She pursed her lips, annoyed.

What? She hadn't been crass. It was like soup. Simon was clearly just jealous that he had not come up with the analogy himself. It was not wrong.

Maya waved the anti-gravity soup of a towel around like a damsel might wave a hanky after her favorite knight.

It did like to stick together.

She waved it around some more as Simon talked at her. She was listening. Sort-of. She could at least perceive him and the towel soup at the same time when she didn't rely on physical sight.

Break the connection? Maya could cut something with air, though it was her least honed ability. She'd certainly never tried to cut something with air that was, at the time, changed into air by her power. It simply had never occurred to her to try.

So she tried now and it was absolutely fascinating. A little corner of cloth fell down, solidified as soon as it had been cut off from the rest. If she let the whole cloth go solid, would they fit together like puzzle pieces? Maya tried to pay special attention to the "frayed ends" that Simon had talked about. They didn't really feel frayed to her.

"It's so weird, Simon. I can imagine this thing whole again." The image of the cloth soup obliged. It didn't solidify, but the imagery formed a picture of the towel as it had been. "It can look whole again. But there's still that piece on the floor." She was pretty sure it wasn't actually whole. It didn't feel right. Maybe because she knew that piece was on the ground.

"Could you stick something odd in there? Steal pieces of a teacup to make a towel?"

Hiding a subtle smirk at Maya’s annoyance Simon drained the last of his tea as he followed her experiments with what he soon expected would become less a tea towel than a pile of rags. It was a pity really, he had so little from his ‘college’ days, he only wished he could have sacrificed something more appropriate, such as his nonexistent diploma.

Honestly with the way things were going these days, he wasn’t sure which would be greater the loss.

Putting aside his grievance with alma mater aside Simon shifted his attention back to his sister as he watched her weave the ethereal essence of the towel through her fingers like a streamer, twisting and folding its fogged form as she tested the limits of its bonds before purposefully separating a slim corner that near instantly wove itself back to solid fabric like iron filing with a magnet.

It was like watching a lava lamp, but in reverse.

"It's so weird, Simon. I can imagine this thing whole again. It can look whole again. But there's still that piece on the floor.""

And if that wasn’t a depressingly perfect summary of her condition he didn’t know what was.

Setting his cup and saucer down Simon leaned forward, watching her play with the larger wisp of fabric, searching for the snapped strands where the corner had been separated. It wasn’t a simple task by any means but, well, he’d had his fair share of practice, so it didn’t take him long to reach out and pinch a section of the cloud twirling around his sister’s fingers, purposefully feeding the transformation to prevent it being torn away like the corner before.

“Try and focus here, this is where the corner use to be, or most of it at least. For me it feels almost like an itch, it’s not entirely whole.”

"Could you stick something odd in there? Steal pieces of a teacup to make a towel?"

Raising his eyebrows, Simon brought his free hand to his chin as he pondered the question. “I suppose it possible, but it would be like putting glass in a loaf of bread, you wouldn’t change the nature of the glass itself, or if you can, I’ve not found out how.”

Focus here? What? Maya waved the towel-soup around again. "The 'here' is entirely indistinguishable from the 'there.'"

How could it feel like an itch? How did it scratch him? He wasn't a part of it. They weren't even connected incorporeally. It just did not compute. The towel was what it was, even if that was minus one corner. But maybe if the towel corner on the floor was incorporeal too... maybe then it would feel like an itch?

While Simon dismissed her teacup-cloth hybrid idea, Maya reached for the fallen piece. She looked between the two: one soup, one not. She changed the scrap into air.

There was. No. Itch. She was just holding two pieces of a whole.

Maya sort of put them near to one another. She may as well have been holding two bits of cut paper together. There was nothing like tape. Nothing to hold them together.

She did, however, notice her two solid arm stumps that ended in towel soup.

The whole transition between incorporeal and corporeal was fascinating and there was no one else who appreciated it like her except for Simon. "I'm really glad these don't just gush blood everywhere."

Maya waved her incorporeal hands which sent the towel-soup sloshing again. None of it was a well-defined image, but the "picture" became clearer the closer to solid that Maya became.

