"That I will not begrudge you, although wards are somewhat advanced and it would probably make sense to learn more about the basics beforehand."

"Sure."

"I've been told I'm not a very good teacher, but I have very comprehensive books and am available to answer questions."

"I can't read your books."

"I would have to switch translation spells first," he acknowledges. "Or teach you the language, I suppose, but that sounds tedious."

"And time-consuming!"

"Quite. Excuse me a moment," he says, and disappears around a bookshelf, then comes back and says a nonsense word. "Alright, that should be fixed."

"Thanks. What's the word for?" She looks at the nearest book spines.

"At the advanced stages, spells are activated through words or gestures. Words are much easier to record, so I don't use gestures much."

"What determines which words?"

"They're arbitrary; the magician in question pairs the spell with the word."

"Oh, neat." Book titlesssss?

Most of the books have complicated titles like "Advanced Nuclear Physics and Engineering" or weird ones like "the one with the bit about negentropy that might have gone into fairies," but Kanimir can show her a shelf with titles like "Basic Magic: Volume one" etcetera.

"You have so many books."

"I have been accumulating them for a long time."

"I'm not actually sure this many have been written on my whole planet."

He glances at her clothes. "I see. My condolences. Here we have the technology to mass-produce books."

"You don't do it with magic?"

"I can, but it's usually simpler to use non-magical technology."

"Wow."

"I suspect we are technologically very far ahead of you."

"Because of the books?"

"And your clothing."

She looks down at herself, then at what he's wearing. Hand-stitched linen versus...

Dark but colorful robes of mostly cotton; machine-stitched.