Like Shaping Clay

Quie was excited when Silver had decided it was time for them to train together. He had said he wanted her to be able to protect the people she cared about as best as she could. Freaking music to her ears. Plus it was more time to spend with him so that was a very good deal.

Landing softly, despite her very large figure in dragon form she stepped forward to both enjoy the cool air and also to give Silver a gentle nudge with her muzzle. For no real reason, just to make contact before she too shifted into human form.

"I'm ready Silver, just tell me what I need to do. I suspect it will be fairly difficult and exhausting until I get the hang of it. Whether you go easy on me or not."

He wasn't wrong, and he pretty much never was, that just about everything got easier with practice. The things that were possible anyway. She was pretty sure that partial shifting was possible though. So many of the dragons here could do it and even Fweiu had managed to learn.

She gave a calm smile at Silver though beneath the surface she was a little nervous. Fweiu had caused quite a bit of damage trying to learn to partial shift and Quie was pretty sure she could have hurt herself pretty badly if she had continued on her own. At least Quie had an expert teacher to keep an eye on her.

"Ok, but you better help me if something goes wrong. I don't know what kind of damage a full sized body part will do to the rest of my body," she said as she carefully watched him demonstrate with his arm.

She took a deep breath and then extended one arm, pointing it about 90 degrees away from Silver so he could see her do it but she wouldn't accidentally clobber him or something unfortunate like that. She concentrated on starting to shift and she could feel the familiar sensation of her body getting ready to expand and toughen. Like something deep in her core was waking. Remembering that she had to stop before actually shifting all the way she tried to hold everything back except her arm.

Quie began to sweat as her whole body started shaking and for a brief moment her arm, from the shoulder down began to develop hard scale-like additions and white fur began to grow along with them. Before she could do any more than that though she lost her focus and shifted fully into her dragon form. She clawed a gouge into the ground in frustration and then shifted back to human form again.

"Dammit," she exclaimed as she panted a little. "It's like i'm trying to hold back an avalanche and only let one little strip of snow through." She knew it was just the first of many attempts though so she moved to stand back in her ready position with her arm extended. Despite the acts of frustration she kept a face of pure determination.

Quie nodded at the advice from Silver. It was basic but that was what she needed right then. Nothing fancy. She just needed a calm voice to remind her to keep her head and guide her through the process. The same thing she was used to doing if one of her people was in a crisis and needed help.

"I'm going to try something different this time. Maybe if I focus on something smaller than my arm it'll be easier," she called out as she wiggled her fingers on the one hand. Instead of the whole arm maybe just forming claws would allow her to focus a little better.

She stood in the same place before and began to concentrate again. Once more she reached for that comfortable dragony core of hers. This time though she tried to focus on visualizing just two things. They way her fingers and hand were in human form and the way that her claws were in dragon form.

With her eyes closed Quie concentrated and a few beads of sweat dripped for her forehead as her body started to shake a little and then it was reduced to just her arm shaking. The ends of her fingers began to turn grey and curl into the shape of claws. She seemed a little more in control compared to the last attempt but before she could get the claws fully formed her arm started to grow in size and stretch awkwardly and painfully. She stopped holding back and let herself fully shift just to make sure she didn't hurt herself.

Shifting back to human form she didn't even wait for Silver's advice to try it a couple more times in quick succession. Each not quite successful but it seemed like for her the way to go was to concentrate on the smallest parts of the shifting and then work up towards the larger portions

A little out of breath from all the shifting back and forth Quie sat down to take a short break in the shade. She made a dull spike of ice sprout from her hand and broke it off to suck on. "So how am I doing so far? At least I didn't break anything."

Quie laughed, "I meant break as in hurt myself but yes, I'm glad were doing this out here and not back in the city somewhere. Aside from the training it gives me a chance to spend time with just you." She sighed happily as Silver came over to cool off the area and give them a nice seat.

"Believe me, it's tempting to keep trying until I'm too exhausted to try anymore but I know that's not a safe thing to do. I think my first goal is going to be just my hand." The mention of learning it as a child made Quie wonder if the children in her clan were going to pick this up much easier. It sounded like that was the case.

"Taking notes huh? Maybe don't record everything though," she said as she leaned over to give Silver a quick kiss on the cheek.

She shook her head and then ran her hands through her hair to move it back out of her face. It always started to stick to her face when she sweated and it was annoying sometimes. She almost started to give him shit for not thinking about how she could have gotten hurt but she reminded herself that he wasn't used to training adult dragons to do this.

The kiss was very welcome, though Quie did start to worry a little about whether she smelled bad from all the sweating. She wasn't an overly self-conscious person but... no she was probably overthinking it. "Good, no one aside from you needs to see me all misshapen and exhausted from all this."

Quie leaned against Silver, forgetting the fact that she was pretty sweaty, for a little bit. "That would be a wonderful plan. Being an ice porcupine ony gets me so far," she chuckled.

After a short rest though she was ready to get back to practicing. "Ok, I'd better get back to it." Quie gave Silver one more peck on the cheek before hopping back up and getting ready to try partial shifting again.

Quie reached out her arm once more and closed her eyes. 'Just the claws. Just. The. Claws', she told herself. After a deep breath she concentrated on just her fingertips. Once more they turned grey and began to shift into claws. As the shifting began to encompass her whole hand her arm began shaking again.