"You," says the human, "are excessively magical."

"Am not," snorts Kaylo. "Can't even cast any spells here."

"Is the amount of magical that you are ordinary where you're from, then?"

"Roughly. For the species, anyway. How are you seeing it? Can you cast spells here?"

"I can't cast spells anywhere," he says. "My world's magic doesn't come in 'spell'. It comes in unique individual packages, and mine is seeing other magic. Is there a whole species of yous? With the shapes and the language and the assorted other things I'm not sure I understand yet?"

"Yeah," says Kaylo. "I'm a dragon, we're a thing. There's like thirty kinds in six magically distinct groups and three power levels, though."

"Gosh," he says. "I want to hear all about them."

Kaylo laughs. "Well," he says, "I'd be recognized as one at home too, albeit not usually from that far off. The eyes," he explains. "Dead giveaway. We keep our colors when we assume shapes. Where it goes depends on what we're being. If I was a girl and I turned into a human it'd be my hair."

"Hmm," he says, peering at Kaylo's eyes. "Curious. Does the colour have to do with grouping? It looks like it might. It looks - subcategorical."

"Yeah. Garnets like me are in the red group. Our thing is fire. White gets flying, black gets senses, green gets empathy, blue gets shapeshifting, purple gets swimming."

"Subcategorical," he says, nodding. "Hmm. It's an awfully delicate system, though. Well, not fragile, but - I would be uneasy if I was walking around with a container labeled 'below here disaster' near the top and 'below here death' a little farther down, even if it was full, tightly sealed, and not prone to leaking."

"...Beg pardon?"

"Oh. Did you not know that? You should probably know that," he says. "You have an amount of the kind of magic you have, and it doesn't want to be much less than the amount you have of it or bad things will start happening."

"...Ah, you know, I think I can guess, and would rather not talk about those bad things, they are something dragons do not like to think about."

"Oh," says Lazarus. "...Um, okay."

"I mean, I can talk about dragons all you like," says Kaylo. "Just not those bad things."

"Yes, but now I've forgotten all my questions about dragons that are not specifically about the thing. - Well, I guess it's not specifically about the thing if I ask if dragons ever leak enough magic to drop dead on the spot, but it's also kind of morbid and depressing."

"It is morbid and depressing, and no, we don't typically do that, although 'dropping dead on the spot' is how old age tends to get us and I suppose it could coincide with leaking magic."

"Well, that's good, I guess. I hope that continues not happening except to very old people and possibly stops happening to them somehow. Oh, another question, is there a thing that happens when a dragon has more magic than you do? It seems sort of like there might be but I have no idea what it would look like if there was."

"Yes, I told you there are three power levels. I'm garden-variety. There's also unusuals and uniques. They get more of the per-group powers. The currently only living unique green-group is married to the headmaster of my school," Kaylo adds conversationally.

"Does this person go to Milliways, and can I meet them?"

"I am not aware of anyone from my world ever having been here before," remarks Kaylo. "It's quite new to me. It's cool, though!"

"Yes!" says Lazarus. "It contains a lot of magic. Which is why I was surprised that you still managed to stand out."

"Excessively, even," laughs Kaylo.

"Yes. Yes, that is the word that I used."

"Despite the fact that you promptly established that it'd be very bad if I were one bit less magic," he snorts.

"Well. Yes," he says. "There's also the other thing you have that isn't in the same container, though. Is that also completely ordinary?"

"The - other thing. Does it look like a hole that is not a hole?" guesses Kaylo.

"Y...es. Possibly. It looks like a thing that stuff goes through."

"That's probably my channeling capacity, then, it's even more ordinary, nearly everyone from my world has one of those."

"Oh. Hmm. What does it channel?"

"Wizarding magic from the reservoir, through spells."

"Aha. Hence why you can't cast spells at Milliways, because the stuff that goes through it isn't anywhere nearby."

"Yeah, it's pretty firmly attached to Elcenia. It's theoretically possible that I could do something with a compatible but not identical reservoir from somewhere else, but it probably wouldn't have the same spells entrained."

"I wonder what the stuff that goes through it looks like," he says musingly.

"...Well, when I look at it, it looks like whatever the designer of my analysis spell decided to represent it as, which I guess doesn't answer your wondering, does it."

"It does not! I'd have to see some. Right now all I know is that there isn't any in reach. I would recognize it if I saw it, though. It would have stuff-that-goes-through-the-thingness."

