She offers him a wry smile as she wipes off her hands. "A lot of things don't look like much but can be pretty impressive. I'm Brigitte, by the way." The boy isn't exactly effusively friendly, but he went along with learning what he could, and that's a point in his favour: open-mindedness to the unfamiliar is particularly important here, in this village, surrounded by strange new things.

"Were you a magic-user back where you came from, then?"