Eventually they get back to Theo's place, and Tyler walks in through the door, and then he proceeds to stand at the edge of the room.
It seems like he's doing this a lot right now.
He sighs.
"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."
"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?"
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?"
"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."
"… 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.
"… 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."
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'?"