Isabella Marie Swan ✝ &quot;Juliet&quot;

"Ooh. Pretty."

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This distracts Juliet enough that she loses something - temperature, she thinks, or the no-fuel thing, since she can see size and shape. The fire falls away from her and - since it has nothing to catch on - dies.

"I need to be able to do this when distracted," she says before Sherlock can ask her if he ought to shut up, and she brings it back into existence again and stares at it intently.

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"How distracted?" he inquires brightly.

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"...Well, eventually, in-melee-with-enough-demons-that-busting-out-the-fire-wand-is-a-better-idea-than-hand-to-hand distracted," she says. The fire doesn't die when he talks this time. She starts coaxing it taller until she's got a ten-foot column of the stuff.

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"In that case, I foresee you setting things on fire while making out with me."

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Shell Bell laughs and laughs. "But then it'll be hard to look what she's doing. Try the back of her neck or something."

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"I'm not sure I want you making quite as many suggestions as you're making," Juliet says mildly to Shell Bell, swaying her column of fire back and forth with unnecessary motions of the wand to remind her what she's doing.

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"Regardless, I suggest not getting into the habit of moving the wand if you ever want to be able to use it without letting everybody know that you're using it," Shell Bell says, unapologetic.

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Sherlock just snorts.

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Juliet flips the wand around in her hand so she's still clutching the handle, but the wand is pointed backwards along her arm, and she stares down the column of fire. She splits it, not all the way down - she wants it contiguous - but she forms it into the bright warm equivalent of swaying blades of grass, adding one at a time until she's managing ten at once and loses all of them.

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"You're doing really good. If you want tendrils like that, try to find a way to think of the shape in a higher-level abstract pattern," says Shell Bell, "move a few of them in parallel if you can, or lean them all counterclockwise at once, or whatever."

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Sherlock listens with interest.

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Practice continues, and Juliet improves considerably, although when she hands the wand back to Shell Bell and asks for a demo, she's blown away by the fire-octopus Shell Bell has dancing through the air, all different colors informed by the heat of the flame.

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"You can get this good," says Shell Bell. "It'll just take practice. And you don't need it for lightshows, anyway," she adds as her octopus swims in a lazy bright circle. "Just for fighting. I could cook swimming minnows reliably after just a couple of months practicing half an hour a day on average. And it's not like it's boring, is it?"

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"Not boring," agrees Juliet. "If I swipe the wand from you now does the fire go uncontrolled or just out?"

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"If I drop the wand, it goes uncontrolled. I'm not sure what happens if I hand it off. Try taking it, the octopus is over the ocean now, no real danger."

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Juliet takes the wand out of Shell Bell's hand. The octopus stays, although she doesn't try to move its tentacles or retain the colors, just focuses on the shape and place and woodfire-warmth and that it should not consume fuel.

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That is fun. Sherlock smiles.

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Juliet slowly adds spots of hotter colored fire to a few places on the octopus, and then starts moving its arms in a coordinated pattern, although she doesn't combine this with swimming it through the air. She maintains this for five minutes and then loses it with a gasp of temporarily forgotten air.

"Hard, though," she mutters.

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"Fun things often are."

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"It's true." She makes a more modest shape - a snake - and starts flying it around over the water, rippling patterns of heat/color along its length and undulating it in a sine wave. She manages a minute and a half. "I think I'm getting tired."

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"Don't operate the wand tired," says Shell Bell at once. "I'll take us home." And she does.

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"What special terrors occur if you operate the wand tired? Or are you just more likely to fuck it up?"

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