Masozi heads over to the group going for supplies, and then...lingers on the outskirts, sort of following them out of the cafeteria, because he's not quite sure how to ask about going along with them and being a lookout. And he doesn't really know any of these kids at all, yet. 

He glances around to see if he can spot Orion Lake. 

Yep there he is. Scanning the ceilings and peeping around corners ahead of the rest of the pack.

He has also been spotted. She does not give him a hard time about following them out of the cafeteria, but when they start going down the stairs she decides this has really gone far enough. "We're not going to the library or back to the dormitories or anything," she says, "we're going down to the senior dorms, and you don't really want to go there without an escort."

Yes, exactly, which is why instead of going by himself he's following them! 

"I can help keep a lookout," he offers. "I'm good at spotting mals - I pointed out out to Orion before so he could kill it." 

"The reason there are ten of us is so there are lots of lookouts, and we've got enough. We are going to another student's private dorm room, and he hasn't invited everyone in the whole school who wants to go exploring, just me and Zeke and Orion and Silas and people we can vouch for."

"Who are you, besides someone who tipped Orion off?"

That should be enough like a rebuff not to annoy Julia, who is currently their only connection to an enclave that did not just go boom, while also not being actually enough of a rebuff to burn unnecessary bridges with this guy she doesn't know. 

It'll be a little annoying if he can't even go in the dorm room, but he's not even mainly trying to get supplies, right now, just to get more of a sense for the school than a map alone can give him. 

"I won't go in their room then," he says to Julia, with a shrug. Also there are ten of them but most of them aren't even a little bit careful, and Orion is good but Masozi doesn't think he has the same talent for seeing mals, just killing them. 

"- My name is Masozi," he tells whoever-it-is who's asking. And then slips ahead past Julia, before she can say anything. "Hey, Orion! Want me to be in front and look for mals for you? I'm really good at spotting them." 

"- we're probably not even going to find anything. Do I know you?" What if he knows him and has forgotten his name, his mother made it clear that was very rude.

"I don't think you do. Look, kid, other people are as dangerous as mals, if you can't trust them. We don't trust you. Go away."

Masozi isn't offended at all. There are a lot of kids here and he can't be especially memorable.

He ignores Julia, though, since he doesn't have a better response for her inexplicable stupidness. He just addresses Orion. "Masozi. You didn't meet me for very long - remember the mal in the ceiling, the shimmery gas one? It was Lucy who came and got you, but I saw the mal first." 

...And apparently it's useful here to impress people, rather than staying unnoticed as much as possible, like he's always done before. 

He stretches out his not-looking as hard as he can, in all directions. "...There's something hiding at the bottom of the stairs, I think." He points. "Little one, though, s'probably not very dangerous."

Except to kids like THIS who aren't even LOOKING WHERE THEY'RE GOING and if they don't let him come he might just have to sneak down after them anyway because he doesn't want anyone to DIE on their FIRST DAY.

Orion blinks and charges down the stairs.

There's an - indeed quite small - corkscrew-y looking critter, apparently made of several bits of warped metal, smushed right up into the shadow in the corner where the last stair on the landing meets the wall. 

Well, it's not much but he stabs it anyway. Comes back up with it impaled on his knife.

"You can sense mals? Is that your affinity?"

"....Yeah. Guess so." That's a good way to not tell them about the part that will make people alarmed, and maybe it's more believable as Actual Magic than just pointing out that unlike most of them he looks where he's going. That's not in fact how he spotted the corkscrew-thing this time, but he normally wouldn't be trying that hard to feel for minds that far ahead, it burns a lot of mana. 

"You just want to trot around behind us telling Orion where everything is, and you understand that you are not invited to the dorm room?"

Masozi is still confused about her level of hostility, but going with them is better than not going with them. "Sure." 

"Cool. You're in. Don't come within ten feet of me. If you make yourself useful for three weeks I will personally acquire you some clothes that don't smell like garbage."

And she resumes her rudely interrupted journey down the stairs.

Following ten feet behind her makes this a lot more work, but Orion at least has the sense to go slowly and pause in especially risky places, and there really aren't that many mals around yet, especially not big ones. 

Mostly just by using his actual eyes, Masozi manages to spot some eyes watching the approaching students from another ventilation grate, and giant-mutant-moth thing wrapped around a burnt-out ceiling bulb, both before Orion sees them first and reacts. 

Wow, there are a lot of monsters around here. She's glad she's with a group this big. 

