Sterling blinked as he heard Anais explain her reasons and honestly he'd agree. Magic was a dangerous thing in the wrong hands, but the pony was naturally inclined to friendliness and being helpful. That was just how ponies operated. They were open, kind, and helpful creatures by default. At least usually they were, sometimes it was hard to be nice all the time. Or like in Willow's case where he tended to be cynical and introverted. He still cared as deeply as any other pony, just in his own way. But Sterling right now was more interested in the science talk, and how it worked with magic.
"Strange, Is that true for most realms? In equestria we've never bothered to actually look that close at objects to see what they were made of besides well, what we could see at by the naked eye. We haven't needed to look any deeper than that. Human science sure is much more advanced than it is back home..." the pony mused, feeling a tiny bit uneducated despite his time at school. How much else were Equestrians blissfully unaware of? At least Scientifically, politically they seemed to be a lot more stable. Indeed aside from the invasions of other species pony kind hadn't known real conflict for a very long time.
"I've never tried to just grab one of those 'atoms' as you called them. How would moving them around change the properties of the items they make up? Isn't like, an apple atom always an apple atom? What else could it be?" Sterling seemed to misunderstand the very basics of chemistry, the closest they had was like alchemy and similar practices, or magic transmutation.
