Marie playfully sends a gust of wind at the rain cloud, not hard enough that it gets pushed away from Stormy, but enough to deform its shape.

The cloud puckers, and then splits in half. Wind kicks up in the opposite direction.

Rather than trying to push back with brute force, Marie sends fast-moving slivers of wind around and through.

"It was great! I wish there were more weather witches."

"Yeah. There aren't a lot of other people with wind powers at home, either."

"What other kinds of powers do they have instead?"

"Helen can generate nigh-impenetrable barriers made of light. We weren't sure if they were made of light or just gave it off until we found Milliways, but before you got here there was a woman who could move bits of light around and it worked on the barriers fine."

"Huh. There aren't any mages like that at home."

"It sounds like your mages and our supers are pretty different."

"Most mages aren't like the kind I am anyway."

"What are they like, then?"

"I'm an 'ambient mage' which means I'm a mage of a thing, but most mages are academic mages, which means they do formal kinds of spells and they all do it the same way."

"Hmm. So your ambient mages are vaguely comparable to our supers if still really different and your other mages are more like what you're likely to find in a fantasy novel in my world."

"You have fantasy novels about academic mages?"

"We have fantasy novels about lots of kinds of magic. Most of the fictional systems work differently, but within a system people all usually do formal spells the same way."

"Huh. I can't be an academic mage, they checked me. It's a pity, I'd like to be able to learn more kinds of magic."

"It sounds nice. If I could have my power and some kind of more general magic I'd take it and gladly but I wouldn't trade it in."

"...I really like being the sky and I wouldn't trade it for academic magic but I could imagine kinds of magic I'd trade for."

"I guess. It would have to be really really good, though."

"Yeah. Because being the sky is fun and it's useful and it would have to be better at both or a lot better at one. ...I'm not sure if there are things that are not useful that would be fun enough."

"It's not just fun for me, exactly. Losing my powers would be like losing a sense and a limb at the same time. Any exchangeable magic would have to be very useful to make up for that."

"Oh. I don't usually have it as a sense unless I'm actually doing it on purpose."

shrugs. "Well, we've established that ambient mages and supers are different."