"We did use moon a couple of times in spells, we can probably use it for the papers, too..."

"The cards themselves are a place to start. What if we write the word 'fly' itself on paper?" She tries that annnnddd... it works! "...well then."

"It didn't work when you called on it as a concept for flight," says Maya. "Which is. A little weird, because apparently it cares about the concepts differently, but okay."

"Well, that's assuming the thing the paper does is actually serve the same function as the concept thing we're calling on, which it may not be."

"… Huh? Flight is still a concept either way, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but I mean, in the spells we cast, it seems like the basic format is calling upon a concept, like wind or the moon, and asking it for stuff, and maybe that's not what the paper thingy's doing."

"Right, yeah, but it's still writing down a specific thing, and so far it seems to be only concepts?" Shrug. "Could try some verbs now instead?"

"Like what?"

Shrug. "Honestly was just a suggestion – um, does 'light' work if you mean it as 'to light up' when you write it? Or, see if 'fire' works and if it does, 'inflame' or 'burn' or something?"

"Erm, which specific meaning of 'to light up'?"

"As in, light up a room– with lights. Not set on fire. But we could try that one too, see if the meaning you intend as you write it has any effect if it works at all."

She tries both, and both seem to work. Fire, inflame, and burn all work as well.

"… Well that's weird. Breeze and zephyr didn't work earlier, right?"

She tries them this time, writing them on a piece of paper and intending for– well, intending for them to result in charged pieces of paper with those words on them.

That works!

"… Temperamental weirdness or what?"

Either way, it gets noted. "Perhaps we should triple check things we try at different times of day in case the magic system gets moody around 6pm or something."

Juniper furrows her eyebrows... then tries writing breeze. That one works. "Hmm."

"Um, okay. I think the magic was being weirdly temperamental, then?"

"Ugh," says Jess.

"If the magic is inconsistent in time that'll annoy me a lot."

"Me too."

"I think I can probably quite safely say it'll annoy all of us, at least a little."

"Did anything change, other than the time?"

"I don't think so..."

Well, Maya notes the inconsistency of this property and hopefully they'll be able to work it out when they gather more data.

"Other words for fire – can you just use 'flame'? Or 'hot' or 'blaze'?"

Flame works, hot doesn't, blaze does.