"Uh, yeah..." He was right; that was probably way too much at once. For now, she decided to just focus on answering his question, and then she'd figure out where to go from there.

And she needed to explain it...simply. If she could. "Crystallized mana behaves mostly like matter, while non-solid mana is more like a wave, or..." He might not get that, she realized, and decided to simplify it more. It wouldn't be exactly accurate, but that was what later in-depth studies would be for, right? "Think of non-solid mana as energy, like light or heat."