"Yeah."

The good news is she doesn't have to do that again for a week, and in the meantime her powers start coming in. Just a few days later she's already noticeably stronger, and her shaking-things power has increased significantly in intensity.

It's not an amazing consolation prize for being tormented like that but it is something.

And one evening when they cuddle up in bed together there's a strange magical sensation that feels like it really should have content but doesn't. 

"...huh."

"Hm?"

"There's some manner of sensation to touching you that wasn't there before..."

"...in a... good way or a bad way?"

"Neutral?"

"Is it a superpower thing?"

"I expect so..."

"You can't figure out what it's for though?"

"Hrm... it doesn't feel like a thing I can do with my power? There's a phenomenon where if empowered touch each other they can get an emotional sense of their feeling about each other but you're not empowered and I'm not actually getting any information about you from the sensation?"

"Huh. Maybe I partially count as empowered, since I'm magical but differently."

"Are you able to sense it at all?"

"I don't think so. It's not a ranged sense, so it shouldn't be blocked by my sensory thing, if I'm right about why it kills the senses it does..."

"It's ranged for married empowered, I believe. As well as communicating considerably more detail."

"Well. We aren't married. So it's not a ranged sense right now. So probably it's for some other reason - I guess I might have unaccounted-for artifact effects."

"What was the count of benefits and drawbacks at?"

"Uh - heat with some kind of infection related thing, healing with music allergy, the senses all together. We don't know what the languages ability or the way I can push artifact effects onto other people temporarily goes with and we don't know what either of the love effect or the transport to another universe goes with, though the conservative explanation would be that those match up one way or the other."

"So it would imply the presence of an entire additional pair..."

"Right."

"Hrm... perhaps we should visit with Sophie? She's empowered and thus would allow us to check if what is occurring replicates with other empowered."

"That sounds like a good idea."

Lucette writes to Sophie the next with an invitation, as well as her daily logs of the weather in York since the last time she wrote.

Lucette sends the only letters consistently worth reading! 

Yes of course, she can visit that weekend. She'd come on her own sooner than that but flying long distances alone isn't allowed for young ladies because people don't think women can read maps or something like that.