This for That

A faint breeze shuffled through the leaves, rustling the grass as it crossed the valley in a swirling arc, carrying the soft smell of flowers to the trinkling stream swerving through the meadow.
"This for that" she said, harsh overtones tampered by age leaving a coarse but melodious voice, "That's what they say. They make it a science. Bah"
Tracing a circle in the clay with her finger, she made a small symbol, placing three smoothed stones in the center. Snapping her fingers twice, she looked up to see a stark black silhouette cut into the fair azure sky. Spiraling down, the raven swirled in a great arc returning to his friend.
Landing softly on the women hunched shoulder the bird shot it's beak up and trilled a hello.
"Good day Angus" the woman said, rubbing the creature's chin.
"See, Hypatia, Angus came because that's simply how you call Angus. One of those Alchymyists," she looked off to the northern ridge of the valley, up to the billows of cokey smoke rising into the cool air, "they would have kept him in a cage--or if they really had to summon him, use 'equal parts Lyme and smoke ash creating the ratio of 3 to 5 and using the galvanic charge...'" she droned off mockingly.
Hypatia rolled a little on her back looking up at the women, "Syreen," she began, "Why do Alchymists follow such rules when nature provides avenues already?"
"Ahh. A silly question" Syreen dismissed with a light hand gesture as she continued to pet the Corvid bobbing up and down in time with the pets.
After a time, she turned her glassy eye to Hypatia, who by that time had closed her eyes, a single blade of grass resting gently on her nose. "Alchymists do not believe in nature," she began, "Nature is free, it exists and works the way it works. People are natural, but some people destain nature--they want it to follow their rules. Alchymists attempt to quantify the flowing mysteries of the world. They don't want the world as it is because they cannot fit it in their box--so they cut nature, they force it to fit into their neatly ordained spaces. They force everything to be quantifiable. To us, we exist with nature and are part of it, but to then, they exist beyond and above nature. And once you believe you're higher than nature, you think you're higher than all and that why they live in tall buildings--the powerful on the top and the closer you get to the ground, the closer you get to earth."
"Ah" Hypatia sighed receptively, eyes still closed firm against the basking sun glaring down.