"My hand is different from the towel. I know what my hand feels like. I don't know every atom in it, but I do know what it's supposed to look like." The more that Maya thought about its look and feel, the more solid her hand became. Eventually it was just a hand again, a hand holding onto a ghostly mess of towel-soup. She held the soup pieces together and looked at Simon. Could he fix it?

Maya’s eyes flickered from the fog formed towel in her grasp to the section he’d caught between his own fingers, brow furrowing as she tried to discern any difference between the two parts of the whole even as her growing frustration belied her lack of success, causing Simon to hold back a frown.

If she couldn’t differentiate parts of items she’d transformed then there was little more he could teach her that would be safe. Being able to attach A to B had little use if it was meant to belong with D after all. Even now, when the transformation when he wasn’t in control of the transformation he could feel the torn, for lack of a better word, edges of the towel wisps and he couldn’t imagine how she was missing them.

Which, in all honesty, was likely part of the problem. They were brother and sister yes, and they shared a mutation but no two people saw the world the same way. Without understanding precisely how she interpreted the effect of her powers it was difficult to provide guidance, and though english was immensely versatile language, it was somewhat ill equipped to describe a sense held by only two people.

How would you explain ‘green’ to someone colour blind?

Fortunately, his sister was was a veritable spring of positive energy and she soon turned her thoughts elsewhere to discard her frustration; in this case it happened to be the stumps of her wrists which she briefly waved about in a manner so reminiscent her young son that Simon couldn’t help the slight grin which tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"I'm really glad these don't just gush blood everywhere."

“I’ve generally found that mutations avoid effects that are immediately dangerous to the user.” The words came with a pondering tone as he cast his thoughts back to the various characters while he refilled his cup. “Isabel for instance, actually has somewhat enhanced healing to prevent her bleeding out whenever she uses her bones, I believe it also one of the key contributors to her high energy levels and why she can’t stand to sit still for long.”

Pausing for a brief sip he watched idly as Ghost retrieved the torn corner of the towel before continuing.“Without these sorts of safeguards most mutations simply wouldn’t pass on, evolution at its finest I suppose.”

From there the conversation eventually returned to the topic at hand as Maya voiced her difficulties in perceiving the entirety of something she lacked familiarity with before she offered the two parts of the towel she’d been unable to repair with a questioning look. An expression to which Simon merely quirked an eyebrow, he supposed it wouldn’t hurt to show her again, so he set his cup and saucer aside as he took each piece of cloth in hand before they faded just as Maya’s had and he closed his eyes.

Putting something back together was always harder than taking it apart and unfortunately this was no exception. Finding the tear wasn’t the difficult part, it was the fact that the break between the two wasn’t clean, making the process more akin to piecing back jagged shards of glass instead of simple puzzle pieces.

Still that merely made it difficult, not impossible and after a handful of minutes combing through each strand of insubstantial fabric to align them as best he could, he slowly lowered the haze of fabric onto the coffee table before gradually going through the process of weaving it back into being until he was again holding a single piece of cloth in his grasp with one corner slightly out of line of the rest of the checkered pattern.

“Not a perfect fix.” He admitted as he placed it back in Ghosts reach, “but certainly good enough for its purpose. I’m wondering whether it would be helpful to have you practice putting things together, I know you’re more than capable of that.” She’d in fact demonstrated it rather acutely when she’d first taught him the technique, accidentally giving them both insight into the life of conjoined twins. “It might help you find the ‘itch’ I referred to before.”

Isabel was his first example. They were talking and his mind just couldn't help but go there. Maya's sister smirk was strong.

Simon and Isabel sitting in a tree...

Simon was oblivious to both her self-satisfaction and her internal singing, wholly focused on the task she'd given him. Maya leaned forward despite the fact that distance had very little to do with how specifically she perceived the world.

But she was paying attention. She wanted to understand this adaptation of power that Simon had and that she did not. Her power pressed in close, probably making Simon's job more difficult, but he did not complain.

He was a good brother.

> “Not a perfect fix.”

Maya picked up the cloth and ran her fingers along the newly minted seam. She didn't bother to turn her face toward it; he already knew that she wasn't actually looking at it with her eyes. There was no point in pretending.

"Putting things together? Like you change it and I'll change it back?" So long as she knew what it was beforehand, Maya didn't really see the point in the exercise. Unless... she didn't know. "Keep it secret. I'll put myself in a little silence bubble and pull all my feelers in. Don't tell me what you changed and then we'll try to hand it off and see what happens." If there was ever going to be any kind of itch, that was the best she could think of how to incite it.

