"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."

"Luck charms exist at home but they're mostly ripoffs."

"Ours actually work. Allegedly."

"Ours work too, they're just very difficult to make and therefore very pricey and they don't work that well."

"Aha. I think luck charms are one of the easiest persistent items for rune-casters to make. If I knew how, I'd offer to hook you up, but."

"But," agrees Bella. "For all I know, bringing something home from a science world would count as cheating."

"... Ugh. 'Cheating.' If I could make one, I would have worked hard to do so, how is that cheating?"

"Because it's from another - game."

"Oh my god, I just realized - this is like D&D."

"Like what now?"

"It's - there's - it's a game, a literal game, with dice and little figurines and obsessive maps. There are lots of different species and different types of magic and gods are running around changing the fabric of reality. It wasn't - it didn't say, 'No science allowed' but. It's - kind of similar."

"You have magic and different species, though, too, don't you?"

"Well, yeah, but mine doesn't work like the game's magic. Also, their different species aren't the correct ones, a lot of the actual ones show up as monsters to fight."