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"What on earth are you <span class="mu-i">doing</span>, Mona!" Bran shouts over the roar the current. The waters draining all the way to the seabed drown his voice beneath the heavy groan of waves crashing against the ocean floor. The funnel becomes a glittering rainbow as the fish grow ever closer to the water's surface, their colors bright as the coral they call their home. The ocean follows, a tornado beneath the glass-still surface of the Mare Phantasos. The noise is such that you can only hear the faintest burbles of Bran's as he calls for you. "The current's going to rip us apart if you don't pull us out <span class="mu-i">now</span>!"
"I have a better idea," you declare with certainty.
"Your better ideas <span class="mu-i">always</span> get us in trouble!" Bran protests. He makes no further argument than that, beyond clinging tightly to the rudder and the ropes that guide the masts. Though he does begin to pray, "<span class="mu-i">Seven weavers of our fates, hallowed is thy loom. Thy pattern spun, thy will as one, have mercy upon we lowly sinners...</span>"
You already have your wand in hand. Master Cullen's gift for what he called your graduation, before he even sent you off to the Red Tower so many years ago. Seventeen inches carved of whalebone and gilded with runic tracery of moonsilver to direct the flowing waters of your mana into spells. Rather than a circle, the profile of the wand took the shape of an uneven isosceles triangle whose corners had been rounded off. At least, until it reached its grip of polished willow wood, stained with dyes until it reach reach a hue as deep and dark a blue as the sea.
A fine wand. A journeyman's tool with which you are intimately familiar. The focus you have used for years in your research at the tower and in your many delves beneath the texture of the world, whose use you have mastered. There is something to be said about knowing the tool that you are using well, even if that tool might not be the greatest of its kind. You know the quirks in how the water of you mana passes through it. Where it resists, where it gives as you weave the flow of magic into a spell, and how it responds in every situation.
One might call it the step beyond an entry level catalyst. The sort of focus one might purchase when they no long wish to weave magic as a hobby, but as a profession. A humble and reliable tool, but not the sort of thing a master would use.
You have decades to go before you deserve the title of Mistress of Hydromancy.
That said, in terms of fine control and precision, you like to think you approach that level. After all, with precise enough control, what need do you have for brute force? Outside the ever-still Mare Phantasos, the waters of the sea move with tight mathematical precision based upon the motions of the False Moon, the True Moon, and the Imaginary Moon. Even moreso than stone, wind, and fire, the water that cannot compress benefits greatly from precise control.
It is a finely controlled spell you cast. "Three are the moons that shepherd the tides..."
