"– And, should I try it at some point? Seeing as how it's apparently doing whatever with me, I don't know what that is."

"Yes, in a moment, don't worry."

Assuming Itaruko is willing, Thor gives him the instructions on how to co-cast the light-warping (Martin should be paying attention to this too) it is a simple spell, but does require some coordination. And if Itaruko is willing to chant and wave herbs and do several other things that would make people look at him funny...

There is a shimmering effect, like hot air above asphalt, but more so.

"That's– huh," he says. "So does that mean it does count as a natural gift, then?"

Felix nods.

"It should be weaker if it didn't." Thor explains. "So, your turn Martin?"

He nods! Turns out he was in fact paying attention as Thor explained the process to Itaruko.

It seems like he does have a natural gift, but it's a rather weak one. Extremely weak, in fact.

This is so weird that Felix almost loses his concentration, but then he reports the results.

"...So it's not what we expected."

"… I'm not really clear why lumen would, you know, attach to me and give me a natural gift," says Martin. "Unless it's not actually lumen and I have something else but I assume you would have seen that?"

"It is really not expected, but also, see how are we standing in a inter-dimensional nexus in our sleepwear."

"I mean, yes," he says, shrugging. "But even though this whole situation is weird it's still, y'know, able to have separate weird components."

"I'd reassure you that I've never heard of lumen doing anyone harm, but I also didn't realize it had preferences, didn't realize it was apparently magic, and didn't realize it would do things to people I meet who didn't have it, because this is kind of unprecedented."

"Thanks for that," says Martin, laughing a bit.

"I mean, I get that, but while you are getting used to any kind of weird, I am just reaching the next tier of weird, if that makes any sense. Anyway, want to try casting without our help?"

"Me? – It's the same steps to do it without a co-caster?"

"No, but only because we are going to play it safe and have you try a different one. This one is much simpler – it is meant to create a kind of immaterial lens."

This spell is mostly words and gestures and by the end of it there will be a couple of distortions in the air, working basically like a glass lens, except without the glass. Itaruko's lasts longer but isn't bigger.

"Can you control precisely how it focuses stuff?"

"Yeah, you can just focus mentally. I know better spells, but this was to demonstrate if you can do it at all by yourselves."

Nod. "Are they– derivable? As in, there's presumably some sort of process you can follow to get the results you want – is there some way of working out what steps you need for what effect, or are there particular stock components you build together?"

"Yes, yes and also yes. But it takes time and experimentation to get anything... efficient. Luckily our world already did a lot of that."

"So you can do regular science to the magic? – I mean, I assumed sort of yes from the fact you have those metaphysics books but I wasn't certain."

"Yes," Felix says slowly, "magic and science are perfectly compatible. The universe is not going to slap you for sciencing the magic too much."

"… I would be really pissed off if the universe tried slapping me for sciencing it too much," says Martin. "I would want to slap the universe right back but unfortunately I don't think that's feasible seeing as how it'd be a universe."

"Fortunately, Milliways doesn't seem to have slapped us yet and I've never heard of anyone getting slapped for science back in my world."

"I mean, it is just confusing that you have these preconceptions over something you didn't believe to be real and that these preconceptions align in a way that is as weird as science not being compatible with magic."

"Right, but magic is usually seen in our world in, like, literature and films and stuff, as being extremely obscure and you have to read rituals out of old spellbooks and-or it's uncontrollable or has horrible side-effects, and nobody seems to successfully science it to get better use out of the spells, or if they do they end up dying in tragic magical accidents because playing around with high-powered things is dangerous."