Marie jumped at the sudden interruption and Logan chuckled, his eyes still closed, and unfazed. "We're meditating," he quietly advised Bella, who was staring down at them from the loft.
"What's that?" the little girl asked, climbing down the ladder to get a closer look.
"Good question, it's like... listening to your insides," Logan said, finally cracking on eye open to regard the girl now standing beside him. He sent Bella off to the bathroom while he tried to get Marie back on focus but she was still unsettled by the time the little girl returned.
"Can I try too?" Bella asked, sitting down on the floor beside then and leaning into Marie, who immediately jumped away from her, leaving the little girl looking hurt and confused.
"Marie, sit down," Logan demanded firmly. "Bella, Marie took off the collar that stopped her mutation this morning, she's trying to learn how to control it herself, but that means you can't touch Marie at the moment, okay, especially not her skin," Logan explained to the little girl.
"Why?" Bella queried, her lip trembling dejectedly.
"Marie doesn't have wings like you do," he pointed out in response, "Her mutation is her skin, and it can hurt people if they touch it, so until Marie can make it turn off, you can't touch her, because Marie doesn't want you to get hurt."
"I don't want to get hurt either, I'll be careful," Bella promised Marie as she tentatively sat back down.
Tears immediately flooded Marie's eyes as she shuddered, before saying anxiously, "I've change my mind, this isn't a good idea, someone's going to get hurt."
Logan frowned. "Marie, no one is going to get hurt, sit back down and focus," he instructed.
"I can't... the voices..." She elaborated when he glanced at her questioningly, "When I try and focus, it's like they all want to come out and all talk at the same time, I try to push them back but that only works for so long."
Logan considered her thoughtfully for a moment before he obviously came to a decision.
"Alright, Marie, sit there, Bella, sit there, you wanted to learn too right," he didn't need to point out it would keep Bella more or less distracted and in one place while he and Marie focused. "We're going to try visual meditating," Logan said, trying not to roll his eyes when Bella immediately interrupted to ask what that was. "So, sit how I showed you, close your eyes, relax and let your breathing even out."
After a few minutes he could tell Marie had calmed down enough to continue, Bella was still distracted but she was a little kid, what would anyone expect. "Right, now, Bella, picture, in your head, a snowy field, can you see it?" he asked softly.
"Uh huh," the little girl murmured.
"Right, can you see the fox?" Logan suggested, a grin in his voice. Bella scented confused for a moment before she giggled, and declared she could see his tail. "Alright, you keep an eye on that fox and follow wherever it goes, okay," Logan told her. "Now Marie, we're going to work on confining those voices, you said they go quiet for a while when you push them back, so we're going to work on building something a little more permanent to hold them back, let's start by picturing you're in... a big white warehouse..." Logan suggested.
Quietly, Logan talked Marie through, creating rooms in her empty warehouse, and pushing visual representations of the voices into the rooms, before locking the doors. He could scent her tears at several points, and her anger when she locked away one voice in particular. After almost an hour of silence, punctuated infrequently by Bella telling them what her fox was doing now, Logan asked Marie quietly if the voices were gone now.
"Yeah, they're finally quiet, will they stay locked away now, do you think?" Marie breathed softly, calmly.
"If you locked the doors properly they should, it's your mind after all, you control everything that happens in there, you understand," Logan told her.
"I control everything," Marie repeated, taking a deep centring breath, he could almost hear the smile on her face as she said it.
"If you're ready, that's probably enough for toda..." Logan's words faded away when he opened his eyes.
The three of them were currently sitting... in the middle of a snowy field. He could tell it wasn't real though, as it wasn't cold, in fact he could feel the heat coming off the fireplace even though he couldn't see it, and he could feel the rug underneath him. At Bella's giggle to his right, he saw her eyes were open watching something to his left. Turning, he saw a little white fox scampering about in the snow, scratching and digging, before it dove into the powdery surface, and came back up with a rabbit. Marie's surprised gasp told him she had opened her eyes and was seeing this too.
Watching the fox curiously Logan suggested to Bella, "We should let the fox go now, to have his breakfast, what do you say, should we go home and have ours too?" With a nod, Bella agreed, and the trio watched as the fox trotted off into the distance, rabbit caught in it's jaw, before the snowy landscape faded away and they were back in the cabin, in front of the fire.
Watching Bella closely, Logan noted a fine sparkly mist, seeming to hang in the air, as her little translucent wings fluttered excitedly. "Have you ever done that before Bella?" Logan asked curiously.
"I watched foxes on the TV once," Bella replied obliviously, "But that was more fun, it came up and licked my nose," she giggled, Logan and Marie just glanced at each other in confusion. It seemed Bella had some psyche powers to go along with her physical mutation.
While Bella and Marie were making breakfast, Logan slipped outside and headed for his camper, managing to dig the snow away from a door enough to open it. He dug around for the last package of things he had bought when he went to town - that he had dumped in the glove compartment and forgotten about - before returning with the little paper packet to the cabin. He watched Marie and Bella interact for a while as he tossed up whether to show her what he had bought, he really hoped it wasn't necessary but after a few minutes of watching Marie flinching, often times unnecessarily, whenever she determined Bella was too close, he gave in.
"Marie," he called her over, and handed the small paper bag to her, prompting her to open it. "Will they help you?" he asked, once she had withdrawn the scraps of fabric from the paper. He had seen the gloves as he was leaving a gas station of all places, some sort of satinised lycra, thin and stretchy, but still pretty, and remembered the warning he had been given about Marie's mutation. Of course the warning had been given so he wouldn't remove the collar but even then he had known he would.
Marie just stared at him for a moment as her eyes welled with tears. She eventually unfolded the gloves, and pulled them on, before turning back to him and thanking him. He even got a hug.
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