See Gabrielle about finally getting this hand back

It takes you a moment to find your way to her room since you are approaching it from an unfamiliar angle but soon enough you are standing outside the plain wooden door. You knock gently but hear no response. You don't really want to wake her up but you knock louder and say. "Gabrielle it's Christopher can I come in?" There is a muffled response from inside that you assume is assent so you open the door.

You were wrong. A naked Gabrielle is standing with one arm a sleeve of a shirt the other bunching it up to lift over her head. She is facing you and freezes. The morning sun filtering through the window does wanders to make it clear how little sun she has gotten, not just recently due to magical exhaustion but over her life in this world. The pinkness of her nipples is a very stark stand out that is impossible to look away from.

Her shirt starts lowering slowing and the moment the nipples are covered you look out of the room and cough. "Sorry I, ah, sorry." You check her aura and see it is the same density as when your first seen her but it looked a bit neater now, maybe the exhaustion had taught her a bit of control. Otherwise it looked like her normal base of not much feeling.

"It's, it's fine." Gabrielle said sitting on her bed with crossed legs. You can't help but notice she chose to not put any pants on.

"I'm just checking to see if you're recovered." You said from the doorway, you wanted to lead into the arm thing just in case it comes across that she owes you or it's in anyway her fault.

"Yeah, back to normal." She grabbed her book from her night stand protectively. "Thank you for bringing my things." She toyed with a corner of the leather. "How bad is the damage?"

You take a step into the room and she doesn't object so you close the door behind you and walk over. She shift to make room for you to her left on the bed and you sit beside her, two hand widths apart. "Not that bad, the estate is being rebuilt. Has anyone told you the story Queen Aurora wants us to go with?"

"Yeah. That lady that looks like her, Demise, said it was an encantor's rehearsal gone very wrong." Gabrielle is still looking at her book and fiddling with the leather.

"I think her name is actually 'Lady Demise' not just Demise." You said awkwardly. You really want to bring up the aura sharing but Gabrielle's nerves were making it harder than you thought it would, like you were intruding more than just in her room.

"Oh." Gabrielle put her book in her lap and looked at you. "Thank you, I, shouldn't have tried to talk with that thing without you. I just, I thought might actually be able to go home." She brought her hand up and wiped at her face. "Stupid."

"It's not stupid, and they're a them not a that or a thing. You thought you were finally making progress and I told you to stop so I could have sex." You reached your left hand over and patted her knee. Her aura rippled at your touch, a warmness but also a shame.

"Your arm is still gone." She said looking at the reached over hand rather than the closer arm.

Well you aren't going to get a better segway. "Yes, I was actually hoping to get your help with that." She gave you a confused look. "Do you know what aura absorbing is?"

She opened her book and scanned through the first few pages before snapping it shut. "No."

"Then I'll start with the basics. Have you ever shaken someone's hand and felt their aura before." You figure foundation to knowledge will work better for her rather than assuming knowledge. She opens her book and find a quill you hadn't see her locate read to start writing.

"No." She didn't even need to look at her book for that.

"Right well you can feel other peoples aura's to get a sense of them, it is fleeting and surface level be effective. Absorbing someones aura is a deeper version of that. If someone trust you or has some affection for you their aura opens up, allowing you to draw it into you. Once a part of you you can return their aura by using your magic to push it back to them." While you talk she's been writing everything you say down in shorthand, or her written language is remarkably quick to write as she keeps pace with your speech. "When you return it to them with your magic you also impart some of your nonself-consciousness knowledge, such as how your body functions and how it works."

"One moment." She said flipping back through her book to read some other part of it then underlining something and making a tiny note beside before turning back to her page, nodding for you to continue.

"When I cut off my hand I also cut off my nonself-consciousness's knowledge of my arm. As far as my magic is aware I don't have a right hand. That is where I need your help. I need you to absorb my aura and return it to me, you're knowledge of your own body should help me to recover my arm. And since the two of us are chosen you should be able to handle my aura while it's unlikely anyone else could."

She finished writing and read over what she wrote then put her quill down in the middle of her page and looked at you. "How?"

You open your mouth then close it. You maybe should have considered how to teach this before this moment. However this is one option, the same one that you'd learned from. "The Church of Nurture." She flipped through her book quickly then nodded. "They have a ritual that taught me how to do it, wrapped up in religious verbiage but understandable."

"Do you remember the ritual?" She asked picking up the quill to write. You recount the passage from memory and after she finished writing it she stared at it for a moment. You waited for to tell you to keep talking or to say something else. She didn't, instead she started making little notes around the ritual text, crossing out some words and writing others in.

You waited until she was done then said. "So want to give it a try?" You asked really hoping this would be the end of the whole missing arm thing, it had gotten old a week ago.

Gabrielle read the passage again then nodded. She moved further onto the bed, crossing her legs under her, unintentionally revealing her lack of anything other than her top.

You joined her trying to not let your eyes look down. She closed her eyes. "Let me know when you are ready."

You copied suit. This felt like the sort of moment where full dedication mattered. Letting out a slow deep breath you relaxed yourself, letting your aura out fully. You assume any level of compression would be detrimental for the simple fact that doing so requires you to stop your aura from going too far from you.