Her brain is silently singing, don't you know, you never split the party, clerics in the back, keep those fighters hale and hearty, the wizard in the middle, where he can shed some light, and you never let that damn thief out of sight....

She doesn't remember the rest of the words. Probably not gonna find them out any time soon. She's, uh, sort of the least wizardy person here? But she's still sticking as close to the middle as she can manage without looking weird.

Rebecca is as close as she can get to hanging off Zeke's arm without making it hard for him to move around and react if anything tries to land on his head, or hers.

The pair from Chicago seem reasonably content to stay at the back and keep their eyes peeled against being snuck up on from behind. 

Lysander is rather getting the impression that there will be approximately zero (0) opportunity to show off his cool moderately magic hammer with Orion Lake within shouting distance. That's all right; he's really just here to carry heavy things. "Don't worry," he murmurs to it, patting it fondly, as one does, "there will be plenty of things to fix soon enough, which I'm sure you'll do wonderful at because you are the best, yes you are." Low enough not to annoy the enclave kids, of course. Good minions are quiet. 

Zeke quietly thinks that Julia is being kind of mean but he definitely isn’t going to mention that when it might compromise Enclave Solidarity! Instead he cheerfully rambles on to Rebecca about every other thought that he’s ever had in his life, a category which includes the fact that she is pretty and cute and good and the fact that after they do this he’s going to paint his room ORANGE.

Vernon is politely on the edges, like a good little maintenance freshman. This puts him near Masozi, actually. It's not like anyone else wants to be near him (except Orion Lake, who doesn't count), and this sort of unwanted spot is what maintenance folks are for. The guy's obviously a maleficer from the outset, which probably makes him approximately as dangerous as the supply run itself? In theory, anyway.

In practice, he's confused. Who bullies their way onto a rather dumb supply run with enclavers who are making it as clear as possible that they don't want him here? What's he getting out of this? It's really unclear!

This confusion is not enough to stop being more wary than 90% of the freshman here, eyeing vents and dark corners and whatnot, because you don't actually trust your safety to someone else, but. It definitely does niggle at him.

Where on Earth does that kid propose to get orange paint in the Scholo - right, New York. They're actually more spoiled than the Parisians! He theoretically knew this and is somehow still surprised.

(His facial expression is that of someone who is mildly charmed by the idea. He doesn't look like he's keeping much of an eye out, either, because he's mostly listening for signs of danger.) 

They make it down to the senior dorms uneaten and Julia finds room 716A, which is double-wide and therefore the natural dumping point for the stuff the departing seniors didn't need for their graduation plans and that the younger students didn't want. There's a lot. Big thin sheet metal, which she picks out at once; she wants that for her new chrome-themed room. A full-length mirror that tints everything purple but otherwise seems fine. A bunch of mixing bowls. A quilt stitched, presumably, out of discarded clothing.  A silver teapot with a set of teacups, clearly an artificing project, whistling of its own accord despite not being on a burner (it's instead on a elegant white wooden desk), jars and jars of alchemy concoctions, presumably not particularly useful ones; two standing lamps, both of which look like they burn some kind of alchemy; candles, an enormous white plastic barrel, a box of fabric scraps, a pair of shoes that must not have fit any of the older kids, probably because they're tiny, and crates they'll have to go through by hand. 

"What's wrong with the teapot?" she asks the senior who let them in.

               "It was great until we ran out of tea, then it got really pissed off about that and instead of leaving like a decent teapot it just glued itself to the desk and occasionally spits boiling water."

"How'd you have tea in the first place?"

               "Some Asian kid brought it in, it wasn't enchanted but it was, you know, caffeinated, and very light, we traded for it."

"All right," says Julia determinedly. "Anyone want the assignment of figuring out whether we can get some tea and restore the teapot to its former glory? It'd be really nice to have a water source in - did we keep it in the library?"

              "Yeah."

It is mildly astonishing that Julia is being that practical but nobody can be an idiot all the time, not and live to age fourteen in the first place. 

"I think I saw someone talking about trading luxuries," she volunteers. "Justinian and I can follow up on it." The two of them are Former Enclavers (as far as these people know) with the Former part being no fault of their own, and can therefore be trusted with more than just grunt work. 

"Awesome, thank you! Chicago can share with us sometimes if you sort it out. Okay, let's go through these crates, I already know we're taking those big metal sheets, which we're going to use to build a desk and shelving that doesn't look like it got here from the 1880s - is any of that alchemical stuff polish -" she asks the senior. 

