It took me the whole evening and the whole next day to finally keep the black wall up long enough. By the end of it I was majorly exhausted and even Dad could see it.
"You didn't properly recover from overexerting yourself back then. Time to rest properly. You need at least whole day to rest. No magic until then, understood?"
"Yes Dad." I whined. Wanted to keep going.
"Don't be sad, you're doing way better than I thought, I'm proud of you."
"Really?"
"Yes, really." He gave me a toothy kiss. "Go tell Anaji."
"Yay!" I barked, jumping up with joy, tail flying around wildly. Then I stopped myself. "Dad? Why don't you train the others like this too?"
"They didn't ask. And it's not like our species needs to do this. Letting yourself develop at your own pace is generally better as with experience you quickly progress your talent. While training like this, you might spend too much time training methods that don't work for your talent and you'll get to the same level as the others at around the same time because of that. It's only useful if you know your talent early. Besides, even fights between our species mostly come down to the basics, there are not that many of us older than twenty winters, and those who make it that far don't get into fights easily."
"Hmm. I'm going to tell Mom then!" I barked and ran off.
"Did you even listen? Or just pretend to?" I heard Dad grumble behind me but I was already at the den entrance.
***
Mom wasn't there as it was still far from dusk. Running onto the clearing I quickly spotted her, goofing around with everyone else, they didn't play any game, just cuddling, grooming each other, and singing random tunes from time to time. It never lasted long as somehow a snout always ended up in the singer's mouth.
From time to time someone ran a few laps around the clearing before joining back into the chaotic fluff pile.
(AN: Yes they do get the zoomies)
I didn't hesitate and joined in on the fun, greeting everyone before making my way towards Mom.
"I see Asher forced you to take a break. How far along did you get?" She asked before I could even greet her.
"I managed to hold the wall up all the way." I bragged.
"This fast?" Mom pulled back with surprise.
"It's still hard and I managed it only once but yes." I admitted, I doubted I could do it consistently, even though I could feel myself getting better.
"You didn't even see snow yet, it's great progress." She nuzzled me. "You..."
"Yes, I'm exhausted, Dad told me I can't use magic for a whole day. I'm not tired yet though." I said, watching Trumpet slam into Lyara who was chasing her tail at the edge of the group—he didn't turn far enough as he sprinted by.
They were lucky that their injuries from the moose fight were mostly healed by now, otherwise this would have definitely hurt. They both got up and continued on as if nothing happened.
Dad joined us shortly and the playing became even more chaotic.
***
"Dad can we continue?" I pounced on him, sleeping curled up with Mom under a hazelnut bush at the edge of the clearing. The sun wasn't even up yet but I was brimming with energy after a day of rest.
"Ugh..." He opened his eyes. "Did you really need to do this?"
"You were asleep, I tried talking to you normally first."
"You can be hard to wake up." Mom backed me up, not even opening her eyes as she pushed him away. She then curled herself up tightly, tail covering her snout and fell asleep again.
"Really?" Dad eyed her as he stretched and yawned.
"Come on Dad." I pulled on his mane.
"Let me at least drink first. Go wait above the den for me so we don't get in their way after they wake up." Dad grumbled, still mostly sleepy.
***
It took Dad a while to get to me while I sat there, waiting. The sun already started rising.
"You're too slow!" I barked when his head finally appeared among the shrubbery, the hilltops were overgrown and comfortable to just sit at and watch the rest of the forest from above.
"Needed to shit. Can't do anything about it. Now, show me that you remember what you were doing before." He sat down next to me, waiting for me to create the illusion.
I concentrated for a moment before creating the wall of darkness, feeding it energy to stay intact.
Dad got up and slowly walked around it before he sat back next to me and I cut off the flow of energy. "Good. Now let's move onto something harder. think of something with more colors and more complex shape. Try making that."
"Can I make you?" I asked.
"If you want to. Just visual copy of me then." He let out an amused grunt.
I concentrated again, gathering up as much energy as I thought I needed. Trying to create the form of Dad I released the energy and the illusion appeared in front of me. Sitting there was something that was as large as Dad but didn't look quite right.
"Quite good for first attempt," He said, "You got the size right, but the shape and colors..."
I myself didn't understand how it went so wrong. I kept looking from the malformed shape to Dad, I wanted the magic to form Dad. "How? Why is it like this?" I asked.
"Your mental image wasn't clear enough. You can try to correct it now that you see it in front of you. Try that."
I did, slowly reshaping the illusion by layering more illusions on top of that, it was slow and exhausting but finally a perfect replica of Dad was sitting in front of me, except it didn't move, not even the flutter of fur in the wind like the real Dad next to me.
"Good progress. I expected you to take much longer." He praised me. "The only way to get the proper replica or any complex illusion is to perfectly visualize it, or at least be able to describe it detail, I don't think there is any other way. Experience is the only way to do that. Illusions are useful because they are flexible, if you can do only one thing with them, you can almost never use them."
"I understand. Should I try something else then?" I asked, dispersing Dad's image.
"Hm, go ahead."
I concentrated again and made an illusion of a raven on top of the shrubs, at least it was supposed to be a raven. It was even more malformed than my attempt at making Dad.
"Should-Should I try to fix it?" I asked.
"Yes, that way you can help yourself train to visualize things. Once you can do that perfectly you will be able to make illusions that nobody has ever seen without them being obvious to be illusions. Take as much time you need with this. I'm proud of you."
I trained hard, even as noon crept closer I didn't stop and Dad went down to the clearing, returning with last of what remained of the intruders and split it between us. It wasn't enough for full meal for either of us even before the split but it was still better than nothing.
He then continued watching me train until the evening. Mom stopped by from time to time as well.