"--Do you have tea?" asks a blonde girl. "I'm doing shopping recon for a New Yorker and she wants tea, coffee might be better than nothing though."

Caio wanders in that direction. Doesn't take anything right away. "- this is an interesting setup?" he says.

Ooh, shiny! 

Not that Destiny is particularly desperate for caffeine - as Morty likes to say, she's banned from coffee because it makes her too powerful and she's bad enough without it - but she's probably a fan of anyone who's just going to spontaneously set up like that. And she would love some chocolate. Maybe she can convince Morty to trade a favour for it or something. 

She meanders over. "Hi! Wow, you're really organized." 

Ugh, Destiny is so social and he's exhausted. Morty follows her anyway, trying to hover in her shadow and look boring. 

To the blond girl: "I have a dozen packets each of Earl Grey, Chai, and Chamomile. Also a mana-heating moka pot on offer - designed for coffee, but could be repurposed for making tea with."

To the dark-skinned boy: "Take a seat, stay a while. Coffee and cookies are free if you listen to the sales pitch, and we all need to get to know people." 

To Destiny: "Thanks! I try. Interested in anything on offer?"

Another boy wanders over. Well, he affects wandering but he's rather making a beeline.

"I am always looking for trade and contacts! I'll gladly listen to your pitch. I also have tea, but let's not steal your thunder."

"--Oh, I remember you, how do you feel about selling your tea to New York."

"Positively! But we can talk later, let's not be rude to our lovely hostess."

She gives him a thumbs-up. 

"What are you looking to trade for?" she asks said hostess. 

Caio sits and takes a cookie - pockets it to have after dinner - and listens attentively.

She smiles slightly at the new boy. "Glad to meet you all, I'm Lily. And the pitch is this - I've got a kilo of chocolate, a kilo of cherry gummies, a kilo of coffee, a whole spice collection - you just know you're going to want salt and pepper with the reputed quality of the cafeteria food around here - pencils and rulers from outside the Scholomance that won't go squirrely on you near as fast as the local ones, and the piece de resistance, a stock of sixteen enhancement bracelets, four each for Blasting, Storage, Endurance, and Shielding. Endurance helps with fatigue, poison and wounds, shielding and blasting enhance the relevant spells to give you that extra edge on defense and offense - and we all know little edges add up - and of course Storage is for your mana capacity, each with a stunning pure-cut diamond in the center of a band of semiprecious beads, all woven together with yours truly's affinity for bracelet-making. I spent literally four years perfecting these so I would have something worth trading at the Scholomance, and now they're up for sale to all of you. I take payment in trade goods, storage gems, artifacts, and favors owed."

"Why are you doing it like... this... instead of just having brought the stuff you wanted to begin with?"

"Money - or in this case, salable trade goods of obvious value - can be exchanged for goods and services," Lily deadpans. "I expect I can get better in trade for my weight capacity by focusing on what I personally can do better than others. I'm indie, I don't have an enclave to watch my back - the contacts I make here will be worth almost more than the actual goods themselves. I probably won't break even on weight capacity, but I'm a slight girl, I have space to spend there that others don't."

"The bracelets do sound very nice." He probably can't afford them, probably it's just for upperclassmen, but she didn't shoo him when he reached for a cookie.

"What do you have to offer in exchange?"

"Um, right now not very much. The normal stuff everyone brings. And a water condenser but I think I want the water condenser at least till I know the people on my hall."

"Endurance and shielding sound nice. I've got all sorts of nice snacks that people will end up missing sooner or later. Cheetos, snickers, and so on. Also, enough precious stones to serve as the centerpiece for more bracelets."

"That's unfortunate, but I have enough stock that I might not run out before you have a chance to find something worth my time. I'd maybe let one go for a major favor, but to be blunt I don't know your word is good yet." 

