"There's a reason I play skirmish. What's skirmish?"

"A bunch of students get together in teams and fight fake battles with fake weapons that do very realistic injuries. I play because I'm a - how d'you say, brilliant tactician - and because it predictably raises my total but in a way that's easier to sustain than hurting myself directly on purpose over and over."

"Brilliant tactician. Sensible. And now there is magic instead."

He grins.

"There are other things, too. Do you eat very spicy food?"

"No, actually, I try to avoid it. If I got in the habit I think the accumulated pain would eventually obliterate my sense of taste, and I enjoy having one."

"Ooh, yeah, I hadn't thought of that. Bit of a shame, there are some lovely spicy things out there, but better to cut off one culinary avenue than all of them."

"Yeah."

"I bet if you do something like that by accident you could magic things to taste more strongly!"

"Now there's a thought!"

"I have those, sometimes!"

Snort.

"You'll get used to imposing your will on the universe as a first resort."

"I bet I will."

"I should help you pick classes! Most people take more efficiency-type courses than are actually required, because they need them and there's a lot of ways to be efficient, but those aren't always obvious--my sister doesn't like pain, she's engineering-track with a side in healing, if you're interested in those things she can tell you which ones are redundant for the likes of you and me and which ones aren't--oh, you should probably take the intro class, you can get out of it if you grew up in Genosha or were apprenticed elsewhere before attending, those don't apply to you but if you're auditing classes beforehand you might not need it? Especially if you learn most things as quickly as Genoshan!"

"I learn things pretty quickly," he says. "But I do think I want the intro class."

"...Maybe if I had taken it I would have known about how people who don't grow up in flying cities develop magic senses."

Giggle.

"I don't think I regret not taking it, but there would have been benefits."

"Yes. I want the - how d'you say, foundation? I want the knowledge about magic that people take for granted."

"For that I think you'd be best served to--spend some time walking around the city, in addition to taking the class. See what people are doing, how they talk, how magic interacts with it. Not everyone in Genosha is a mage, but most of the ones who aren't are hedgewitches."

"That too."

"People are probably going to make some assumptions about the scars," she adds. "At least until the fairy story gets out. Removing scars with magic is pretty trivial. so anyone who has them is assumed to want them."

"I wouldn't want anyone to try removing my scars with magic. Not just yet, anyway."

"I don't blame you. But there's a certain personality type that people are likely to assume would want that many scars, and it's not yours."