"No, they do, the promising thing is that the fire you make is in tune with your heartbeat, instead of fluttering randomly or at a pattern that didn't match your body. That it is doing that means everything's integrating together well! We might be able to get you out of there early."

"Oh. Oh great!" he says, turning a blindingly brilliant smile to bespectacled guy.

"Yeah! Uh, if there's nothing else right now I should probably go tell someone actually important about this, and also like. Grab books to read to you and things to burn and whatever else you might want to have? Oh, oh, I could find a game and set it up over here and move your pieces for you, that could work! My job's basically just 'please write down what happens and try to help keep this person from exploding, and call someone better at magic if something's going weird,' so it's not like you're distracting me from important tasks."

"Okay! No problem."

"Okay! Be back in a bit, then. Uh, please keep on not exploding!"

He gives a little wave, then carefully closes the door, leaving him alone in his circular room again.

Well. That was a very productive few minutes. He learned how to speak and all.

Now he's gonna try lowering the temperature again and pay more attention to what that feels like.

It's not painful? But it's certainly not as comfortable. The warmth definitely feels better.

Mrrr but the guy said he could leave earlier...

He doesn't care about being super comfortable anyway. He'll keep it low. Ish.

It's not quite as cozy in here, and the air seems too still now that it's not wavering as much from heat, but otherwise, this seems to go all right.

Yeahhhhh okay he can deal, the guy implied it's not that warm outside anyway so.

He's gonna see if he can figure out any more magic while waiting.

Well, if he likes, he can work on finesse with his heat push. Instead of pushing heat near his body, he can stretch out with the warm tingling feeling and then push, and make there be heat at a distance away from him.

Okay he can practise that!

He can make gorgeous fire shapes in mid air! After a bit of practice he can make them show in in more complicated shapes than just a general blob of fire. He might even notice that he can get subtly different colors with a bit of trial and error, depending on what the temperature the air was before he pushed, how hard he pushes, and how concentrated he tends to push. Pushing gently in a wide area or with a low difference in fire to air temperature produces red flame, whereas more drastic or concentrated changes produce orange or yellow with hints of white. The yellow-white flame tastes strangely cleaner and more concentrated, while the red or orange flame tastes more hearty and nuanced.

Fire is the coolest thing he's gonna have so much fun with it!!!!!

It's definitely very pretty and fun to play with!

Eventually the bespectacled man returns with his clipboard carefully balanced on a stack of wooden boxes. He awkwardly balances his stack of boxes before caaaaarefully opening the door with his foot.

"Hey! I have acquired things to relieve boredom! Oooo hey that's really impressive finesse!"

"Thanks!" He makes a humanoid figure out of fire and gets it to walk around invisible ground.

"Wow," he says, blinking. "Well if nothing else you could probably go like, perform fire tricks in a big city and make some kind of living. ... You're probably literally never going to need to do that, because uh, yeah you should be set for life if you don't explode regardless, but you know. Options!"

"Set for life? Why?"

"You were paid kind of a lot for participating in this highly risky experimental thing! Enough that you could probably go comfortably retire in the country somewhere at, uh, whatever age you're at. And if it works out you will have unique and kinda unprecedented control of pyromancy that some people might actually kill for! So, like, people throwing money at you to please do fancy fire things for them."

"Oh. That sounds nice." Beat. "I don't know how old I am. Or my name."

"You should remember them pretty soon? Ish? I'm sorry, that sounds unpleasant. Unfortunately I think I'm not supposed to tell you either so as not to, um, contaminate the scientific results, because ideally we want to get this down to a perfect science and know all the ins and outs of how to redo this exact thing except maybe better next time, somehow, for someone else. Which means knowing when you remember which things. Uh. But I can tell you mine! Hi, I'm Quael, nice to meet you?"

"Nice to meet you, too! Oh and I got the room to a lower temperature so I don't set anything on fire." Pause. "That I don't want to."

"Oh! Good job and congratulations! It's okay if you make it hotter in there if you'd be more comfortable though, please don't push yourself too hard, you've been through kind of a lot." He sets down his boxes and clipboard on the floor, the fumbles to get out the charm that tells the temperature. The crystal glows yellow, this time.

"That's a really big shift," he explains, looking thoughtful. "Which I think is probably a good thing if it's not hurting you?"

"It doesn't hurt, and is not difficult, it's just not very comfortable. Like..." He pauses, thinks, remembers. "Like the difference between a bed and a sleeping bag in a tent?"

"Huh. Okay." He writes this down on his clipboard. "Well. Want to burn some things?"