Gideon shows up very quickly thereafter - Ellyn hasn't seen her yet today, which isn't unusual. Ellyn didn't hear her entering the archives, which also isn't unusual, nor did she hear Gideon's approach.

In fact, the first sign that Gideon hasn't somehow left the planet today is when jumps down from wherever she'd been lurking to land quietly next to Ellyn. 

She promptly starts looking at the book spines. "What's the study plan for today?" she asks, teasingly. There's a few books (ones she's probably not supposed to have) peeking out of her small backpack.

"Bones, Gideon. Same as yesterday." Judging from the stack, specifically she's starting to shade from construct programming to wards, with a collection of the letters of Mathias Nonius and some of his contemporaries to break things up.

"Well, luckily I found just the books for that..." Being unable to perform necromancy hasn't stopped Gideon from studying it (nor from trying, repeatedly and sometimes messily), and she plops next to Ellyn and pulls out one of the tomes in her bag - 

- One she is absolutely definitely not supposed to have. Apparently she's figured out some method or another of breaking into the locked parts of the library; appropriately, she's holding (carefully, with gloves on) a very, very old book, a work journal penned by one of the Ninth's early necromancers and ward specialists.

"Is that- paper?"

"Make sure you wear your gloves."

"You really shouldn't have this."

Not that that stops her from putting her gloves on and taking the book.

"What the nuns don't know, won't hurt me." She settles down with her own thoroughly illicit reading material. 

There's lots of things the nuns don't know that could hurt them. But at least for tonight, Ellyn can put that aside.

Heavy thoughts aren't good for reading, after all, and these books deserve their full attention. 

Ellyn scratches notes on her pad of flimsy as she goes, occasionally muttering to herself under her breath about some technical point or other.

Gideon takes fewer notes overall, doesn't mutter - but she's pretty clearly absorbed.

Well yeah. Not like she can use any of these theorems. Still, Ellyn much prefers these moods over when Gideon wants to run around and hit things.

After a while of this, she pulls out one of the knucklebones she carries and frowns at it, causing it to dissolve into fine white powder. This she begins carefully sprinkling out, in one of the patterns the journal referenced. Theory is all well and good, but perfection takes practice. (A small drop of blood leaks out of her nose as she works.)

Gideon pauses and raises her head to observe this, brow furrowed in concentration - 

Then she flips a chunk of pages back in her book, scrawls something out on flimsy, and passes it to Ellyn once she seems at a stopping point - a comment on technique, and reference notes for other versions of that pattern, later developments on it. 

"...Thanks."

"No problem."

"You've been through these already?"

"I got in last night."

"Nothing better to do, huh?"

"Aiglamene put a fancy new lock on the weapons room. Figured if I was gonna spend an hour on wards and locks and all I'd spend it over here instead."

"Of course that's your motivation."

"I would've gotten in sooner or later anyways. It's important to switch back and forth and all." She says this with all the lofty wisdom a ten year old can muster, which is certainly far more than a nine year old's (in her not particularly humble opinion).

Ellyn huffs. "Only because you don't care about anything."

She frowns a little bit. "I do too!" 

"Then why don't you concentrate?"

"Switching back and forth's how I concentrate! And it's unhealthy to do all one thing. Aiglamene says the brain works better if the body's in good order, and vice versa. And I checked 'cause that sounded like an excuse but the medical book said so too! And it's been working. I do half day with Aiglamene and half day in the library and I've been reading faster and thinking faster and getting strong faster. And I switch among a bunch of stuff so I'm not just getting one muscle really really really bulked up, I'm getting all of them, which is what you need to win. And this way I don't need any total do nothing rest 'cause my brain rests when my body's working, and my body rests when my brain's working, and my arms rest when my legs are working and my memorizing rests when my synthesizing is working. I need way less sleep now too." She has her arms crossed, defensively, and she's speaking quickly enough that Ellyn would have to shout over her to get a word in edgewise.