"I don't know of one, so the university doesn't have one and there isn't one that people routinely get on a plane and pay a year's income to touch, but yeah, if we can contact my world I can look that up."

"And, uh—should I be getting you a painkiller potion—"

"It's not that bad, but if there's non-addictive kinds I'd try it. The cold thing is trying to be hurty and I think it's only not succeeding better because of the warm thing."

"That's, uh, sort of convenient, I guess. I'm sure we've got some hofis in the house, neither of my parents is a shren so when they get headaches they notice... let's see if I can dig it up."

He proceeds into the kitchen and tries two cupboards before locating a neatly labelled vial.

"You don't notice headaches?" She reads the instructions.

"Pain in general is - just sort of not attention-getting the way it is for most people. I have good enough body awareness that I don't have to go to the light every week in case I broke a bone without noticing, but I still try to go once a month if I remember, just in case I missed something. —Lights are one of those inborn magic types, they're healers, they make a little glowy ball of, uh, light, and if you touch it you are healed."

"Those sound useful. I do have a healing factor, I don't at all seem obviously to have been hit by a van half an hour ago, but it probably goes with something awful like being deaf or whatever, so."

"You don't at all seem obviously to have been hit by an insufficiently safety-spelled vehicle," he agrees. "I suppose in your world all vehicles are insufficiently safety-spelled."

"Artifacts only work on people."

"That sort of makes sense with how artifacts work!"

"Plenty of them could work on animals and just don't."

"Hmm, yeah, I was just thinking of people as contrasted with scoots and similar. I wonder why. Why artifacts work that way, I mean. I have also wondered this about most of the other magic I've encountered in my life, but yours is new."

"Is there a lot of local magic that only works on people?"

"Mm, no, I meant more generally - like, why do lights not work on lights, why do mages need to almost die of their associated element before their magic activates, why is the power cost of wizardry structured the way it is..."

"Lights don't work on lights? That's stupid. The other things also sound potentially but less obviously stupid."

"Lights don't work on lights! It's kind of stupid! Mage activation - could be worse, I think if mages were born with their powers the world would look a lot different in that more of it would have been destroyed by baby mages, but yeah, it's not great. The power costs of wizardry aren't too bad except for the part where overreaching kills you - the actual relationship of power cost to spell effect seems mostly reasonable, although that might just be because I grew up with it."

"Destroyed by baby mages -?"

"Mages are really powerful. Small child mages are rare because small children are not often in a position to die in fire-, water-, earth-, or air-related accidents, but when they happen they tend to be kind of destructive and I'm sure some of that is a reaction to the trauma of activation but also I would not want to live near a baby who was capable of causing localized earthquakes and hadn't yet learned why that's a bad idea."

"...makes sense."

"Yeah."

"What's the power cost of wizardry like? I can see if it makes sense not having grown up with it."

"It's been a while but I think I actually made a chart for exactly that purpose, partway through getting my wizard certification, I might be able to retrieve it from among my old notes..."

"Ooh."

"Let's find out! My room's this way."

She follows him.