The next few days settled into the kind of routine I'd always hoped to build. Mornings were paperwork, while Stella worked on shrinking her mana visualiser. Afternoons were training with Rose and Cecilia as they got used to their new rank. Evenings belonged to the family, and reminded me why the rest of it was worth doing.
"Look, look!" Stella's voice came from the workshop with the particular pitch that meant either a breakthrough or a small explosion. "I made it portable!"
She was holding something about the size of a tablet. The original chaos of blinking lights had been organised into neat patterns that managed to look both professional and unmistakably like the work of a twelve-year-old inventor.
"It works for classrooms now," she said, and switched it on to show me. "Kids can pass it round and see how mana moves, even if they can't feel it themselves."
"That's real progress," I said. "You've got all of that into something people can actually use."
