Ever since Ned had given Sloane the handmade book of tips and tricks for metamorphmagi, she'd been making huge strides in her skills. She could do easy things to her appearance, hair color, facial features, but she wanted to be able to really control it from head to toe and that meant she needed some actual instruction. She was not a natural student and could therefore only get so much from a book.

"You don't have to help, you know." Sloane looked over the garden they were currently weeding at Ned pointedly. "I'm the one who wants the lessons, I can do the work." It was a pretty fair trade, do some odd jobs for the woman and she would get a few lessons in her skills. Weeding a garden was something she did for fun with Calla at her house, it wasn't like this was hard.

Sloane yanked a stubborn plant from the soil and tossed it onto the pile. Not that she didn't mind spending time with Ned, in fact she quite enjoyed it. Like Hatch, he was easy to be around, more so than just about everyone else these days. Sisse, Alice, Cam, even Calla, they all had restrictions around the relationship, things that couldn't be discussed or mentioned, no matter how much they weighed on her mind. Poor Hatch was burdened with all of her problems and Ned, none of them. Here nothing was wrong and she could just be herself and pretend the problems didn't exist.

In the spirit of that though, she tossed the next weed she pulled up at him playfully, grinning mischievously.