The Estate's meticulously kept gardens, including a hedgemaze that students have occasionally described as "sadistic" and a sizable rose garden. Benches in shaded spots are plentiful, and the gardens are popular to study in on pleasant days. The nearby stables are still maintained with a number of well-heeled equines.
Nailah is wandering back and forth on an open bit of lawn, waiting for Sam and possibly Charles to show up so she can try to teach them how to fly. Occasionally she stops and does some half-assed stretches, mostly just to calm her nerves. She's not really sure she's cut out to teach anybody anything, but she promised and she'd really like some company up in the air.
"And it'll be so worth it, I promise. Okay, so, first up you need some wings, I guess." she says, unfolding hers and pointing at them as if she was explaining some profound truth.
"Alright, I can give this a shot..." she says and focuses on just picturing Sam with two wings sprouting from her back. Her mind's eye decides that brown wings don't really work for Sam, so after her thoughts cycle through a couple different colors she finally settles on black ones.
Sam shifts back to herself and focuses on Nailah's mental image, shivering a bit at the moment that Nailah finally settles on black wings. Soon, a pair every bit as impressive as Nailah imagined sprouts, spreading out behind her.
"Pff, please, you gotta work your way up to roofs." she chuckles. "First thing is you spread your wings and get a feel for how they move and then you try to spread them out so they catch the wind a little." she says, demonstrating. She leans a little bit forward and down while her wings unfold behind her.
Knew I should have practiced this in front of a mirror first
"It's just...something with wings," Charles said his voice lacking emotion and sounding more like animal mimicry than a person. The oddness was completed by the space between words containing the occasional odd clicking noise. "I guess the answer is that yes I can in fact talk that's at least convenient, eh?"
"Legs? I think, yeah, probably," Charles said as he focused on trying to integrate legs into the mix. Four insect-like limbs grew out of his torso so that he could run or or maybe just leap into the sky it was kind of hard to tell.
"Well... okay, I guess that works." she says, taking up her previous pose again. "Anyway, I was just telling Sam how to hold yourself and to just kind of spread your wings and feel them out and lean into the wind a bit." she says, demonstrating by leaning forward and angling her spread wings a little into the faint breeze.
"It's not very windy, so what you do is you just start running into the wind and try to find the right way to hold your wings. You'll know you got it because they'll stop dragging you down but instead it'll be like you're cutting through the wind and ideally they should start to tug you up just a little." she says and starts to run across the lawn. She spreads her arms as well and tilts her hands into the wind a bit the same way she does with her wings just to show Sam and Charles what she means.
Charles made an odd chittering noise that was most likely laughter.
"Maybe I'll just unnerve the super villains into submission," Charles said as he tried to copy what Nailah was doing by opening his wings and trying to feel the breeze.
"Come on, Sam!" Nailah shouts when she notices Sam still just standing there. She leans into a curve and comes running back, still with her arms out as if she was pretending to be a plane. It'd look worse if she didn't also have actual wings, but, well, truth be told it still looks pretty silly. "It's like holding your hand out the window on a car ride."
Charles made quiet airplane noises to himself for a little bit. Though they probably sounded more like hissing to everybody else. He thought he was starting to get a feel for thaw wind.
"So what's next, teach?" Charles asked as he ran in circles.
"Next you jump!" she says as she does just that, beating her wings and jumping a couple feet into the air before gliding down again. "Just flap your wings and try to find the windflow again."
Charles was pointedly trying to ignore the laughing he heard. He was well aware that he looked ridiculous while jumping and flapping his wings trying to feel the wind.
Just ignore them... sure we don't have nice feathery wings
Nailah, on the other hand, wasn't having any of this.
"Hey! Who's laughing?" she demands loudly, turning a sharp curve in her gliding descent to take her towards the direction she'd heard the laughter from.