"Why shouldn't you talk about your accident?"

"'Cause someone else could get in trouble and I don't want them to get in deeper trouble."

"So what kind of magic do you have?" Book is closed now.

"Metamagic, basically: I can see and manipulate—well, I can see and manipulate all sorts of magic from my world, I can see all sorts of magic here, have not succeeded at manipulating wizardry yet and not tried anything else."

Kaylo gets up, tucks his book under his arm, seizes Kaede by the wrist, and attempts to drag him out of the cafeteria.

Kaede will be dragged by the cute dragon boy.

"I am going to cast so many analyses on you," Kaylo announces. He tells the lift to take them to the library. "What wizardry were you trying to manipulate, how did it fail -"

"Well, I was inside a ward that was as solid as they get, I'm told, and I tried to do—anything to it, but it was kinda rude to me and I never got anywhere before the ward was unmade. I also tried getting some wizardry for myself but the reservoir wouldn't let me. That's the extent to which I tried anything, I think there's a thing I can see that's someone's Channelling Capacity and I'm wondering whether I can change it."

"It was rude to you, what does that mean -"

"It metaphorically told me to duck off? I have a hard time translating the things I sense to any other senses but if magic could tell you 'get the heck out' then that ward was doing it."

"...it told you to do what now? That's not a real idiom."

"...in my language it isn't either, er, but it replaces swearing. That'd be 'fuck off' which I prefer not saying."

"I mean in your language, yes. Okay. Your sense isn't synaesthetic or moderated through a standard sense?" The lift opens. He grabs Kaede's wrist again to drag him into the stacks.

He could get used to this. "It's not, it's its own thing. I usually use visual or tactile metaphors, sometimes even auditory, but mostly it's just itself."

"When did this manifest?"

"When I was little, around three or four years old—I'm human, and as far as I can tell mature at the same rate—and magic manifests voluntarily in my world, sorta."

"Voluntarily sorta." He's found the stack he was looking for and drops Kaede's hand to start rummaging through the books.

"One in about two hundred people, in my world, when they try to perform magic, succeed. What this trial looks like varies from person to person and is very hard to describe because doing magic is a primitive mental action, but after they do they get some intuition for how to use their type of magic. When I was around three or four years old I tried Expressing my magic and I succeeded."

"And before that you did not have the sense you use to navigate it?" Page page growl replace book get different book.

"Before that I did not have it," he agrees, and oh dear did Kaylo just growl that was kinda hot.

"Did it take practice?"

"The sense itself didn't, I could always passively detect magic from the moment I Expressed on. Manipulating magic did."

"But did it take practice to make intelligible use of the sense."

"Mmmmore or less. The sense doesn't actually immediately tell me what the magic I'm looking at is. It gives me a vague notion, sometimes—like, I could see the part of a light that was, sort of, missing, that corresponded to how they can't affect themselves or other lights—but I have to analyse it for a long time, and sometimes poke it, to figure it out—I had to be told about this limitation, otherwise it might've taken me hours."

"What is the process you undertake during those hours?" He is satisfied with the book he has in his hands now and heads for a table; there is not dragging this time.