She puts it back where she found it and head to the dining hall.

The dining hall is expansive and beautiful! It has many buffet lines, each of which is denoted by a charming legend! There's a carrot, a piece of cheese, a steak, a cow, a baguette with a line through it, a geode, a banana, and a cake.

(If she looks at the people frequenting each line, she can probably rule out the cow and geode lines, because they're populated by people who do not look very human.)

Bella goes through each line except cow and geode once to see what is there, without taking anything, then circles back for stuff in the cheese and steak and banana lines and looks for a place to sit.

Well, Morty's sitting over here with a blonde boy and a distinctly green boy with tiny sparks of light flitting in and out of his long, flowery hair. He doesn't seem to notice her.

She'll go over and sit with Morty anyway. "Hi Morty."

He jumps a little. "Bella! Hi! Um, this is Isaac and Ethan, they're my friends?"

"Yes," Isaac confirms, tapping two fingers on his brow. "Isaac Biely, Mooncast, nice to meet you."

Ethan waves a hand. "Ethan Hart. Mulch. Also nice to meet you."

"Bella Swan, no codename at this time."

"Welcome to Whateley," Isaac says. "Morty here had just finished explaining your arrival, actually, very well timed."

"Well, I'm glad to be here!"

Isaac smiles broadly. "We're glad to have you."

Ethan speaks up, leaning forward. "You come from a world without science, right? I'm worried that you may not have gotten the best first impression of the field from Morty. Science is usually very reliable, very carefully experimented with, and does not involve cardboard in any way, shape, or form."

"I'm not the first person to ever make a mistake while building a new invention," Morty sulks.

"That's true. However, if making mistakes while building inventions was a field of study, you would have a Nobel Prize," Ethan says.

"I wasn't sure what to expect from real science! I mean, TV scientists do things like Morty does all the time, but TV wizards are wrong too."

"Even I don't do 'real' science," Ethan admits. "Science as it's done by baseline humans is agonizingly slow and tedious. But I have a power that allows me to skip past a lot of that. I have an instinctual understanding of many of the steps involved in what I'm doing, and so I don't have to experiment nearly as much before coming up with something like a superstrong variety of grass to weave a costume out of, or a flower that creates sleep-inducing pollen."

"And I just do something that seems to make sense to me, and then it either turns out fine or explodes," Morty says cheerily.

"What other kinds of things have you made?" Bella asks Morty.

"First thing I ever made was a derby car that ran at something like 150 miles an hour. Since I got to Whateley I've made about twenty different power sources, all of which exploded after at most a few weeks; a handful of ray guns as proof of concept, most of which exploded but one of which still works; a quantum entanglement communicator, which worked perfectly but then exploded after a month; and, as a test of general principles, a grenade. Which failed to detonate."

"It sounds like something is mad at you."

"Yeah, I try not to be all 'oh, God hates me' about it, but it's kind of hard sometimes."

"What I mean is that sounds like the sort of thing that would happen if you made something like a god mad where I came from."

Morty looks like he's trying to find something to say to that and failing.

Isaac raises his eyebrows. "Morty, be honest: have you personally offended Zoroaster?"

Morty shakes his head slowly. "I... my dad has a story about how my great-grandpa... offended an old woman once? And she told him something about her curse being upon him for seven generations? And he was rich before that, and then he lost it, and we're still kind of poor? But I really don't think-"

"Jesus Christ, Morty!" Ethan says.

Isaac nods vigorously. "That is essential backstory information."

"- wait, is something in fact mad at you?"

"No," Morty says, at the same time as Ethan says "Apparently!"

Isaac stands up. "I'm getting Arjun."

"Don't get Arjun, Arjun hates me," Morty argues. "I really don't think an old family story is-"

"You have not taken Intro Magic," Isaac says. "We both have. You are cursed. I am getting Arjun." He strides off.

"...sorry?"

Morty shrugs helplessly. "Not your fault? Isaac's, um, excitable."

Ethan flicks him. "I'm not."

"I don't know what's up with you," Morty says.

"Who's Arjun?"

"He's this kid who says he's the Avatar of Ganesha."

"Not Avatar, Paladin," Ethan corrects. "Ganesha's this big Hindu god, so Arjun's a really powerful wizard. Specializes in blessings."

"And he thinks I'm a danger to myself and others and should be locked up," Morty says. "So I'm not thrilled Isaac's bringing him over."

"Oh. Well, if removing curses is the sort of thing that can be done maybe he can help?"