Tentative smile. Most of seven hundred years of general misanthropy has not done a great deal of good for Kanimir's social skills but he thinks you're probably supposed to smile back when someone smiles at you. Anyway. He pulls out a polished cabochon of some kind of pale blue stone and hands it to her. "If you need me for anything else, tap it four times like this," he raps his hand against the side of a shelf in a two-iamb rap-rap, rap-rap pattern, "and speak into it after approximately ten seconds. If for some reason there's an emergency for which this is too much of a delay, tap it three times in close succession and speak into it immediately."

"Okay," she says, accepting the stone. "Your magic must be really useful if it lets just anybody make things like this."

"It doesn't. It's highly skill-intensive. I'm the most powerful magician in the world because I'm the only one who's spent the equivalent of several human lifetimes studying it. A trinket like this is well within the reach of a normal magician, but even they would have to spend years or even decades of study to do so."

"That's still more than one person per century making useful magic things." She reviews this statement, then amends it to, "Well, probably."

"Many of us create magic items; few of us create large-scale magic items."

"Then I guess I don't know whether it's more convenient for most people than the way things work on my planet."

"...Well, most people don't know that magic exists. I don't know how that started, but no one's wanted to be the first one to change it."

"...How do they manage not to notice?"

"Well, no one has selfspaces..."

"...I guess that would be a way not to notice. And if most of your magic doesn't look like much unless it's doing things..."

"Unless you have an analysis spell active, the only visible part of magic is what it's doing," he confirms.

"Then I guess it makes sense that some people might not notice."

"And--oh," he says, making a brief face of distaste. "My name is Kanimir. I should have introduced myself properly sooner."

"My name is Riya," she says.

"I'm glad to be actually introduced to you. Now, I think I'm going to compare the patterns of your world's magic with some other impressions I've taken over the years."

"Okay. I'll sit and read books," says Riya.

"Alright." And Kanimir goes and studies a large number of diversely-colored chunks of quartz.

Riya perches in a chair and reads the reflections of books.

There are lots of those. Books on the foundations of magic, books on math, science and history, books on more advanced magic, a handful of novels, books on really advanced magic...

Well, that's sure a theme.

She picks one of the books on the foundations of magic, first.

Magic, in this universe, exists in the form of innate powers held by several different categories of being, and in the form of complex rituals which can be condensed down into manageable actions and phrases. Rituals have many distinct components that can show up in different rituals and correspond to fundamental aspects of magic.

How interesting! Why are the rituals the way that they are?

Some components are obvious; others less so. If she wants to be able to cast a spell where she knows why every bit of it works the way it does, she can do that; if she wants to know how every bit of all her spells work, she can't.

She has no particular intention of casting any spells but quite likes the idea of figuring out exactly how and why some particular spell is put together. Investigate investigate.

That's something she can occupy herself with for a good while. Magic theory is complicated.