Again! This new seed was even smaller than the last! Its leaves were tiny and weak, its color almost faded. It was there, but only just.

She picked up a clod of dirt from the planter and threw it across the field of grass, her cry of frustration clear throughout Polaris. This was useless to her - she couldn't save lives with this! She needed more, she needed them to be stronger! She needed herself to be stronger! She could go around saving people with weak little baby sprouts; she couldn't heal someone with huge burn wounds or broken bones with one or two little baby leaves! She needed to be able to grow a whole plant from nothing at a whim, because that was what others needed of her.

But her magic just refused to listen.

"Again," She told herself, steeling her resolve. "Until you get it right."

Again, it was just a small sprout, but it was bigger than the last. She nodded. Just keep going, just keep using your magic until you understand it, and it will be alright.

Surely the more she used it, the better she would get, right? Surely the answer to controlling her magic predictably would come with practice and age.

It had to.

She sighed, her frustration mounting. Maybe if she tried out another spell, the outcome would change? Perhaps her magic got tired of -

But no. She tried a different spell and it was just as weak as the last five times she'd tried. The voices of the plants were still as weak as before, her magic was still weak, she was still weak. She was getting sick to death of it, of her magic just barely cooperating with her, or failing completely. This was pathetic.

"Just-just work already," She said, her voice breaking. "Please; I need to be strong."

Her head fell into her hands. This wasn't working. What she was doing wasn't working. She was stressed and frustrated and putting too much pressure on herself to perform well; the plants didn't respond well to it, and neither did she. She was putting too much emphasis on the roll of the dice, and blaming herself when she got snake eyes.

She need to take a break. She walked away from the planter towards her little garden, sat on a pretty decorative rock she'd set next to an iceberry bush and started plucking some of the sweet berries, eating them slowly, savoring the taste. She stared at nothing for a while, then leaned over and rubbed her face with a slow sigh. She needed to change something she was doing, and she didn't know what.

She swallowed a berry, just one, and out of a absentminded whim, she didn't chew on it; rather, she used a small flash of her magic and tried to see it with her other eyes as it made its way down her gullet. She closed her eyes and felt it, not only with her body, but with her magic.

She saw it, somewhat, from almost a third-person perspective, as everything else was dark but the green glow of the little berry making its way down into her stomach. She could see it as clear as day, swishing around in her stomach juices, bubbling up in the acid, and she could see it start to dissolve. It was...disturbing, to say the least.

She popped a few more in her mouth, chewing slowly, her eyes still closed, and she could feel the life of them become squished and useless as she ate them. She was doubly glad she wasn't a carnivore, and that her affinity was towards her food. That would've been terrifying to understand and see.

But she was heartened by this, too. It was a good casting, made with a clear and level head. It boosted her confidence, somewhat. And it was nice to be sitting down.

She ate another one, and did the exact same thing, but this time it was weak again. She sighed, the sound long and drawn out, and she ended the spell early, knowing the green light traveling down her gullet would be pale compared to what she'd just seen, and it wouldn't be worth the energy she was expending with it.

Cayenne just sat there, eating berries for a while, staring at nothing. She remembered when she thought she was weak and worthless when she healed Dovefeather and her friend, that cat-thing, and when she'd helped out Bog twice. When she thought she was weak, when she was afraid, she was useless, she was worse than useless; she hurt more than she helped. What she needed to conquer wasn't her magic; it was herself.

When she was afraid, when she let her fear take over, she was an ademption of what she could be, of what she should be. She should have confidence in herself - she'd saved multiple gems from the brink of death, and she was only just barely three cycles old! She needed to get a hold of herself, she needed to have more faith in what she could do.

She took another berry, then looked at it....and just bit into it, refusing to even use her magic at all this time. She needed to stop babying herself with these little spells and practice the bigger ones! The ones that would save lives wouldn't be little sprouts, they would be crazy, complicated spells!

She closed her eyes and turned her magic internally. This was one particular spell she needed to become better at using - ever since she discovered it, it was an invaluable spell she knew she'd be using over and over again. It wasn't a cure-all, she knew it wasn't. But when her herbs and cures couldn't touch certain things, certain problems in the body, this spell helped out tremendously.

It wouldn't save a life all on its own, it had to be supplemented with other things, but it helped calm down her patients, and that was what mattered. As she looked internally, she saw all her cuts and bruises and aimed her body's attention towards them. She watched with half-lidded eyes as one cut on her hand slowly healed and closed.

It was weak, but it was a start.

She sighed and poured more magic into it, and she felt herself relax and smile, and she felt safe and comfortable and happy as her magic allowed happy chemicals to be released. She felt....really nice.

As she sat there on the rock, feeling at peace, she felt like wanting to try out more difficult spells. There was more to what she could do than relax her muscles and heal a little cut.

It was a good start, though, and she felt proud of it.

There she sat, her eyelids drooping, her muscles totally relaxed, and she looked to the sprouts at her feet and the bushes nearby, and felt the urge to try to control them. They were more complicated to control than they would have her believe, because it wasn't just a simple matter of asking them, she literally went inside them and moved them. She had to understand what went where, and had to split her attention from an outside perspective, to exactly where she wanted the plant to move, to the inner one, to manipulating them to fit the movement she needed. It wasn't a very easy spell.

And it was utterly no surprise to her that when she tried it with the little sprout near her, she struggled with it, and all she could make it do was shudder gently. She paid that no mind though - she'd only used the spell maybe once before.