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"Now, Spook! You need to Pull it now!"
Her instructions, unfortunately, came too late. Spook, newly made into a mistborn just a few months ago, went tumbling from his precarious position amid several Pushed and Pulled horseshoes with a strangled curse. Flared pewter was the only reason he didnt break any bones.
Vin frowned to herself, tapping her foot.
Frankly, she just didn't get it. Was this really such a hard skill to learn?
Spook was doing better than Elend had, at least. Though that truly wasn't saying much- despite how allomantically strong Elend had been, he'd also been abysmal at using it with any finesse.
But seriously- she'd figured it out in a few hours directly after pewter dragging half the distance from Terris to Luthadel. It couldn't be that hard.
Perhaps it was mistake to have him start out with remaining stationary, but she wasn't all that willing to have of repeat of her first session teaching Elend the trick- her husband still had a rather large scar on his right shoulder from it going wrong.
"Alright," she finally said, Pulling the scattered horseshoes back to herself and approaching Spook, who had yet to roll back over from his spot faceplanted into the grass.
(The green grass. She would never get used to that.
At least it was more comfortable to lay in than ash)
"Lets try again."
"You" Spook growled into the grass, "are evil."
"Uh huh," Vin said, unimpressed, and bent down to lift him up by the back of his shirt when he still refused to get up. He hung limply, not unlike a scruffed kitten. "C'mon, Spook, you're the one who wanted to learn this."
"That was before I remembered the fact that you are a bastard."
He turned his head only enough to glare one eye at her. Vin shook him,scowling.
"Maybe," Elend called from his position propped against a tree and surrounded by books, interrupting them before it could devolve into them brawling.
Again.
"-Its time for a break?"
Vin turned her frown to him. He weathered it with a fond smile and she was the first to break with a sigh, shoulders slumping. She dropped Spook, who barely caught himself in time and finally flipped onto his back with a huff, and made her way over to her husband.
She promptly threw herself into his lap, forcing him to either move his book or let it get crushed. He set it aside. Tensoon, who had been dozing in the warm sunlight a short distance away, saw that she was finally done tormenting the younger mistborn and moved to join her and Elend.
"I just don't get it," Vin mumbled, face burried into Elend's shirt. "What makes it so difficult to learn?"
She reached out blindly to tangle her fingers in Tensoon's fur, scratching him idly, trying to soothe herself with the familiar texture. He huffed at her but didn't pull away.
"I think you forget that not everyone is you" Elend said, amused. "We don't all live and breathe allomancy like you do."
"And we're not all insane like you!"
"Spook," Elend called,"If you call my wife insane again, I'm going to be the one who you spar against next."
Spook grumbled but didn't say anything else. Vin shot him a rude gesture, though she wasn't certain he was even looking her way.
"He does have a point, however," Tensoon said. "Even among past generations of allomancers, I've rarely seen any who approached your skill with it. Part of that appears to be because you are willing to do things they believed impossible. The rest seems to just be that you are naturally inclined to."
"You do have a tendancy to seemingly defy the laws of reality," Elend agreed.
"It's not my fault no ever tries experimenting!"
"But they do," Elend shook his head. "Most people just don't have anywhere near the skill to pull it off, so they dismiss it as impossible, especially since no one else around them can do it either. You simply assume that you're the problem in the equation, and so you keep trying."
Vin finally unburried her face from his shirt, resettling so her head rested in Elend's lap. He smiled down at her, carding a hand through her hair. She'd cut it recently, so it only reached her chin instead of her shoulders. The lessened weight of it meant it curled more, and Elend seemed to delight in running his hands through it, smoothing out any tangles.
Vin considered his words. He wasn't necessarily wrong- whenever she encountered something that she was unable to do with allomancy, she generally assumed that it was something she was doing wrong, not that it wasn't possible to begin with. But still, there were certainly other allomancers in the past who had been the same.
It didn't feel right, just saying that she was simply more skilled or more stubborn than they had been. It had always felt odd, realizing the differences between herself and other mistborns- it didn't feel like there should be a difference at all.
Even after everything- even after holding the power of a god, after killing a god, and being left as something other afterwards, she struggled to accept it all.
"Well, how were you able to figure it out? Maybe you can help me teach Spook- clearly I'm not great at instructions."
Elend hummed. "Perhaps, instead of having him start with trying to spin the horseshoes around himself, you should have him just practice Pushing and Pulling on a single horseshoe to get it to spin in place, so he can get used to using both iron and steel at once."
That... was a really good idea. It hadn't occured to her to break the trick down into smaller parts before moving onto actually spinning the horseshoes around him.
Much less likely to end in broken bones as well.
Vin grinned up at Elend before turning towards Spook. "Spook! You hear El's idea? Let's try that instead!"
She rolled back to her feet, giving Elend a quick kiss and Tensoon a pat, before moving back towards Spook.
Spook groaned, mumbling about the break being too short, but notably did sit up and reach towards the pile of horseshoes.
(Several hours later, with numerous new bruises, Spook was able to successfully spin three of the shoes around himself in a stable loop. It was horizontally, so he wasn't actually using them to move yet, but it was progress.)
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