Maya started constructing the little vacuum bubble wall structure which had been the first thing that Zephyr had taught her and worked to pull her awareness entirely inside.

That was an... interesting little smirk dancing across Mayas features; he wasn’t use to seeing her smug but, as he handed over the roughly re-sewn towel he supposed it made sense, even if she’d never truly spent any time in the country she was half British and given what he knew of his father well, suffice to say smug certainly ran in the family.

Truly she was his sister.

The following conversation was brief but productive as Ghost proved herself more than eager to try and take the proposed lesson to task. While her enthusiasm was encouraging Simon couldn’t help but feel she was getting ahead of herself. After all it was generally harder to undo an action caused by another and she seemed to have enough trouble just keep track of herself.

Still, before he could voice any objections Maya had constructed a shell of silence, how long ago had it been since he taught her that? And he sensed her influence retreat from the surrounding air as she effectively blinded herself in the same a way a child would for a game of hide and seek.

Hmm, he supposed this was a game of sorts, yes why not? If nothing else it would keep him entertained. Still, how best to go about it? It would have to be a silhouette but how to differentiate the character from the symbol?

Taking the cloth and raising it one hand Simon stared at it intently as he raised a single ethereal finger and slowly began to cut out the image in his mind, working in silence for a number of minutes before finally coming to a stop and examining his handiwork with a smirk of his own.




Yes, that would do nicely, now how to get her attention? He was still behind on his teasing quota...

The balled up towel hit Ghost right between the eyes.

Pop.

Her carefully constructed bubble was disrupted by a wad of cloth that hit her in the face.

Maya caught it on the down tumble. What? It was the very same tea towel they'd been souping earlier. Wasn't the point to choose something that she didn't know what it was? This was going to be easy. So she stuck her tongue out at Simon.

Yes. They were being real mature today.

She felt along the cloth with her fingers rather trying her power immediately. There was something... missing? That was not at all what she'd meant. It was... What was that? Maya ended up holding the cloth up and pressed in close with her power.

"Har. Har. Very funny." It was the Ghostbusters logo... kind of. "Actually, did you do that from memory? That's pretty good." Simon might actually have some artistic talent.

Except that her job was to erase all this damage he'd done.

It was like erasing the first gift he'd ever gotten her.

"You really want me to fix this?" 'cause now she was leaning toward saving it and cherishing it forever and ever.

Watching the mural of Maya’s face switch from surprise to indignant and then childish petulance when she stuck her tongue was rather more entertaining than he’d expected it to be. Was this what he’d missed out on by not knowing his sister for the last, what? Almost three decades? Really it was just another item added to the list of his deprived childhood. At least he could start to make for lost time, unlike other things-

...did you do that from memory? That's pretty good."

“Hmm?” Roused from his musings Simon shook his head as he tried to catch Ghosts words. “Oh, yes… it took me a little while, but the design fairly basic, the hardest was determine how to get the circle to work with the main figure.” It had honestly taken longer than he wanted to admit to figure out how to get the overlapping parts to work, but if his sister hadn’t seemed to notice that he wasn’t going to point it out.

"You really want me to fix this?"

Tilting his head slightly at the question, a confused frown danced across Simons face, “I rather thought that was the point of the exercise…” He paused then and took in the way Maya was holding the the remnants of the towel in front of her, gingerly as though it were made of rice paper, her head tilted down towards it out of habit as she focused on it, even though they both knew she didn’t use her eyes any more.

Sisters truly could be odd creatures.

“Though I suppose, if you want to keep it… What else did he have that they could practice with? He didn’t exactly have a plethora of possessions on hand, being homeless and all, though given that was Isabel’s fault he supposed he could simply use something of hers. Actually come to think of it didn’t he.. yes, yes he did.

I’d be willing to let you have it, though you’d owe me a new tea towel. If you want something else to work with we can try this. Holding out his hand, Simon focused briefly on the book he knew was resting on the top of the fridge and which promptly proceed to flip onto its edge and and the float into his waiting palm.

“Grimms fairy tales, I think we’ll start with just the cover for now as asking you to put actual print pages together may be a bit much, and I haven’t finished reading it yet.”