:Oh! No, I don't want to leave, I just - don't want to take up more of your time than you're happy with. I have a lot more questions, actually. The thing I wanted to ask for was paper, or something else to write on, so I can take notes: 

:Yeah, I can do that: She has a lot of paper, bunched together in a notebook with magic connecting all the paper directly, but she peels off the back half of it.

Jisa takes the paper with a grateful smile. :All right, can you help me go through what all the types of elemental are and what powers they have? I've been picking it up in bits and pieces but haven't been through it systematically: 

:Your basic elemental types are Adamant, Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Glass, Ice, Lightning, Shadow, Wood, Stone, and Shine, in no particular order. All of them do what they sound like - direct manipulation of metal, fire, water, light, darkness, etcetera. There are also occasionally hybrids, which have all the powers of both types they're hybrids of - I've never heard of a triple, I don't know if that's impossible or not - and have appropriate idiosyncratic halos and wings. They mostly have healing applications of one sort or another though some of those are very limited; some people think they all do and we just haven't discovered some obscure Shadow and Wood and Glass healing abilities. Those are the generalities, I can get specific if you like:

:I think I want to know specifically how mages use their powers in combat? Since I might end up fighting mages who're ordering their elementals to fight too: 

:Depends what elements the mage has. Every mage has got at least three, some have more. I have ten:

:Whoa: It doesn't make sense to be jealous, Jisa is telling herself. (Jisa is absolutely jealous.) :I think I'm still confused how mages having elements versus elementals - being them? How that all works. Is it the same list of elements and does it gives the mages similar powers?: 

:Same list of elements, and the same powers but we don't have them as strongly as an elemental, which locks us out of some things - for instance, Shines can heal, but only at such a high power level that an elemental will be wiped out for the day if they do it, whereas I can't Shine-heal at all even though I have Shine:

Nod. Jisa still feels confused, but she thinks it's mostly from sheer information overload. She has most of it down in her notes, anyway. :Thank you. I'm trying to think what else I should do right now... How do I get a place to sleep, are there rooms for rent around here?: 

:Travelers usually find a house to stay in, but you wouldn't get your own room, they'd probably put you on the floor, and it also kind of requires the ability to make dinner conversation. I can put you under my bed if you want but my room is very small:

:I've been sleeping in the woods or in bushes, so under your bed is still an improvement!: 

:Under my bed it is. I'll tell people you're my mom's friend's kid or something, she's the sort of person who'd have weird foreign friends:

:Oh? What is she like?: It takes Jisa a moment to recognize that the feeling she's having is one of having been very lonely for days and immensely relieved at an opportunity for chitchat that isn't about freeing slaves. 

:Eccentric children's schoolteacher with odd hobbies and odd friends. She's nice, you'd probably like her, but she isn't great at secrets:

:Mmm: Jisa fidgets and resists the temptation to read Maurabel's mind again out of some mixture of curiosity and boredom, which would in fact be a very fucked up thing to do. 

:She is credited with discovering it's possible to teach children to read, has her own little school. Uh, do you need food?:

:Wait, what, did people only learn to read as adults before that? Huh. And, yes please: Her loaf of bread was a while ago and she could really use something to eat other than bread, at this point. :Er, I don't eat meat, I hope that's not inconvenient: 

:Writing was invented about forty years ago. I don't think I even have any meat. Why don't you eat it? - I'll have to go back to my room for food, you can wait here with Adamant - I don't know your telepathy range:

:More than a mile, I think it should be all right. I don't eat meat because animals have feelings, our world has people with Animal Mindspeech so we know that for sure: 

:...huh. Well, I'll be right back

She's back in ten minutes with a loaf of bread and some eggs. She has a knife on her, it seems common around here to carry one for various utility purposes, and cuts the bread in half and scoops out the middle and offers it to Adamant who takes it and gobbles it up, and breaks an egg into each half and stirs them up with her knife. The egg flash-cooks and she hands over one of the steaming egg-in-breads to Jisa.

"Thank you!" Jisa says out loud, practicing the language. She devours her egg-in-bread ravenously. 

"You're welcome." Chew chew.

:So how did you end up deciding you wanted to free a lot of elementals?: Jisa asks Maurabel eventually, mostly to make conversation. :It didn't seem like very many people decide to do that, anymore: 

:I mean, it does generally kill you. I'm not doing it right now myself. But most people just - figure they're useful slaves, I guess:

Jisa makes a face and says nothing.