        "Uh, some of it's acid, I guess you could use it for polish - the teapot's happy enough with a soft washcloth and a bunch of compliments, when we've got tea for it -"

"No, for my walls, I want them to be shiny so I stop feeling like I'm living in a shipping container."

       "Didn't you bring art supplies?"

"Yeah, but at this point I'm kind of attached to a chrome aesthetic? Karen thought of it too, she said this place could look like a spaceship. Anyway, Zeke's gonna need my share of the paint if he wants his whole room to be orange. Which ones are acid - is this, like, a 'wear work gloves' acid or a 'apply only with magic' acid -"

        "Uh, these ones are fine with gloves, this one I'm not giving a bunch of freshmen, you'll hurt yourselves -" He indicates some jars and Julia puts them in the 'take' pile. "Work gloves'll be in Melvin's crate, he was alchemy and had lots of safety gear."

So Julia sets on Melvin's crate and in addition to the work gloves finds goggles and a thick cloth apron. "Okay, whoever agrees to polish the walls of my room until they shine can keep the gloves and goggles," she declares.

Vernon raises his hand, because his planned official track is alchemy and you don’t get a better opening than that.

Rebecca has no idea how valuable that is or how hard it is to polish things. She is probably not going to major in alchemy anyway. She looks at Zeke and doesn't speak up of her own accord.

Zeke does not really look like he thinks that she should do that! 

Julia moves on to another crate, which is full of empty bottles and jars, and a third, which is full of...pickles? "What do these do?"

      "Oh, they're edible, but they're so miserably salty that you can't get the taste of salt out of your mouth for the rest of the day."

She passes those over too. Fourth crate contains badly tattered clothes. "Zeke, maybe look through these for presents for Rebecca?" 

Fifth crate contains -

A RUG!!!!!!!!

"There is a God," Julia declares delightedly, "and He loves me. - is this cursed -"

         "It was meant to be a flying carpet but it doesn't fly, and it's really temperamental."

"That's fine. I'm taking it. I have a void floor and I hate it."

         "It's really temperamental, it wants you to like, do yoga on it and talk about your feelings."

"I know yoga and have feelings." 

        "Every day."

"So it's, like, a therapist? Honestly, more students here should have a therapist. I love it. It's just looking out for our mental health, and you're too unappreciative."

“I don’t super wanna give you, like, rags? But if there’s anything in that crate that you wanna have you can, like, take it. And the shoes look like they could maybe fit you if you wanna have more shoes,” Zeke says, to Rebecca. “Also I’m totally taking the quilt, the quilt looks awesome.”

Karen also moves towards the clothing crate, keeping an eye on whether anyone looks freaked out or like she wasn't supposed to do that. She picks up some items that strike her as interesting and holds them up for Rebecca to see. "Some of these could probably be patched, if you didn't bring anything else."

(Karen: also did not bring anything else.)

"Vernon gets first pick after New York's done, but I don't mind if the two of you take anything he doesn't want either," Julia says. She is aware that it's actually a big deal to not hold up your end of deals, around here. "Oh, and I guess I should find something for garbage heap kid, in case he does his three weeks and doesn't turn out to be a maleficer up to something evil, though I bet he will." She goes back to the clothes pile for things for garbage heap kid.

Huh! She honors her deals. He kind of wasn’t expecting that, but he’s pleased about it anyway. See, this is why it pays to be a spare minion, you get to learn who is good for the spirit of their deals instead of just the words.

Vernon, being a good minion, continues to be wallpaper. Wallpaper looking out for mals, of course, but still.

        "Garbage heap kid?" says the senior, who is doing pull-ups with a bar above their bed. He's very good at them.

"Uh, we got followed by this weird kid who just wanted to point out every mal around, he can detect them? I think he's maleficing, cause they're supposed to have bad vibes, right, but he also smells like a garbage heap and it's possible it's just that."

       The senior looks to Zeke and Silas and Orion for a perhaps more informed estimation of the situation.

Silas shrugs. "He seemed really weird."

Rebecca sorts through things. It's pretty dire, but if she can get fabric and sewing stuff she can sew and embroider it into passability. She is super taking the shoes.

“I dunno?” says Zeke to the senior. “I don’t wanna, like, be mean to him behind his back, if he’s just from a different culture or whatever.”

"He's good at finding mals apparently?" Orion remarks when people seem expectant. He's rummaging through random supplies without much focus.

Oh my god, Orion.

The senior, looking exasperated at all of them, swings down from the pullup bar. "The kid followed you here? Is he still here?"

