[Watching the fire, his fingers drawing circles against the thin skin on her wrist and he feels for it - for the call that might ring underneath her skin, that might reach out to his own Small Science. That sense of not being alone that comes when he touches someone with a connection to the Making at the Heart of the World.

And finds- nothing.

Sabriel herself had it, her magic singing through him with a touch. Her essence mingling with his on Braccia to rebuild and reinforce the protections around the headquarter but he feels- nothing, with Clara.

Her skin is just skin, blood-warm and alive, under his touch. In his grasp, she feels like any other human.]

It doesn't work on everyone. Here, I mean.

[Daisy, so powerful and beautiful, her hands splayed against the trembling walls and he was helpless.

He has theories, ideas of why that might be. That not everyone has the connection to the Making, despite the evidence that they should have. The power that flows through their veins just different enough, bound to something else hard enough, for his own threads to fail.

Her hand falls from his, and he takes her weight easily as she falls against him.]

I only know how it work with people like me, that it works at all with anyone from a different world is... a miracle.