Different Magics

"Hi Claire," Mintten said with a broad grin. Apparently not all dwarves felt the same as Ignacious about humans. "You're here to help?"

"Sure," replied Claire. "What can I do? I'm not very strong, I don't have a trade, and I haven't practiced magic."

"Well, if worst comes to worst we could always have you get the stuff on the highest shelves for us, but I have something else in mind for you," Mintten explained as he began walking with Claire into an alcove she had to duck to fit into, with Iggy slightly behind them and grimacing disapprovingly at his jest about height differences. These two certainly were different from each other.

The room they found themselves in was an organized mess; papers and files were stacked neatly, often with a top paper with a note scribbled on top denoting what the stack contained, but the entire room was filled with these neat papers. Claire moved carefully to avoid knocking any over, and Mintten quickly moved papers off a bench to accommodate her.

"Here you go, that should ease the strain of bending your neck. You're going to be in here for awhile. You see, our magic is a highly precise matter; the way the words are pronounced, the hand movements, and even where the eye is looking and the mind wanders all matter. A slight difference in any of those areas can create a very different result, and as such we have teams that map out exactly what the spellcaster should do, then have someone train them in each part separately to make sure they can complete their task when the time comes."

"Oh, I think I get it. You mean like -" here Claire pretended to hold a wand in her hand, and did a random squiggly gesture "-expelliarmus!" and a pile of ink pens on the other side of the room exploded in all directions. All three stared at the new splot of ink with eyes bulged.

Slowly, Iggy and Mintten turned back to Claire, who was now staring at her hand as she turned it around. "I, er... was that a strong wind or something?" she said hopefully.

"No, that certainly was not! Where did you learn that?!" Iggy exclaimed.

"I... it was a human book, it was just pretend! Just a silly story about kids that end up being wizards..." here Claire trailed off, staring distrustfully at her hand.

"Come, give the girl a break," Mintten said soothingly. "I remember when you first discovered your magic, Nacious, you started crying when you accidentally set your favorite toy on fire even though you'd even seen my parents do magic." Turning to Claire, he continued. "Discovering that you have magic is unsettling at a very young age, it must be very strange now that you're older. It's nothing to fear, a small percentage of humans still possess it but even most of them don't realize it."

Sitting down on the bench, Claire leaned her head back into the cool cave wall and closed her eyes, without even saying anything to the dwarves. She just needed to process for a couple of minutes. Ignacious and Mintten seemed to understand, and turned to a set of plans in the opposite end of the room, murmuring quietly except when an occasional comment like, "oh don't be stupid, the illithium would unbalance the fusion reaction" could be heard by Claire.

After a few minutes - or atleast it felt like a few, but Claire couldn't be sure if she'd fallen asleep - Claire opened her eyes. Her head was clearer, and she was sure about what she was going to do. She would try to get some magical training from Iggy, and she would help the dwarves to fix whatever she'd messed up. For now, past that didn't matter; this was certainly a life altering moment, but dwelling on that right now wouldn't be helpful.

"Ok," Claire said firmly, loudly enough that the dwarves looked over at her. "Let's get the elephant out of the room. I have magic. Can you train me?" and here she looked at Iggy, who looked slightly sheepish but mostly defensive.

"That's beyond my expertise. Your magic is much different than mine, and from my study of history and ancient humans I can only teach you a few small things, like how to make sure nothing happens accidentally."

Taking a deep breath, her plan already derailing, Claire continued. "Ok. That would be helpful. Now, where are those dwarves you want me to help with spells?"

"Whoa, whoa, let's back up here." Mintten warned, taking a step toward her. "First of all, we don't know what making those motions and saying those words would do in human magic, so that's already out the window. Secondly, and most obviously, you're magic! You won't be back here behind a desk, I'll be putting you right up front to build the - "

"Mintten!" Iggy hissed."

"Be quiet, cousin," Mintten said sternly. These two did not mix well. "This is a magical human. We can use any edge we can get against the Gnomicon."

"The Gnomicon? Who's that?" Claire asked.

"Gnomes, pixies, and dwarves have never gotten along," Iggy explained. "We lived in a tense peace for many years, but about 175 suns ago the pixies and gnomes teamed up and have been making our lives difficult."

"But I overheard you guys talking about fusion reactions. Please tell me you aren't making a weapon?"