Leslie got a familiar last month. Specifically, the sentient shadows that follow her around. Now that they're a familiar and tied to magic, it'll be easier for people to notice that Leslie is followed nearly everywhere by strange shifting shadows but don't worry they're harmless here.

She promised Hubert to tell either him or Lady Edelgard if she ever feels her magic feeling strange or too much, and also since familiars are supposed to work for approximately five months, she also promised that she'd get one before the end of that even if her magic feels okay.

This is month three, so she's halfway through her "doesn't have to form a bond" before her "yeah, okay, she has to form a bond, because no one will let the child explode and she doesn't exactly want to do that either."

But that's June's problem, if one doesn't happen naturally before then!

For handwaved stuff, Hector is definitely checking in on Leslie vis a vis her pets. Enjoy your on-call vet, child.

Saber still checks in on Leslie and probably drops in to visit.

handwaved stuff includes teas and kitten play dates

and seriously if Leslie goes long enough without a Bond and needs one in a pinch, Lorenz kept a slot open for that purpose

helping friends, which Leslie counts as

demonrubberducky: She 100% absolutely will enjoy this. She might stress a little bit about her responsibility with these pets and probably calls him on the watch anytime one of them does anything that seems to be suggesting bad health.

dragoon1940: Leslie is very happy and may sometimes greet her with food since she's been off-and-on learning to bake ever since Valentine's Day.

woodrift: She would make a very bad "Lorenz needs a bond that can push him to take care of himself" since he would be on double DON'T SHOW THE TINY TROUBLE, I expect, but she will appreciate it if she ends up needing one.

well he's already got two like that what's one more?

If necessary, she'll talk to Marie who offered to introduce people to others who have bond space, but she would probably do best with a friend.

if she's in trouble and nothing else comes up, he's open to the idea until she finds someone who is a better fit

if she wants to

ONE MORE IS NOT HAVING ANYONE WHO CAN LOOK AFTER YOU BONDED WITH YOU even if Leslie would want to try to do that but Lorenz is better at playing the "I don't have problems, you have problems" game.

/sobs he really is

Leslie just doesn't want a bond in general for the same reason that her first reaction to finding out people saw her sad memories is to apologize for making them have to see that, but setting aside that reluctance, she trusts Lorenz completely so she'd be willing to have at least a temp bond with him if necessary.

so i just wanted to ask something out of curiosity, leslie is using shadow magic, isn't she?

Sort of! She had shadow magic back home and some of the shadows at her command followed her here, but she's a ways away from being able to make that sort of thing with Aefenglom magic.

haha, it's just that flat has similar magecraft and i just wanted to have him use it as well but i'm not sure how to...write it, i guess?

he seems to be able to use it both offensively and as "shadow clones"

I did ask the mods about that somewhere. It requires using a couple of different schools at once. Let me see if I can find it.

oooh perfect! i did just ask a question about what sorts of elements there are

We had talked about corrin teaching leslie some swordplay a while back, do we want to say that was ever a thing?

Here we go! I put it in the middle of a long thread of many questions, so it would be so hard to find because I didn't want to crowd up the page (but I made it harder for other people that way, oops).

so by binding, what exactly did you mean? like controlling other's shadows?

Dalrint: I'm down for that! Edelgard asked Byleth to help Leslie with her education when she arrived, but what if we had Corrin have started to teach Leslie some swordplay toward the end of March and that might even give Corrin and Byleth another thing to interact about in Leslie's sword education.

odasaku: The way Leslie did binding was literally like tying the other person up with rope but the rope was shadows and alive.

ohhhh okay!

yeah this sounds like something that flat would definitely be trying to learn

Leslie has gotten sidetracked down abjuration and hasn't been able to devote as much time as she'd like to magic, because she decided that something had to be done about the Outer City not having the protection of the Bright Wall and she's been chasing down leads about anti-shade stuff.

And also she wants to be able to help when her friends get injured.

But she absolutely wants to learn how to make that sort of thing work here, because her shadows have lost most of their strength so even she can use approximately the same amount of physical force as them before she starts learning to buff up and can cover like a metre-radius circle at most.

