"What were your plans?"

Scyelen shrugs uncomfortably. "Depended on what kind of familiar I got."

"Ah. Well, Miss Vaux wanted to hear about how my magic works, and might come looking for me for that - you can come too if you'd like, but I don't know if you'll want to know, it's pretty heretical. If she doesn't come, maybe we can go flying?"

"Apparently I am even more heretical than that, though."

She peers up at him, poking her fingertips together.

"I am curious," she admits, "about your magic."

"All right." He puts an arm around her shoulders again. "I don't really want to do the whole thing twice, but if you have any questions I can answer them? Back in the room, maybe."

Blushing fidget nod.

Scyelen mumbles something about waiting to listen to him talk to Miss Vaux and lets him steer her out of the dining hall.

And back they go. He'll take the desk chair. "Are you sure you don't have any questions?"

Scyelen perches on the edge of the bed, hugging her knees.

"Maybe? Um, you said you get your magic from an evil spir---um, a... a foreign god? How'd that... happen?"

"Well, that's most of what I'm planning on explaining, but I don't mind doing that part twice. Gods where I'm from are gods of things, all of them, and you have to sort of be of the same thing yourself, or one of the same things if a god has a few, to be a cleric of one. My god is the god of travel, and I've never been able to stay in one place too long, I have to be out seeing new things and meeting new people, and I'd be like that even if I didn't know anything about him, and that's what lets me be his cleric. So if someone has that in the same way a god does, and spends some time each day paying attention to it - usually by praying but we don't actually have to, I usually don't - then after a while the god will notice, and they'll start to get magic from it, and then they're a cleric of that god."

Scyelen shivers. "It's kind of scary to think there're... beings... that can just... notice you feeling a way about a thing."

"It's not the sort of thing that happens by accident, you have to be trying to get their attention. At least for that - they'll notice big things that have to do with their domains - the things they're about - but not anything that just affects one or a few people unless you're trying, and usually not even then without magic for it."

Scyelen nods, but, she wasn't really worried in a practical sense, just unnerved by the thought of an evil spirit, terrible enough to approve of who she is in her heart, being drawn to her because of that... and now she's blushing again.

He'll just ignore that. "Anyway, most of them aren't evil. The most popular one is Pelor, the god of healing and community and the sun, and he's very good. Good gods are usually more popular and more powerful; it's easier to get people to do things that make them stronger if those are good things to do anyway, like working together with other people or growing food."

"I, I didn't mean, it's just hard to... that's what the church would call them, and its how they say elves get their magics, so..."

He nods. "Well, I'm pretty sure your church has never heard of my world before, so I don't see how they'd know anything about our gods one way or the other."

Scyelen shrugs.

After a moment, she gets up and goes to her bookshelf. She pulls out her introductory magic theory textbook.

"Um, you wanted to take a look at this?"

"Sure. Did you want the room to yourself while I look at it?"

Scyelen just takes another book off the shelf and crawls back onto her bed with it, not answering.

He'll read, then.

The book she gave Raafi has three sections, going into detail about the process that Scyelen explained to him at lunch.

Keying. This is an innate ability and a basic action. It is binary. Either a mage can key to an element or they can't. Actually gathering the ambient will of the world using your keyed element is a highly subjective process described in far more flowery than technical language, but it becomes second nature with practice. It is widely agreed to be the easiest part of casting, which is only proper, since this is the essence of the Founder's Gift.

Evocation. In contrast, this step is highly technical, requiring mental focus and adequate understanding of one's own intent. A mage's Element(s) may be thought of as one of these several metaphors; like a container with a shape of ideas rather than forms.

Willpower. Once a form of ideas is embodied in a mage's Element, the mage temporarily offers up some amount of their capacity to bend reality to their cause to fuel the transubstantiation of the ambient will within their Element into physical reality.

Overall, the book was clearly written by someone reasonably intelligent and competent who had some idea what they were talking about, but had never dreamed of the scientific method.

It's useful, scientific method or no. (Plenty of writers in Raafi's world have never heard of it, either. It's mostly a wizard thing.)

He wants in particular to know about how someone's first element is special, and how someone goes from being able to key only that one to being able to key more than one.

According to the book, every mage is born to one of the four points on the pentagon, with the ability to key to that element. Philosophers argue about this, but the author of this book believes that this is based on bloodline affinity; you are overwhelmingly likely to share the same or the nearest adjacent element as your parents.

When a mage 'unlocks' a second Element, they also grow to encompass the nearest adjacent point on the pentagon.

(The pentagon is drawn on the cover of the book, with an annotated version in the back of the book itself. Void is always at the top, and to the right is fire, then earth, then water, then wind, before returning to void.)

Fair enough.

Any sign of Miss Vaux? How long has it been?

It's middling afternoon.

Miss Vaux has not dropped by.

Well, she's probably busy. "Hey sweetheart."