"I need to know what I have to work with, is mostly the thing?  I'm not a one-woman Industrial Revolution, though y'all seem to have that well in hand actually - but what I do have comparative advantage in, is probably going to be pulling random things out of my - ahem - that help y'all do magic more efficiently, and if we can get my computer running, I have rather a lot of math and simulation capability."

Aeslin looks at Mira for the first time.  "Making magic more efficient?  What's this 'computer'?"

"A computer does a lot of math really fast and uses that to control outputs."

"Oh!  Do you have one of those?"

That'd be really handy in a whole lot of ways, in addition to proving her story right away.

"I sure do."

Look!  A cell phone calculator!

Aeslin and Tilda both stare at it in shock.

Aeslin asks first, "How does this work!?  Do you layer spells on top of each other, or - or -"

"This works by the properties of certain metals and nonmetals enabling you to shuffle around electrical potential in certain predictable ways, plus the way certain crystals can be induced to emit light at specific frequencies, for the display; computers in general are mathematical constructions rather than a specific physical mechanism.  If I were constructing a computer out of magic, I'd certainly look towards metamagic as the field to do it with, though!"

"What is electrical potential and how does it -"

Tilda interrupts.  "That sounds like something too long to talk about right now.  First, Mira, do you have anything else useful on you right now that my brother didn't mention?  Aeslin can show you to lunch - don't let her forget lunch again - but do you want anything else before then?"

"Lightning."

"...What do I even have on me...Uh.  Nothing immediately comes to mind beyond what you've already seen, but if I find something after unpacking, I'll let y'all know.  Speaking of which I will eventually need somewhere to rest my head and-or keep my stuff, I don't actually want to haul this suitcase around forever?"

Tilda nods.  "I'll make sure you get a room.  Aeslin can tell you everything you want to know about magic; I can get you in touch with metal miners..."  She frowns.  "Actually, that'd take a little while; Duncan's gone to visit the mines up north.  But sometime.  Let's get out of these people's way."

"You can leave your suitcase in my workrooms for now."

"That'd be fine.  ...Also I should warn you that I too have what I'd guess is Aeslin's flavor of quirky brain stuff, unless I miss my mark, so...apologies in advance for getting caught up in discussing magic and probably fumbling get-lunch?"

Tilda throws up her hands, laughing.  "Two of you!  Well, all right.  I guess I'll just head on to Court and leave you to talk magic and computers.  Aeslin, I'll tell the Queen that your report's going to be delayed a lot."

"Sure, but I might have to rethink my plans given what else we'll be able to do with metals now!  Come on, Mira!"

And on she goes!  "So tell me about magic!"

"To start on the theoretical level - Magic energy flows out from the Earth itself.  I can diagram the flow for you if you want, but there're still a dozen theories on why that we can't distinguish.  If only we could fly to the Moon, that'd tell apart half of them, which means that the Days of Wonder probably knew...

"But anyway.  Most things can't sense magic.  Or maybe the human body does instinctively and that's why we're living people; I haven't bothered to look into that.  Though I suppose your coming from a non-magical world would pretty much settle that!  Assuming your body does work the same way as ours!  Either way, to actually do anything with magic, you need to catch it and conduct it, and for that you need - well, if you don't have an Elf or a dragon or something like that, in practice you need wood or leaves from one of a few plants."  She taps her wand.  "Even crystals can't catch it, though they can store it.  And you also need your own living mind behind it to direct the wand, of course.  You envision it with your mind and direct it through the wand."

"...Why of all the bloody things would it be sapient thought?  I mean yes of course it would be, given the premises, but there has to be a reason even so - can you do it with live plants?  What happens if you do a graft?  Why can't crystals store magic?  The center of the planet is just a bunch of highly pressurized metal!  Unless magic, but it's not like I exploded because iron stopped existing, or maybe iron started existing and that's why I haven't exploded, or a bunch of variations on the simulation hypothesis that basically mean nothing actionable - why is it thought that you need to shape magic, can you tell if my computer has the magic-shaping quality, do you have an instrument to test whether I can do magic - oh, bloody hell, I need a voice recorder or some other way of taking notes - okay, cuing that up and - " she reiterates most of her questions - "okay, hypothesis, whatever ended the Age of Wonders was or involved a magical ritual to make all the crystals we can't readily find, magic sinks.  How could we disprove that..."

Aeslin stops abruptly by the corner of a flowerbed.  "Magic sinks, as in they naturally take in more and more magic?  That would actually explain some of the weirder stories about the Crystal Mountains... but if so we'd expect to hear a lot more weirder stories, and we could go to the Crystal Mountains to test it out... or more broadly, with other crystals around the world, we could trace the large-scale trends in the magic field, which we somehow haven't been tracking because nobody thinks it's important enough!

"- oh, and I've got a few spare wands in my workroom; you can try one of those, and how can we connect one with your computer?"

"Science is the art of failing to prove yourself wrong, I should probably remind you, but that really does sound like a good idea!"

"We would need to have a wholeass project to engineer 'connecting magic to my computer directly', probably; there's layers upon layers of specifications I don't have handy and we would thus need to rederive from the example.  Unless magic is very do-what-I-mean, which, I don't trust near an irreplaceable item anyway."

"It is on the elementary level, like the simple light and motion spells.  But things more complicated aren't, and even there it's easy to move something too fast and hit your friend.  - Oh, and you were asking 'why sapient thought' - well, I think the best guess was the one about how being a person is itself using magic, but your being here disproves that... assuming you're a person in the same way as the rest of us are, which it'd be some level of evidence for if you can do magic... come on, let's try that!"

She starts off again a little faster than before.

A moment later, she adds more softly, "... and a broader test tonight, though I still can't be sure to distingush..."

"A broader test tonight...?"

Yes she does want to do magic though!

"Oh - my dreamwalking spell.  I've seen some animals' dreams before, and different sorts of people's - humans and Elf and Dragon - and there're clear differences, though I can't say I can be sure to distinguish any differences."

"Oh wow, that sounds interesting!"