Corbie's jaw dropped. Where she had come from, no kid had magic anywhere near that young. Now she did blush. She knew her efforts were probably fairly childish, but... "My magic didn't come in 'til I was thirteen," she explained, absently taking that rock in hand. "And then I've only actually really been learning to use it... it's less than two years," she stumbled minutely over that word, trying consciously not to say 'indictions.'

Some wizards don't come into their power at all until they're eighteen or nineteen, you know... I can't imagine you're starting ruinously late. But she'd still lost all that time between thirteen and seventeen.