<span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ccff99">Ayla was half expecting to get yelled at, or at the very least, chastised for her outburst. But what she was waiting for didn’t come. She blinked in surprise as he asked her to actually use magic. </span><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#a6ff4d">“I...right. Okay.”</span><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ccff99"> small had always been so hard for her, but she had to believe that she could do this. It was like turning on a faucet. Very very slowly. Just a trickle. She took a deep breath, holding out her hand in front of her. It was like an overfilled dam about to burst, raging with energy. She could feel it when she tapped into it, without even releasing any. And somehow she had to just syphon off the smallest bit. She took another deep breath, closing her eyes. This was literally the first spell she learned. That every illusionist learned. The barest, most basic of spells. She did her best, slowly allowing her magic to flow through her, fighting the raging torrent that wanted out. A fast spinning ball of light, flickering wildly like a star ready to explode into a super nova, though the light it gave off was nowhere near that bright. She had to dim it, to steady it somehow. To make it smaller. She focused on the ball, blocking out the very idea that she was being graded on this, managing to get it to shrink smaller, dimmer, though it flickered even more wild than before. And yet, still, this was an improvement.</span>