Flow

Flow is an extension of magic's natural tendency to form pairs within itself. Every living thing with a place in the Hierarchy will gravitate towards a few sets of magically connective relationships, determined by their respective Role. A User pairing up with a Bearer is the most straightforward example of this; a User benefits from a Bearer's reservoir of magic and a Bearer benefits from a User making use of the excess supply that they cannot use. Just as Role and Hierarchy get more complicated, however, Flow also has a bit more depth to it. These complications require further explanation:   Flow has two states; Solo and Duo, simply describing whether magic is staying within a single entity or being shared ("flowing") between two living things. Duos can form for a multitude of reasons, but usually consist of a Bearer flowing into a User in order to maintain a balanced connection between both parties. For most pairs, it just doesn't make sense for a User to give their limited magic supply to a Bearer, who already has more supply than they can use. The introduction of User-Bearers and Bearer-Users throws a wrench into the operation, however, and requires a lot of fine-tuning to stay comfortable in a pair.   As a rule, Flow almost never manifests in groups of three (or any other odd number), as it is not possible to daisy-chain magic between more than two people at a time without serious consequences. Flow from two Bearers into a single User would overload and subsequently kill the User, and Flow from one Bearer into two Users would drain and subsequently kill the Bearer, making odd-numbered groups impossible without at least one disconnected Solo. Four group members may simply set up two Flow states for two pairs, and so on and so forth for all even numbers. In extremely rare cases, an extremely powerful Bearer-User can share their magic with multiple lower-level Users— but this risks the death of everyone involved without an incredible level of finesse. For example, in traditional Witch families, groups are assembled from two Bearers, two Users, and a particularly strong User-Bearer or Bearer-User for a total of five people. This group would be labeled under Flow as two Duos and one Solo.   As a final note, Flow is completely isolated from traditional Newmoon ideas about romance and sexuality. Flow does represent a connection between two people on a fundamental level, but it doesn't carry the same connotations as a romantic partnership. Even so, the distinction between Flow partners and romantic partners can cause serious social friction, and in modern times it is considered outdated for Witch families to assign Flow pairs between their up-and-coming descendants.