Magic tends to come in either personal or broadly available, sometimes those two overlap where a broad group people have access to a system of magic but each person has a meaningful advantage at some small part of that magic system. Personal magic largely amounts to superpowers of one sort or another. It is very rare to find a single person with a highly flexible magic system all to their own, though there are some magic systems with very high barriers to entry such that few to no individuals have used them to their potential.

Broadly available magic systems are often though not always species specific capabilities or otherwise available to insular communities though on some occasions the ability to use magic seems randomly distributed through a population. Personal magic as I described above is often, though not exclusively, randomly or apparently randomly distributed.

I do my best not to get attached to any magic I acquire in a world since on every occasion I've jumped between worlds I've lost all the magic I had thus far acquired besides the magic that makes me jump and the magic that lets me see perceive the seed's fingerprints.

As I've said, magic in my world comes in sort-of-two forms: wizardry and sorcery. Sorcery seems to be the kind of magic Stellan calls "personal", and as far as anyone can tell is randomly distributed. Some people are just really good at one particular thing, like growing plants fast or controlling water or being essentially fireproof. Wizardry is broadly available and anyone can learn it, and usually people learn their first spell as a child. I'd be surprised if any adult in my world doesn't know how to do any of the most basic spells, though most people don't become full wizards and just know a few useful spells.

Stellan, what about magic places and magic plants? My world has a breed of apples where the fruit appear overnight and vanish overnight, and a flower which produces music, and a lake which turns anyone immersed in it to gold until they're immersed in water that isn't from that lake, for example.

I was focused on how magic interacts with people. I'd consider plants with magical properties to be a broadly available magic since all you need to do is find and harvest those plants. Magic places are closer to the personal magic end in how they look at least if it's unique. Some worlds have lots of places of the same sort, in those cases I would call it a broadly available magic.

I've been asked to explain the ley a couple of times, figure here's a good place to do that.

The ley is - a sort of unspace, or space that exists outside of/parallel to normal space. It's non-Euclidean, works in more than three dimensions, though ley ships can force it to behave in a manner consistent with the proper realm's laws within and around them (though not always stably, we don't allow non-navigators up on deck when in the ley for a reason). It looks - there's this fog, that surrounds the edges of the reality-islands, and that becomes denser in the ley itself. It forms basically the equivalent of waves, and shines like an oil slick, with frozen lightning trapped inside (which is hazardous to run into). There's a high wind typically, that carries bright flecks of we-honestly-don't-know-what. The ship moves through a combination of riding the waves, hoisting a ley-sail to catch the wind, and magical propulsion. Being a navigator requires a lot of magical sensitivity, and a good head for higher-dimensional mathematics. 

Here is a more technical description for anyone actually interested in the mathematics behind it, plus here for how the engines work, and here for a widely praised artistic rendering a ship in the ley. (I hope these link properly; we don't have electronic archives, but from playing around with this thing they should pull up sufficiently specified physical archives?)

The magic in my world is too varied and versatile to summarize; attempts to produce an organized unifying theory of magic might be charitably described as ongoing. What is clear is that the capacity for magic is (imperfectly) heritable; magical parents generally produce magical children, and nonmagical parents almost always produce nonmagical children.

Are there things that are certainly impossible to do with your world's magic? Is magical capacity absolute, or is there a range children fall into between "magical" and "nonmagical"?

There are a few things conventionally held to be impossible, such as restoring the dead to life or inducing true love (as opposed to lust or infatuation), but this belief does not appear to be based in any kind of well-founded theory. It seems to me that in order to place limits on what magic may yet be invented would require a much better understanding than is presently available.

The distinction between magical humans and nonmagical humans appears to be discrete. There is some variation in magical ability among magical humans; the magical community is divided as to whether this is due to differences in fundamental capacity or merely of supporting skills such as studiousness, ingenuity, and so forth.

Thank you.

There are some types of magic in my world that restore the dead to life. I have not particularly researched whether there is magic to induce love.

Huh, I can technically bring the dead back to life. It only really works up to a few minutes after their vital functions stop, though, and usually still leaves them pretty injured. Plus it's a gift gained due to my close connection to Terrakion, so it can't be considered that common. I can use it at a distance, though-does your bringing-to-life/healing magic require physical contact? (Most common healing abilities require physical contact or close proximity.)

I personally cannot bring the dead to life, only save the living from dying. The magic I know of to restore the dead to life is a slow power through an area the size of a town, and depends upon the dead having originally been buried there.

Many though not all worlds with magic have afterlives more have akashic memories that you could use to construct an afterlife.

Could you please elaborate on how one might do such a thing? It affects whether I ought to continue to preserve the lives of those I can, or search for a more universal way to bring all the dead to life.

Usually worlds with some form of magic past-watching or similar abilities to look into the past have the necessary prerequisites to constructing an afterlife. I've only seen it done once though. Usually it takes incredible amounts of magic and considerable creativity.

I do not think that I can construct an afterlife with the resources I have. I plan to continue preserving those I can, and to watch for anyone who might be able and willing to construct an afterlife.

Thank you for this information.