Magic! Jamie does turn out to be a faster learner than Alex, as he'd guessed he would, but they're both learning at a decent pace. 

Besides that, though, Alex starts spending time in the music room with Adam, reacquainting himself with the piano and violin and trying out a few of the other instruments he has. Jamie, as he'd mentioned, starts working on a painting, though it's not easy to tell what he's working towards yet, as it's slow-going - he keeps leaving it to work on other things whenever the mood strikes. They also start joining the family for meals, rather than eating upstairs or outside as they had been, and Jamie continues coming down early to help Morgan with breakfast. 

Alex keeps working on breath exercises, slowly but surely getting closer to unraveling his breath gift. A few days later, they're practicing in the library when he suddenly opens his eyes.

"Oh, there," he says, sounding a little surprised. "I think I have it."

"Ooh, that's great. What do you think you got?"

"Some kind of... sound projection-" he focuses, and then the sound of a harp can be heard throughout the room.

It goes on for a few moments, and then Jamie interrupts his focus by throwing his arms around him excitedly. 

"Cool! Huh, we both got some kind of sound projection. I think I like yours better."

"It's really cool. Maybe you two and Adam could start a band."

Jamie squints, trying to picture it, "I mean... I can see us playing something together for fun, maybe, though I really can't do much on any instrument but voice. I feel like actually trying to form a band would go... badly, though."

Alex shakes his head, "I'm not sure the music Adam and I would play if we did write something together really fits the word 'band', anyway," he says. "I wouldn't use this gift for that, anyway. It'll be handy for keeping track of tunes I think up while I can't write them down, though." 

"And for atmosphere! You can use it as a soundtrack." 

"You guys do realize that on the other side of knowing magic, people do use it for art? Even if Adam is really not band mate material."

"Sure, but," he shrugs, "Part of the fun of music, for me, is making it with my own hands and voice."

Shrug. "That much I can relate. Anyway, this is great. Maybe we should get you a commemorative cake or something."

Slight smile, "That's a lot of fuss for the easiest gift." 

"You did a good job, Lex, you deserve cake," Jamie says, only half-joking. "Or at least a cookie." 

"A cookie and a cake."

"Oh no, if we do both what will we escalate to when we get the wakefulness ones?" 

"Ice cream?" He shrugs. "Whatever your idea of commemorative food."

"Cake, cookie, and ice cream, for wakefulness," he nods, "And then we'll just add more as we go." 

"Before we get to celebrating," Alex cuts in, "What should we be doing now? With the goal of attuning to the vault in mind." 

"Learning how to feel all the other aspects of your lifeforce on your own. The vault will connect to them all and you have to do some reaching of your own with it. But learning how to move two out of five is enough for the basic vault tuning."

"Hm. Does that mean I should do some work with the fire gift?" He asks, visibly reluctant. 

"No, no, no we will just train you with some rituals that involve health and that will be fine."

He looks down, "I could handle it, if it would be faster."

"Pushing," Jamie half-sings. 

Alex snorts. 

"Yeah, okay... Thanks," he tells Temple.