Mal has shown up early to breakfast -- on the theory that there probably aren't mals lurking on the very first day -- and claimed an entire tray of blueberry muffins, hauling it over to a well-placed table.
He might share, if people sit with him and ask nicely. Or if they barter with him. Or if they threaten him. Who knows! It's a mystery.
Tomonori will come investigate the muffins. He smiles politely and briefly at Eliza.
"Hello. Do you mind if I have one of these?"
"Might could spare it. You musta spent half your weight quota on manners, huh?"
"No. Manners don't weigh anything, that's why everyone should bring them. I'm going to check these for poison."
And he does, reciting the spell he memorized for it.
"That's okay. It doesn't help you stay alive anyway, that's what spells are for. Do you know any good ones?"
Non-poisoned blueberry muffin!
"Yeah, we can swap. I can write some for you if want, or I have some in Classical Chinese you probably haven't heard of."
"I ain't in the business of learnin' Chinese. Tell you what, though, you help us nail down a room in the library, you can hang out in it an' write to your heart's content."
"I'm good at divination. Identifying what something is, if it's hard to tell, or detecting things that are hard to see, or sometimes finding things, but you can usually just find them without wasting mana if you're smart enough."
"Now that sounds like the sorta thing you could get some use outta. You runnin' with a crew already?"
"No. I talked to some interesting people, but no one who could complement me. I met someone who had some great ideas about killing mals- maybe messing up the whole food chain. No way to do it yet, though. Did you meet anyone who's good at fighting or warding?"
Lissa wanted a muffin. This boy took all the muffins. She comes in in time to hear that they're not poisoned, at least, though she still takes out her Swiss army knife.
"Do you mind if I poke mine, just to check?" she asks. That's what you should do, right?
"Hello, Mal, what can I do to get one of those tasty-lookin' muffins, Mal," he suggests.
-sure, Mr. I-Left-All-Mine-At-Home.
"Maybe this is the no-manners breakfast table," Tomonori suggests.
"You can decide what the next spell I write is, and I'll share it with you."
"Drive a better bargain, friend, that's worth more than a blueberry muffin. That'll buy you in to our little jaunt to stake out space in the library."
"Oh, okay. Thank you. Um. I have-
Some paper? For a muffin."
Mal, who has just made someone pay him for the privilege of doing him a favor, is smug but not so smug as to turn down free paper. He accepts it and forks over a blueberry muffin.
Are those muffins free or for trade? She'd been eyeing them from the breakfast line and it looks like the girls just grabbed some, but the Asian boy handed over some paper for them. Well, one way to find out. "Hey, what are you handing out muffins for?"
Blueberry muffin! And library friends! The simple joys in life.
Tomonori will sit and eat with Mal, if that's fine with him. And peer at this Swiss Army knife to see if there's anything magical going on while he waits to see what the new girl does.
Lissa's knife is very nonmagical, as she was advised.
"Nice to meet you, Mal," she says. "So are you trading, or can I have a free sample?"
Daria has her own food and isn't interested in giving up perfectly good supplies for slightly nicer food. She wanders off while they're talking, looking for a table.
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