"Oh and, I am sometimes a girl, too, so I'll need clothes of both genders."

"Oh. Okay, I can take you where I get mine after. When you run out of mana there's wizardry for that."

"Really? Is it, like, something that has to be cast each time like mine or something handier?"

"Each time, it's not really designed for people who change a lot, but I think the spell's not very complicated, Saasnil could probably cast it and it'd take a few seconds once she had some practice - and Dad will make her do it since he's looking for ways for us to make up for stranding you."

"I'm feeling kinda bad about that. You two having to make up for it, and stuff."

"You didn't ask to be stranded and we messed up and it could have been really awful even you happen to not mind."

"I guess."

"But I'm glad you don't mind."

"Like I said, I can do a lot of good here and this extra time might even allow me to get a better grip on resources I can leverage to help people back home, too, so."

"What do you do back home, run a charity or something?"

"Find ancient ruins and cheat at magic to get money, drop some of that into charity, sure, help young people develop magic, rise in the ranks of the Explorers' Guild to get some political capital, look for the fabled group of subversives who don't think metamancers are corrupted and doomed to damnation."

"...that sounds more complicated than organizing conjured food distribution or something."

"It is but with our magic and without metamancer help conjured food isn't really feasible on a large scale—and my end goal is doing away with the taboo, because I expect that to cause the most long-term positive impact in the world."

"Oh. Conjured food is easy here but it tastes bad so people don't eat it if they can afford regular food."

"Mana and complexity are the two biggest limitations to my kind of magic."

"I guess wizardry is like that too, there's lots of power but we have to channel it."

"How does this channelling thing work, exactly? Your mum said the reservoir isn't really finite..."

"What do you mean how does it work -? We have limits on how much power we can draw in one go."

"That's what I mean, yeah. I suspected it was something like that but wasn't sure. What happens if you try to draw more? And can you draw more if you do it over a longer period of time?"

"Uh, you die, and no."

"Oh. That's very unfriendly magic."

"I guess? It was worse before we could identify people's CCs precisely."

"Are familiars the only known way to increase CC?"

"Yeah."

"Was the spell to get them discovered recently?"