"Can you spread out most of the way in here without it?"

"Yeah. The way the wind whistles through the caves is interesting, there aren't a lot of caves nearby at home."

"I don't go that low to the ground easily unless I really try, but with sort-of-walls around the edges I might be able to. I don't know any other weather mages at home, do you want to swat the wind around at each other?"

"That sounds like fun!"

"Awesome. Do you care if I make it rain? I think there's enough water to do it."

"Nah. Nothing I'm wearing will get hurt by a little water."

"What about the thing? Should it go inside?"

"Oh. Yeah, probably." She picks up the machine and lugs it inside. "I'm going to play tug-of-wind with Stormy. This may involve getting wet," she informs Helen.

"Have fun, dear."

Stormy is already flopped on her back on the grass, getting energetically rained on, smiling dreamily, eyes closed.

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."