"I'm beginning to suspect that you aren't talking about things with color and opacity, here."

"Not remotely," he says. "There isn't anything particularly subcategorical about the shade of red that your eyes are, but when I look at the magic, I see it insisting that your shape should have that particular one there. And it's tied to some other things, and all together it has a very subcategorical look."

"That is really very interesting. I wish I could cast an analysis and have a look at your magic right back, but." He waves illustratively at their surroundings.

"Yes," says Lazarus. "And unfortunately my power doesn't share. Not that you'd have much luck interpreting it if it did, I don't think; it is extremely me and not anyone-else-ish at all."

"I'm occasionally asked to stop speaking in jargon. This is the first time it has occurred to me to ask someone else to start."

"Unfortunately, I don't have a jargon, because there is only one of me and only one of my power and it doesn't really sort itself into a vocabulary."

"That's a shame," says Kaylo. He finishes his iced planet. "One of each power, huh? Not very - systematic."

"No, indeed. Well, there are exceptions. There's one of each power of the kind that I have, but there are also mints, who are special."

"Yeah, what do they do?"

"They make coins that grant wishes," he says. "For which one possible use is turning more people into mints, and there is only one way to be a mint."

"How peculiar."

"Yes," he says. "I have not entirely figured out mints."

"What do you have left to wonder about them?"

"Where they came from, mainly. All of the mints that are around now got it from somewhere. Maybe once there was someone who was a mint like I am a what-my-power-is, and they passed it on because mints can do that, but they seem like such a different kind of thing that I'm really not sure."

"Huh. I'm not sure if I'm in a position to help you, but it sounds like a fascinating question!" says Kaylo earnestly.

"It is! It fascinates me. Someday maybe I will figure it out."

"Do you know helpful mints?" asks Kaylo.

"Not especially."

"Then how're you going to make progress?"

"Well, that's why I didn't say 'Someday I will certainly figure it out!'"

"Fair enough. I guess you can tell whether someone you might be about to meet is one easily enough, huh?"

"Yes," he says. "Sooner and more easily than I can tell anything else about them. Mints are distinctive."

Kaylo laughs. "That sounds really useful. I'd have a huge head start on my career if I could see things like you. I wonder if I can invent a spell that'd - probably not, it'd just wind up being another analysis."

"And analyses do not see things like me?"

"People have been trying to come up with exotic ones that do all sorts of interpretation for you, but they don't work very well, and I don't think having met you as inspiration would give me enough advantage to promote 'revamp the entire field of analysis' to particularly high on my to-do list."

"I wonder if I could revamp the entire field of analysis."

"Do you have a channeling capacity?" asks Kaylo skeptically.

"No. Do I need one? How does inventing spells work?"

"It does involve actually performing the spell," says Kaylo, "which you can do only with a CC."

"Hmm. Well, it was just a thought."

"Getting CCs to entities that do not have them does seem like an interesting problem, but has limited application at home, since everyone has one there."

"It seems like the sort of thing one could potentially wish for."

"Maybe - I wouldn't know. Do you have any wishes going spare?" inquires Kaylo.

"I do not," he says. "Or I would probably try it."

"You would also need to be in Elcenia to cast spells," Kaylo points out. "Can you even get there from here? I have been assured that I can..."

"Oh, yes, visiting other people's worlds is possible."

"Would you want to? I have also been told I can't count on getting here whenever I feel like it."

"Well, I could go for either a very short visit or a very long one. Although I suppose that if there are a lot of dragons in Elcenia, you've probably cornered the market on interpretation and translation. But then, if I was going to revolutionize magical analysis I guess I might not need another job on top of that."

"...wait, you can see magic, no one else can, and you work as a translator?"

"I'm a good translator! And there are few enough people with magic in my world that the general population does not know it exists," he says. "I know some people who might like me to see magic for them more than I do, but they are slightly scary and I like translating better than I would like working for them."

"I'll believe that you're a good translator, but - wow. How few is few?"

"Few. I live in a big city and I'm out and about reasonably often and I can go as long as a few months without seeing any unfamiliar powers."

"Wow. In my world there's only about that many dragons, but there's lots and lots of wizards, plenty of lights and mages and sorcerers..."

"And what are all those things?"

"Wizards are the ones who use channeling capacity. Lights are healers, mages do elements, sorcerers do telekinesis."

"I see. Well, no I don't. Your world sounds interesting."

"I like it pretty well," says Kaylo cheerfully.