"It was one. Now off to bed with you."
Jenna laughed again. "Yes, mother," she said in a mocking tone, but there was a definite warmth in her eyes and a gentle smile on her lips that said that she was very comfortable using that term.
Triana gave her a hard look, but it was a look of pure bravado. Tarrin could see it in her posture. She was pleased that Jenna had called her mother, but she wasn't about to show any softness. Jenna seemed to see that too, chuckling lightly as she passed by Tarrin, reaching up and putting her hand on Triana's shoulder, then pulling her head down so she could kiss the Were-cat matriarch on the cheek. It was more than a display of affection, he knew. By kissing Triana, by putting herself at risk of being turned, she was showing how much she trusted her brother's bond-mother. That act did break Triana's emotionless mask, as her eyes softened and a gentle look flushed her handsome features, then she was all stone again. "Sleep well, cub," she ordered in a very motherly tone that belied the emotionless mask.
"I always do knowing you're near us, mother," Jenna answered calmly, then she waved to Tarrin and Sarraya and gracefully swept herself from the hall.
Triana put a paw on her cheek, over where Jenna had kissed her, and watched the girl pass, then she fixed a boringly dangerous look on Tarrin and Sarraya. Naturally, it had no effect whatsoever. Sarraya exploded into gales of laughter, and Tarrin gave his bond-mother a knowing little smile. Because of the touching of their minds, he knew his bond-mother alot better now, and he knew how gentle and loving she really was. It was just something she didn't show to the outside world.
"O, how the mighty have fallen!" Sarraya said with a snigger after recovering from her mirth. "I thought you were about to let her scratch you behind the ears!"
"That will do, Sarraya," Triana said in a dangerous tone.
"Aww, you want your widdle belly rubbed, Twiana?" she asked in an outrageous manner. "Does kitty want her widdle back scratched? If I scratch the base of your tail, will you stick your widdle butt up in the air for me?"
Despite knowing the consequences, Tarrin suddenly couldn't help but to succumb to a fit of laughter. Triana glared hotly at both of them, and her expression made it abundantly clear that was going to be retribution. She snorted loudly, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and waiting out Tarrin's fit like an impatient teacher waiting out a student's floundering for an answer. "If you're done, we have alot to do and not much time," she said tartly.
"I'm sorry, mother," he sniffed, still smiling. "I take it I'm not getting any sleep tonight?"
"Judging by how fast you learn? I doubt it," she said acidly and turned towards the door, waving him to follow.
"Ouch," Tarrin grunted.
"She'll get over it," Sarraya giggled. "It's good to see you! Triana told me about what happened. What was it like? How did Jesmind take it? What did you do all that time?"
"We'll have plenty of time to talk about it later, Sarraya," he told her calmly, moving to follow Triana. "I don't think I want to keep mother waiting. Not after what you said."
"Posh. She needs someone to tease her every now and then."
"Then you can do it," he said fervently. "I'm not that crazy." Then he started laughing again. "But it was funny."
"Of course it was," Sarraya said airily. "I said it, didn't I?"
The instruction he got from Triana and Sarraya was surprisingly simple, and it was also very similar to some things he had already learned from Allia. The problem was that when a Druid reached a certain level of ability or had enough natural aptitude, he attracted the All to him. This attraction increased dramatically whenever a Druid was emotionally upset or afraid, as the turmoil of the Druid was like water running downhill for the All and its power, drawing it towards him. And when the power reached the bottom of that hill, it would act just as if the Druid had reached to the All himself, looking into his mind and acting on whatever it found there. This was what Triana and Sarraya had to teach him to prevent, and there was a twofold method of it.
The first method was simple control of emotion. It was why Triana always seemed so grim and emotionless. It wasn't that she wasn't a very emotional person, it was that at her level of power, it took very little to attract the All to her. It would virtually come at a whim, and any time she even thought about Druidic magic, the All began to respond to her. She always had to be extremely careful, and she kept an almost perpetual check on her emotion. This wasn't going to be easy for Tarrin, and he knew it, but she drilled it into his head again and again that he had to at least try to maintain a throttle on his emotions. She didn't completely supress her emotion; in fact, she had gone past the need to really control her emotion to protect herself from the All, but it had become such an ingrained practice for her by now that it was second nature. But she always kept control. She offered to teach him some mental exercises that caused one to relax and regain control, but he explained that Allia had already taught him several of those things, as well as how to meditate. He had used a similar mental technique to remain in human form much longer than any other Were-cat, a method of thought and preparation that allowed him to ignore the pain. She had also taught him techniques for remaining calm and focused in the face of great turmoil, exercises to help him prevent a rage and keep his head in the many desperate situations he had faced. Tarrin had a very disciplined mind, as Triana had learned from her touch with it, and she seemed comfortable with what he had already learned. It was the only reason why she had been willing to leave him at all, because she was confident that, now that he understood the danger involved, he could keep control of his mind and not cause an accident.
The second method of defense against the All was learning how to resist it when it did come. This was the part that, to his surprise, Sarraya was much better at explaining than Triana. The whimsical little Faerie was a very powerful Druid, and that meant that she had the All coming at her all the time, since she had such little control of her emotion. So she was a master of blocking it when it did reach out to her, much better at it than Triana, and much better at explaining it in terms and images that he could easily understand. She explained that the key was sensing it the instant it began, because it was like a boulder rolling downhill, much easier to stop at the beginning than at the end, when it had built up so much momentum that stopping it would be a very dangerous proposition. If he could catch it at that stage, she told him, he could shield himself from it, using a tiny bit of Druidic power to create something of a barrier of sorts which he would put between him and the All. It would seek him out, but encounter the barrier and turn back on itself, which would do nobody any harm. She taught him the spell for that, a very simple, very easy spell that any Druid with his level of aptitude could cast without even having to reach into the All. Just the desire to cast it would be enough for the All to do it; and since it was already starting to roll towards him, it would be partially in touch with him and would respond instantly.
This concept would seem illogical to someone not accustomed to working with magical energy, which had its own rules that occasionally seemed contradictory. Sorcery also had a behavior like this, when one cut one's self off from the Weave, turning the power back against itself until it disrupted its own flow and was cancelled out. The idea of using magical power against itself was not new to Tarrin, and he found that he could embrace the idea with an ease that most other Druidic Hierarchs, a term describing Druids of their ability, did not. Tarrin noticed that when dealing with the All in a raw state, it behaved with surprising similarity to other orders of magic. It was only when it got into the mind of the Druid and was released by his will that the rules that governed it changed so radically. Perhaps in its raw state, in any magical order's raw state, magic was magic, and the rules that governed it all were a constant that could not be changed. Only after it reached the one who had summoned it did it change, transformed by the mind and body of the summoner into the form of energy he was trained to unleash.