"What do I do," he says instantly, "will it just work for me?"

"Not quite. I mean, you can try copying what I just did if you like, but you don't know all the mental bits of the spell and it won't work. That's what the scroll is for. There's two kinds of spell records - one that you use to learn a spell from, and one that you cast from. You can use the second kind as the first but not the first kind as the second. I just made the first kind, though, since you have to know at least a little wizardry to even use a scroll and nobody but me does and, well, I know all the spells I know."

He nods. "So I can learn from that?"

"Yeah. I'm actually curious to see what will happen if you just look at it without me explaining it; usually there's weeks of classes before casting one's first cantrip but usually one isn't speaking Pax this well after first exposure, so." She hands him the scroll.

He reads it carefully, several times, his face serious. Then he copies what she did. Nothing happens. His face falls.

He finds this thrilling, and peppers her with even more questions. The explanation ends up taking probably as long as it takes in school, though he focuses on different things to ask about endlessly.

She answers as best she can, although her knowledge is gappy and sometimes the answer is "that sounds like it would take experiments to answer".

He beams whenever it is.

And she dutifully writes down the things she will need to experiment about.

Finally he's ready to attempt it again.

Have a pinch of wool, Fëanáro.

And there's music. He jumps, again, onto the ground, and cries out with joy, and glows like he is about to burst. "I did it!"

"Brilliant!" she applauds, beaming at him.

He dances around the room for a while longer. "Can I have more wool? I want to do it again."

"Sure." She gives him a big handful to pinch from.

He does it ten more times in quick succession before announcing that he's ready to learn another one.

"That's the only one I have a lot of material for," she warns. "And most of the others aren't nearly as useful around here. The next one doesn't have a material component. It's not dangerous either but you could probably really annoy people with it; are you going to do that?"

"People get annoyed anyway," he grumbles, "but I won't annoy them with magic."

"Oh, and if you keep casting everything that many times you're going to run into your mana limits, that's a thing; I don't know where yours are but you probably won't be pleased to know that the fastest way to recharge them is with sleep." But she picks up the scroll for arcane marks.

"What are the other ways to recharge? How do I get rid of the limits?"

"The other way is just waiting - and not doing very much while you wait unless you want it to take days. You can eat and have conversations; some people don't seem to lose recharge speed if they read but most people do. Limits ease up with practice. I'm actually not sure if the advice is not to just run down to your limit over and over again because it's a good idea in a dangerous world to keep some in reserve or because it's actually less efficient that way and I suspect you're going to find out."

He looks distressed. "Maybe the trees can recharge people. They're magic."

"Ooh, maybe! That would be neat."

"I'm really not good at not dong anything."