"Okay. I asked about your feelings because you look super bored and checked out but maybe that's just how you look all the time." She braces her fingers against each other and stretches them. "Where do I start?"

She makes a dismissive gesture. "I would like to spend about four hours a day actively teaching you, and you should practice at least as much on your own too. In this special dimension, the mana you use doing magic is replaced, but you will need to learn efficiency anyway. Don't get sloppy. Do you want to learn biomancy or motemancy first? Both? Feel free to ask questions, just don't forget the answer and then ask again. I hate that."

"Can I have paper to take notes on, that'll help me not forget things. Let's start with motemancy."

Loril hands her a blank softcover-bound book and a black stick from an inner pocket.

"Nicholas started with motemancy as well. Very well, this way." As she walks she lectures, "Motemancy is the act of claiming and manipulating motes. Motes are present everywhere in varying amounts. The types of motes are firemotes, airmotes, earthmotes, watermotes, lightningmotes, metalmotes, lightmotes, and darkmotes. Motes can be part of either zero or one binding - a binding is a pattern or set of rules imposed on motes by a motemancer. Bindings can also have imbuement. The amount of mana that has been applied to them, which is consumed when the binding creates a change in the world. The bindings have imbuement - not the motes. That's important. For example, a firemote binding that heats everything in an area to a certain temperature will lose much more imbuement if snow is constantly poured into it. Here we are."

Loril has brought her to a tiki torch with a bench next to it. She sits. "Questions?"

"What affects how many motes of what kinds are found in various places?"

"The full details of that will take a long time to intuitively understand. Broadly, firemotes are found where there is heat. Lightningmotes where there is electricity or electrical potentials - though it tends to be easier to harvest them from the air, which is constantly producing fleeting lightningmotes. Watermotes in water, airmotes in the air, earthmotes in both stone and soil, darkmotes in dark areas and lightmotes in brightly lit ones. Metalmotes in metals or certain metal oxides, such as iron ore and blood."

Her teacher suddenly stares directly at her. "Bella. Do not take motes from living beings until you know what you are doing. It will almost certainly do them grievous harm. The exception is darkmotes, but anything with a shadow can produce darkmotes, so there is no need to risk it."

"No motes from living things, gotcha - does that mean from within the spatial boundary of the living thing, or given off by a property of the living thing? Fleeting lightningmotes, so they have limited lifespan, they don't just hang around?"

"That means from within the spatial boundary of a living thing. Claiming the firemotes and watermotes from warm breath is acceptable, if potentially unnerving. And yes, motes are constantly appearing and vanishing, unless claimed. They are influenced by physical matter, but do not obey the general rule matter does of sticking around in one form or another. Motes that you are actively holding or are in a binding stay. Bindings vanish if they run out of infusion, and even when inactive slowly spend infusion to maintain the integrity of their constituent motes."

"Where does mana come from?"

This merits a short pause and an eyebrow-raise. "What we call 'having mana' is more like negative entropy. Certain gods, cosmic processes, and most living things can affect the mana of the world in ways that reduce total entropy - with varying levels of efficiency, of course. This is known as generating mana. This density or order can then be 'consumed' in various useful ways to do useful work through mana engines - that being an academic term for any thing that uses mana to do a thing, not necessarily a device that exerts force against a resistance. It is not something most people actively concern themselves with. Your initial training does not require a detailed understanding. However, you... May... Borrow one of my books on the subject. If you promise to not. Damage. It."

"I would be very careful with it."

She looks slightly confused, then nods. "Anyway. We should mix theory and practice. Time for practice, I think. You're going to learn to snuff out and light this torch. Can you feel the motes around you right now?"

Well, can she?

She can feel ripples of motion in the breeze around her. She can feel the material of the torch, standing out in some sort of way as a weird outline, even if her eyes are closed. She can feel the solid carpet of dirt, the stone bench, the warmth both of she and her teacher are giving off - though the inside of both their bodies is just a void, nothing at all inside. It's sort of like being in a dark room after spending time in the sun, or vice versa, or wearing glasses with the wrong focus. Though the sense definitely isn't vision. It's slowly getting better.

"- am I correct in guessing neither you nor I count as alive?"

"That is correct. We're incorporeal beings doing a pretty decent facsimile of being alive. We consume mana, rather than producing it."

"Wow, that feels creepy with my new sensory modality actually. I think I can feel motes, or rather, I suspect that the thing I can feel is motes."

"I am going to light the torch now. Pay attention."

She reaches out with a copper wand that was hidden in her sleeve a moment ago, taps the tip, and - something stops in the torch, holding still. Then, fwoosh. The tip of the little wick in the tiki torch ignites as suddenly as a gas stove. There is indeed a lot more something spilling out from the tip of the torch, trailing upward like sparks from a firework now! It's kind of... Pretty?

"What I just did, was extend my will through the copper wand. I claimed the firemotes at the tip of the wand, then used those firemotes to claim motes along its length, then used the motes at the end to claim the few firemotes that existed in the wick. You can only claim motes you are touching or have a claim connection to. It's a kinesthetic sort of skill that gets better with practice. Then, I bound the firemotes in the wick to heat up, and then gave them a small amount of imbuement. The imbuement was spent almost immediately, creating enough heat to start the fire. You can feel motes at a distance, but not claim them at a distance. With exceptions for advanced techniques. You can't feel a binding unless you claim it, so you didn't notice that part. You might have noticed them holding still, but not the binding itself, I mean. Now, the torch is burning oil, which creates a lot of heat and a lot of firemotes."

"Huh. Claim connections have to go along - solid objects? Motes of the same kind?"

"Motes of the same kind. Air does not easily conduct motes other than airmotes. The working motemancer carries a staff or wands for this purpose. You can also move claimed motes away from your body and then work through them, but this consumes imbuement, and is a journeyman level technique. Or at least not a day one technique."

"Do motes move around on their own enough that you can kind of diffuse claim outward, or do you have to move them with magic or something?"

"It depends on the material. You can claim a whole mass of rock that way, for example, or perhaps a still pond, but would find it impossible with a moving stream. It's often easier to claim motes near you and move them with a binding. Motes do not have to stay in their natural environment. Many staffs have coalcharms, left constantly smoldering in order to have firemotes at hand. When one needs firemotes, one claims them, and then moves them to where they are needed. Moving the motes is a different primitive action than using the motes to move something else. There are two possible elementary exercises here. One, I give you a rock, and you claim the earthmotes. Two, I give you this wand, and you claim the firemotes inside it, and then some in the flame."

"Does the wand have a coalcharm?"

"No, but it gets warm where you hold it. That generates enough to start, and copper and other conductive metals transmit claims extremely well." She frowns slightly. "At some point you have to actually do magic."

"Oh, yeah, I'll take the wand and do the wand exercise, I just wanted to know how it worked." Wand?