"Yes exactly."

"And all too many people are like that."

"Too many."

"Honestly, I like people very much as individuals, but in the aggregate I'm almost as sick of them as my brother."

"I like a lot of elementals very much but have met few humans I like. But, you know, I'm a human, so I know I can expect better of us."

"Yes. And I'm an extrovert; it makes it easier to like people."

"I'm not sure we have that concept at home but I think I'm an introvert, if the translation's reliable there."

"Well, you've been content to hole up in my brother's library and nerd about magic with him, so I'm going to say yes."

Giggle. "It's such nerdable magic!"

"So I've gathered!"

"Mine's pretty nerdable too but it's a really young field because we only recently learned how to improve the chances that a child will be magical - not that long before I was born - so there's not nearly so much settled research and accumulated invention."

"And before that how rare was it?"

"Very - I don't know exactly - and how many elements people can work with varies a lot."

"Hm. Seems a little like fey magic, almost."

"Fey magic?"

"Fairies are a thing we have that aren't human. They have personal magic that runs along themes."

"Huh. What themes?"

"I don't know all of them, but off the top of my head--plant, animal, music, teleportation, glass, fire..."

"Glass and fire are one of ours, so is plant sort of. Wood."

"Glass and wood both seem more specific than fire, but my sensibilities are not necessarily objective."

"Glass wood fire earth air water adamant ice shadow lightning shine stone."

"Huh."

"Glass is my best one. It's not just literal glass, it also does interesting vision tricks."

"Huh. That makes sense."

"Does it?"