She looks at Kevin appraisingly. "I'll trade you bars of chocolate and bags of cherry gummies for similarly-sized packages of your snacks at one to one, improve both our stocks' variety, and I'd be willing to let a single bracelet of your choice go for a dozen precious stones."

"Snack variety sounds good. But you haven't even seen the shiny rocks yet, what if they're especially bad or good shiny rocks? I'm not sure how good the bracelets are either, inconveniently assessing is not my affinity."

He's digging around in his backpack and-

-There's a variety, with a lot of opals and rubies. Slightly on the small side. "Not the opals, preferably, they like me."

She pulls out examples of her wire bracelets, one of each type. They all look good-quality, well-finished in black wire and inset with a dozen or so semiprecious stone beads each, save the storage bracelets which each have a single pinky-sized clear diamond trapped in a wire cage among the tigerseye. They don't have any mana invested at the moment, but the potential is there.

She looks over the rubies, assessing their clarity.

He investigates the bracelet too. The defensive one. Is it a good one? Who knows? But he's going to look like he knows. It feels like solid work to his vague magic-instinct, at least.

None of the rubies are perfect, and they're mostly on the small side, but he has a lot.

She's worked with flawed gems before. Not that she's going to let him get a good look at the shielding bracelet that's hiding under her shirt sleeve. 

"These are adequate. My choice of a dozen rubies and a bracelet of your choice is yours. I can bring out the others for comparison if you wish, I have similar ones in bronze and copper as well as black."

"Deal, bronze. Gear's a great investment and I can resell it if I have to, presuming that won't offend? Do they play nice with other enchantments?"

She puts her examples back and pulls out bronze examples of both Shielding and Endurance. "Shielding or Endurance? They can handle having another enchantment on the same wrist, but not two. A full set will play nice together but I wouldn't stack more on the same wrists. Resale's fine by me, though you can expect to have competition with what I make from those rubies." 

"Shielding, I'm better at offense than defense right now. And the resale idea is more just for when I start making my own things or if it decides it doesn't like me. Not nearly so practiced as you but I've done knives and an almost-mana-free flashlight that's not for sale and I'm feeling confident."

She smiles and hands over the shielding bracelet, putting the rubies into her shirt pocket with her left hand. "More luck to you on that. And the snack trade?"

They can do that too, quickly and efficiently.

He looks around at the other three who have been mostly silent for this. "Should we all introduce ourselves properly?"

"I'm Eliza Godfrey."

Destiny has stayed quiet during this, after waving off Destiny's question, because she's not incredibly interested in anything but the chocolate, which a) she doesn't have much to trade for, and b) the POINT is for Morty to do a ROMANTIC GESTURE but he is, of course, being oblivious to her attempts at subtext even when she's as blatant about it as she can manage. 

"I'm Destiny Williams!" she says brightly. "Lovely to meet you, Eliza! This is the love of my life, Mortimer Prescott!" 

"It's Morty." 

"Good to meet you." She's not going to advertise the depth of her attachment to Justinian just yet, it's unstrategic.

"Good to meet all of you, Eliza, Destiny, Morty. How's everyone's first day of school being so far?" 

"I'm from Chicago, so, not great."

"I heard about that. Very sad. Is it indelicate for me to offer you a chocolate bar about that?"

"No, I'd be grateful." She's going to keep it for trading instead of eating it, but that doesn't make her not grateful. 

She hands over a milk chocolate bar, 100 grams of pure sweetness. "And I'd like to talk to you privately once the trading is over, if you don't mind."

"Sure, I'm alright with that." 

"Um, I'm Caio," says Caio. He does not normally break out all the names. He will omit some. "Caio Paes Almeida."

Something's going on there with Chicago and Lily, but prying is rude. Does he say something? Does he not?

"I'm Kevin Astley. Light affinity, artificing. Morty and Destiny, do I sense a story there?"

"Good to meet you two as well. Bracelet affinity, artificing."

"Oh, that's convenient. Creative writing track, I haven't found a good one-word descriptor for my affinity."

