"Fair enough. Mrs. Carson's good about that kind of thing."

"Thanks for everything. I'll go sign up for classes, shall I?"

"Sounds good!" Dr. Duncan waves goodbye.

And she goes to the person who was going to help her sign up for classes.

Ms. Dennon is ready and willing to assist!

Required classes for Bella's first semester are Powers Theory (Powers Lab is, unusually, not automatically highlighted), History Tutoring, Science Tutoring, Word Processing and Technological Literacy, and Basic Martial Arts.

Recommended classes include Introduction to Psychic Disciplines, Introduction to Mystic Arts, Home Economics, World Literature, and Statistics 101.

"Remind me how much course load is recommended?"

"There's eight class periods in the day, but some classes have a Saturday morning option instead."

"- oh, right, this isn't actually a university. Okay." She puts Psychic Disciplines and Intro Mystic Arts and the literature course on the heap.

"No, it really isn't. Winter session is structured a little more loosely, where you choose up to four 'special topics' classes, but that's winter session. Anyway, that's all unless you want a Saturday class, but I imagine you'll have plenty on your plate either way."

"Not my first semester. I imagine I'll want to spend a lot of time on self-study about stuff from home once my books come in - I can probably make some progress even without - and I don't know how the workload here compares to what I'm used to yet and if I do get bored I can always read things."

Ms. Dennon nods. "If you end up thinking it's too much with a full courseload, you can always register that self-study officially and have a free period in your day for it. But if it all fits together, this seems like a very respectable schedule."

"I do like to be busy! But I can't spend all that long experimenting with arcana, I'll hit mana limits."

"Ah, resource limitations. That's why I never got into our kind of magic, it always seemed like a bit too much management for me."

"They have mana limits too? I guess that bodes poorly for science fixing it readily."

"Not mana but essence - as far as I can tell you sort of accumulate essence over time, and you can save away as much as you like but if you want to do magic you're using a bit of it every time."

"Huh, okay. I have a capacity limit but it can improve with practice."

"Well, it sounds like you'll be practicing plenty!"

"Anyway, thanks for registering me - do I get my booklist now -?"

"Yeah, it's on the site. ...and I can print it for you, let me do that." She presses a couple of buttons and a piece of paper emerges from a device next to her. "You can buy or rent the books from the bookstore, or if you don't they'll have copies to hand out on the first day."

"I think my stipend will more than cover it, but it's nice that they have handouts."

"Definitely! We have plenty of students without money to spare, so we make allowances as much as we can."

Bella smiles at her and trots off to the store to collect her books and gi and anything else that looks like she might need it.

The Mystic Arts syllabus recommends she purchase a quartz crystal, as crystals provided by the school are synthetic and therefore mystically inferior. There is, conveniently, a display of quartz crystals for this exact purpose.

It's so convenient. She likes this store. She gets the nicest-looking quartz.

There's a couple different bins of quartzes of various grades; the very nicest is a lovely piece of rutilated amethyst, which costs noticeably but not bank-breakingly more than a simple chunk of rock crystal. There are helpful signs indicating the differences between the various types of crystal (this one helps with clear thought, apparently), and clarifying specifically that any of these stones will be acceptable for Intro to Mystic Arts.

Her books, gi, and quartz are rung up and she's free to go.