"I mean, I doubt he wandered off on his own, he'll get eaten."

The senior steps outside to look for maybe maleficer kid.

Vernon probably doesn't want girls' clothes, but she feels like she should at least check. She looks around for Vernon and then realizes that she has no idea how to tell who Vernon is without asking. How do you ask in a way that doesn't sound stupid... 'who's Vernon' sounds bad somehow.... 'which one's Vernon' is even worse... 'vernon?' is ambiguous about what she's asking and also sounds kind of bad... oh!

"I don't think I've met Vernon?" Hopefully Vernon will take this as an opportunity to introduce himself?

Vernon isn't particularly offended by not being known, but it's not like Karen knows that. He perks up at his name, though, and looks attentive.

"Oh, hey. Vernon Durant. And you are?"

(And he can gently steer the both of them to be Out Of The Enclavers' way to quietly have this introduction, instead of being rude and thinking they're like the real people here.)

Masozi is still waiting outside the dorm room, back against the wall, going through his regular scanning-pattern. He's saving his mana by only doing it visually - he's got a pretty good position for that - but at this point he seems to be holding back an entire family of something spiky with too many eyes. They're very interested in coming down through the ceiling and he is burning through way more mana than he would prefer persuading them to, instead, not do that. 

He's very relieved when an older-looking kid pokes his head out! 

"Mals up there," he says, cheerfully enough, and points. "You'll have spells to kill them, yeah?" And he releases his push on their tiny but irritatingly stubborn minds. 

The older kid mutters something and fries them without much apparent effort, and then turns his attention back to Masozi, very coldly. "Get the fuck out of here, and stay off the New York freshmen. We will avenge them and we will be pissed about it."

Masozi stares at the older student blankly. "I– what?"

Then the contents of his words catch up and he's actually kind of angry, though this doesn't show much; if anything, he looks calmer and less scary, since less of his full attention is going toward situational awareness. He folds his arms and meets the senior's eyes, levelly. 

"Look. I dunno what you thought I was doing, but I came down here because that girl who wanted the rug wasn't looking where she was going at all and at least two of the others didn't know about magic until today and I didn't want anyone to die!" 

"Did I fucking stutter. New York does not consort with maleficers, I do not have time for this shit, and you are lucky I am letting you run."

Masozi does not have the slightest idea what this guy is talking about! 

He is maybe going to ask...someone else. Someone less shouty. He really doesn't like being threatened, and he doesn't-like it in a way that makes it awfully tempting to do something about it, but it's clearly not going to help his cause in the long run to make even worse enemies of this stupid enclave full of stupid people. 

He does not allow himself to look even slightly perturbed, just turns and walks casually away and up the stairs. 

(While extending every single sense he has in search of mals, because right now he is extremely not in the mood to let them come within ten feet of him, and at least trudging up eight flights of stairs while fuming lets him build enough mana to mostly cover it.) 

New York senior stomps back in. "He's definitely maleficing. You kids need to trust your instincts. Something seems off, someone's giving you bad vibes...being a bit of a dick to a random person is much less of a risk than letting a maleficer follow you around learning who he can peel off."

Julia puts the boys' clothes back. "I did tell him to fuck off! But he was really insistent and I didn't want to be, like, a bitch -"

"Be a bitch," the senior says, and jumps back onto his pullup bar. 

"Okay, mom," says Julia, but the senior shoots her a look more withering than her mom is even capable of, so she cuts that out. 

Silas is meanwhile sorting through New York's junk for the stuff the other enclavers requested. Chloe had wanted a sheet stripped off a graduating student's bed, to hang below her void ceiling, which freaks her out, and had also laid claim to some beanbags stitched together from spare fabric and stuffed with more spare fabric, which will be nice for hanging out in her room for study groups. She'd also expressed an interest in any excess art supplies, especially paint and stencils, for a mural on her wall. Magnus had requested a bright and reliable desk light, a better door lock, and some bookends that his books would like. Emma had wanted a quilt too, or if there weren't enough quilts to go around a box of fabric scraps she could get someone to quilt for her, and a well-behaved hairbrush and a light strip if available. Bennett had asked for a bunch of extra shelving, things he could use for padding to make his desk chair ergonomic, and at least two extra pillows. 

"What do these lights run on?" Julia asks the senior even though he's quite unreasonably pissed at her and is probably going to answer rudely. 

          "Alch oil, the good ones burn a couple tablespoons a day, the crappy ones will go through quite a lot of it. Should be in that crate."

