"I don't know! It just seemed… equal-ish before with fairies, if not among mortals who stumble in, because you're all immortal – right? – and you can all be masters of each other, and– there wasn't someone who was just automatically master of you all! Not that I knew about, at least!"

"Well, there's only one of her. In general one-of-a-kinds have better kind magic than plural spontaneous kinds and spontaneous kinds have better kind magic than breeders."

He shrugs and looks at the bits of lumen.

"Lumen can also do slight temperature change? It's kinda difficult to control."

"Huh, difficult how?"

"It's kinda sideways to the regular things? Most people don't bother with it much, you can't usually get more than a few degrees either way of ambient, it's sort of– fiddly?"

"Can you do that part alone invisibly?"

"Nnn– I don't think so? I haven't actually tried, but I can vary the intensity of the color, so I might be able to get it transparent enough?"

So he tries making the pyramid less– obviously colorful, while also trying to raise the temperature.

"Temperature - and light, but light's more conspicuous - can affect sorcery. Sorcery can affect temperature too, but if lumen doesn't require environmental knowledge it might be able to make it easier to do sorcery on new turf."

"It doesn't require environmental knowledge, nope. Uh, not even, like, objects in the environment either – it's fine intersecting things."

He hasn't yet got it totally transparent, he seems to have slowed down in how quickly he's changing the intensity, but it's relatively difficult to see.

"Does anything happen if it intersects things?"

"Nope? It's still there, it's just not actually visible because there's, you know, a thing in the way. People sometimes, uh, 'phoss' people, meaning you cover them in it or put it around their skin, making them look sort of glowy, but that's rude unless you've been given permission."

The pyramid is now mostly colorless, but it looks slightly blurry. Gradually getting less blurry, but still noticeable.

"Why does one phoss somebody?"

"… Usually to be rude, actually. Or as a kids' game." He shrugs.

The pyramid seems to be sticking at 'slightly blurry', and when he tries to fix that it goes colored again. "I'm not sure I can get it totally transparent, but it might get better with practice."

"Is there a lot of practice effect with this stuff?"

"Yeah – I've messed around with it quite a lot, 'cause it seems cool, but most people don't. Some people wouldn't be able to make the pyramid thing pointy like I did, for example."

"Hm."

She tries grabbing some space again.

It seems somewhat similar to before, slippery when she thinks about the section she wants and then slightly less so when she tries to grab it, but it doesn't do much more than that.

It's a bit less easy to think she's imagined the change this time, though.

"Might not have imagined the thing after all? I'm not getting usable results exactly though."

Shrug. "What was the thing again?"

"The bit of the air I'm focusing on feels peculiar. Normally air I'm not actually in contact doesn't feel like anything, so..."

"That… sounds like it might be the proprioceptiony bit? But I don't usually get anything like that with air, I don't think, just with the lumen?"

"Well, do you remember doing it for the first time?"

"No. Most kids do it around the time they start to talk, which is like one or two years old, and I don't remember stuff before like four, so. Nope."

"So maybe this is normal for first forays. Although I don't know why mortals would pick it up so early and fairies wouldn't. Maybe just having the example?"

C'mon space be grabbed be lit.

It feels like it's responding somehow when she tries to light it, but there's not an obvious visible effect.

"Maybe," he says. "Where are you trying to do it?"