"Fair."

Nod.

"We got sidetracked from explaining my magic to you, do you have more questions?"

"What kinds of things do people typically do with it, besides laundry?"

"I make window glass, and sometimes take healing shifts. There's artifacts you can make with it, like ones that shed light or help plants grow. You can scry far away; Shadows can step between dark places..."

"But not people with the Shadow element?"

"No, no humans have enough Shadow to do that even once."

"I wonder if it would be possible to create artifacts that store magic that one can tap."

"That would be neat. I'm not aware of any research in that direction - most people just tap elementals - and it wouldn't help all that much in the case of shadow-walking in particular because it involves navigating in a way humans are very bad at, but it'd be really handy."

"And I imagine if one has an elemental of the relevant type on hand already one can simply ask for a ride."

"Assuming they have the energy to spare, sure."

"Well, if they don't then presumably you can't tap them for it, either."

"Yes, although it's possible to tap several at once."

"Oh, I see. Can you similarly tap other human mages?"

"Not that I know of. The field is still pretty new, there might be a way."

"Do you know what the difference is?"

"No, sorry."

Nod. "It doesn't seem as though you've had very long to investigate."

"Well, I've had my whole life, personally, but yeah, the magical community is younger than farmers or sailors or whatever."

"That's not--quite what I meant."

"Hm?"

"I have had my life settled roughly as I wish it for the past few hundred years; aside from maintenance tasks like finding new blood donors when the old ones choose to leave or keeping up with modern technology I have had few practical concerns to distract me from pursuit of theory. You have been alive less than two decades and presumably have had more urgent concerns than pure thaumaturgy."

"Oh. Yes."

"I was assuming on the less than two decades part," he amends.

"Yes."