"Spaceships are brightly lit," Julia says reflectively. "What I really want is a mirror with a light strip around it, so I can do my makeup, but I might need to make that."

"Do we have a way of cutting the metal sheets into new shapes, or do we need to be figuring out a solution there, too?"

How do you even cut metal, do you use, like, specialized circular saws? She has a saw, but she's pretty sure it's for wood and not metal. She's not seeing any circular saws here. They're also gonna have to fasten it together, if they want to make a desk, which - what is that gonna take, welding? She doesn't know how to weld things. But Julia seemed very confident that this was doable, so probably there's something here.

(Wow, she sure does seem weirdly confident that she can build a desk if she figures out what the right tools for it are and how people use them. That seems completely unwarranted, but maybe her earlier confidence that she couldn't build anything ever was also unwarranted? Probably they'll find out.)

"Does anyone already have a good solution for metalshaping or should we be looking for one?" she asks more loudly than Karen did, looking mostly at Lysander, who seems to be carrying some tools.

"I can't cut metal in precise rounded shapes yet," Lysander says, "unless you folks have a really nice saw, but those sheets look thin enough that if rectangular shapes are adequate we can definitely break 'em," he mimes marking a line and bending them back and forth several times, and then, patting his trusty spiked tool which he's hoping will hold him until he can start collecting things out of supply cabinets, "and I can punch holes for nails." This is more a summary of the procedure he would actually execute to make precise straight line cuts on sheet metal, there's also some magic and extra steps, but he figures they want a general idea and it's the minion's job to execute details. 

Oh thank God, someone who knows what they're doing. "I think spaceships can have rectangular furniture," she says, hoping this sounds uncertain enough that it's clearly an attempt at offering interior design brainstorming and not an attempt at telling Julia how she should decorate her room. "Especially if we could sort of do - a rectangle with some trapezoids on the sides that sort of hug you a bit, I feel like that could have a sci fi battle station vibe?"

Oh wait that sounds much harder than just a normal rectangle, maybe she should have thought of a case for normal rectangles as spaceship-y instead. Uh. She can help Lysander hold stuff when he's working to offset the inconvenience she possibly just created, maybe??

"Yeah, all right," says Julia generously, "we can do rectangles and trapezoids. Though the edges should be sanded down enough I can't cut myself by accident while I'm doing yoga - does New York have a sander," she asks the senior -

"Not right now, they're nasty when they get moody. Someone in artificing'll get it mid-semester and you'll have, like, a week."

Fortunately for Karen('s sense of guilt), he doesn't seem terribly concerned about the prospect of trapezoids, which do not involve any curves, and is nodding agreeably. The more complex the desk slash art installation, after all, the more chance to find out how competent the rest of these aspiring maintenance folks are before he's figuring out who to trust to watch his back in the ductwork, so long as it doesn't get so out of hand they all end up spending way more mana than they get hauling the materials up the stairs. 

Oh boy, no sander. Okay. "We can bend the outward facing edges," he suggests, "so they're rounded instead of sharp." 

Julia smiles at him. "Sounds good. All right, by the time we get all this stuff up to the freshmen dorms it's gonna be nearly dinnertime, let's get moving." She picks up one pillow, herself.

No time like the present within Orion Lake's field of view, specifically, to grind mana by carrying heavy things up eight normally very hazardous flights of stairs!

He will start refilling a well-behaved necklace gem with that activity for now, he thinks, he hasn't been able to get his hammer to hold mana yet and suspects it'll take a great deal more babying. Whatever is the heaviest thing he can get a shoulder under which probably means awkward to pick up with only two hands even if it'll be fine once settled in a comfortable carrying position... somebody here probably has a sense of efficiency and can make that happen. Vernon, maybe? Vernon definitely has a vibe of being on the ball about Silent Helpful Coordination. Lysander arranges stuff into a suitable pile, points some body language at it, shoots his fellow minion a hopefully meaningful glance. 

Rebecca finishes tying on the shoes, bundles up her clothes stash, and takes one end of the rug.

 - oh, Julia should hold the rug too so it doesn't think she doesn't like it. She drops the pillow and takes the other end. "I love you," she tells the rug. "You're the best thing that has ever happened to me, and a lot of really nice things have happened to me. Once, someone came up to me in the street to say I should be a model."

“Those shoes are really pretty!” Zeke says to Rebecca, who he probably shouldn’t try to carry up the stairs. “Or, like, not in a way where they were really pretty before you put them on, but you’re super pretty! So they’re super pretty? I dunno.”

