"Neat! I'm guessing the firefly's required, though?"

"Unless I learn to not do that, yeah."

"Oh. I was gonna say we're more versatile if so, but if that's just a shortcut then I've got no real way of determining if your system's better or not."

"It's not just a shortcut - fireflies and stuff are cheap and light, lots of actual wizards still use them - but even without doing science to it it's possible to learn to skip material components. And verbal and somatic ones, for that matter."

"Might want to learn to do without fireflies then, they're not so much available for purchase. Unless the campus store is feeling particularly weird today, I guess."

"All the clothes I tried on fit me. All of them. It doesn't do fireflies? I can be conservative with what I had on me."

"Nobody really uses fireflies for anything, is the thing? Maybe if you reinvent your magic and everybody starts using it."

"I might!"

"I'll look forward to fireflies being available for purchase, then."

"Will you? What would you do with them?"

"Look forward in the abstract. I've got no particular use for fireflies but it'd imply you've done well for yourself, which would be nice."

"Oh. Well, then, thank you."

"You're welcome! I'm also kind of curious to see how relatively easy, accessible magic might affect baseline society. I've always thought more baselines should be encouraged to try our kind of magic, too, but with our kind it's sometimes hard for the untrained eye to pick out the real stuff from the New-Age hippie bullshit. Not that the hippies didn't have magic."

"It might be hard to separate what effects that had from what effects all the other differences had. We use magic for a lot of things you do with science stuff. Also a lot of people aren't human, so we're not what you might be thinking of as a baseline society, even in majority human areas."

"Oh, yeah, trying to work out the why and how of our societies' differences would be a clusterfuck. I'm talking about if you end up popularizing your kind of magic and it goes mainstream, what kind of effect that might have."

"Oh! Yeah, that would be really neat to watch."

"It would!"

"Now I'm curious about your world in general," Sally comments. "What kinds of species of people do you have? We've got humans, Sidhe, various kinds of spirits and gods, werewolves, vampires, demons, and the creatures of the Mythos, and I don't think I'm missing anything but I wouldn't be shocked if I was."

"We have more kinds than that including all of those, or things that translate that way, except whatever creatures of the Mythos are unless they just aren't translating generously enough. Plus lots more, some of which I would absolutely forget if I listed them because no one has ever written a comprehensive mnemonic poem. There are elves and dwarves and sylphs and orcs and ogres and mermaids and nymphs and dragons and goblins and hobgoblins and stuff."

"Wow," Sally breathes. "That's- a lot. Um, I think we used to have dragons but they're extinct now if we ever did. Creatures of the Mythos are various flavors of horrible monster from outside our reality that disagree with our existence. They're thankfully quite rare."

"Oh, we have those but the crystal sphere surrounding the planet generally keeps them out."

"Ah. We don't have one of those, but there are defenses in place, hence their relative rarity. -oh, I knew I was forgetting someone and it turned out to be me. We have golems, though they're very uncommon. I'm technically one, hence my general, ah, metallic appearance, but I was transformed into one rather than being constructed."

"We have those too! They vary in whether they have independent will or not but some of them do."

"Truly sentient golems were never common in our world, and their creation is now illegal, at the existing golems' request. I tend to agree with them."

"Still legal on Prime Material, at least in any country I've heard of. I'm not aware of major golem-related political activism, but I suppose I might not have been. But, I mean, slavery in general is also legal."