Disclaimers in Part 1
Lake Mead, while possessing the beauty inherent in any large body of water, was created by the hand of man at the convergence of three major North American Deserts (Great Basin, Mojave, and Sonoran; only the Chihuahuan refuses to come play) and is so recent in terms of geology that it has no specialized ecosystem of its own. The riparian zone that surrounded the Colorado River, which created it, has been drowned for sixty years in its waters. It is too new to have created such a zone for itself, merely a sediment-stained transitional area between water and full desert: a bathtub ring many hundreds of miles in length.
The bathtub ring does not prevent half of Las Vegas from treating the lake as a water park.
Diarwen did not have the human habit of dividing up the Moon's cycle into weeks, nor dividing up the week into days, nor of dividing those days into five-on, two-off. To Optimus, such made equally little difference. They had not remembered that this was Saturday, and that the lake would be crowded.
And noisy. Not only with humans, but with their floating toys too.
It took a while, a long hot noisy sandy while, but eventually they found Lake Mojave's Cottonwood Cove. Diarwen availed herself of the restaurant and store in the Cottonwood Cove Marina to procure a packed lunch, sunscreen, a large cheap paper straw hat, the first sunglasses that came to hand (they made her look like a silver-haired Audrey Hepburn), along with a gallon of water, and they absented themselves from human company.
They reached a secluded spot on the southern shore of Lake Mojave. For once, there were no boaters nearby, so they had the little cove to themselves. Still, Optimus found a spot hidden from the lake by the rocks to sit down in root mode.
Diarwen smiled. "Avoiding the papparazzi?" she asked. He had to find the reference, but grinned when he did.
While Diarwen ate her meal, he sunbathed, lying on the ground and resting back on his elbows, torso fully exposed. The sun was warm, and a little south of the base, was almost strong enough to allow him to create energon, but only "almost." He had never before regretted his adult-frame size.
Nonetheless, it felt marvelous.
When she folded up her packaging waste, he held a hand out, and subspaced the tidy bundle; there was no waste receptacle on this barren little cove.
She washed her hands in the lake, and rinsed them with her gallon of water. "Very well," she said, coming back to sit in his shade, with the darker umbra of her hat also contributing. "You have healed someone, three someones now, and we need to be sure that Gaia knows what you are doing, and I need to teach you the techniques that will ensure that you do not drain yourself to do so."
He cocked an optic ridge. "I would have assumed that was necessary. Aren't the healers taking their own health, and giving it to their patients?"
"Brigit's Forge, no. Healers would be very short-lived if that were so. They channel the energy, do not create it; nor do they use their own. At least, that is true if they do not wish to create a bond between themselves and their patients."
Optimus considered the possibilities of being bonded to Sideswipe, and wrinkled up his nasum.
"You have not had the training or experience with magical methods of energy transfer to know whether it was the same sort of energy flow as that which occurs in the casting of a healing spell," Diarwen continued thoughtfully. "Although it certainly felt as if it was."
"I have no idea," he replied.
"Nor should you at this point. You are still learning the basics. Healing magic of this level is not something taught to novices. Most healers study for years to achieve what you have accomplished. My concern now is that you are doing it safely."
"Ratchet told me that when Ultra Magnus performed healings, he was exhausted afterward, but I noticed nothing of the sort, and my logs showed no significant use of my resources."
"There are two possibilities. One is that the patients Ultra Magnus healed were much more severely damaged. Ironhide's injury was quite minor, and probably the only thing you actually healed was the leaking energon line. His ankle joint is a chronic problem, and magical healing is much less likely to affect something like that—not without some very specific, conscious direction of the energy, and you have not learned to do that yet. I think all that you did there was reduce the dislocation by purely physical means. While Sideswipe's injuries were quite severe, they were also very specific, and Ratchet had already repaired the worst of them except for that one broken plate. Neither healing may have required a great deal of energy.
"The other possibility is that Gaia provided the energy for the healing. It would be interesting to know if Prima had the healing talent, and if the Matrix ever assisted him.
"Either way, whether you are doing this alone or if the two of you are working together, you need to learn the parts you have skipped over. What precisely happened when you healed Ironhide?"
"I was examining the back of his knee to try to determine where the leak was coming from."
She sighed, and before he could protest or stop her, took her mithril dagger from her BDUs and made a swift slash across the palm of her hand. "You healed that other cut. Let's see what you can do with a fresh one."
He extended his servo, the palm of which was a little under two feet across. Diarwen was always amazed at the gentleness and precision of which he was capable, given his size, and laid her own trustingly in it.
She sensed concern in his aura—obviously it crossed his processor to wonder if such a small injury caused her significant pain. But there was also curiosity. Her body was so different from his. Was he wondering how organics worked?
Diarwen found that scholarly side of him, so often hidden by the demands of responsibility and necessity, very alluring, a thought she put firmly aside.
Neither of them were expecting it when the power flared. Diarwen barely registered the flash of energy; she was concentrating on Optimus' aura, tracking the tendrils of energy emanating between them.
The cut sealed itself so quickly she couldn't be absolutely certain what had happened. She could definitely sense Gaia's innocent strength in the aura that meshed with her own, but the control belonged to Optimus. He didn't have a great deal yet, but practice would remedy that.
