She does notice. She shields her working as default standard; she can consider later if not to do that at some point.

"Food should be fine for me, thank you."

She's mostly looking to see the flow of energy, and if Lee's using anything like chakra to power it; she doesn't expect to get much of anything, though.

"Alright. Do you want to cook, or there should be room-temperature food available."

She cannot conceal that thoroughly at the moment, even if it wouldn't be rather pointless given that she already said she would be doing this.

(And if this is something Rian can sense somehow: she is a mage; she draws her power from inside herself and then directs it. She does not draw from her life-force, of course. This is not a shaped spell, just exploration with power.)

"I think I will eat what is available, for the moment."

"Alright. It's over this way."

She can't get quite that much detail, unfortunately for her curiosity. It's interesting that magic exists that doesn't use chakra, even external chakra, though.

It is very interesting that a different form of magic exists, yes.

She goes over.

The food selection's pretty much jerky and rice packed into balls, some of it with various fillings - pickled plum, kelp, fish prepared in various ways, and others, mostly salty or sour. Rian points out what's what, and grabs rice with pickled plum for herself. 

"There's a wider variety available during proper mealtimes," she says apologetically.

She considers nutritional analysis and makes selections.

"It's not a problem. And I would hardly expect it to be your priority in wartime."

"We'll be out of rice, too, soon enough. It's too resource-intensive to harvest right now, and we're running down our stocks."

She is not sure whether to offer condolences on this as well.

"Is it replaceable, or is this likely to be a shortage problem?"

"It'll be replaceable once we beat Kaguya, but for now - mostly a shortage problem. We still have over a year left of supplies, though, a few of the daimyo were pretty stringent about keeping enough rice in reserve in case of a famine. Some of the reserves got destroyed, but we were able to salvage others."

She had not gotten the impression that beating Kaguya was at this moment at the stage where this was safe to consider sufficient. She refrains from mentioning this, at this point.

"Does your magic help with crops?"

"Usually only indirectly. Like, it can help with watering and irrigation, or with plowing. There's one person who can directly make plants grow, but it tires them out."

"Ah, what does it do for those elements?"

"Mostly just directly moving the water or earth, through elemental manipulation."

"Ah, I see.

If you decide it might be a good use of my time, I can see if there is anything I might do? Plants are not my specialty but there might be elements I can reproduce at least in part. We don't generally have that kind of elemental manipulation, but we can sometimes make faster growing or stronger plants, larger or more fruit, more nutritional value, repelling pests and disease, some amount of growing plants under the ground..."

"Of those, growing plants underground would be the best help, since going above ground's dangerous. But I'd still like you to sit down with someone to figure out if there's something else you can do, especially given knowledge of our resources. I can explain the basics of our magic if you'd like - ?"

"If the correct conditions can be present, that one can be fairly simple. Otherwise could be complicated to impossible, depending. I am very able to take a look and determine.

Yes, of course." Well, it's something if they're going to get to it, she supposes.

I would be very interested."

"We'll do our best to make sure the circumstances line up."

"Hm, for a primer... Techniques require chakra, which flows within every living being - and arguably within the non-living, too. There are four main types of techniques - sealing, illusions, bodily techniques, and everything else. Sealing requires drawing or imagining seals - the shapes of which are determined mathematically, I'm not sure how - and powering those seals with chakra. Illusions are fairly broad, but usually require using your own chakra to interfere with someone else's. Bodily techniques generally deal with enhancing the body and fighting hand to hand or with weapons. 'Everything else' mostly includes things like the body flicker - what I used to move fast earlier - and walking up walls and across water, as well as elemental manipulation and medical techniques."

"Thank you, that is a very good beginning explanation." (This is fully sincere.) (She is interested in more, of course, but that should likely wait for more convenient time and place and perhaps someone with more knowledge of some elements, if available (she is quite interested in this 'determined mathematically').)

(And ah, illusions working in that way is likely relevant to the illusion trap mentioned earlier.)

"Would you like one in return or are we waiting for someone?"

"The people who'd be better than me at this are mostly busier, so a basic one for now would be good if you don't mind. I can also explain some of it more in depth if you'd like - ? I mostly specialize in weapons, illusions, medicine, and elemental manipulation - mostly fire and wind."

"I don't mind, though this type of explanation is very much not my specialty so it may not be as ideal as one might like.

