Shannon is nominally trying to memorize the school blueprints, and what she SHOULD be doing is looking for the kid who's with the Sacramento enclave so she can hand over 20kg worth of gear and stop carrying it everywhere, but in fact she's mostly busy being very overwhelmed. There are so many people! She hasn't been in a space with this many people at once since she was ten! 

The new arrival's voice startles her, and she jumps. "- Oh! Sorry. Hi." 

"No need to apologize. This is all a bit overwhelming. Did you not get a copy of the blueprints before?"

"No. Uh, my parents didn't go here." 

"Oh, that makes sense. Is there anything you know you don't know that you'd like to ask about?"

Shannon considers this. "- How do we find out our class schedule? Is there, uh, anyone I need to tell that I want to do alchemy track, or does the school just know?" 

"The school will slip a note with your homeroom under your door overnight, you'll get your initial schedule there when you look away from your desk, you get most assignments from the school that way. You can adjust your schedule a little to have what you want before you submit it."

"Huh. Why do they do it that way instead of just putting the class schedule under our doors to start?" 

"That's a good question, it would be easier to compare schedules that way, and you want to do that before trying to modify yours so you have an idea of what classes are at the same times."

Nod. "And then do we have homeroom again every day with the same people? Or just on the first day?" 

"I think it's just once per term but if I'm wrong I expect it'll be on your schedule. It'll be first thing in the morning, even before breakfast."

"Thanks!"

...And, wow, she must be nervous because she's really falling down on her friendly small talk right now. "I'm Shannon, by the way. From Vancouver, Canada. Where are you from?" 

"Mother and I live near Banff. Nice to meet another Canadian."

Nice! They have Something In Common! This is apparently an important component of Making Friends, which Shannon's parents tried to give her extensive advice on! 

"Oh, cool! That's not even that far from us - um, in the grand scheme of things, I mean, Canada's huge and all. Ummm, and - your name is...?" 

"I go by Ribo, it's technically short for Ribosome but that's a bit of a mouthful."

Shannon giggles. "Ooh, wow! Is one of your parents a biologist? ...Uh, my dad has a mundane job, he graduated a mundane med school and he's a university prof - that's actually how I got a spot here, he knows someone from the Sacramento enclave who's got a side gig as a biology prof at UC Berkeley... Anyway, so he made me memorize his textbooks too." She giggles again. "Not that it was much of a hardship!" 

"Mother has an affinity for biomancy, she's self-taught on biology but she keeps up with the literature."

"Oh wow, that's really cool!" If Shannon survives she is absolutely following up on that. Banff - in Alberta, right... And she's pretty sure there's not an enclave there.

She puts on her best Making Friends smile. "So you're an independent as well, then? How did you get a spot? I just had to carry in a backpack of gear for someone in Sacramento - I'm small for my age, I had lots of extra weight - and it included some healing potions I made. Apparently that's a pretty good deal?" 

...aaaaaaaaaah that was way too many words, she's supposed to say as few words as possible and Give Nothing Away but it's really hard to do that AND make friends at the same time... 

Ribo looks slightly discomfited by the question. "Mother made the arrangements I'm not sure of the details."

Oh no now she's made it awkward! Apologizing too much is awkward too, though. 

"...Um, anyway, what track are you going for? I'm doing alchemy." 

"I'm doing artifice, my affinity for wire lets me use this enchanted wire multi tool mother helped me commision." She gestures with the arm wrapped in wire.

"Oh, nice! That seems pretty useful. Um, is artifice track dangerous, though? My dad thought it might be." 

"A bit, the workshops tend to be in low levels so there's more risk of Mals and if you mess up too much the school will send your failed projects to eat you. The same thing can happen with Alchemy though, if you mess up an alchemy assignment the school might dump your mistake on you. Either way you have to mess up pretty bad for that to happen."

"Right. ...I guess my dad warned me about alchemy being really dangerous too, but I - well, I'm not that worried, I feel like I understand it decently well and I know how good I am? And I guess you'd maybe feel the same way about artificing, if your affinity's more that way?" 

"Yeah, I'm pretty confident, and worst case scenario it'll be an exciting way to die."

Shannon thinks she would much rather die in a boring way - it sounds so embarrassing to have everyone paying attention to you while you're getting yourself killed - but this doesn't seem like a helpful friendship-building thing to say. 

"Right. Uh, what languages do you have?" 

"English, Mandarin and Lojban. What about you?"

"- Uh, I'm native in English and French - well, Canadian French - and fluent in Mandarin. I picked up Spanish and Italian and Portuguese after that, since they're, um, not that different from French. I can read Latin and Greek but, uh, not sure I could have a conversation in those, not like I ever had a chance to practice." 

