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Kithabel wants to be a sorceress.
She's very precocious with dabs of householdy magic, like what her mother does when there's the right amount of work for this to be faster or easier or the only way - rescue an overcooked roast or dust a whole room without missing spots or make sure flies find other places to be than their apartment. These things are only a matter of a few minutes' want. Want the roast to be perfect and rare in the middle and tender - want the room freshly clean and unsneezeworthy - want those pesky bugs gone gone gone. Anyone can do it. Kithabel's fast, maybe, and starts early - most four-year-olds don't have that much concentration - but this is not exceptional, and it is not, really, sorcery.
There are ordinary people, who do only that, and only now and then; these people have no particular name. And then there are people who do magic fairly often, who put up buildings or perform for audiences or heal the sick. Those are specialists, who work the same power, want and concentrate on and need the same thing so much that it makes a home in their bones and learns the way they breathe and doesn't take too long to rekindle in the morning.
Kithabel doesn't want to be a specialist. She wants to be a sorceress.
Sorceresses do not get days off. Sorceresses do not take hourlong lunchbreaks or roll over to sleep in or have hobbies.
Sorceresses might start like specialists, but someone who only needs one sort of power can put it down and pick it back up again without the furrows they've left in their ambient power wearing shallow. Specialists specialize.
Sorceresses (or sorcerers, as the case might be) specialize only in doing magic. Familiarizing the energies that collect around them not with construction or color or curing but with the sorceress herself. Accustoming the magic to obedience.
Where a specialist thinks I've done this before, a sorceress thinks I can do anything if I want it hard enough.
Kithabel is very good at wanting.
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She doesn't do very well in school past the time she's about twelve. Too distracted. She's always, always trying to do magic. The reason sorceresses do not get days off is because the magic will forget about them if it isn't in constant use. She drops out of school and carries books from the library with her instead. She switches to a biphasic sleep schedule so she doesn't lose so much progress overnight - five hours at night, nap in the afternoon. She makes sure she has work. A variety of work. Some specialists aspired to proper sorcery only to fall into doing the same thing over and over, then figuring they might as well go on vacation... Kithabel doesn't do that. She finds lost sheep. She fixes plumbing. She encourages her mother's garden. She wears wooden beads on a string around her wrist and concentrates and concentrates over weeks, and then gives one each to her parents and someone who runs an emergency response service, and they can talk to her from far away.
When she is eighteen, she has finally built up enough momentum that she can fly.
This means that she can put her name in the national book of sorceresses, and that makes finding things to do magic to a lot easier.
For instance, the national dispatcher speaks to her bead to summon her to a flooded area in the lowlands.
She's in the air and on her way presently.
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ertia
ertia
"I would like help! Unless it will come off as challenging, or something, to come as a pair."
assayer
"Nah, not if I play it right and identify myself as a nomad right off the bat. I mean, there's a subtle threat element? Of, 'This is my friend, if you mess with her you are likely to upset me and I will be on her side,' but that can't be helped."
ertia
"All right. I'll hold off on the castle until you swing back this way. I'll get a list of the bordering sorcerers and sorceresses who will require visiting."
assayer
"Sure. Try to get all of them, some might find it rude if you accidentally snub them. ... Oh, oh, and they'll probably visit you later to see if you've actually done what you've said you're going to do. So be ready for that one."
ertia
"That being - making a palace and looking after my town and its environs?" Pause. "Is it going to cause problems that I sometimes go visit my father? He's in a sorcerer territory - the guy doesn't have a problem with me, but I mean it does involve leaving here for a couple of days at a time."
assayer
"Nnnot if you prepare for it, it's not a problem. I recommend leaving a constructed messenger when you leave, to great any sorcerers that show up at your house and be nice to them and explain that you are away visiting family. It's also probably a good idea to leave an item there with the messenger to let them speak to you directly - not the beads, some sorcerers get snippy with wanting fancy things. Mirror's traditional, but you can go with something else if it is pretty and fancy and magical. Oh, now that I think of it - don't just hand a bunch of communication items to other sorcerers that you don't know. Do it with friends. I got into a bit of trouble a few years back when a sorceress tried to treat me like her lackey."
ertia
"All right, messenger with a mirror-or-something to attend visitors and relay messages. I can do that."
assayer
"You're welcome! There's a surprising amount of politics to it. After the first few years it calms down a bit, at least if you're not a nomad. Everyone knows where you are and what you do, where your turf is, so on." Pause. "... Should I give you a crash course in like, sorcerer politics? I sort of feel like I need to do that."
assayer
"Sure, crash course in sorcerer politics. The really important thing to remember is that sorcerers aren't like magic. You can't get anywhere by pushing them around or expecting them to yield or anything, they are powers in their own right. Similarly, you can't let them push you around, either, or they will never stop. So... Imagine that instead of an all powerful sorceress, you're a country. You can do whatever you like in your own territory, but you aren't allowed to dictate what happens in another country's territory without upsetting them and possibly provoking a conflict. And neither will they with yours. Sorcerers are generally more peaceful than countries, and you don't have the bureaucratic tape or anything, and you're only dealing with the one person, but the principle is similar."
ertia
"Hmmm. I've been known to have strong opinions about what other people are doing in their own countries."
assayer
"Well, you can offer help, offer advice, but walking in and changing things for them is going to cause trouble."
ertia
"So basically I have to put up with this unless I have lots of sorcerous friends or at least a small army of specialists and I know I can win."
assayer
"Mhm. If you get to have several hundred years of unbroken momentum or something, though, you might just be able to stop playing by the rules."
ertia
"That's my plan anyway, just for sheer longevity effects and eventually resurrecting the dead."