now blow into it," he said, softly. Tris did, and the globe reshaped itself. Her hands moved back to the pipe, and took over the spinning of it again, keeping his pace. She moved to the table, and etched the break line in it, then tapped it and watched with glee as the perfect globe broke off into her hand. Smiling, her teacher lifted the lid to the annealing oven, and she set it inside, her creation rippled over with swirls of blue and gray.
"I had a feeling you would try once more," Keth said. "It seemed strange that you would just give this up."
For a long moment, she looked at him, her expression strangely frustrated, face flushed. Then she stepped closer. "The thing is," she murmered, voice full of self-mockery, " I wouldn't have been able to do it without you."
"Nonsense. You just needed a different teaching method...I should have realized." His eyes followed her, and he swallowed hard. "Tris..."
She smiled again. "Quiet, boy-o. I'm still your teacher, here." He smiled back, and pressed his lips against hers. Small sparks jumped between them, but neither lightning mage noticed as she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back.
Finis