Lying and saying that her affinity is weapons is a dumb plan. "Uh, my affinity's stealth and I'm doing languages. ...A story about what?" 

Kevin shrugs. "You seem to know each other, is all I meant."

"Well, she called him the love of her life out loud and in public and everything."

"Not exactly a brilliant observation, I know, really I was probing for some kind of social connection."

"Oh. I mean, we grew up together in the Oakland enclave. He heroically saved my life five times. That the sort of story you're hoping for?" 

"Yep! Nice. Sadly I don't have a similar story, except for how my mom kills mals just by thinking. Maybe Rico can tell me one, he's from Melbourne's enclave. What's Oakland like?"

"You want the honest answer? ...Kind of lame. It'll be better in a couple generations, I bet, just - it's pretty new and my grandparents' generation kind of bankrupted the whole clan, paying for the spells to get it built. The company's good, at least." She twinkles at him. "If I say so myself." 

"How sweet, you two. When's your anniversary?"

Morty rolls his eyes slightly. "I shouldn't think anyone celebrates anniversaries in here." 

Destiny elbows him. 

"September 5th!" she says brightly. "Well. That's the anniversary of the day he saved me from a blood-clinger and then I saved him from a swarm of shrikes. I guess we weren't official-official together 'till a couple weeks later, but, you know." 

"I think getting through another year is definitely something to celebrate. I know, I know, life is hard, but if you don't take moments for yourself now and then you'll burn out. Tell you what - I'll give you a chocolate bar now on the condition that you two make time to share it together when you both have a free moment. Fair enough?"

"Sure! Wow, that's really generous of you." 

Morty is SO SUSPICIOUS and is definitely going to be checking over that chocolate for poison or mind-control spells or something. He smiles at the girl, though, no sense antagonizing people on the first day. 

She smiles and sips her coffee and fishes out a chocolate bar and passes it to Destiny. "Here you go." 

(The chocolate is entirely unspelled and unpoisoned.)

"Awww, thank you! You're a sweetie." 

"I try. What was life like in Oakland for you two? Busy, I expect? Lots of drilling?"

One of the older Pisans has wandered over, enticed by the coffee's smell, which is much better than she's had in... probably two years, no one she knew brought anything good last year. She's hanging a step back, though; the merchant girl is giving sentimental gifts, which is too interesting to interrupt.

She waves at the Pisan. "I see you over there. Don't let my conversation hold you up if you're looking to buy."

"I may want to buy coffee, but I would like to try it, first, since you've offered. I did not manage to have anyone bring decent coffee in this year or last."

She fills a cup from the moka pot and offers it to the senior. "It's the real deal, have a try."

She eyes it excitedly and takes a deep breath, then takes a long sip. She bursts out, "Oddio-!", but she cuts herself off before she can say anything more in Italian.

She takes another sip before continuing in English. "This is lovely. How much do you have?"

"A kilo or so. Enough for a cup every day for months."

"I'll buy-" she stops herself. Considers. She really shouldn't just buy the whole lot... ah, what the hell, she can trade the spells she wrote herself. And she knows a good preservation spell that can keep it from going stale for months.

"Oria Calloconti, and I'll take the lot. And a blasting bracelet. I'll give you my shield spell for it - I wrote it last semester and it's what I'm relying on for graduation. Latin. But no trading it onward, even after I'm out."

A spell a senior just wrote recently may have too much mana draw for a freshman to use, but this is still a pretty lopsided deal in Isabel's favor.

She doesn't have Latin, but she does have French, and she'd have time to work on Latin...

"I'll give you everything less one pot for that price."

"I'd take... 800 grams, the bracelet, and a future favor. Take point on a tricky maintenance shift for one of my younger cousins, something on that scale."

She considers. 

"You have a deal."

"Excellent. What was your name?"

"I'm Lily. Pleasure doing business with you."

"Likewise. Good luck with your other sales."