"Push harder."
"Like this?"
"No, not like that. Pretend you have your hands on the stick."
"Like this?"
"Don't put your hands on the stick!"
"But you said…" "I said, pretend." I put my palm on my face and sighed. Still, looking around, despite my exasperation with this one elf, the elves' magic training was going pretty well. The oldest ones were already able to move small rocks and sticks with motion magic. A few asked why they weren't learning water magic, but Noel and I told them they needed to learn motion magic first, so they could move water from rivers or rescue themselves from collapsing trees and branches. We didn't add that we didn't know water magic, because we were planning to fix that soon.
Noel and I took scouting duty together in the afternoon. New hunters like us weren't supposed to be scouts but with our magical abilities, we were about as powerful as an adult hunter. The elders also agreed we needed to see the fire to help direct the elves' magic training. We were told to experiment upwind from isolated patches of fire and to steer clear of any monsters we met along the way.
We found a suitable place near the edge of the forest fire. We tried controlling the fire with our fire magic, but we couldn't get it to fizzle out. We used motion magic to drop water, dirt, and large stones on the fire, but realized that wouldn't be enough to put out the massive amount of flames that were burning through the plains. We needed a new plan. None of our existing magic was good enough.
"You want to use water magic?" said Noel. "We tried it on the pond during training, remember. We couldn't even make ripples on the pond."
"Yeah, but that was because we were trying to move the water," I said. "Even with fire magic, we couldn't control flames until we created them first."
"You want to create water?" she said.
"Kind of," I said. "I can think of two approaches, you can pick the one you like more." I put a line in the dirt and made five circles. "The first approach is to think of water as an element. Back home, there was one tribe that classified the 'elements' or 'movements' as fire, earth, metal, water and wood, but since these were more like different types of energies than actual substances, we probably don't need this system."
I made four circles in the dirt this time, with small symbols from a cartoon show back on my Earth. "Instead, a lot of other tribes said that the elements that make up the entire world were: water, earth, fire, and air, although they often added the fifth element of the aether or void."
"Wait, what do you mean the elements that make up the entire world?" asked Noel.
"It's complicated. Some of them argued it was only one of these elements that was the base for all existence, while many thought a combination of the four was what created various things. A mountain might be mostly made of the earth element, but there is also water as snow and fire as lava.Different tribes had different ways of looking at this theory, but for us, what's important is that we can think of water as just another element in this system and come up with a way of using it like we did for fire."
"I see," said Noel. "Then we could learn air and earth magic with this system too."
"Exactly," I said.
"But what about the other approach?" asked Noel.
"The thing about the elemental system is, well, the people of my tribe already know it's not correct. We figured out that the world is made of a lot of other things, not just fire, water, earth and air," I said.
"Then why did you bring it up at all?" asked Noel.
"Because the old, or 'classical,' elemental system is an easy way to learn water magic. The way I used motion magic to stop the Farro Bird's movement was by using an idea that the people of my tribe have also proven wrong. The classical elemental system has enough 'knowledge' for spells and is easier to use with 'wisdom' too," I said.
"Got it," said Noel. "You're saying it's easier than the other method."
"Well," I said, scratching my chin, "what I really mean is that it'll be easier for you and the other elves."
"You're saying you won't use the classical elemental system?" said Noel.
"It'll be faster for me to use the other system," I said.
"Then I'm not going to use it either," she said. She had a determined look in her eyes.
"It's not a competition. You can make the classical elemental system into a powerful form of magic," I said.
"But it won't be as powerful as your magic," she said. "Or else you would be using the elemental system too."
Darn. Why was she so smart? "Fine," I said. "But it's going to be boring to learn and I don't know if we'll be able to gather the 'wisdom' necessary to cast it before the fire gets too close to camp. We should set up the basics of elemental water magic today so we can train the other elves."
Noel nodded. "So we need to think of everything around us as being made of fire, earth, water and air, right?"
"Yes," I said. "And then we can use the fact that we can create fire to learn how to use the other elements."
"Since fire uses fuel, if we think of creating fire as taking the fire element out of a piece of wood or a pile of leaves, we can think of creating water as doing the same," said Noel.
Wow, she thought of that on her own? "We could also think of the elements existing inside our body, maybe as a sort of energy like in the five element system I told you about before. Then we could create the elements out of nothing but magical energy."
"But wouldn't that tire use a lot of magical energy? We'll tire out really quickly," said Noel. "The fire is pretty big. If the elves get too tired too quickly, we won't be able to control it at all. I think my idea works better for this situation."
I nodded. "You're right, if the elves draw out the elements from other things, they won't tire as quickly. But what if there isn't a good source of the element nearby. If they're surrounded by flames, they can't draw out enough water from the air, earth or burning logs."
Noel agreed with what I said so we decided to teach the elves both ways of casting classical elemental magic. It took us several hours to extract a few drops of water from a piece of wood. And making water out of pure magical energy almost made me faint. We spent several days practicing our water magic, telling the elders we needed to scout out a large area to plan the elves' response. The elves got pretty good at motion magic, although none had gotten as good as Noel and me. Perhaps the birds' blessing improved our ability to learn and practice magic.
We began teaching the elves what little water magic we were able to cast. After a few days of training, Noel and I could spray water like a hose out of the earth and like a faucet out of our hands. It wouldn't be useful in a fight, but a dozen elves could fight a small fire with it. The elves didn't understand the elemental system. How could everything be made of only wind, water, earth, and air? What about trees and lightning and the sun and moon? It took a while to show them how everything could, in an age before particle physics and chemistry, be boiled down to a few elements.
I walked past rows of concentrating elves. I offered advice and gave feedback to people who were having trouble understanding elemental water magic. I let them make their own conclusions and explanations, since everyone's 'knowledge' didn't have to be the same. One young elf even came up with water magic that came out of his mouth.
Once they could create a few droplets of water, Noel and I told them to keep practicing on their own. Starry and Vell, who could already create steady streams of water, took over our duties and helped the elves gather 'wisdom.' I brought Noel back to the place where we'd trained the elemental water system.
"The others are learning the elemental system very quickly, but they won't be able to fight the forest fire with that kind of magic. It doesn't create enough water and uses a whole lot of energy," observed Noel.
I nodded. "They'll be able to protect the camp, but that's about it. If we want to save the plains we need to come up with a water magic system that can pour a lot of water over a large area with very little magical energy."
"That sounds impossible…"
"It would be impossible, if we were trying to make all that water appear with magic. Magic seems to mean breaking the rules of nature to do the impossible. But sometimes, we don't have to cheat nature to do our magic. Sometimes, we can walk right over to nature and give it a little push!"