"Oh, that's so valid. Uh, well...that's actually sort of a tricky question, in some ways, because--there's a difference between just saying a word and saying a word with intent to do magic--fire happens because if you don't know exactly what you're doing it's very easy to do magic by accident and very hard to aim the magic at anything, so it just goes off like that. And the thing is that I have been speaking Correspondence since I was a baby, it's just in my head the way moving my hands and feet is. It's...it isn't like speaking a normal language. It's like--if a normal language is a bunch of stuff in a room and you can go in and find the thing you're looking for but you have to like go and get it, you can do it by reflex if you know where the thing is unconsciously enough and people mostly do but sometimes you have to look for a bit...if a normal language is like that, Correspondence is like wading into a pool full of fish and having the right one dart into your hand on its own, and if the one you're looking for doesn't exist yet then a new fish will spontaneously generate in your hand. And there's a, a difference in, in texture? It's not texture exactly but like, hm you know how your mouth feels different, when you're rolling your r's versus clicking your tongue versus whistling? It's sort of like that, like, when I speak Correspondence I'm making noises a fully human larynx just couldn't." 

"A fundamental and innate experience, as natural as breath or love or a smile... Transcendent words spoken by a tongue no man or woman could hope to match. And perilous if one does not understand, which none of my compatriots do. Then again, many things in an engineer's workshop are surely perilous to the uninitiated, no?"

"Yeah, exactly!" 

"I have many more sigils I would be curious for a proper interpretation of, if you can spare the time. I notice that you have woven the Correspondence into your very dress - quite adventurous and daring, even if one knows that you have relevant advantages."

"Haha, well, some of them are just for convenience, making sure the pockets don't mess up the lines no matter what I put in 'em, you know. This one, though," she indicates one repeated over and over again, the single most common sigil, "this one is just there because I like it." 

With one raised eyebrow, "Then I find myself, of course, insatiably curious as to its meaning."

"The heartfelt, bone-deep belief, permeating every cell of one's body and every wisp of one's soul, that everyone, no matter their place on the great chain or in society, ought to exist with happiness and self-determination."

"...Hmmmm. Ambitious. Admirable. And a rare sentiment, lamentably. I should like to copy it down."

"Let me write it out for you, much safer than trying to get you a good enough look at white-on-white embroidery." 

He hands over his pen agreeably. "Though it would be quite a fashionable statement if you burned it into my notebook, or something similar."

"Nah, burning is what happens when you don't know how to handle Correspondence exactly right, and my whole thing in working with it is that I do, you know?" She traces out the strokes of the sigil carefully and hands the implement back. "There's a difference between when someone like me and when someone who leaves incidental charring works with the Correspondence, and I don't want to suggest that humans shouldn't work with the Correspondence, shouldn't claim as much of the power of the stars as possible, but I don't want to blur the lines between the two categories. It isn't safe to be as casual about it as I am if you're leaving burn marks on things. Not that safe is the best way of describing human Correspondence studies anyway, but it isn't good to get cocky." She considers. "I could write something in blood, would that be aesthetic?" 

He grins and nods rapidly. "Do you need mine?"

"I think mine would be much better. Got anything black to write on?" 

...He searches his pockets and produces a black handkerchief. "Do you bleed starlight, then?"

"I don't bleed light itself, but I can make any part of my body glow, and that includes my blood, and also it's not starlight it's mountainlight. Like there's no reason stars couldn't switch to it but it is very much not the thing that enforces dumb laws and makes you go crazy." 

She turns her hand diamond and softly glowy, brings her thumb to her mouth, bites down on it with a crack, and brings the digit, now with a jagged spiderweb oozing glowing fluid down its center, and begins drawing it in strokes across the handkerchief. 

"Not all starlight is the same, of course, some is more dangerous than others. Would that I could bottle the mountainlight for later, or perhaps create an electric bulb that shines it."

"Well, you can't do either of those--yet, growth mindset--but..." and she finishes the character, then pries a jagged glowing chunk of diamond out of her thumb, and holds it out to him as the resulting gush of blood from her thumb trails off to a trickle and then nothing as her thumb heals. 

"-Oh! Thank you! Will it continue to shine?"

"Yep! I mean, I guess I can't say for sure it'll continue to shine forever, but the oldest chunk off of me came from a childhood accident twenty-five years ago and hasn't dimmed since." 

He bows and makes a thoughtful 'hmm'.

"A more pragmatic and vicious and shortsighted person would at this juncture suggest that you ought to nigh-on shatter yourself, again and again, so that such beneficial light shines on more of the world. There is, of course, a difference between thinking something is right or good and being capable of it, and while 'alive and well' is better than 'ashes and dust' there are other things to address, I am sure."

"The thought has occurred to me...but, uh, I don't actually think that would be a good idea. I'm not the only one whose quality of life would be likely to suffer. How much do you know about the Neath? All the examples I can think of come from there, naturally enough." 

"A great many ghoulish secondhand stories, very few of which I have much ability to credit one way or the other. Urchin gangs and face-stealers and man-eating hats and predatory ideas and the Masters of the Bazaar willing to unmake anyone who goes against them."

"So if I say 'Polythreme' or 'Seeking the Name'..."

"Clay Men, and clothes and paving-stones that think? The latter does not ring a bell."

"Yeah. Polythreme happened when someone decided to solve a dude dying by shoving a big ol' chunk of mountain in his chest. They didn't know that would result in him transforming into an island every individual part of which would become sapient."