Anew

Wist scuffed the ground. "But the grown-ups make it look so easy. They're so smooth. I was a mess."

"The grown-ups have done it ten thousand times," Anew said, bouncing. "Of course they're smooth. You think they were smooth the first time? Nobody's smooth the first time. The first time anyone steadies themselves alone, they wobble all over the place. That's not doing it wrong. That's exactly what the first time looks like." She grinned. "Smooth comes later, from doing the wobbly version a hundred times. But you don't get to skip the wobbly version. It's the doorway. And you just walked through it."

Wist paused. "So... being shaky and clumsy at it doesn't mean I failed?"

"It means you started," Anew said warmly. "Listen — when someone helps you steady, that's wonderful, and you'll always need that sometimes. But just now, with nobody there, you took the slow breath. You talked yourself through it. You waited for it to pass. The steadiness came from inside you for the first time. The wobble doesn't erase that. The wobble is the proof you were really doing it yourself, and not just being carried."

Anew sat down beside Wist, practically vibrating with how important this was.

"Let me tell you what actually happened, in case you missed it in all the shaking," she said. "A big feeling came. You were alone. And instead of being swept away, you reached for the things you'd been taught — the slow breath, the steady words — and you used them on yourself. Maybe your breath was shaky. Maybe your steady words came out trembly. Doesn't matter. The machine worked. You ran your own steadying, with your own hands, for the first time." She beamed. "That's the biggest first there is in CoRegRealm. Bigger than any smooth, easy time will ever be. Because every smooth time after this is just this — the wobbly first — done again and again until it gets easy."

Wist felt something she hadn't let herself feel: a small, surprised pride. She had done it. Shaky, yes. Clumsy, yes. But the calm had come from her, alone, when it mattered.

"I really did do it myself," she said slowly. "Even though it was wobbly."

"Especially because it was wobbly," Anew said. "Wobbly means it was real, and new, and yours. Smooth means it's old news. You just had the realest version there is."

And so Wist let herself believe it — that her shaky, imperfect, all-by-herself steadying truly counted, and counted big.

"I keep wanting to say it doesn't count because it wasn't good enough," she admitted. "But it did work. The feeling passed. And I'm the one who did it." She looked at her own paws, which had been shaking an hour ago and had steadied her anyway. "I think I just learned I can do it. Not perfectly. But I can."

"That's the whole thing," Anew said, glowing. "Not perfectly. Just yourself. And now that you've done it once — wobbly and all — you'll do it again. And each time it'll wobble a little less. That's how everyone who's ever been smooth got smooth. One wobbly first, then a thousand slightly-less-wobbly afters." She bounced. "You're on the bike now, Wist. You wibbled, you nearly tipped, and you rode."

Wist felt the pride settle into something steadier and warmer — not the cool relief of being calmed by someone else, but a brand-new feeling, sturdier and entirely her own: the quiet, wobbly, enormous pride of having steadied herself, alone, for the very first time. It felt like growing — like discovering she was bigger and more capable than she'd known, and that the bigness had been hers all along, just waiting for a wobbly first time to show itself.