26 Teaching Troubles

I had finished everything I had set out to write down. After a few moments of thinking I determined what I needed to do was to seal the paper so that the writing would stay. The charcoal would rub off very easily if you were not careful. Without Faun's help my options were a little limited, but the pine tree nearby should work just fine. I collected some sap that was oozing from the tree. The sap was a little thicker than was ideal but I could fix that without even using my powers. I stirred a little water in with the sap until I got the consistency that I wanted.

Just when I finished I heard Ivy exclaim, "I did it!" as she took a bite and then frowned. "Why does it not taste as good as the one you made?" she said to Leafia.

"I have been practicing for many years." After a slight pause she continued, "Also I don't think dropping it in the dirt helped any."

Ivy once again turned a little green as she blushed. I did my best not to laugh because I knew it would only make her feel worse. But why was she so adorable?

I was running out of time to seal the papers. Ivy would be done eating really soon. "Istan, come over here and watch what I am doing. I am going to have you take over so I can teach Ivy." I took a sprig of a particularly feathery grass and started using it as a rush to spread the pine sap over the paper. This really was not the best sealant and it took time to dry, but it was the best I knew of without Faun's help to gather some beatles. If Ivy found a good place to store the pages, it should hold up for at least several decades.

Just after I finished my second sheet, Ivy came up to me and said, "Sorry for the delay." She still had a little food on her face, but I chose to ignore it. "What have you been working on?" she asked, seeing the paper that was laid out.

"I decided to write some notes to help you practice when we leave." I then handed the brush to Istan. "Let's find a good spot to practice," I said as I took Ivy a little way into the woods.

"I think the most important thing for you to learn is how to strengthen your reserve. You will need it if that magician comes to your woods. You will need to run away across the prairie. If you head west you should be able to get to my forest in a few days, if you go through the night. You won't to able to do that if you don't have energy you can use once the plants go to sleep."

"How will I be able to find it? I don't know the way."

She would have to be really bad with directions to miss my woods from only a few days away. You could veer quite a bit off from west and still make it to the forest without problems. The smile on my face was due to a mixture of her ignorance and imagining her managing to get lost with something so easy to be found. "Remember that I said my woods are much larger than yours. If you head west, you will find it. If the time comes and you need to run, just head west." I paused and thought for a moment. "I do not know how long my journey will last. If you need to run and can't sense me when you get to my woods, find a fairy or an elf and ask them to take you to my pond. A water sprite named Mist lives there and will be of help. I have taught her much because she was my daily companion." I added that last part since I could tell Ivy was wondering why she would need help from a sprite. It seemed to pacify her knowing that I had spent years teaching Mist.

Now it was time to get back on topic. "I am going to teach you the basics of how to improve your reserve, but it will take you much practice to improve. Please do not slack off. Your very life may depend on it one day."

I carefully explained to Ivy how to use her internal power all the way and then fill it up all the way. I gave her an example of how it was like draining a pond away and filling it with clean water. Every time she did this some of the dirt at the bottom of the pond would leave with the water, which would allow room for more water in the pond next time.

After I had finished my explanation Ivy asked, "What should I use my powers on?"

I guess my explanation was not quite as thorough as I thought. "That really does not matter. But make sure that it can accept your power quickly."

Ivy then started the exercise. Instead of picking any specific plant to nurture, it seemed that she was releasing her power to the forest as a whole. This was much the same as what Emily was doing before I started teaching her. It was much more inefficient, but that did not matter for our current exercise so I did not bother correcting her.

After a minute or so I could feel Ivy's power diminishing. She must be nearing the end of her reserve. The release of her power came to a stop and I said, "Try to squeeze out a little more."

Ivy nodded and began to push out a little more power. Quickly her skin started to fade to the dull green of dried leaves and she collapsed to the ground.

I hurried over in a bit of a panic and started to push power into her body. How could I be such a bad teacher to forget to explain that step?! I was not that bad at teaching all those millenia ago, was I? I hope that I was just a little slow to pull up my sap after winter, and not that I was always bad.Well, I guess one good thing did come of this. She will know better for next time, and me filling up her reserves at high speed will help her improve even faster. I guess that is two things, but now is not really the time to be particular.

A moment later Ivy opened her eyes again to see that her head was resting on my lap with my hands gently placed on the sides of her head to supply her with power. "I am sorry I collapsed. I must be a really bad student." I looked down on a face that looked like it was on the verge of tears.

"It has nothing to do with you being a bad student. I am the bad teacher. I forgot to explain one of the basic steps of doing this exercise. You need to sustain yourself using the power of the forest around you while you use your power to strengthen the forest. Otherwise when you run out of power you collapse until you absorb enough energy from the forest around you to continue functioning."

Ivy appeared to be very confused by this concept. "How do I do that? How can I use two different power sources at the same time?"