Talent
才能
Practice is the best of all instructors.
—Publilius Syrus
"We call the force that pulls things down towards the ground gravity."
"Gravity..."
Repeating what I said, Ai wrote it down.
It's still extremely primitive, but what we're doing right now is having a class.
Although Ai has already mastered the alphabet, she's still working on her digraphs.
As a result of thinking about whether I should teach her how to write or whether I should research magic, I decided to do both together. I believe that writing is important for her to remember things that I teach her, after all.
Still though, it went in an unexpected direction.
"Alright, now go ahead and try turn gravity off. If you do, you should be able to float in the air like me."
"Okay!"
Ai gazed at the wooden board she'd written on a moment ago in earnest.
"Gravity, off. Gravity, off. Gravity... off...!"
After chanting to herself a few times, her body suddenly began to float.
It wasn't by much, but her body had definitely unshackled itself from gravity's chains.
I folded my outstretched wings back and sighed in relief.
"Why were your wings spread out?"
"Just in case."
I was afraid that she might've suddenly shot into the sky at orbital speeds after completely turning gravity off. That obviously doesn't appear to be the case, though.
I already know that this world is the same as the Earth in that it is a planet spinning through space. By looking towards the horizon when I am flying in the sky, I can see that the world is round as well as see that there is a moon rotating around this planet, which is itself rotating around the sun.
By the way, Nina accepted that as fact unexpectedly easily when I told her about it.
I'm not sure if it's because her comprehension is great or if it's because she doesn't have much in the way of prior knowledge prejudicing her from new ideas, though.
"Good, you did well."
"Yeah! Thanks to the words, Mentor taught!"
Ai smiled in delight, hugging the wooden board tightly.
It appears that names are extremely important in magic. No matter how hard someone tries, it is impossible to use magic to move something that they haven't named. The world expands through the amount of names you know, allowing you to do more things. Also, it seems that there is a force within the word that strengthens the action.
I'm not actually sure if there is a force in the words used or if it's because it makes it easier to picture mentally, but the success rate of Ai's magic had definitely improved after she understood the concept through writing.
Although there was some magic that wouldn't show much of an effect even when I taught her initially taught her the names, there hadn't been a single one that hadn't at least shown some result after she learned how to write them.
"Dinner's done, you two~"
When Ai and I were happy about her magic succeeding, Nina's voice came down from the sky.
