"Yeah but birds have their biology all made for that, their bones are hollow, stuff like that. You could turn into a large bird. And, the thing with spending mana to keep yourself shifted is that the magic needs to keep you running—" Pause. "Let me start this from scratch. For you to turn into something, you need to have an idea of what it's like, what will change. The less you leave for magic to fill in, the less the actual shift costs. Then, if the thing you'd turn into wouldn't be able to exist, or survive, running only on physics, you have to consume mana to stay shifted. For something like becoming a sparrow-sized human, the total cost is high enough that the magic won't let you turn into that because you'd either die or run out of mana too fast to shift back and then die. For something like becoming a sparrow, the continuous mana expenditure is due to running a human mind in a sparrow brain. For something like becoming taller or changing your biological sex, you can just do the shift once and then be done with it and even switch blessings with no adverse effects."

"A Wood mage could use life manipulation to make someone short and winged, and I'm pretty sure they could fly that way, and if it was just life manipulation there wouldn't be any ongoing magic keeping them like that afterward. But maybe it's easier with life manipulation because you can tell what you're doing? So I guess the next question is, can an elementalist bless themselves with life manipulation like a Wood mage?"

"...maybe? I don't know what life manipulation's like, and I think no one here does, so I suppose it's possible... and if I had access to a Wood mage I might be able to squint at their magic and figure it out."

"Sorry, I left mine at home."

He raises an eyebrow. "What a shame. Maybe I'll be able to look at your Light magic and generalise from that."

"Here's hoping!"

(And is he going to find out—should she explain—how does she even explain—)

"So, I think that's the gist—well, actually, way more than that—of elementalism. Then there's arcanism, which is the thing I used for this telepathy spell and for the healing one. Arcanists pick magical effects and attach them to groups of symbols, and lots of things count—words, drawings, gestures, poses, facial expressions, anything that can conceivably convey meaning. An arcanist defines an effect, chooses a group of symbols that they will attach to that effect, and then from then on for as long as they live whenever they perform the actions related to those symbols—writing or saying words out loud, et cetera—and have enough mana, they will perform the magical effect, which we call a spell. The symbols we call an incantation."

"...Is it bad to forget your incantations?" she wonders.

"Only if they're very common actions which you might perform accidentally if you don't remember they're magical. Most people don't do that, though. And longer incantations cost less mana so many arcanists develop longer versions of a spell for use when they don't need to be quick—I did that for the telepathy spell."

"Hence why you sat there muttering for several minutes first. Makes sense."

"Yeah. Arcanist spells have to be better defined than elementalist blessings, though. There's no such thing as lumping effects together, a spell has a specific duration and a specific target and a specific effect and the more complex the spell is, or the longer it lasts, the more it costs, so we balance that, too. Oh, and if the incantation is related to the spell somehow—like a fire spell that mentions fire—that costs less, too, so those minutes I spent muttering I was literally describing in a few different ways the effect I wanted in as much detail as I could get."

"Still seems... friendlier than elementalism, honestly. Or at least it doesn't instantly activate my contrary nature."

He shrugs. "Elementalism limits stuff to keep the mage safe. Arcanism doesn't do that—you can totally make a spell to become a sparrow and if you don't make provisions for keeping your mind in the sparrow body you die, or if you turn into a giant ant you'll probably be crushed by your weight. And arcanism can affect other things and people, you can grant them flight and such."

"I'll take dangerous over limited, personally."

"It's not terribly dangerous, most people use tried-and-true spell definitions to make theirs."

"Even better!"

Grin. "Last thing arcanists can do is create scrolls with their spells. They inscribe the spell on a scroll, spend the mana then and there, and they or other people—even nonmages—can cast the spell from the scroll. It's destroyed then, though."

"Of course it is. Anything else would be far too convenient."

"Magic here is always quite finite, yeah," he shrugs. "Anyway. Enchanters do a similar thing to arcanists, but to physical objects. They have to define the effect they want even more precisely than arcanists do, and pour mana into the object they want to enchant while focusing on that effect. The object is forevermore a magical artefact, and for as long as they're charged up they have their effects. If they run out of mana, they become just regular objects, but if someone charges them again, they get their magic back, the same effect that was added to them in the first place. You can't change an artefact's effect, or erase it." He reaches into his shirt, revealing a round stone pendant glowing with a soft blue light emerging from carvings on it. "This is an Explorers' Guild Token. It can be used to recognise other Tokens and for as long as it glows I'm officially a member."

"...huh. Sounds like being an Air mage except more inconvenient in every conceivable way."

"Really? Wh—never mind, I'll ask later. Er, if you have no questions about enchanters I think that sums it up nicely?"

She giggles. "Yes, I feel very informed! What else - hmm - where do you live when you're not wandering in the middle of nowhere? And why are you wandering in the middle of nowhere?"

"Thaaaat is a complicated question to answer—and don't you wanna know how metas break all the rules?—and" the telepathy runs out. "The telepathy ran out," he points out helpfully.

"The telepathy did run out," she says, in his language, accented but understandable. "Tell me how metas break all the rules!"