"Karen Tiu," she says to Vernon. "Uh, do you think you're likely to care about girls' clothes at all? I'm kind of short."

She attempts to inform him, via facial expressions and telepathy and vibes or whatever, that 'kind of short' means 'I don't actually have any other clothes'.

Oh yeah no he totally caught all of the facial expressions and telepathy and vibes or whatever.

"Spare fabric's valuable no matter what shape it originally comes in," he tells her, gently, so she can be aware that expecting him not to immediately take literally everything he can carry out is naive to the extreme and that she should have secured herself something better, "But nah, I don't mind, I think a lot of people are going to be a bit short on things this year. I'd be a right tosser if I just crossed my arms and said 'no.'"

Which is to say, in subtext: so you were dumb, but I'm not going to do anything about it and you get a freebie because I'm nice. Please remember that I am in fact a nice guy.

"Oh cool! Thanks so much. It'd be good to have another outfit."

The subtext about how she should have secured a better deal for herself is going completely over her head. Partly because she's totally unprepared for almost everything social going on here, and partly because she already has dibs on Julia's current furniture and is mostly just trying her luck at getting more free stuff while she thinks she can.

She's absolutely going to die the first year, isn't she. Poor thing. Realistically speaking, he should not get attached or let himself feel sad, only get her room number so that when she does inevitably die in this cruel, unfair world of theirs, he has a good chance at raiding her stuff before anyone else can. But it does pay for maintenance kids to be able to get along, because while they are in a sense competing with each other, they're also going to be working together and relying on each other basically all the time. It is the only way any of the shitty work the enclavers don't want to do gets done with a minimum of deaths. It's just smart to try to whip the once-mundies into something resembling a proper maintenance crew.

This is what he tells himself, anyway.

"Yeah, I heard about Chicago. ... You're adjusting pretty well, considering this is all new to you, but do you want tips?"

"Yes! Absolutely." She STILL doesn't know what happened to Chicago or what it has to do with her, she should really figure that out, but it can wait until after tips.

"Okay so you're on the right track," he says, with a little wave around them. Doing this kind of stuff. "But you need to advocate and fight for yourself more. You can't expect people to accommodate or defend you, for things you need or from mals. We're all busy trying to defend ourselves and that's hard enough already. But good instincts, you found one of the best enclaves in the world and get to sort through the stuff they don't want by helping them do what they want, that's a damn good first day."

She nods seriously, despite having no idea what an appropriate level of advocating or fighting for herself would look like. Maybe he will elaborate on this??

Apparently he will! He has put a lot of thought into this.

"Clearly defined deals in advance and tangible gains traded at the same time are the smart way to go, be polite and make it a question of if you can. If they say no and it's not worth it even accounting for goodwill and enclave inflation, you're going to be busy enough that an excuse will be easy. And some people will try to screw you over, to get by one more day. Pay attention to people who keep the spirit of the deal over the letter, and be there and reliable for the ones that treat you fairest. Your priority is graduation, because that's going to be nasty, and people like us need to plan for it starting now, not junior or senior year. You need people to rely on to get out of here, that also want you to get out for reasons that serve them, too."

"...okay," she says, feeling like she's missing something. Possibly - no, definitely several things. "Do you have, um, an example reason?"

Oh, dear.

"... Generally they'll want to keep having help. Even when they're out of here and don't need it as much. And if they believe you'll be good for it, even outside where it's nicer, if you have actually been so unwaveringly dependable the entire time that they've known you that they don't think you'll book it the first chance you're out of Scholomance, they will want to get you out. For selfish reasons. Because you'll do something like guard duty for the next couple decades to keep their kids safe, for them, because they asked."

"Hm." Yeah there's definitely something social going on here that she doesn't get and probably doesn't have enough context for it to be possible to get, and she can't even put her finger on what specific thing it is, probably because it's lots of things. "I guess that makes sense."

"... Did anyone tell you about graduation?"

"...no, I'm getting the sense that I'm missing something there."

Ohhhhhh no.

"It's a euphemism, not a description," he sighs, while organizing space themed decorating materials that Julia might like. There are a couple piles, some for building desks or painting things, some just to be pretty on their own merits. There's going to be a lot of scavenging and scrounging to figure out how to make her artistic vision a reality. "The monsters we're all flinching at? It's not because of the school. They're here for us, because of us. And the very worst ones can't quite get to us, and there is only one way they can get in. But they can just sit and wait by the exit. For when we leave."

...hm. "So - we have to fight our way out, no teleport?"

"More like run as fast as possible with enough defenses to live long enough to make it to the exit before something gets you, but. Yes."

She chews on this for a few seconds, also looking for space-themed stuff that Julia might be able to use. 

"So - how does that work, in terms of how people usually get out? You said you couldn't do it alone, but running away as a team makes it easier?"

"Running away as a team with a defense strategy, yeah. Apes together strong or... some such. I don't know enough American pop culture for decent references, sorry."

"That's okay. You're British?" Oh man this school is multicultural enough that she shouldn't be assuming she has the accent right but she already said it and now she just has to hope it's right.

"The accent give me away?" he says, wryly. "Yeah. Manchester. Or, well. Audenshaw, but Manchester's who got me in here."

"Cool. - do you, um, know what happened in Chicago? Julia said something about it but I don't know what it was exactly."

"Uh." He lowers his voice, because he's aware that there are some survivors from Chicago here, he's been listening. "No. That's the big drama. We won't know until next year's batch of freshmen get brought in with explanatory letters. We do know that apparently the enclave is gone, though. And instead of all of the people that were supposed to be brought in from there, the spell for grabbing freshmen for Scholomance grabbed random mages who thought they were mundane. To fill out the roster."

"Oh," she says, taking a cue from him and further lowering her voice. "So - normally everyone who comes here is expecting it?"

"Yeah. Comparatively, you were screwed over, by not having forewarning and prep time." His voice returns to its earlier volume. "... But also comparatively, you got incredibly lucky, because even the bad odds here are better than the ones out there."

Nod.

"...thank you for the clothes," she says, quietly, sounding a lot more genuine and a lot less happy-go-lucky this time.