She brings her around to one of the doors to the dorm building, and sort of awkwardly nods-and-smiles her way in.

"... so as long as we don't bother anyone too badly, it should be fine," her explanation concludes, with a certain amount of false confidence. The kind man gave her a path to follow, and she is following it, even if she isn't entirely certain how things really work in university dorm buildings.

She gets in easily. In front of her, there's an empty reception desk; a sign indicates that someone will be there at 8 AM tomorrow. To the right, there are elevators that seem to require a keycard, but to the left there are some unlocked doors: a laundry-room, a small fitness centre, and some sort of common room: couches, chairs and tables, some board games, and an old, bulky TV. There's a first-aid kit mounted on a wall. A little exploration also turns up an electric kettle, some mugs, and some teabags and hot chocolate powder.

Occasionally a student passes through the hallway, but nobody comes in. Small windows positioned high on the wall would not make them visible from the street. Emily and Concordia have, for the moment, privacy.

She relaxes a little, and drags Concordia over to the common room area.

"S-So we can just ..." Emily starts to say, before trailing off and trying to think what comes next. It's kind of been a whirlwind.

Concordia pokes around the room, finding most of the contents unfamiliar — although the furniture is obvious enough, if built in a barbarian style.

The big flat glass block is ... probably a spell focus of some kind? Maybe a heating element? And the racks of little pouches are probably stimulants or silphium powder or something like that. This is, after all, apparently a place of learning.

Emily sees her poking around the hot chocolate packets, and gives up on coming up with a plan. She's hungry, and tired, and still on the edge of being overwhelmed. It's ... probably fine to take some hot chocolate.

"Here, let me," she says, filling the kettle.

Concordia watches the kettle make hissing noises as it heats.

"... is it summoning flames inside the water?" she guesses, trying to peer into the spout. "That's dangerous, because it means you can't have the normal safeties against not summoning flames that intersect with something; you could turn it into a weapon pretty easily."

"No, it's ..."

Emily shakes her head. Normally she would love to explain electricity, but right now ...

"Can we just ... sit in silence, for a little bit? And then we can have hot —"

The words stop on the end of her tongue again.

"Hot, uh, sweet-and-slightly-bitter tree-spice milk and sugar drink?" she tries. "What, do you not have chocolate?"

"The Empire has all kinds of spices," Concordia automatically replies. "But I haven't heard of 'chocolate', no. I like a lot of teas, though. If it comes from trees, is it like cinnamon?"

"A little?" Emily hazards. "Only it's not so, uh, spicy? Or, it can be, I think."

She shakes her head.

"It's not important, you'll see for yourself soon enough."

She lapses into silence and watches the kettle, wrapping her arms around herself.