"You poor thing," Ranara repeats. "But things are set up all right in the Tower, right? I hear the hertasi fuss over everybody from Urtho on down, they'll make sure you have what you need..."

Ma'ar isn't sure what to say so he just nods, his expression carefully neutral. (The hertasi are one of the biggest reasons he keeps his Thoughtsensing open all the time, they're so quiet and he hates having anyone sneak up on him, even a lizard smaller than he is.) 

"What sorts of things are you going to study besides magic? Any other Gifts? Academics?" asks Ranara, leaning over to stir the stew.

"Mage-gift and Mindspeech," Ma'ar says, a bit haltingly. "I need to do reading and math better. Azabel helped today." He has to pause a lot to retrieve words, but he's a lot more confident in his vocabulary than he was before he had a chance to check all of it with someone. 

"He's really good at math, and faster at reading than most anybody," Aza mentions. "Not as fast as me but I wasn't trying to learn it in a new language."

"Congratulations, that's high praise," says Ranara.

Ma'ar doesn't know what the correct response is to that either! He bobs his head shyly and gives Azabel an uncertain look. 

:You can say 'thank you'? - if that's what you were wondering about?:

Ma'ar isn't really sure if that's what he was wondering about, but he nods. "Thank you." He's feeling kind of overwhelmed, but if he wants to study at a huge school constantly full of people, he needs to practice being less jumpy around strangers. Or at least showing it less. 

"Oh, don't mention it," says Ranara. And then she asks Aza about how she's doing and what she's been reading and Aza replies chattily till they all have stew.

Ma'ar feels like it would probably be polite to join the conversation more, but he's hungry and also increasingly exhausted. He eats in silence and listens, asking Aza in Mindspeech when he doesn't catch a word they're using. 

She will translate helpfully and when dinner is over she will offer to walk him back to the tower. "Since you probably don't know the way that well yet."

Ma'ar thinks he could figure it out, he has a decent sense of direction, but it's dark out and he's exhausted and appreciates the offer, so he agrees and follows Azabel. 

She leads him back to the Tower. It's fairly well lit, but she steps carefully anyway. She's kind of wondering if she should have sent him off sooner and he only stayed to be polite, or, contrariwise, if the rude person he has for a roommate is so unpleasant that she should have tried to get him permission to stay overnight, but - she doesn't want to overthink it. She does ask, "Are your other roommates nicer?"

This is yet another question that Ma'ar has no idea how to answer, so he just shrugs. "I've had worse." 

"You can probably change rooms if you want to."

"Do people do that? I - dunno if it'd be better." 

"I've never lived in the tower but I bet people do that! You could ask the hertasi." She cannot imagine a hertasi hearing "I would rather live in a different room" and not immediately responding "ah, I see, I have just the place".

"Mmm," Ma'ar says, noncommittally. The trouble is that all the questions he wants to ask, to figure out what's safe, are in themselves things he's not sure it feels safe to ask about, and also it seems very hard to communicate it to Azabel, it keeps feeling like she's answering a slightly different question from the one he expected or meant. 

"I could ask for you if you want?" She has no idea how to guess what he is and isn't going to be timid about.

"If you want to." Azabel's lived here her whole life, probably she knows how to ask for things in a way that doesn't offend someone or make them mad, and if not then maybe they won't be mad at him. Aza's position here is a lot less tenuous than his, maybe it makes sense that she's less worried about it. 

"I will then." In the tower she walks him all the way back to his room. She hands him all the math he's been working on in case he wants to go over it.

"Thank you." He does want to look at it again, although maybe not here, he could look for somewhere to hide out of sight of anyone. 

The boy from earlier is home still, along with another roommate; they're sprawled on the opposite bottom bunk, playing a game, but turn to look speculatively at Ma'ar and Azabel, and then the first boy starts up a singsong rhyme about boys and girls kissing, except he replaces kissing with 'figuring', making his friend burst into gales of laughter. 

It's not like this is actually all that threatening, but Ma'ar still sorts of curls up. He has no idea how to interact with it, except that he can tell it's not friendly laughter, not toward him. 

She makes a derisive noise - further acknowledgment than that seems unwise - and bids Ma'ar good night and lets herself out, looking for hertasi as she heads for the elevator.