"At the advanced stages, spells are activated through words or gestures. Words are much easier to record, so I don't use gestures much."

"What determines which words?"

"They're arbitrary; the magician in question pairs the spell with the word."

"Oh, neat." Book titlesssss?

Most of the books have complicated titles like "Advanced Nuclear Physics and Engineering" or weird ones like "the one with the bit about negentropy that might have gone into fairies," but Kanimir can show her a shelf with titles like "Basic Magic: Volume one" etcetera.

"You have so many books."

"I have been accumulating them for a long time."

"I'm not actually sure this many have been written on my whole planet."

He glances at her clothes. "I see. My condolences. Here we have the technology to mass-produce books."

"You don't do it with magic?"

"I can, but it's usually simpler to use non-magical technology."

"Wow."

"I suspect we are technologically very far ahead of you."

"Because of the books?"

"And your clothing."

She looks down at herself, then at what he's wearing. Hand-stitched linen versus...

Dark but colorful robes of mostly cotton; machine-stitched.

"Huh."

"Not that my clothes are a typical example."

"I wouldn't know. Mine are really typical for where I'm from."

Nod. "If you're curious I could show you more typical examples; I keep clothing on hand among other human necessities in case of sudden need in one of my guests."

"I might conceivably want a change of clothes if that's convenient."

"It would not be inconvenient in the slightest."

"That will be useful, waste of magic to use it on laundry."

"Is your magic a thing that can be meaningfully wasted?"