"Did I tell you where I was from? Eiro, small town in Serenta, about twenty kilometers from the nearest civilized area, a city called Ouran, has a nice market every midweek. I'm currently living in Rhunya, the– uh, I think it's the biggest city in Kerune? It's the capital city, at least, has quite a large population, and am at university for psychology and math."

It doesn't have a very clear description about how to use lumen, but apparently they do have some therapy courses where they try to rehabilitate people with its use and go through the steps quite slowly and thoroughly as a sort of meditation exercise. It seems to be approximately grabbing hold of a space, trying to conjure lumen there, and then twisting.

They don't seem to have very precise instructions on how to do it, only the previous vague overview.

"Oh, cool. Do you already have a specific career in mind or do you just like the subjects?"

"Itaruko? I would like to test something."

"No specific career yet, just like the subjects," responds Itaruko. "Maybe experimental psychology or something." He turns to Fenris. "Anything in particular?"

"See if I can use lumen."

"I'd expect you to be able to, but if you've never heard of it or seen it before, that's– kind of weird? It'd suggest you can't do it."

"I was thinking it could be some kind of ambient effect from your world if it isn't just a species feature," Fenris shrugs, "it is an easy enough test."

"Okay, um. What do you need to know, because this sounds– difficult to describe, if you want to ask me how I do it and just copy that."

"I'm already used to unusual mental actions, but do you have a better metaphor?"

He demonstrates the "unusual mental actions" by making a gust of cold wind. He then tries lumen and fails.

So he goes through the process of making lumen himself, quite slowly, working out the individual steps in his head…

"It's difficult to describe and it'd be convenient if I could transmit it with some form of telepathy, but unfortunately I'm lacking such a thing. Uh. Try to 'grab' a bit of air – keep it quite small, maybe like ten centimeters in diameter – and then try to push something into it and also try to make it bright, and sort of– you know the difference between thinking of moving your arm and actually moving it? Try to do that with the pushing and brightening action." Pause. "I think if I didn't know what I was talking about, in my head, I would even have difficulty following that set of instructions, so I doubt you'll get anywhere with it."

Fenris tries that. Fails again.

"Would you mind opening the door to your world just so I can try in there?"

"Sure?" he says. "I'd rather you not, like, go around and terrorize all the non-magical inhabitants with your air thing, though, just in case you had plans to do that."

And assuming he doesn't get a worrying response to that, he'll open the door! (On the other side is a small hallway.)

"I promise not to." Fenris steps in and tries again and fails.

"Still no luck?" asks Itaruko.

"Apparently not." Fenris shrugs stepping in. "Too bad you weren't around when there were patrons that could analyze magic."

"I continue to not think it's magic, so it might actually not work too well with the whole analyzing magic thing, but yeah, would've been neat if they could determine that for sure."

"Still looks pretty magical," says Martin.

"Yeah, but still could be biological. I think there have been studies, even if maybe not very many."

"There had been a disappointing small number of studies, even if one didn't consider the possible uses that the underlining principles would have if harnessed."

"I am pretty sure I can't do anything obviously 'magical' in the same way, at least not unless there are some obvious things that I'm overlooking that you can't do? It can do small changes in temperature, it can do lighting which is useful if you're in a dark place – actually, yeah, that might mean we have fewer lightbulbs than you do or something? Or lower tech, I'm not sure? It can also do diagrams, it's useful in teaching, it's useful in showing things – like that globe I did earlier – and I feel like not having it would just be really frustrating in lots of small ways but you've probably got around it a lot?"

"I was thinking how it can transmit or manifest energy apparently without crossing the intervening space. If there was a technological way to do that better, you might be able to transmit information secretly, or maybe through physical barriers depending on how it works."

"… We could already do it by just forming lumen through a wall or something, if we want to do it nearby? But it's difficult to get much range on lumen, and I haven't heard of it being done technologically though it should presumably be possible, so I wouldn't expect developments to be made very quickly."

"I meant something that worked through large distances, presuming that machines have more power for that kind of thing."

"Well. There might be some inherent limit to distance, though if there is I don't actually know of one, since people's ranges vary, but yes, that would probably be possible and could be useful? Huh. I don't think anyone's done anything with that, at least, though maybe they looked into it and found it was a dead end?"

"Maybe they didn't, it was very under researched."