"You can make books float! That's neat. Is that neat? What's that even for?"

"It's a study technique. It makes it easier to form connections between unrelated theses to arrive at a synthesis."

"Flip me if I'm ones, but you could do this with them on the ground and a few bookmarks?"

"Yeah, but then I wouldn't have an excuse to wear my tower robe. Besides, it's more useful than that. I can selectively highlight text and suspend it instead of letting it get lost in the page when I look away. And the physical manifestation of it you see is only a symbolic expression of the internal note-keeping I'm doing. It--it helps, trust me."

"How's that even work? Is that a spell?"

"It's... something like a narramorphic style or narrative reassignment, but built entirely out of the Magic element. It's closer to an elemental symbol expression, but it's a hyper-focused mastery of one stroke with no regard for its context in the greater symbol. If you're asking how I make it happen I don't even remember. It's just one of those things where it's part of You, now."

"Meadoe on. Like deciding to override."

"... I wouldn't know."

"Right. Adversary. I mean, your thing is still the same innit?"

"Style override occurs automatically based on its context. A freeperson's Story override is... I suppose it's conscious, isn't it?"

"Well. It's more like--it's like--okay I'm at the city problem."

"City problem?"

"Ever try to give a tourist directions? You know the way but you gotta give them left-and-rights you're fucked."

"Implicit knowledge bypasses conscious apprehending by design. You're trying to explain how you move your fingers. You aren't gonna be able to do it, Corbis."

"Haha what? College-girl I can tell you how I move my fingers."

"Okay. Do it."

"Well... I think about... nah I guess I don't really gotta think about it, it's more, I want it, so it. Yeah. Yeah no you think you're being smart, I want it so it happens. That's what a Story override feels like. Just a finger you don't move too much. Oh. No, I got it. Dicks."

"Damnit Corbis..."

"It's like when you twitch your dick. You don't really normally use that muscle but you want? I can flex that bitch real hard and firm. I see something I don't like on the next page, feel my die bouncing Jayce, I give that dick-muscle a good firm throb, and Meadoe gives me a nice moan around it, yeah?"

"Mm. Well. For an adversary a Style override is passive. It hitches along. I can feel it always sitting there inside me, waiting, and I know its shape, I know what actions will hook onto it and drag it along for the ride. Add its weight to mine. But it's less like moving something static and more like trying to catch something that's always mid-air. I suppose it makes sense for Style, making you work for it. Yours sounds easier. But. None of the other races were made as powerful as yours."

"Children."

"Children don't count. Children are basically gods. They're just Figments' servants run loose."

"Well they were made though. They're a race. Crownleaf my ants, girl."

"Ugh."

"Knicknacks, too."

"How do you figure?"

"Well if I didn't get old, could just, get bored of my body rip-zip me up a hotter one? I mean, I know, I'm already as hot as can be, but still."

"Mm. Well. For this, it's more like my Style override than your Story override, then. It's something I want to happen, but it requires me to get it just right. It's not a muscle that's mine... it's something I can hook, with my fingers, and drag along with me. It's holding a pitch. Balancing something? Closer to Style."

"A'right a'right. What does Magic feel like?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well Story has this big sense of, well, shit! You ever get like really high but not one of those, not that high that puts this crazy wall between you and you, makes you into two people and one of them's an idiot and the other's half asleep and crazy at the same time, but like, you know a good poppy-high, maybe, that really warm red sorta cozy thing where it cuts out all the bits, that's what it feels like. Like I'm pulling my head out of water and looking around, like I'm a fish, and I'm cheatin' a rabbit-look up over the ocean. Style feels way deeper in the water. You feel it right? It's a messy element but it's a real good mess, yeah?"

"Yeah. No. I get you. Magic, huh. Magic's way back in the head. Back of the brain. Miles away. In some dark space. Looking down at everything organized into cells and ideas. It's heartless. Even passionate magic, it's... it's way out of the ocean. It's forgetting what it means to be wet while you're sticking your fingers in the water anyway. It's not my favorite. I'm really good at it but it's a weird feeling, and I guess I enjoy it, but. And it's harder to do when you keep asking me questions."

"Right. Right. One last question. Doing a frynut run. Want any?"

"Ugh. Yes. Very. Red."