"That's a good mix as long as you know them well enough to learn spells."

....She's not worried. 

Probably it would sound really stuck-up to say that, though? 

"I - guess so? I think if I'm willing to work hard I can handle spells in all of those." 

"That's good then, I know some people take on more than they can handle but it sounds like you didn't make that mistake. What's your affinity?"

"Healing!" Shannon beams about this. Maybe healing isn't the most useful affinity but she does definitely feel that it's objectively the most interesting. 

"Oh cool, that's a useful affinity, people need healing a lot in here. You might want to talk with the nurse at some point. I also have some of Mother's spells and at least the diagnostics might be useful to you if I can translate them into a language you speak, or as part of a collaboration if you want to test a spell or potion."

"Neat! Yeah, that seems worth discussing. And I'm totally planning to talk to the nurse at some point, I just - figured it'd be more useful to her once I have more spells so I have anything to trade her." 

"That makes sense, hopefully this one will last longer, I heard that the last one died in less than two months."

"Yeah, it seems like a rough gig, being the only mundane in here!" It seems VERY UNFAIR but probably saying that will make her sound naive and idealistic, neither of which are good survival traits in the Scholomance. "It'd be smart to try to keep her alive as long as possible, though, I think? Like, she's the only adult in here at all, she's going to...know some things we don't, just from having life experience, plus she'll know all sorts of medical stuff." 

"From what Mother has said the Scholomance suffers from a deficit of cooperation. Not that she'd actually say that. It's hard to change that though because some of the stuff in the graduation hall is almost impossible to kill so cooperating doesn't really help there and that bleeds into how people act the rest of the time."

Shannon blinks at her. 

"Uh, my understanding of tactics is that - even if you can't kill something, you can still distract it or hold it off better if you've got a group working together? Is that not true with really powerful mals, or something?" 

"As Mother tells it surviving graduation is about momentum. If you stop to hold off a powerful Mal it's more likely you'll be fighting more than one before long. That's why alliances are usually small."

That sounds stupid. 

- saying that out loud would make her sound even stupider, though.

"Right. That makes sense." 

"You don't have to agree with everything I say. Mother said what she said to convince me to prioritize myself at the expense of everyone else. It's possible she lied or distorted things."

"Uh, right. It does - seem like that's sort of how things are done here." Which sort of makes sense but that doesn't mean Shannon has to like it. 

"I'd like to change it, I'm just not sure how."

"Mmm. It - seems hard." She giggles a little, even though it's really not even slightly funny. "And I guess the prerequisite is, you know, not dying in the first term." 

"Well, hopefully we can both do that. On a less heavy topic what projects are you working on at the moment?"

"I haven't properly started anything yet - I need to make a run to the alchemy supply room before I'll have much in the way of reagents to work with. I think first priority will be making up a gallon or so of my mouthwash potion - it keeps your teeth in perfect condition without needing to brush them, and it's quick and easy to make, I just couldn't spare the weight to bring in any." For herself. Raleigh is set for the next six months, if he sticks to 5ml once a week. 

"That sounds useful, I'll have to think about trading for that. I expect a lot of people didn't bring toothpaste or else ran out."

"Yeah! That's part of why I prioritized inventing it. I could probably muck with it a bit to get a toothpaste consistency, but why bother, if you can skip the actual annoying brushing part and, like, needing to make a toothbrush last four years. ....Huh, though I wonder if an artificer could make a magic toothbrush? Probably not the highest priority for healing-related equipment, I guess. I do want to talk to the nurse about what sorts of potions she thinks would be handy." 

"I'm not sure how much she'd know right now. You might be better talking to an upperclassmen about what kind of healing people usually need, though maybe an upperclassmen has already talked with her."

"Maybe! Yeah, I should ask her. Uh, do you actually - know any upperclassmen? I guess I could ask for an intro to the Sacramento enclave older kids but I haven't actually seen them around anywhere." 

"I've said hello to a couple but they didn't seem interested in long conversations. Being associated with an enclave is definitely an advantage there."

"Well, maybe I can make friends with some kids in our year who have older siblings, or something." 

"That's also probably a good route. I didn't think of that."

"I...feel like it's awkward to ask if people have siblings, though. At least when I don't know them very well. Because they might've, uh, had siblings before, who, you know. Didn't make it." 

"That's a good point, I expect it'll come up if you know someone for long enough."

"Yeah, probably." 

Shannon fidgets with the hem of her shirt. She's feeling pretty out of small talk openings, at this point. 

"Hopefully I'll see you in class or at least in the cafeteria."

"Yeah! It was nice meeting you. It's good to know another Canadian." 

"It's been good meeting you too."