Where to begin and how to begin were always gonna be the hardest questions to answer first and foremost. Before you could even walk across the starting line, you gotta know just where the hell it was first and just where you were trying to go.

Obstructing Death? I didn't know both.

But it's not the first time I was at a loss before I could even reach step one. Just like with every herculean task I had set before me, trial and error was the only trite and true.

Irene's house hummed throughout with a brimming silence - dead quiet as a library, a cemetery. I'm sure it helps tremendously to keep focus, but I almost wish it wasn't. When things are too quiet all you're left with is just a building pressure.

My palms were starting to feel clammy with sweat. I wonder if she noticed at all, the way she could just sit so still.. like, I never knew you could expend so much focus doing absolutely nothing - yet, here's Irene anyway, her hands never losing their grip on mine come sweat or shine.

Makes me wonder who really has it harder here.

After grasping for air during a fair few attempts, I finally made an inch of progress - I simply did what I did back when I was being bombarded at lightspeed by multi-colored balls.

Something happened: a twitch of a finger, Irene's finger.. and her grasp began to tense. I could feel something ebb between us, from me to her in the slightest, smallest increments, it was like tiny drafts of wind leaving the pores of my fingertips.

The only thing my mind could relate the process to was as if I was blowing a bubble through a wand. Except the bubble was practically invisible, and the bubble had to be big, very big.

And much like a bubble, I had to keep blowing at it extremely carefully, as it grew, as it swelled.. I could feel it permeate, expand, slowly, beyond my own breadth, beyond hers.. I could feel it envelop the couch..take root in the fuzzy matting of the carpet..

I took a breath, feeling my lungs start to stab from a dying lack of one, and then pop! - the bubble was gone.

"Shit.."

"What, you're actually upset?" Irene asked, as far from severe as could be. "Accomplishing months of effort within minutes, I'd be rejoicing if I were you."

"I dunno.." I muttered, taking my hands back for a second and giving them a cleansing rub. "...something didn't really feel right just now. I know that feeling too - felt it before, and the last time.. it went on for a lot longer than a few minutes last time."

"No one's that good, I promise you. At least, not right away."

"Yeah, but if there's any chance of me pulling this off, I gotta be."

But she just shook her head at all of my misgivings, both said and unsaid, quelling them with the look she gave.

"You will be," she said, channeling the spirits of all the kindest teachers in the world. "Come on, try again."

So, that too, went on for some time. After crossing the starting line, all that's left was beating the rest of the race and all of the obstacles strewn about along the way.

I tripped over the first hurdle, and so I tried again. The second time went as well as the first and with the third winding up not being much of a charmer.

No matter how gentle I was, how careful I went about it - for some damn reason, the bubble I was blowing just kept popping.

"Any chance I won't be too late if I double back home?" I asked, after coating her hands with my sweat for the umpteenth time. "I'll take my cloak back along with me, then maybe then I'll - "

"No cloak," Irene interrupted, projecting a slightly sterner mentor. "You do this, you do this on your own. How will you learn otherwise?"

"I'll learn eventually," I said. "Right now though, we don't really have a lot of time to - "

"So try again," she spoke over me again, no intentions whatsoever to see to reason. "You're just lacking confidence, that's it."

"I think it's more than that. I'm just.. stuck. It just feels like something's pushing back against me every time, and when I try to push back a little bit, then - dead. The whole thing crumbles."

"Of course something's pushing back - I'm pushing back!" Irene said, scoffing a little impatiently. "Didn't I tell you? A live person as a catalyst is not going to be receptive to your magic. You'll have to learn to get through me, suffuse yourself with my magic - find a way to be in harmony with it, instead of opposing me."

"I'm trying," I said in earnest.

"Honestly, it's a little weird that you even have to try.." she mused, her eyes falling to a small glint of crimson. "You know, considering.."

Irene reached her hand out, and very slightly, I felt my neck be tugged a little forward.

For a moment that both felt brief and long, Irene simply stared at the small vial of swirling red dangling over her fingers.

historical

"There are a few scratches on the glass here," she pointed out, lightly rubbing a thumb along its curves. "Hmm, how long more does it have 'till you bump into something at the wrong angle and there it all goes, I wonder?"

"Won't happen."

"Won't it?"

"Even if it does, I'll make sure to get another," I said. "I'll make sure you'll give me another."

"Easier just to keep it safe somewhere."

"Funny joke, Irene."

"I mean, what's even the point?" she said, tossing it, disregarding it in a rather ostentatious show of pure, bitter apathy. "Not like it's of any help to you here now anyway."

I felt the vial slam and bounce hard against my chest, feeling just.. completely bewildered.

"A little piece of me with you at all times," She heaved heavily. "And yet you can't find any harmony with it, with me. Clearly, it's a sign, a big one - a mismatch, incompatible.. maybe we just don't blend well together at all. Maybe that's why you're having so much trouble."

What the hell.. what is happening..

"That's.. not true," I said.

"Isn't it?" she raised both brows. "Explain this, then. Go on."

"I-Irene.." I said, blinking at her as much as I was stammering. "Is this just a.. weird way of trying to bolster me, or.. or are you actually upset here.. which is it?"

At that, Irene went immediately silent.. sitting rigidly up with her arms crossed in stark defiance.

Guess I'll never know. If it's the former, then woah, what a primetime actress we got here on my hands. But if it's actually the latter.. then God have mercy on my soul.

Please be the former.

"I'm just gonna assume this is just one of your teaching methods.." I muttered. "And that being the case, I'll just go along with it. Here.." I offered my hands toward her once more. "I'll prove that you're wrong, that we are compatible. C'mon, let me try again, alright?"

I offered a smile to which she reciprocated with a scowl.. but after a moment or two, she slowly unfolded her arms and extended them out.

"We better actually be compatible like you said," Irene said, her eyes gleaming in warning at me as she gripped my hands perhaps a bit tighter than usual. "Or else I really will be.."

Now if that ain't motivation to succeed in this, I don't know what is.