And I am very interested in learning more.

The world I'm from has a few types of powers. I seem to be the only one here at least that we've met so far" (...she should look into that, and should have also thought of this earlier...) "so I'll keep to mine for the moment. I'm a mage. Power relevant to doing magic is inside me and I work by calling it up to use. Power can be - shaped to have certain effects on the world, and this can be deployed in an immediate way for an immediate effect or - set in place - for a more long-term effect.

In a somewhat more freeform sense it can also be used to - interface with the world, the way that you might investigate something with your hand and then manipulate it. The very latter is what I did when testing the food - I sent my power into it to find information. The very former is how one teleports. The second is what I might attempt to do with the plants. Somewhat in between the first and second is how I do translation.

Magical power and its use are part of the world for these purposes - I could set a spell over a certain area to prevent someone from translocating, say, or if I was in my world someone might notice what I'd done with some plants and attempt to interfere with it."

"That's really interesting. Are there limits to what you can do? Are there things some mages can do that others can't?"

"Yes, on both counts. The elements relevant to both are power and - ability, one might say, as well as strength and endurance. Ability works as it does with most things - some people can do more math than others, learn more math than others, learn math more easily than other, but most people can improve to some extent by learning and work. One can also be more talented or more trained in one area than another. Working with magic is the same.

Power is a matter of magnitude. One can only call up as much power at a time as one has. There is a person in history who was said to be able to translocate to the moon, if she wanted. I cannot do that, because that would require more power than I have available. However, both she and I could translocate across your river. 

Ah - a common misconception I remember can arise - power is not used up when one uses it, it is a tool not a consumable resource. Though it can be in use in a given moment, or 'exhausted'. Again, could be somewhat compared to your hand. 

Strength and endurance can also be compared to the physical ones. Various parts of using magic are strenuous to some extent - calling up high magnitudes of power and using it is more strenuous, some more difficult tasks are more strenuous, opposing other active power is more strenuous, and so on. Some people can apply more to this than others.

Other limits - freeform working is well, freeform, but generally limited in what one can effectively do with it, and comparatively expensive and inefficient - if I called up enough power I could also walk on water for some amount of time, but it would be like, hm, constantly operating a complex array of levers to lift a heavy item all of whose weight you would have to bear the entire time. And it takes comparatively less in a task for the - lever system - to become simply too complex to operate, or for the weight to become to heavy. 

Shaped workings, in contrast, have to be invented. Compare, say, finding a method to tie said levers together such that one can pull one string and everything moves as one wishes. Allows more capabilities, but if I don't know how to do it it needs to be invented or I can't. There's all sorts of areas where the situation is a question of 'potentially we cannot do this, but potentially we have not invented the way to do it yet'. There's researchers who work in this, the same as there are researchers who work in non-magical technology.

Constraints we work with include complexity, magnitude of power needed, attributes of the world - 'natural laws' and such -, this requiring of invention and general things about invention such as cost-benefit.

I might be forgetting some limits that are background of the world enough to me that I did not think to mention, please let me know if you have specific ones I might answer about.

And for yours?"

"It's a lot like a stance for a particular fighting style, in that you can build up muscle memory for complex tasks - walking on water's decently hard, you have to match your chakra flow to the movement of the water, but once you get used to it it's like balancing on a tree branch. Instinctual. And that goes for everything - we usually use hand-signs to mold chakra a specific way, memorize that, then just memorize the hand-signs for a technique as a shortcut to memorizing the whole thing, though again if you practice your body keeps track of it for you. Chakra can run out - I think it's more like the energy you use for muscles than the muscles themselves - and when it does, people usually experience shutdown of internal organs. You can use chakra to manipulate yourself, the world around you, or other people, by moving it in specific patterns. Chakra flows internally within coils, that mostly follow major blood vessels but not always, and exits the body at pressure points. There's three hundred and sixty one total, though most people can only use the handful in their hands and feet."

"And it is making use of it that uses it up? Can one tell how much one has left? I presume it regenerates in some way?

Does one always cause it to exit in order to use it, or can it be used internally as well? Does it get used up in both ways, if so?

Can one assist someone who has critically used theirs up, perhaps by loaning some?" (She is rather curious to see what that state looks like, though she will keep that to herself, currently.)