Welcome to Gaia! ::

The ad for their home had described it as a “charming villa set in the Gaian countryside” but it hadn't mattered – that was where the Mystic Mixers company had paid for Julie's family and Imani's family to move in together to share the care of the twins Lilly and Narcissa together. It was a weird situation but the girl had taken decently to moving in with her best friend and their family.

As the summer months drew up, she found herself sitting outside in the sun and practicing her abilities alone with her friend. While Patton had previously helped her by having the bigger girl jumpstart creations, Julie was finding her sister less and less home or interested in that. So she chose to play with it on her own.

However, play soon turned practical when they found the great “villa” still had it's share of problems, being so set away from the bigger cities. For one, power liked to be a little on the wonky side, particularly when someone in the basement was keen on using large amounts of it on machinery and the rest of the house was trying to run their air conditioners to not swelter mid-heat-wave. It was on one day that Patton was on a particularly inventive streak that she managed to overheat and blow their main source of electricity – mainly since she tried to directly connect her machine to it. Ixxie was at her shop, and RJ was grocery shopping. This meant there weren't as many adults home as usual when Julie started to panic.

Patton had just decided to walk to the nearest pay phone and call the electric company from there (the main house phone was cordless), but the resident angellic imp hadn't known this. What she had known was that the fridge wasn't working and the house was getting extra hot. In a fit of “inspiration” she had run down and slammed her hands on the generator to try and fuse it back up. All at once the house flared back up and Julie promptly blacked out.

When she came to, the child was in bed, and the air was back on. Her vision was blurry but the girl was sure that was Phineas patting her forehead with a cool cloth – the antlers were sort of a giveaway. Then, of course, there was the voice.

“Julie, you feeling better?” He wasn't scolding just quiet and concerned. Ixxie would probably give her a stern talking to later, but for now he seemed to be the one in charge. Or at least taking care of her.

The window was open a little so she could see the dimming light outside – had she been out so long? She idly tried to open her mouth to speak but felt nauseous and immediately closed it again, inciting light patting from Phineas and being told to just relax.

It took till the next day for Julie to be recovered enough to leave her bed, and she found that even touching something metal was stinging and touching even her small string of lights she used to decorate her bed area hurt some. It was kind of scary to feel like that – like she'd been completely drained and so ill from it. Most of the family was sympathetic – scoldings were light and just a matter of “please don't do something that stupid again, you could have really hurt yourself” but her own weakness was evidence enough that she had her punishment. It had merely been an attempt to help but it was a very startling wake up to what her limits were.

Imani was a great comfort during this time, bringing the other girl light meals and fetching her drinks when she was in bed or sitting outside to get some air – the family required she take at least a little air and sun while she recovered. Julie liked having her friend there since it made her feel less awkward and alone, spending most of her time moving between bed and maybe a stretched out lawn chair by the backyard.

Julie's health didn't take too long to recover, but her powers were almost scary at times. She would still occasionally poke at the string of lights and quickly draw her hand back, but part of her wondered at her own strength now and then. It took a bit before she was brave enough to hold onto the string of lights and not immediately jerk away.

That had begun her real practice – seeing how long she could hold what. Cornelius jokingly described it as weight training – gradually working up to heavier weights. Little lights were easy for long periods of time but something like, say, a fridge took more. Patton's little experiments when they'd been smaller had tended to be more playful and short, but Julie was finding herself experimenting differently. Setting up a line of lights of various powers and tapping each in succession to see the effects – this resulted in a bit of fun play with Imani where dolls moved to little strobe lights.

It was during this that the purple haired girl began to play with her distance issue. She had always had to be in physical skin-to-skin with what she wanted to power, but she realized something about her previous practicing with the small string of lights – while she had been sick, she had often been too scared to actually touch the lights. She would reach out near them, see them light, but couldn't recall her hands actually coming into contact fully with them. And so she thought, one morning, sitting on the veranda that maybe she should see just how far she could make it work.

Slowly, she set her small line of lights out and tested that each worked with a gentle touch. After that, she tried again, holding a hand over a small one – very close – and just willing it. It sparked and lit up but only for a time. She found this worked only up to a normal powered light, which only barely lit for a second. Julie took this time to ask advice of her siblings on experiments and soon enough a bunch of them were recording data for her as she slowly tried to test how far away she could power the littlest light from, how long she could keep it going close by, and how powerful a light she could do. The more she did this, it seemed, the longer it worked. Still not much but it was definitely an improvement.

As her experiments continued, Julie was finding herself more interested in her own powers. She still happily spent time with her siblings on other projects and playing around with Imani and the others, but sometimes she confided in the other girl wanting to really explore her power. Previously, she had only done so for play but now, it felt almost natural to really try things.