Efficiency classes: boring, and way more useful for people who aren't her. Odette would probably just pull out a novel, but if she got terrible grades in every class that didn't matter to her, it would reflect badly on her professor father.
If only something interesting would happen.
"You look like you're good enough to survive an awful lot of things trying to kill you."
"Anyway," says Milan, "joking aside, I have the capacity to do this magic but not the knowledge to make use of that capacity and that's kind of an annoying state to occupy and I don't want to wait until I can take a course on it. The five-minute version should be enough to get me started, and if it's not I should probably know that before I start," he pauses; he smiles, "experimenting."
"I believe I mentioned the very basics to you earlier," he replies. "Coaxing, pushing or commanding. However, it has been a very long time indeed since I began learning, and I do, unfortunately, have the demands of running a city on my time; recalling what should and should not make it into the five-minute version might well take longer than five minutes. Do you believe you have the vocabulary to discuss this with your peer, or do I need to do it?"
"I'll manage. Odette! What's the five-minute version of 'how do you actually do magic'?"
"There are three kinds, I think that's been established. Conquest which works by commanding, Sympathy which works by coaxing, and Effort which works by pushing. With Conquest you assemble your intentionality and then you demand that the universe comply; it will either work immediately or not at all. Effort you just sort of--start wanting at it, like he showed you, and sometimes the magic starts happening immediately and gets stronger the more you push, and sometimes nothing happens until you've been pushing a certain amount, and it hurts more and gets harder the more you push; theoretically if someone had the willpower they could push all the way to doing something you ought to need a master for as a novice but in practice no one has that much attention. Sympathy works by attempting to convince the universe that the way you want it to be is more correct than the way it currently is; you can keep trying to coax something indefinitely but there's no guarantee it will work at all."
"No one has that much attention, you say? So, wait - how do you convince the universe, what logic does the universe accept, what does the universe know?"
"The universe knows...physics and chemistry and biology. The universe knows how it works and what things are in it. The more you know about these things, the easier it is to convince, because it's easier to persuade the universe 'these cells should divide in this manner' than 'this guy should have a foot.' For example. It's also a lot easier to convince the universe of things that you yourself believe are correct, and the more strongly you believe this the more of an impact it has."
"So for Effort you have to be stubborn and determined, and for Sympathy you have to be confident and persuasive. Which of my core personality traits does Conquest rely on?" he jokes.
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