"You're welcome. Hopefully, the conversation will escape the skymage problem number one: talking about the weather."

"Oh but come on it's super interesting! What's having that magic like?"

"Well, we get a sense of the state of weather in a several miles radius, which also comes with the added benefit of good sense of direction."

"I would say it gives us a sense of scale... it doesn't make us feel small, but skymages as a group often think big."

"And of course, it's fun to play around with the weather." He twirls a finger and a gust of wind passes through them.

"I'm envious. How much can you do?"

"We have the gifts to control wind, heat, cold, humidity and lightning. Which means pretty straightforward control over the weather."

"But like, at what range and scale and intensity?"

"It depends on what we are trying to do and where we are trying to do it. Really strong winds, the type that causes people problems moving, can be done instantaneously in a small scale. We could call a thunderbolt in a few minutes - it takes time gathering the energy correctly - produce temperature changes that are strong enough to knock someone out in a matter of seconds. Or cause a city-wide heatwave in... maybe ten minutes. Same thing for cold. Raining varies too much according to local air humidity and likewise snowing, but actually freezing the snow is pretty fast. Freezing liquid water is rather tricky and indirect... there is a lot of skill to it if what you want is to influence the weather for a long time."

"Sounds broken to be honest. Why don't you as a society use these broken powers to fix thirst? Too many butterfly effects messing with weather at that scale?"

"The butterfly effects," Felix agrees, "we have to take the water from somewhere and that can often edge on political problems. Diverting water the regular way can cause that too."

"Another political problem: having disaster-inducing mageborn can be seen as very threatening and politically destabilizing despite the international treaties that prevent everyone but the Stormlands to use us in warfare."

"And general thaumatophobia?"

"Yeah, it wouldn't be popular in a lot of places. And a lot of the places that need it the most are the ones that already suffer from that cultural problem, on top of various political problems. Which leads to our current situation where Nevada is the state with the most skymages working - and doing so in the private sector - instead of a state in the Tornado Alley."

"And I read somewhere that Dubai wants to build a mountain to increase rainfall."

"...so we should fix that, yes?"

"Well, yes. How do you propose we do that?"

"I don't know yet, haven't thought about it for long enough."

"I can guarantee you that he is going try."

"Well, if he wants some help."

"Well it won't do to try to help fix thaumatophobia without a thaumatopracticer or two!"

"That does sound counterproductive!"

"And I'm nothing if not productive."

"Do you have political ambitions?"

"One or two."