---
She wanted to be that.
"I am not a cup feeder, or useless" she said again, to the air and the stone and the things that are older than both. "I am not a cloak."
She put out her hand.
A warm current lifted from the nearest core and touched her palm the way someone who is careful touches a sleeping child's hair. A thimble of aura went into her skin; it went everywhere at once, like laughter up a sleeve. She hissed and then giggled and then forgot to do either because a second breath of it followed the first and then a third. She could feel her want turn its face toward the light and open its mouth.
"Papa gave me this," she decided, and the decision made her smile a small, private smile that was part gratitude and part mischief. "It is mine. I will use it all."
She tucked herself between the two cores. It felt like finding the only warm corner in a winter house. Her little wind, which was not little now, pressed her cloak against her knees and made a shelter of it.