There is a rush of knowledge and feeling. Everyone's aura in the vicinity had just been flattened underneath you and the surprise and shock of that reverberated inside you. "Sorry just need a moment." You said as you tried to relax through the alien feelings.

You were struggling to do so. Letting out your aura also let out your perception so it wasn't just feelings you were detecting. The garden had a lot more bug in it that you'd have thought. "Are you ok?" Gabrielle asked. There were only two auras that you could feel with yours but had no sense from. Delilah being the other. The density of her aura must prevent yours from simply forcing a merger.

"Yeah just. This might be easier somewhere else but just give me a bit more time." You said fidgeting on the bed. The surprise was wearing off and the emotional effect of all the hangovers started to hit you. "People drank a lot last night."

Gabrielle was quiet while you tried to adjust. It took a while but eventually you think you were calm enough for her to absorb your aura. "Are you ready?" She asked so she must be feeling it.

"Yes." You said.

... Nothing was happening. Her aura wasn't changing, you'd never been on this side of it before so don't know what is supposed to happen but it should feel like something. You open your eyes and saw a concentrated face on Gabrielle. Closing them again you waited longer.

Second stretched into minutes. The longer it went on the more obvious this wasn't working. Her aura was still closed off to you which seemed wrong. "Let's take a break." You said pulling your aura back inside yourself. You go light headed from the sudden cut off of everyone in the palace's feelings and had to use you hand to steady yourself on the bed, looking down to cut down on the vertigo.

While you recovered Gabrielle got onto all fours and crawled over to her book to re-read her notes. You looked up expecting to see her face only to see a bare butt with a shirt resting on the small of her back. It was a very small butt, and in the sun light was honestly kinda bright. She needed to get some more sun.

"I don't understand why it didn't work. I didn't feel your aura at all." Gabrielle said looking over at you, catching you staring at her ass. She pulled her shirt down over it and you blushed.

"Sorry." You cleared your throat. "Maybe you'll need to compress your aura. I've mostly only absorbed aura's while my aura is compressed inside me."

"Ok," she flipped through her note book then picked up her quill, "how do I do that?" she asked sitting back down ready to start writing.

You opened your mouth then closed it. "I have no idea how to explain that. Did anyone ever teach you how to control your aura at all?"

"No. It wouldn't help me get home so I didn't care to learn."

"Right. I am not the teacher to explain this. Your aura is a part of you, you just pull it inside yourself and hold it there." That is honestly all you do, until Stephanie told you how exceptional it was you hadn't even thought totally compressing your aura was all that impressive.

Gabrielle looked up at you. "Is there anything else you can explain. I want to help but." She looked at her notes and closed her eyes, concentrating for a moment. "I don't have any idea how do what you just said."

Well, you had a feeling this wasn't going to a quick thing to do, though you'd been hoping it wouldn't be a weeks long affair. "We'll find a teacher. Stephanie seemed to know what she was taking about and I've seen her compress her aura. And while she's teaching you we can keep trying to figure out how to open a portal to your old world."

Gabrielle looked surprised by your words. "You still want to help me?"

You were surprised by hers. "Well yeah. I said I would. Why wouldn't I?"

"I almost got everyone killed. I could feel how much power that - they have if it wasn't for you the city wouldn't exist anymore. Why would you try to help me when I so," her eyes started watering. Her aura was still hard to read and it took a moment to figure out its density was the issue. Like trying to make a sound underwater this is too much stuff between her and the outer edge where you'd be able to read her emotions.

"That's not, I already said it was my fa-"

"STOP SAYING THAT!" She shouted at you throwing her book off the bed. "You saved everyone. I put everyone in danger. I almost di -" Her breathing sped up and you could almost hear her heart pounding, so that is what you looked like. No wonder both Mary and Stephanie had picked it out the moment an episode hit you.

"You're ok." You said, gently touching her knee. "You're alright. We're in your room. Just the two of us no one else." Gabrielle's eyes were watery and you got up to hug her. "It's ok."

"I-I almost died." Her breathed didn't slow and she started crying. "I did die. I remember it. I remember how it felt." She grabbed at your shirt, pulling the fabric into fists. "Why did Clare let me remember?" You thought she didn't remember, that her death had been quicker than yours had been. "What, what if I don't get home?" She starts crying more seriously. "What if they don't let me die?"

This is not how you thought this was going to go. You rub her back gently. "We'll get you home. Promise, even if I have to do it one arm down." You really need to pick a better time for humour as that made the existential crying go back to guilty crying. Not an improvement as far as you could tell.

The two of you stayed there for a while before she let you go and wiped her eyes. "Sorry." She said. "Saved my life shouldn't -"

You wiped a tear off her cheek with your thumb to stop her talking. "You don't need to say sorry for anything. It was," you stop from blaming yourself, "it happened, and now it's over. And once this is back," you waved your hand, "and the estate is fixed, all it will be is a memory."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Ok." She nodded. "So, where is Stephanie?"

You explained who Stephanie is and agreed that you'll introduce them on Monday. You figure Stephanie won't be opposed to teaching Gabrielle if you explain how it help get your hand back. You leave Gabrielle to go over her notes, it seemed to be calming for her.

With that done and yourself still in the palace you should probably find Ana, you've got a lot to talk about.