The walk from the office to the inner courtyard took less than three minutes and Hild said nothing during it.

Beorn did not fill the silence. He was used to walking with people who had something to work through, and he had learned that talking into that particular silence accomplished nothing except making the person work through it faster in the worse direction.

Aestrith moved on his other side with one crutch managing the uneven stone of the old corridors, and she also said nothing, which made the walk exactly as full of words as it needed to be.

The courtyard had the scent of cut herbs and flowers from the garden corner.

Beorn had stopped paying attention to it weeks ago.

For Hild, it was a rare sight in the Badlands. She looked toward the garden once when they came through the entrance, her eyes taking just a little longer on the flowers, taking stock of what was there before she decided how she felt about being in it.

He watched her gaze move across the chalk marks on the stone floor, then to the red circle at the far wall, then to the timber target standing against the wall’s base.

Beorn reckoned he should have the courtyard cleaned up at some point.

She stopped in the middle without being told to, her arms folded across her chest.

"What now?" she said.

"Show me what you can do."

Beorn said. "Whatever you’d prefer. I want to see what first comes to your mind before I make specific requests."

Aestrith had already walked to the near wall, her back to the stone and the crutch braced against it, watching the open space between Hild and the far end of the courtyard.

Hild uncrossed her arms, let them drop to her sides, and looked at the floor made of flagstone in front of her feet.

She breathed out once and tried.

Nothing happened.

She kept trying.

The courtyard was silent. The herb aroma drifted from the corner.

Hild didn’t look neither embarrassed or nervous. For her, this was to use something that has been sealed for a very long time, and she worked through the lock rather than allowing it to be free.

She breathed out again, longer this time, and tried once more.

The courtyard cracked.

A fracture appeared in the stone floor two feet in front of her, and then the stone on either side of that crack grind against itself with a tremor that rose from low and buried into something that shook the soles of Beorn’s boots before it reached his ears.

Then the floor moved.

A part of flagstone the size of a wide doorway compressed downward under something enormous and invisible, the old stone shattering into thick heavy fragments that pushed against each other like the base of a collapsing wall, and from that point the force transferred outward through the solid rock.

A wave spread under the courtyard floor, cracking its surface in a jagged branching line that raced toward the far wall and pushed the earth underneath up into a ridge that split Tam’s old chalk grid markings clean across.

The whole thing lasted about three seconds.

The ridge of earth stood four inches high at its peak.

The stone around the compression point was fractured in a wide star pattern. Dust rose from the cracked floor in a grey cloud that spread across the courtyard and caught the afternoon light.

Hild was breathing hard.

She looked at what she had made, the broken floor, the earth ridge, the dust still moving, her expression neither of relief, satisfaction or even fear. It was like she simply recognized an old companion.

"I suppose that was rougher than you intended," Beorn remarked.

"Yes," she exhaled.

"And stronger than you intended."

"Also yes." The exhale became a snort.

He was already writing.

Aestrith pushed off the wall.

She crossed the courtyard toward Hild, the crutch managing the new uneven ground from the ridge, and looked at the fracture without crouching.

"I could see you were aiming for the wall and it went through the floor first."

She looked at Hild directly.

"When you start, focus it where you want it to go before you let any power out."

Hild looked at the far wall, thinking about this.

"Like threading the thread through before you pull it," she said.

Aestrith nodded. "That works."

Hild turned to the intact section of stone wall to her right, the part without chalk marks or prior damage.

She put her hands at her sides again, and this time the power came faster, the ability having turned once already, the rust partially worked out of it.

The wall section groaned.

The stone compressed inward from the surface and then sheared. A long diagonal fracture raced from near the top of the wall down toward the base, and from that fracture the stone’s face bowed outward, pressing forward against the resistance of its own weight.

A slow wave of solid rock curved six inches away from the wall behind it and held there, cracked along the surface but kept together by everything behind it.

It looked like the wall had taken a blow from something enormous and not quite broken.

It happened through five full seconds.

Then Hild let it go, and the wall settled back with a grinding sound like stone teeth coming together.

Three large fragments broke from it and hit the courtyard floor in three heavy impacts.

Aestrith’s field had been up throughout.

Beorn could see it in the way the dust from the fallen fragments didn’t spread out, but was forced against the ground.

It made he wonder inwardly how much of her ability changed.

He then looked at Hild.

She was breathing more steadily.

"It looks like you can bend the stone." he said, marking it. The concept felt oddly familiar.

"It’s been a while... the first one went by itself and I couldn’t keep it right."

He wrote that phrasing as she had given it.

"Can you also influence earth?"

She looked at the garden.

The soil there was packed and cultivated. She aimed at it and the earth came up.

A wedge of it rose and compressed itself into a column two feet high, the roots of the nearest herb plant pulling free with the sound of wet wood tearing, and the earth held itself there, solid and self-supported, before settling slowly back down under her direction, the earth closing over itself without fully sealing.

She looked at him.

"It’s way easier."

"How curious. I wonder if it has to do with the materials or their composition."

He closed the ledger partway.

"Either or, that’s enough for now."

She nodded.

She was tired, not spent, not close to crashing out, but the honest tiredness of a muscle that had not been used for months and was now strained.

She was only still standing because she was not going to sit down while being watched.

That was her pride.

Aestrith looked at the bowed section of wall, still carrying the curved impression of what had passed through it.

"The first time is always the hardest."

She said, to Hild rather than to the wall, though she was still looking at the wall. "It’s not your fault, you just have been pushing it down for long enough that when you let it move, you are fighting yourself and it at the same time."

She looked at Hild.

"It gets easier."

"How do you know?" Hild said.

Aestrith shifted her crutch slightly and rolled her eyes.

"I have experience, and despite everything, you still succeed in showing your powers to him."

Hild was quiet.

She did not say thank you and Aestrith did not wait for it.

Meanwhile, Beorn was more interested in his notes.

Earth, stone and possible other types of bending. It was the sort of ability that had dozens of extremely important applications, be it construction, mining or even altering the landscape for infrastructure and agriculture.

He felt his thoughts excitedly jump around with the potential.

"Thank you Hild, you can return to rest." he said. "When you go back, send Mod."

Hild looked at the courtyard once more, the cracked floor, the earth ridge, the bowed wall with the fragments at its base, the herb plant half-uprooted in the corner.

She uncrossed her arms.

Then she walked out through the entrance without looking back.