A very short man with pointed ears, looking a bit weathered for his apparent age of late-twenties, comes down the stairs from the hotel portion of the establishment, scans the room, and makes his way over to the crystal-laden table. "What's that?" he asks, without preamble.

He looks up and puts his not-quite-salesman face boosted by his honest magic-geek smile and waves at the various structures. "Magically created crystals." He holds up a hand, the fingertips made of the same crystal.

One of the fingertips extends and makes contact with a chalice shaped crystal, and then it changes into a dull metal gray.

"It's my own world's native magic. Interested?"

"Ooh, very. Safe to touch?" He's already reaching for the chalice.

He pushes the chalice towards him. "It's non-magical steel. I am Henry, by the way."

"Wilston." He pokes the chalice. "Huh, not even a trace."

"Of magic? Or crystal? I am trying to refine to get the pure material."

"Magic. Usually there's at least a little." He pokes one of the other crystals.

"Those should be magic, though, they should have at least traces of anti-magic. I am not sure how it would work for your senses."

He pulls his hand back after a couple of seconds and shakes it out a bit. "Yeah that's anti-magic, all right. So why are you trying to make steel when Bar'll just sell it to you?"

"It's a skill, so I can make my own objects at home, and a precursor to using this kind of magic for healing if I decide to specialize in that."

"Oh, healing, nice. How do you guys do it? Wizards can't yet, where I'm from, I'd love to take a technique home."

"Got anything to trade for? And one of the primary applications of this magic is duplication. And if you have enough control, you can replace a damaged part with a healthy part."

"I can teach you spellthievery but it's not quick to learn - it'd be worth it for healing a wizard can do though and that might work if it's not just transmutation."

"The magical terminology might not align, so I don't know for sure if it's not just transmutation, or what that implies. What is spellthievery do?"

"The short version is that it lets me take spell effects or uncast spells from other people or things and have them or cast them myself."

"Might not be very useful where I am from, even if it does work with our magic. Though, I am curious enough to give it a try. What is a 'spell', exactly? All our magic comes from these." He waves. "Different people can make different kinds with different effects, though everyone can use them to duplicate materials."

"I'd expect to be able to borrow the ability to make them, then - might be able to mix kinds, too. In my world magic comes in discrete bits, a wizard will prepare a summoning spell or a polymorph spell or whatever and it just does that one thing once when they use it - or when I do - and they can prepare something different in its place the next day."

"Interesting. We can create each other's crystals if we have a sample to duplicate, but it is, too, a skill, easier than working on living matter, though not that much easier. Our magic doesn't do discrete bits like that? The more of the right kind of crystal you have around, the stronger is the effect. Or how much energy you put behind it. Can anyone learn this back where are you from?"

"Yeah. Wizardry, too, but that's not really useful without our libraries - wizards need their spells written down to prepare them."

"Huh, are the books magical? Maybe bars can sell those? Or... you don't use the books yourself?"

"Nope, spellthievery's different, I don't prepare my own spells at all. Though I do have a few, at this point. Anyway Bar can't sell the books, the inks they use aren't completely mundane."

"Too bad, still... can you try stealing from these? Would you expect to make them lose their power?"

"I can try, I'm not sure it'd settle right on me though - if you can usually put it on humanoids it will, otherwise I'd have to try it and see. And either way it'll depower them for like ten minutes if I do."

"Maybe not as useful for the purpose, I was thinking, but still useful. Do you want to take a shot then?" He takes a vaguely rectangular crystal and offers it to him.

"Sure." Yoink?