After their enjoyable day in the town, instigated by Meg, Emilia decided it was time to return the favour with a day of training at the mansion. Turning up mid-morning of the next Saturday, Meg prepared for some lessons in the fine art of beating up monsters. After enjoying a nice cuppa each—courtesy of Lifa, of course—they headed out to the rear garden.

  Blue was already there, wandering around the lush lawns and occasionally engaging in some desultory hedge trimming. He gave them a friendly wave, but otherwise kept to himself and let the girls practice.

  Emilia had transformed and now hovered a few feet above the grass in the centre of the lawn. Tall conifers and weeping willows on all three sides of the garden made for an excellent privacy guard, but since non-magic users couldn’t see the mansion in any case, she was free to openly use her powers.

  “All right, Meg, transform, please!” she called over.

  Meg stood on a paved patio area at the rear of the mansion. Behind her, the French door leading back inside to the kitchen had been slid to one side, and the yellow flagstones beneath her feet felt reassuringly solid, unlike the sensation of flying while transformed, which she attempted a few times during the intervening week or so, and still had a sore posterior as a result.

  Taking a moment to compose herself, Meg did as requested and her crimson and orange outfit materialised around her. This was followed by a vague sigh. “I really don’t like flying…” She couldn’t seem to get past the fear of being suspended hundreds of feet in the air on what amounted to sheer willpower.

  “You’ll never get better if you don’t practice and overcome your fears,” Emilia said.

  “I know, but…”

  Emilia floated across and landed before her new partner. “I was scared at first, too. And I was born with these powers. I’ll catch you if you fall, I promise.”

  Setting her face into a determined expression, Meg nodded. “Okay!” She hesitantly jumped a few times, like an athlete limbering up. But unlike most athletes, Meg had to be careful not to put forth too much effort, lest she accidentally launch herself into space.

  “Now, focus,” Emilia continued. “The magic is always there, you just have to trust it. Believe you won’t fall and you won’t fall!”

  “Easier said than done,” Meg murmured, jumping once more and ascending a few metres. Wobbling and flailing her arms about, she focused on remaining airborne.

  Nodding a few times, Emilia called up, “Try not to think about it too much, let your subconscious deal with it.”

  Staring down the length of the garden, Meg unwisely gave a thumbs-up, meaning she was now focusing on that instead of remaining upright. She dropped straight into Emilia’s waiting arms.

  “Your world has airplanes, Meg, I’m not sure how you can be this bad at staying in the sky,” Emilia said, exasperated.

  “That’s not the same thing at all!”

  “Okay, maybe that wasn’t a great comparison.”

  “Not even remotely,” said Meg, letting out a brief laugh.

  “Is there anything that could give you a clue?” Emilia wondered out loud, placing her partner back down on her feet.

  Thinking for a moment, Meg recalled something from her childhood, attempting to ride a bicycle for the first time. She had fallen off and grazed her knees to the point of air raid siren-level wailing. Her father had popped her back on after applying several plasters and hugging her till the tears stopped, and talked her through the process of keeping balance and letting her body work without needing to consciously think about it. She had been immensely proud of the fact that she never used training wheels like most of the other kids in the village.

  “Cycling…” she murmured, smiling at the memory.

  “Thought of something?”

  “I just remembered when Dad taught me how to ride a bike. He didn’t want me to rely on a crutch, so I learned right from the start how to balance by myself, no training wheels. But having him there while I practised also helped my confidence.”

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  Emilia stretched her right arm out. “Take my hand.”

  Meg did so.

  Lifting off again, Emilia used her own skilful control of magic to support her partner until they hovered a few hundred feet above the garden. “How do you feel?”

  “O-Okay! I think. It helps having you beside me,” Meg said, taking in the view. “It’s beautiful up here. And terrifying.”

  “There are perks to being a Galaisin,” said a smiling Emilia.

  Meg gazed out over the vista before them. Beyond the garden at the rear, and to both sides of the mansion itself, fields of green grass extended out for a mile or so, all of which had the same magical enchantment cast upon them. No one could see or even be aware of their existence unless Blue willed it.

  Holding hands, the two magical girls danced back and forth through the sky, with Emilia doing her best to keep Meg the right way up as much as possible; most of the girls at the temple where she had initially trained had the tendency to roll forward until their legs pointed skyward, and Meg was no different.