He is going to make up for not carrying Rebecca by carrying ALL of the things. - actually he is only going to carry some of the things, his armspan is only so accommodating. He is going to carry all of the things that reasonably fit within his armspan.

Vernon is totally on board with Silent Helpful Coordination! He catches Lysander's look and is there to help near immediately. Here he is, assisting with carrying stuff.

"Thank you! I might draw on them later to make them prettier if I find a good pen for it."

“I, like, totally have pens! You should have one of my pens.”

Julia exchanges looks with Silas which mean that Zeke is being completely ridiculous and they're not allowed to say anything because you never criticize an enclaver around outsiders.

The senior seems less bound by that. "If you get her pregnant I'll tell your dad and I bet he'll send you a cursed care package," he says, herding them out the door with their armsfull of stuff.

Eep.

“Fraaaaaaaank,” complains Zeke, who knows this senior’s name, and then he is ushered out.

... he does not know how to reassure Rebecca that he could borrow abortion pills from the stockpile and stuff and also that it’s not like they’re even going to have sex, like, unless she wants to - he half hides behind his large stack of carried items and starts heading up the stairs.

"I should probably have a no-shoes rule in my room, right?" Julia croons to her rug. "You don't look like you'd like people stepping on you in nasty shoes they've been running all over the Scholomance in. Only the thing is, you're not supposed to go around barefoot in case there are mals that will bite all your toes. And I am willing to risk my toes for you, but if I get them bitten off I'll get blood all over you! Maybe I can have one set of indoor shoes and one set of outdoor shoes, and a shoe rack at the door to change between them. Or maybe you can help me out with the mals - do you have any way to let them through you so they fall into the Void?"

The rug, being a rug, does not answer; she'll get her answer the first time a mal has a go at her in her room.

Karen has a box that was carefully unpacked into other boxes and the repacked to be full of building supplies and space-themed decorations. She still doesn't know how mana generation works and is kind of expecting, without thinking about it, that it either fills up whenever you sleep or slowly regenerates naturally over time, but she is feeling a bit less weirdly hollowed out than she did when she first arrived.

"So, uh, how does objects having opinions work, are all magic objects like that?" she asks the group in general, because this seems important and it's not like she's really trying to hide that she was sort of metaphorically born two hours ago in this area specifically.

Vernon is carrying things, but doesn’t feel like what he’s carrying is very worthy of narration. He’s convenient wallpaper, nobody cares how heavy or awkward this bundle of building supplies is for him. But the answer is ‘very.’

“Generally speaking, yeah. Goes off their nature and what they’re used for, with variance like for people,” answers Vernon, “Ordinary objects can pick up opinions from hanging around a bunch of mages, too. Scissors tend to have a bit of a bloodthirst to them, it’s why they tend to go rogue so much.”

"Do... all objects here just come to life at random times, then?" 

This is probably a stupid question but that seems like IMPORTANT INFORMATION if it isn't.

"Not all, but you can't predict in advance for sure that one won't. This rug is going to love Julia," Eliza predicts, managing her own Something.

They get the stuff up to Julia's room. Eight flight of stairs are a lot to walk and there's a couple creepy things that run out at their ankles on the way but Orion handles it and they all make it up, sweaty but none the worse for the wear. Julia's pretty sure she built some mana from that after all, even though she doesn't need it. 

"Okay!" she says, chipper. "We'll reconvene after dinner for decorating! You can bring a friend if they're really cool."

"What counts as really cool?"

She counts options off on her fingers. "Is willing to bribe their way in with lemonade or soda for everyone to eat while we work, has some snazzy star decorations they're offering to the project, has an extremely useful affinity like creepy maleficer guys' while not being a creepy maleficer, is a dude and really hot and from an enclave my parents won't make faces about, can sell me nice slippers to wear in my room so I don't trouble my wonderful rug, has seen all of the seasons of Friends and has good opinions and is my size so we can trade outfits, wants to do my history homework."

"I got some slippers, I don't know if the girl who gave me them has more though."

"Ooooh!" Julia examines the slippers. "These are perfect," she declares. "Who'd you get them from?"

"Her name was Lucy! She has a twin brother who was dressed like her but didn't say anything. They're spider silk, they have spiders for it."

"Well, you can tell them they're invited to decorating, if you want!"

"Okay!"

"It's practically dinnertime, now, we should get back to the cafeteria so we can get a good spot in line. There's not room for all of you at New York's table but I'll round you up afterwards." And Julia trots off towards the dining room in a very good mood, after kissing her rug good-bye.