Endless drills. Regimented schedules. Ruthless discipline. Vathorem had a work ethic that could have been forged in an Imperial elvish ghetto. First, he ran me through charm after charm after charm to hone this trick on which I’d stumbled. It was nearly a week before I managed it again, and then four days before I managed it a third time. Then, it happened again after just one more day. After that, I managed to break charms with something approaching consistency. It was like learning a language: once I had the grammar of it, once that elemental pattern emerged, everything else about shaping, about charms, began to make sense. I felt immensely accomplished for about two hours, and then he pushed me into hard, uncharted territory again. He had everyone and anyone charm me. Everyone charms a little differently. If you are sensitive enough, you can tell who is charming you or shaping you by the feel of it alone. It took a little while to get the hang of breaking anyone’s charms, but not as long as I expected. I found it simplest to break charms by people I knew, even though those charms tended to be deepest. I think it’s because with someone I know it’s easier to distinguish between my heart and theirs when both are inside me.

I made progress quickly, but that’s not to say it was easy work. I learned to break charms and mirrors, and I learned what it meant to use my gift. I had always thought mastery meant you kept the gift walled up within, doling it out in the right dose at the right time. That’s largely how it is with mimicry. But shaping is a completely different animal. It’s a gift that permeates everything you do, everything you are. It is a way of living more than it is a talent. After a lifetime of trying to separate it and me, this was a hard lesson to learn.