"… I think I can," she responds.

"You will pay attention to it while I fly several times, and then try it on your own, until you get it. You'd eventually get it on your own anyway, but that's faster. And then I can give you actual flying lessons."

She nods, trying to put on a brave face.

Farah looks back at her, then nods slightly.

The broom goes a bit higher and speeds up some. The wind pushes against her face.

And Evelyn tries to focus on the magic in the broom – the 'wing – while leaning into it.

There's not really much to feel - it's - a thing - and the steadily increasing drop from where she is to the cold, hard ground is kind of distracting. And after a minute, the somewhat shorter distance between her and a lot of sharp, fast-moving branches of a forest.

(You can see two towns, the Abbey, and the Baron's castle from here.)

She opts to close her eyes when they get high enough, and instead try to focus on the magic without the worry from looking down.

Well, the magic is being low key and steady. Though it's not exactly easy to see it. It shifts slightly when Farah turns at all, like a scarecrow in a breeze.

After a while, "Navigation time. How far would you say have gone?"

Evelyn opens her eyes.

… Can she see the town in the distance, some point to anchor off? She didn't realize she was supposed to be keeping track, tries to be careful of looking at the distance to the ground.

The landscape below is not particularly familiar. There's a lake to the right.

"No pressure, just take a guess. Maybe from how fast we're going. And, sorry to distract you from the soul-searching bit. I'm just introducing you to the idea that you have to pay attention to half a dozen things when you fly."

Uh. Hah.

"Um." Paaaause. "A few miles?"

"Mm. Five and one quarter miles by my reckoning. You don't have any experience flying, so of course there's no way for you to tell. Yet."

"But it comes with practice?"

"Study first, then practice. Yes. How do you think sailors get around? Navigating is probably the most important life skill that non-Witches don't need to pick up, but it's still a skill. Learnable. You can navigate by dead reckoning, by the stars, by landmarks, by compass..."

… Fair.

She nods. "I don't really have much to… anchor off."

"I see. Then perhaps I should stop testing you and wait until I can give a proper lesson."

"– Maybe?"

Farah chuckles and flies on silently for the rest of the trip.

Evelyn tries to be a good passenger, quiet unless spoken to.

She gets chilly about an hour in.

But Farah sticks to her promise of low and slow. They approach a town, with its own cathedral and a river winding through it, at around the time the sun is setting. 

"Welcome to Caville. My post is on a field just past this place."

"Oh – it's pretty," comments Evelyn. Trying to be polite.

"It's not gonna be a middle-of-nowhere town for long. See that?" She points to a curiously de-treed area on the horizon. It's an ugly brown scar of land. "That's the site of a lumber mill, cutting down whole forests to fill the demands of the war. They're building new roads, steel roads, to it to get the trees out easier. All the villagers hate it. Some of them tried to burn it down a couple months ago. So be careful if you head in that direction."

Farah angles north and descends.

… Less pretty horizon.

"Why do they hate it?" she asks. "Too big…?"

"It's loud, it makes lots of sawdust, if it keeps cutting at this rate in a decade there'll be no forest left and they're worried about what happens then."

"Ah. … Seems weird for them to burn it down."