"That sounds fun. How does - subtle artistry work, anyway? If it's not magic."

"Well - I say it's not magic because it doesn't ping magic-detection spells. It otherwise works a whole lot like a kind of magic. I can tell that you are a mind - so even if I just unexpectedly encountered you in deer form in the woods and you didn't say anything, I'd know you were a person - and if I try, I can - do things with that fact. But I'm not going to unless you want me to or attack me or something. And I can defend against other subtle artists who try to do things to me, and supposedly if I work really hard at it I have a little teekay potential I can train up. When I'm out of school I'm going to be a mental healer."

"That sounds really nice of you. How does that work, is it - healing mental trauma?"

"Not necessarily trauma. People go to mental healers for fairly ordinary issues too, with mood or their interpersonal relationships or anxiety or things like that. But trauma too, sure."

"Huh. That sounds better than ordinary therapists, certainly."

"All therapists where I'm from are subtle artists, as far as I know. I suppose if you don't have them somebody has to do it."

"Yeah, it's - I think it's people that are good at empathizing. But, no magic."

"Again, subtle arts are not technically magic."

"... Not-magic that conveniently works exactly like magic in every way, except for being sensed by other magic."

"I spend too much time around other subtle artists in my classes to let it go without nitpicking. I'll do the same thing if you call it 'psionics'."

"What's psionics, and how is it different from subtle artistry?"

"Psionics doesn't refer to anything other than subtle arts - except, sometimes, science fantasy versions of subtle arts - it's just another thing subtle artists nitpick."

"Huh. That's - kind of weird. Magic users from my world aren't picky at all about what they're called."

"What do you wind up getting called, then?"

"Ehhh. Lots of contradictory stuff. Witches, wizards, oracles, rune-casters, sorcerers, arcanists, occultists, warlocks, shamans - it's really annoying, actually. This is what happens when you don't have a centralized school for magic, people call themselves all sorts of things."

"So you can see why the subtle artists might want standardized terms."

"I can, yeah. If I get the chance to standardize things, I'm going with rune-caster, it's the most accurate."

"Why's that?"

"Well, the entire magic system's based around drawing runes. That's why I compared it to chemistry - each rune's similar to an element on the periodic table, and if you put them together in a certain configuration with certain sizes of 'element' you get a desired result. Or, if you're not careful, an undesired one."

"...You remember the part where I am not from a science world, right?"

"... Right, right, um - sorry, it's - easy to forget, I'm really used to being from a science world. You have a rune that does several types of things, but there's only one result from it that you want. So you combine it with other runes to cancel out the effects that you don't want, and then more runes to cancel out those effects, and it's - a giant puzzle."

"Oh, cool. That sounds fun. What I know about arcana isn't much like that - elementalism can be a little, I guess, but fuzzier - and divine magic isn't at all."

"It's pretty fun, yeah. Lots of math, good thing I'm not terrible at it. And I need rulers to draw things out. How do yours work?"

"I really do only have high school level understanding of arcana. I'm not - at all competent to teach the stuff. I mean, I can list common enchanted things? We have televisions and mirrors and crystal balls and golems and - oh, these boots are magic, they make me less clumsy. They aren't quite expensive enough to make me actually graceful, but they do a solid amount of less clumsy."

"That's useful! We can do stuff on items, too, but I'm not quite that far yet to manage it. Things that bestow luck, or do a specific thing, or the obvious one of the medallion that lets me shift."