Back home she could stop her sister's hand in midair by wrapping shadows around her when she tried to slap her, and devour wood blocks into splinters, and turn out every light in a mansion in the blink of an eye. Here they're more a comforting friend than anything.

yeah like

That works for me, sure!

theres various instances where flat uses shadows as part of his attacks, but im not sure if theyre actually tangible or if theyre just illusions. i have to read again

Dalrint: Awesome! Sword Leslie is slowly coming to fruition! ...Though her upper body strength is really weak so there may be less sword fighting and more strength exercises right now.

Corrin hands her the yato, she promptly falls over trying to hold it, so they had to go buy a wooden dagger instead.

odasaku: I feel you on "they aren't telling me specifically what this is so let me squint at the canon and try to divine what is actually happening with the magic." Leslie talks to her shadows like 2-3 times in canon but it's always alone and thus no one ever talks about how they...work....

Dalrint: I love that Corrin starts this training with "here is my endgame weapon." It's basically exactly what Leslie expected. But she absolutely would fall over at least anytime she tried to swing it.

Pretty sure it's taller and weighs more than her anyway...

She's been slowly gaining weight here thanks to people here but I estimate her at 4'3" and she started out significantly underweight.

yeah, education stuff for sure. also teatimes and cooking

sword leslie will be real

I forgot that Byleth also cooked with her students. Cooking is like...4th? 5th? on Leslie's list of learning priorities, but she really likes being able to give people things and get thanked for it, so she's really happy about getting another person to help her learn that.

And heck yes, Sword Leslie. She wants to be just as strong as Lady Edelgard, because Leslie picks extremely unrealistic goals for her sword training. At least she doesn't get discouraged about how far she has to go and how plausible it may be that she will never match her goal.

Play? Bring sweets to Leslie, carry around?

I imagine for now they would be teaching her basic forms and how to keep her balance. And in corrin case, making her run laps around the house. thanks xander

yeah pretty much. also sorry leslie byleth approves of the laps as long as its not pushing her tooooo much

Five laps at a time seems reasonable.

kittylyoko: Leslie approves. Or, at least, she does up until the point she thinks about how those sweets cost Mikasa money but if she doesn’t think about that Leslie approves.

Also training things but that's Mikasa awkwardly swinging from being a tough but good teacher and nearly feral fae who want to look after and dote

So it's like she wants to carry, but no Leslie must jog so randomly puts her down

omg mikasa....

Dalrint: clockworkbrain: Leslie doesn’t know it, but laps are how she will begin her training with her adoptive mom.

excellent

Except her adoptive mom is superhuman so she goes “20 laps around the training ground should be good for a small untrained child.” The knight helping to oversee this when the duchess is busy convinces her to cut it down to 10 and even then he didn’t think she’d be able to make it in her state.

omg.

Also oh my gosh, until Mikasa actually gets a bond, I expect that Leslie’s time spent with her is going to become increasingly confusing.

Mikasa, carries her out and then makes her walk back...

LMAO

It’s thanks to those excessive starting laps that I know that Leslie will accomplish anything she is told to do in training without complaint even if it concludes with her in a pile on the ground. So like...she’ll probably do any of Mikasa’s tough but good lessons and then go right into the FE ones without a word about what she was doing,

leslie...........

Corrin and Byleth waiting for her to come around the house, she doesn't, they finally go looking and find her crawling the last bit of her lap...

/begin extreme guilt

its fine. byleth will reward her with sweets.

You will learn that Leslie is the anti-Hilda in that she will keep doing assigned work that doesn’t have a precise end until someone tells her to stop.

And lmao she absolutely would crawl before actually giving up.

That feels like a habit they need to break her of. Love yourself, kid!

yeahhhh theyll work on that

She needs the help.

Mikasa does the same so she's no help there

At least Leslie doesn’t work herself to exhaustion as a matter of course anymore. It’s just when she thinks She Has To Do Better that she starts going for Hubert levels of pushing herself.

Byleth scoops her up while corrin runs inside to get her a glass of water, then they all sit on the porch and she gets a concerned lesson in 'tell us when you need a break!'

That would lead to a discussion of “what counts as needing a break,” and they may get a bit of insight into her thought processes, which include defining needing a break as “I can no longer physically move.”

leslieeeee