  Over the next half an hour, grasping her mentor’s hand like a lifeline, Meg learned to control her power a little better. Gradually she got used to the idea of letting the magic carry her and to stop consciously thinking about it so much. And much as her father had done so many years ago, Emilia stuck close by, offering advice and letting her learn at her own pace.

  Zooming around the sky, feeling more and more confident, Meg wheeled and rolled, laughing exactly as she had when she learned to ride a bike. Forgetting the previous terror, she let herself be lost in the moment, performing barrel rolls and, on one occasion, attempting the magical girl equivalent of a stall turn.

  Upon reaching her zenith, she deactivated her wings for a moment, turned in mid-air, and dropped again. Looking down, she realised Emilia was no longer there and returned to reality with all the subtlety of a brick through a window. “Ohshi—!”

  She dropped back to Earth in much the same manner as a brick might, too.

  Fortunately her partner had been prepared for this and was, as promised, there to catch her. “Don’t get too carried away, you’re still new to this!”

  Meg, still enjoying the exhilarating thrill of flight, giggled. Despite the fall, she was perfectly relaxed. “That was wonderful!”

  “Want to give it another try? Or should we land for now?”

  “I’d love to fly some more! But maybe I shouldn’t push myself too fast?” Meg said, yawning. She was still getting used to simply being a magical girl, never mind all these extra shenanigans.

  Emilia agreed this sounded wise, so she descended at a sedate pace, gently setting her friend down on the patio once they reached ground level. “You got the hang of that pretty quickly. Now we just need to work on your stamina and making sure you can stay in the air without losing concentration.”

  With a magic top-up from Lifa, Meg was soon ready to continue her practice. Next up, she spent an hour doing her best to visualise attacks and fire them off without the pause to wind her arm up.

  Blue had set up several wooden targets, each in the rough shape of an elemental, at the end of the garden, behind which they had piled sand to roughly head-height, similar to a shooting range. Blue’s ability to create items using magic came in handy for situations like this, and the sand helped to ensure that Meg didn’t accidentally burn the trees down in the event any of her attacks missed their mark.

  This training went considerably more smoothly than the flight practice, at least. Before long, she had the hang of firing bolts of magical fire from the palms of her hands, and now worked to refine the speed and intensity of each shot.

  “Ey!” she muttered, tossing another spitting ball of fire at a target. She watched in satisfaction as the wooden target disintegrated in a cloud of black smoke and orange sparks. “Getting better, getting better…”

  “Try a machinegun!” Emilia suggested from behind her.

  “What, like… rapid fire?” Meg said, and aimed for the final target. Concentrating, she let off a burst of half a dozen smaller fireballs from a fingertip, each around six inches long and two inches wide. They punched a circular series of holes in the target, similar to the pattern she’d made in her ice cream when Yasuko had visited. She grinned. “Awesome!”

  “It’s getting late, we should probably wrap up here,” Emilia said, happy with her student’s progress. A glance at the sky confirmed that evening was upon them, fading gently to the soft orange of sunset as the shadows gradually lengthened.

  Releasing their transformations, they strolled back inside the mansion.

  “I’ll walk you home,” Emilia said, grabbing a lightweight jacket from a coat rack attached to the rear of the door which led back to the living room. “You said before you like exploring old buildings, right?” she added as they exited the mansion, walking down the driveway and out of the gates.

  “I love it,” Meg said. “Though I’ve not had much chance to do any urbex since arriving in Japan. Busy with uni, and there aren’t all that many places I’d feel comfy exploring anyway.”

  “Maybe you’d feel more comfortable with a friend?” Emilia suggested, blushing a little as they stepped out onto the pavement and turned towards town.

  Meg looked surprised. “I thought you weren’t interested?”

  Emilia stared at the pavement. “Not by myself, but it might be nice with you…”

  “I’ll have a look around for somewhere we can explore,” Meg said, her enthusiasm plainly evident in the way her eyes lit up, like a sugar-addicted kid trick-or-treating around Candy Cul-de-sac.

  They reached Meg’s place, at which point Emilia surprised her with a quick hug. “I’m glad I met you, Meg. I don’t feel so alone now. Night!” With that, she ran.

  Shivering a little in happy delight, Meg headed up to her flat.