Gaia was acting as a symbiont, offering her strength to her carrier—and Diarwen was now certain that Cybertronian terminology was correct. Whether the relationship would remain that of carrier and symbiont as the sparkling matured remained to be seen.
The scratch disappeared, leaving only new pink skin behind it.
Diarwen said, "Excellent. You and Gaia are working together, but it seems that she is acting only to support you. The ability is yours. Were she not docked, you would be able to do this yourself. And I think you are going to have to try it that way, in order to see for yourself how this is working."
"I cannot say that I like the idea that you must injure yourself in order to teach me."
"It is the way I was taught, and the only way that I am willing to teach."
He cocked the optic ridge at her again.
She shrugged. "Some teachers use animals or sentients that they see as lesser beings, but that was not the way of my teachers, and had it been, I would have found another."
"I see," he said.
Gaia was not happy to be evicted from her safe warm dock. But Diarwen was there, and the tiny femme realized that she could study her other teacher much more easily when she was free of Optimus' fields.
Teacher, yes, but the Sidhe was neither of the people Gaia had consented to be carried by. She hovered just out of reach, fields curiously washing over the silver-haired warrior.
Diarwen replied with calm and welcome, but made no attempt to overstep her boundaries. "Little one, you may watch and learn as well, but please let Optimus do this himself."
Gaia sent understanding, then trilled in distress as Diarwen once again cut her finger—a trill which turned to a whistle of surprise as Optimus closed the injury.
Without Gaia's assistance, he could now sense and analyze the small but perceptible drain on his energy reserves.
It gave them both a new respect for the energy that Gaia held within her small form. And when Optimus said to her, "Gaia, will you come back to me now?" she whistled a refusal, continuing to study Diarwen.
The adults eyed one another. "Well," Diarwen said finally, "that gives us the information we need. Let me show you something. Hold out your servo."
He did so, and she concentrated for a moment, then trailed one finger down it. His sensors relayed heat …
He jerked the servo back. "How did you do that? That was hot beyond the human range of tolerance!"
Diarwen chuckled. "I have told you, and Jazz too for that matter, that the world is made of the energies of four elements: Air, Fire, Earth, and Water. It was a human who first described that, by the way, but it is so useful a way of looking at things that it came with us into Tir nan Og, and human energy workers of various stripe have used it for a very long time. I channeled the energy of Fire, the element with which I have the greatest affinity, into my fingertip, and that is what you felt. I couldn't have done it if you had not slightly overpowered that healing, as you left me with a bit of mana to use. I suggest you begin to try channeling cold, not necessarily Water but simple cold, into your fingertips. When you have learned how to do that, it is an easy matter to channel the healing energy in its place."
"Please don't cut yourself again," he said. "That distresses Gaia as much as it does me."
"I shall not, then. But that," she said with a grin, "is why I asked you to channel cold. It is very warm here!"
He practiced and practiced and practiced, and felt as if he were getting nowhere.
Diarwen excused herself, went behind a boulder, and then entered the lake in her underwear, swimming and splashing. Gaia floated over her, obviously concerned, whistling.
Optimus continued to work. When Diarwen gave in to Gaia's distress and came out, Optimus gave them both an abstracted glance, and continued with what he was doing; Diarwen got back into her BDUs and returned, walking carefully because she was carrying her boots and socks. She stopped just beyond him, and wrung water out of her braid before coming closer.
She sat next to him, and shivered. Gaia whistled again.
"Are you ill?" he said, concerned.
"No, not at all. You've been working very hard, Optimus, and you've been successful: it is cold here!"
He was embarrassed. He hadn't thought to check the ambient sensor array: within his own arm's length it was 62 Fahrenheit. Outside his reach, it was one hundred and eight. "I wish I knew what I had done."
"I cannot say this will work every time," Diarwen said, "but all I need do is think that I will do this. Try that."
Ten seconds later, she shivered again. "I think you can stop now; it's working!" She moved out of his shadow, into the late-afternoon sun. "Oh, that feels good," the Sidhe said, but nonetheless donned her wide-brimmed hat.
"Diarwen, you were able to use your magic for a moment. Does that mean you are healing?"
"I believe that you healed a bit more than a cut finger, Optimus, since some of the channels I use in energy work, of which magic is a part, have reopened. I still cannot raise mana myself, but I was able to make use of what you gave me."
"Does that mean you can use energy that I give you at any time?"
"I do not know if I can store it. And I doubt you could give me sufficient for any major working. But what you did gives me hope that more of my own energy may yet return, given time. In closing the Space Bridge, I damaged my nervous system, and that repairs itself very slowly, if at all. It is likely you have done all that magical healing can do for me. Now, we wait to see what time will accomplish, and hope."
"Hope is no small thing."
"It is no small thing," she agreed with a smile. "It's getting late, Optimus, and we have about an hour to drive. Shall we leave?"
"Not until you are dry," he said firmly.
She laughed, and he bent down and very, very gently put his lip-plates to hers.
She put her hands to either side of his chin, and gave herself over to the experience. She could perceive Optimus' fields, and took special care to open her own to him.
They were fully within one another's fields for the very first time.
Gaia watched curiously, and then decided that she wanted to do what the grownups were doing, too.
Her aim was a bit off, and her enthusiasm high. She knocked Diarwen clean off her feet, and gave Optimus a nice-sized fat lip.
End Part 12