"...huh. I don't think I knew that, about your affinity."

Thoughtful face. Potatoes.

"That does sound kind of neat, though. Collars in artifice, tick powder in alchemy. No infernal napalm mixed in a skull."

She startles, at that. "Infernal...?"

"Um. It's a cow skull, for the record."

Why does he keep talking to Liu like he's a person instead of remembering she's not insane.

"If you need to burn anything very thoroughly, I'll have a supply soon," he says vaguely.

"I'll... keep that in mind," says the girl who is very definitely actually a maleficer and very definitely still kinda scared of him. But it's not like she can really leave, now, is it?

Scorpius is in trooooubleeeeee lalalalala~

Potat- the potatoes are all gone. Actually he appears to have eaten everything on his plate. Was he... hungry? That seems fake. 

"I - sorry," he says, inanely, since he can't just put more food in his face. "Um. In my defense Lake has been decreasing my ability to remember how normal people talk to each other, because he reacts completely inappropriately to normal conversational stimuli like insults and threats."

"Guilty as charged."

"It's fine," Liu says automatically. Then she looks at Scorpius, tries to think of something to say, and returns to her food when she fails.

"You're good people, Liu. Uh. Lake, when did you want to work on the project? Since you already exacted your pound of flesh."

Liu grimaces at the expression. She's familiar with many expressions in English about trading and payments and the like, she's been taking classes almost exclusively in English since induction and making sure to talk to people from this language group, but it's still one of the weirdest ones.

"I suppose whenever you and Sophie are free. All juniors have a personal work slot right now after lunch, right?"

"Right - if now works with you I can check with Sophie, I didn't have anything slotted but yoga."

"Sure, works for me."

And Liu will then say bye to them and go only half-advertently spread the new bit of gossip around the mill. Mostly to the Mandarin-speakers but it'll sure get around.

"Oh - are you going to make me receive my gift before we go to the shop? I half expect a wedding ring," he says as she leaves. 

"Better after, actually, it's not that portable."

"Oh the anticipation."

Lex finds Sophie in the cafeteria - she's sitting with some of her respectable-but-not-too-respectable indie acquaintances. "Oi, Hara," he says. "You up for some shop work? I'll give you a spell that controls spiders, I know it's not as handy in here but when you get out it's money in the bank. Think of the silk. And it's in Latin, I know you've got Latin."

"She doesn't -" says one of the respectable indies, before observing his companion and stopping midsentence. 

Sophie smiles at Lex and Scorpius both. "That does sound like a good trade, provided the project isn't a killer. And I'm just about done here. Samantha, could you bus my tray and tell Ameerah I won't be by? Something has come up, obviously."

Another girl gets the hint. "Course, Sophie."

"Thanks." She stands and nods to Scorpius. "Good to see you again."

Once they're out of earshot, Lex mumbles, "...didn't mean to make you cancel on an appointment. We can-"

"Lex, please don't try to manage my schedule for me. I assure you I have more practice."

...man she gives off real strong "don't flirt with me" vibes but he kinda wants to.

He can sit on his feeling and ask, "So what exactly was your thing meant to do?"

"- right. It's a blood orb. The way it works - you don't need all of it but I do so I'll go over it anyway - it hooks into void storage and lets you pull the blood out of a nonliving source - puddle, vial, um, corpse, et cetera, and keeps it fresh and clean for later use. The glass needs to be mixed precisely and kept at blowing temperature, there's an incantation I'll be handling, and it needs to be blown evenly - Hara, your job's probably easiest but you're the one who knows how to work glass. Questions? Concerns? Complaints?"

"Only nonliving sources?" asks Scorpius with some surprise.

"...modified the recipe a bit. It's still in-affinity."

"Cool," he says, in that weirdly genuine way teenage boys sometimes do.