"If I want to put myself to sleep I have a different thing for it. Need to, actually, elves are immune to standard Golarion sleep spells."

"Huh! If you ever trust anyone enough to test ours I'd love to hear about it."

"Looking at it would be a good first step whenever that's convenient, just give me enough warning that I can have a detect magic up."

"I can grab the stuff for it and do it now - 'a detect magic'?" Chanai starts collecting herbs.

"It's a spell - most basic version is a cantrip but there are fancier ones I can prep if there's nuance I don't get a good look at with the cantrip."

"Huh! I don't have anything for seeing magic itself but I really wish I did." He lays out the herbs on a metal tray to burn them and takes an amethyst out of his pocket. "I'm going to prepare two at once since it's slightly more efficient that way and I can handle two more, but just let me know when you're ready and I'll start."

"Mm-hm - detect magic - give it a few to come to full strength -" Stare stare. "When."

And Chanai burns some herbs and - the spell doesn't fit neatly into the schools of magic that constitute Golarion's arcane traditions. It's sort of similar to necromancy, and sort of similar to enchantment, and for all that there's no way it could possibly have anything to do with conjuration it sort of almost looks similar to it if you squint.

He tucks the undamaged amethyst back into his pocket afterward.

"Huh, that was really weird looking. More like necromancy than anything else but with some enchantment and a splash of conjuration thrown in? Weird."

"Huh. What does it mean for it to look like those, is it a color or a shape or something?

"Sort of a texture, almost, though some people develop more color-ish synaesthesia."

"Are some of the textures more or less pleasant than others?"

"Not intrinsically, though, like, I have developed a bit of an aversion to the schools I don't like."

He nods. "I don't suppose you have any idea why it's so flexible?"

"Why - magic is? I mean, people innovate on it but I don't think anyone has invented an entire school so, no, no idea."

"I keep hoping there's something - deeper and more explanatory than just 'this is what magic humans can do, this is what magic aliens can do' - but so far it's just one of those mysteries." He shrugs.

That's about when Tema returns with a book containing among other things a world map.

"People say the gods invented it but even if that weren't true gods might say it, so it's hard to be sure..." She peers at the world map. "I might want to copy that tomorrow when I can drop a dungeoneering cantrip for a Scrivener's Chant."

"That's a convenient thing to be able to do. We're about here - " On the smaller of two continents, or arguably the second-biggest of several if the islands count as continents, labeled Rekk on this map. They're south of Liru-a and a few other countries, also on Rekk, and north of the Federated Southern Islands, not also on Rekk. "Definitely not your planet, then?"

"Definitely not."

"I'm sorry, though I'm glad you landed here if you had to land somewhere. If our food agrees with you I'd be delighted if you would join my household for dinner tonight."

"The berries weren't poison and tasted good too so I'm optimistic on that."

"I'm glad. Hey, suppose we get this book out of the kitchen and you clean your hands and come see my library?"

"Prestidigitation." The berry juice disappears from her hands. "Is there anything that you want to ask before I lose the ability to answer your questions? I can understand and read for a large fraction of every day no problem, but talking is a higher circle spell."

She starts walking toward the library. "A lot of things - how soon will that happen, maybe we should set you up with writing to point to...?"

"That's not a bad idea, I can't write it myself because Tongues only does spoken language but I can point to it no problem. It'll happen in about... forty minutes? Seventy or seventy-five from when I cast it, about."