"Does raising the dead count as healing? I'd like to get strong enough to do that. Besides that, I've heard Desnans can Teleport if we get to fifth circle. I'd love to Teleport. I don't know if I'll make it that high, though, most people don't."

The kids are all impressed by the idea of teleporting!

The woman sitting across from Nuria speaks, "Have you cast Dream Feast before?  It's a 1st circle spell that gives you a meal in your dreams.  It's a nonstandard spell, not a domain spell, but not one offered by most Gods, with somewhat tricky and complicated conditions around who can cast it, but from what little I know it should be available to a cleric of Desna."

"Oh, yeah, that one's really useful. It doesn't scale as well as Create Water, obviously, but I still used it a lot when things got tight in my neighborhood after the Four-Day War when everything was uncertain." 

"I'm quite curious about that spell... if you've learned how to scribe scrolls I would like to see it.  I can-" her voice painfully rasps a bit and she is careful to speak quieter when she continues "I can of course pay, but given your convention stipend I'm not sure how competitive what I can afford would be."  She gives an awkward but genuine thin smile.  "And I have inks.  Additionally, I would like to see it cast, and I would like it cast before I sleep... I do have some skills in trade, besides 1st circle wizard casting.   How is your spell craft?  I'll give two hours tutoring per casting"  A bit of a lowball, but it shouldn't be offensively so.

"...If I were smart enough to be a wizard, they'd've sent me to wizard school. Can you...tell me more about why you want it...? I don't want to pry, but I want to understand what I'm helping with." 

"Oh... well for a nightly casting the porridge in the morning is pretty bland even with a prestidigitation, it's not anything important.  For seeing just one casting... sometimes wizards figure out how to stabilize cleric spells as wizard spells.  I probably wont succeed but I'd like to make a passing effort at trying.  It's a rare enough spell not many people have tried yet, and there is a small chance I might have a unique angle on it?  And scribing scrolls and spellcraft doesn't require nearly the smarts hanging spells done.  With enough practice you can develop an intuition for spellcraft.  I tutor Thea a bit each week on spellcraft as part of our dealings."

At the mention of the porridge, the faces of the children seem to agree with Estella's assessment.  The stew is good at least!  It's thick and well seasoned, with plenty of meat in it... although the meat is so tender (to put it charitably) it practically falls apart, it is almost like the thickness of the rest of the stew holds it together.

"Alright, that's fair." 

"How are you liking the stew by the way?  The seasoning mix is my own invention, no prestidigitation, and I have a few mixes I cycle through so we aren't eating the exact same thing every night even if it's all stew.  It's something of a hobby of mine, basically my only hobby besides wizardry."

The kids expressions look still at the mention of the stew, even as much as they seem to enjoy eating it.

"It's pretty good! Definitely not something I've ever had before." She points her spoon at the wizard. "From a Desnan, that's a compliment." 

The youngest kid near Nuria has their expression outright frozen, but the rest of the students expressions are all normal.

Estella smiles "Thank you, I appreciate the compliment."

Thea has a tense smile that might be noticeable if Nuria is paying attention.  She should have figured out a way to explain part of this ahead of time and it will sound even worse if she has to explain the whole story.

...Something's up with Thea. 

That's concerning. Also the kid who froze. 

Well. Nuria's plenty good at pretending everything's normal. It kept her alive while the Asmodeans were in power. 

Dia, Thea's right hand and confidant in all social matters, saw that Nuria knows somethings up.  Well... time to do damage control.  Best to go with the more moderate story, see how she takes it, and maybe the full story after.

She's one of the oldest student at 15 and sitting across from Nuria next to Estella.

She sighs (but not too dramatically) "Thea is ashamed because the way she's made the food stretch so far is using lots of purify food and drink on otherwise spoiled meat and vegetables.  With so many Asmodean clerics disempowered, there is an easy cheap surplus of spoiled foods like that since almost no one else can purify it.  It normally wouldn't taste good even with that, but Estella's cooking skills, which she just had to brag about, she can turn it into something that tastes great."

There, almost the full story, and if you have a decent knowledge of magic and alignment of spells, the full story isn't actually much worse.

"Oh, well, that's nothing new, I did something much the same back home for a while."

Best to push the whole story out then.

"Well... there is a 1st circle necromancy school spell that restores flesh to bones of the dead.  It doesn't touch souls, just the flesh, and it doesn't detect as Evil, and purify food and drink will remove the completely rotten parts and restore to edibility to partially rotten parts... but we'd still appreciate your circumspection with this information, some of the poorer eateries in the poorer parts of town do profitable business with Thea and Estella."

She looks to Thea "And I think our finances are good enough that at this point we should switch to normal meats, especially if you want to go forward with the plan to take on tenets."

"But fresh meat just isn't as tender!" Estella's voice is quiet but mirthful.

"I guess you're right Dia, I should have listened to you sooner..."

The youngest girl next to Nuria speaks up "But the purify makes it okay." as if repeating a mantra she had absorbed earlier.  "And I like the thickened stew!"

The mention of 'thickened stew' makes some of the other kids smile, just a bit.

"Oh, that's clever! But, you know, you don't need to tell me all your secrets--I mean, I won't tell, but there's no need to trust me so much so early. Even without being malicious, some people are really bad at secrets." 

Wow, that was literally the best reaction Thea could have hoped for.  Dia is genius and Nuria is great.

"I trust Dia.  That the student sitting across from you, who finally explained it, is Dia, she's basically the second in charge here.  If she figured it was best to just tell you, I trust her judgement."   She pauses.

"It's good it was you not someone who would take offense or accuse us of evil necromancy or something worse.  If some people..." she glances at Estella, glance at a few of the kids who had worse poker faces, and stares off a moment in the distance for herself  "can't keep that piece of information close, it's probably best just to switch to normal meat."

There are some sighs from the kids, who have apparently grown used to it.  Or maybe it is some in-joke among them?

"I'm capable of seasoning normal meat as well.  I wasn't lying about having cooking as a hobby... but I did develop the hobby incidentally to figuring out the best usage of Restore Corpse."

"Well, it was very creative of you. I approve." 

Nuria is the best person ever.

The ten year old speaks up "I've been thinking about Desna and I have more questions.  Where do you most want to travel?  Is Elysium really you're preferred afterlife?  And did you get chosen before the Four Day War or after?  If after, what did you do to get to second circle so fast.  And if before, how did you avoid getting caught?"

This ten year old has ambitions of getting strong fast and/or being amazingly stealthy.

"It was before. And the thing you have to understand about me is that I had been working at not getting caught for a lot longer than I've been a cleric. I was a romance novel smuggler for years, and before that I was trying to become one without tipping off the authorities when I found some."