Author: cumulonimbus	After lunch is over, Stormy asks Rook: "Can I see your cute tiny trees?"
Author: nonbird	"You may!" he beams, and he leads her out the back door of the cottage, to where there is a rack of shelves along the outside wall. The shelves are exactly wide enough to comfortably hold the broad, shallow pots that rest on them, and in each pot is a very small tree, bent into shapes of varying beauty and complexity. The trees are of many species, some familiar, others unrecognizable.
Author: cumulonimbus	"They're so little," exclaims Stormy. "And so cute! Do they have names?"
Author: nonbird	"They do not!"
Author: cumulonimbus	"Why not? They should. I could name them," she offers.
Author: nonbird	"You can name them if you want."
Author: cumulonimbus	"Okay. I wonder what it is best to name tiny trees. Can I touch them?"
Author: nonbird	"You can, if you are careful," he says. "Some of them are fragile."
Author: cumulonimbus	Stormy gently pets each tiny tree.
Author: nonbird	"Awwwwwwwwwww," says Rook. "If you'd like, you can help me take care of them."
Author: cumulonimbus	"What do tiny trees need? I guess since they're under the roof edge you have to water them by hand... Can I make them tiny weather?"
Author: nonbird	"You can try making tiny weather," says Rook. "If you succeed at making tiny weather, you can provide it to the tiny trees. But in case of accidents, please don't experiment on them directly until your tiny weather is behaving."
Author: cumulonimbus	"Okay. I will practice tiny weather somewhere else. I bet I can! I can work really small sometimes."
Author: nonbird	"What kind of work do you do, small or otherwise?"
Author: cumulonimbus	"Sky stuff. Rain and wind and clouds and sunshine."
Author: nonbird	"And what do you do with the stuff?"
Author: cumulonimbus	"Be it. Move it around. Make it stir up different."
Author: nonbird	"When you move weather around, do you look at where you took it from and where you sent it and where it passed through in between, to make sure you didn't make any messes by accident? I've heard that weather magic can be particularly tricky that way."
Author: cumulonimbus	"Nooooo... what kind of messes?"
Author: nonbird	"Changing one bit of weather can affect others. If you take too much rain from the same place, or if other rain shifts to follow what you took, there could be a small drought - or a big one. If the rain you move starts a chain of downpours in its wake, there could be flooding. If you pull one wind off its natural course, it could change the course of others, and do things you didn't intend. Most kinds of magic don't have this problem, because in most kinds of magic, the mage can keep the working contained so it affects only what they mean it to. But there's no containing the weather. That's why it's a good idea to check and make sure, and not to change too many things until you know what you're doing. Which is what you're here to learn."
Author: cumulonimbus	"But... if weather gets left alone, there are droughts and floods, too," says Stormy.
Author: nonbird	"Yes," says Rook. "But the absolute minimum a weather mage should try to do is make sure that there aren't more disasters than there would have been if they had just left things alone."
Author: cumulonimbus	"Yes. Maybe I should take rain from flooding places and put it in droughting places," suggests Stormy. "Then I can solve two things at the same time."
Author: nonbird	"That is an excellent idea," says Rook, "and you should talk to Mathilde about it. I'm sure if there's anything she doesn't know yet about weather magic, she's going to go learn it."
Author: cumulonimbus	"Okay. And I will learn it too."
Author: nonbird	"That's the idea!"
Author: cumulonimbus	"And I will be large parts of sky and do responsible things with it and someplace where it won't bother anybody I will make the biggest best storms. And then I will make tiny tree tiny weather."
Author: nonbird	"I'm sure the tiny trees will appreciate their tiny weather."
Author: cumulonimbus	"Do tiny trees appreciate things? Tinily?"
Author: nonbird	He laughs. "Yes."
Author: cumulonimbus	"How can they appreciate stuff?"
Author: nonbird	"Plants have feelings in plant ways, just like people have feelings in people ways," says Rook. "And miniature trees are especially magical, so their feelings are especially complex. The herbs growing in the garden like the feeling of drawing water into their roots after a rain, but my miniature trees notice how often they need watering and complain if I don't keep to schedule."
Author: cumulonimbus	"They complain?" giggles Stormy. "How do they do that? Do they - rustle annoyedly?"
Author: nonbird	"No," he laughs. "I communicate with them by magic."
Author: cumulonimbus	"Do they do words, or... what? I don't talk to the sky..."
Author: nonbird	"They don't do words. I told you, they have feelings," says Rook. "And when I miss a watering, they feel grumpy at me."
Author: cumulonimbus	"Grumpy tiny trees," coos Stormy, petting one.
Author: nonbird	"Tiny and grumpy," he says. "And they itch when they build up too much magic. But most of the time they're happy."
Author: cumulonimbus	"When you take out their extra magic what do you do with it?"
Author: nonbird	"Help other plants to grow, usually."
Author: cumulonimbus	"Helpful tiny grumpy trees," giggles Stormy. "What other plants do you have?"
Author: nonbird	"Lots," he says. "Useful ones like herbs and vegetables and grapevines, and pretty ones like flowers."
Author: cumulonimbus	"Were there plants of yours in lunch?" Pause, sudden concern: "Do plants mind being eaten?"
Author: nonbird	"Not usually," he says. "Most of them wouldn't understand being eaten if I tried to explain it to them. And the miniature trees don't mind giving up their fruit; animals eating fruit is how plants get their seeds from place to place, so fruit isn't something a plant expects to keep."
Author: cumulonimbus	"Okay... are there any plants that don't want to be eaten that I might eat if I didn't know, though?"
Author: nonbird	"...It's possible that somewhere in the world there is a plant with a mind enough like ours to have opinions about people eating it, that isn't a miniature tree or something similarly magical that people would already know to be nice to," he says. "But I've never met one."
Author: cumulonimbus	"So it is not very likely. Okay. Are there animal mages like there are plant mages? Do animals mind when people eat them?"
Author: nonbird	"I've never heard of an animal mage. That doesn't mean they don't exist, but if they do they're very, very rare, or all live somewhere so far away that their mages and our mages don't talk, or both."
Author: cumulonimbus	"Is there any other way to tell if animals mind? If plants can have feelings it seems like maybe animals do too." She pets a tiny tree.
Author: nonbird	"Of course animals have feelings. Anyone who's ever owned a pet could tell you that. But I don't know if they're like most plant feelings, and not really complicated enough to understand a thing like being eaten, or if they're more like people feelings."
Author: cumulonimbus	"Maybe I had better not eat animals, just to be safe, if no one can tell."
Author: nonbird	"If you want to, I can tell Mercy and Dedicate Maple."
Author: cumulonimbus	"Yes, thank you. Until I think of a way to find out."
Author: nonbird	"Okay."
Author: cumulonimbus	Stormy writes down that she should look into ways to find out how smart animals are. "I will think of names for your tiny trees," she adds, counting them quickly and writing down how many names she must think up. And then she goes back in the house.