“My affinity is for layering spells, so I could layer another ward on your room every time you did the homework, or whatever? Or I could give you, like, stuff, if you need physical stuff.”

"Wards sound great, deal."

"I've got lots of pills, Hannah. Could kind of use something directly for healing if that's on offer instead though. Would I have to find the other materials?"

“Cool!” says Zeke to Eliza.

"I have a decent stockpile of the basics, but if you want me to use them I'd have to take a larger cut of the results. How many pills of stimulants have you got? We might be able to work something out on the healing side."

"A few hundred. They're not that heavy if you pack 'em right."

"Anything stronger than caffeine, or is caffeine the best you've got?"

"Not much of a trader if I didn't. Adderall and Ritalin and more controlled things, what'cha want?"

"Adderall is ideal. You said you had two hundred pills or so of it? I'll trade you two healing cookies for that."

"Didn't say that, actually. I've got a hundred twenty of Adderall specifically, and even that's kind of steep unless those are flat-out amazing cookies. They're high-dosage pills."

"How many can you give me for a wind-up alarm clock?"

That's a no on the pills, then?

"Well, has it grown up in a nice home? Couple dozen, maybe, I can think of someone who could use an alarm clock."

This Raleigh guy is legit!

"Theun, Languages, Philadelphia. I'm with Eliza, most enclavers are... inconsiderate jerks. Including my own, alas."

"It's well-behaved, entirely mechanical. I'd take thirty of adderall for it."

"I dunno, I don't have a way of getting any more later myself."

"That's not what I said," she protests. It's very inconsiderate of him to say she did in front of Zeke. 

"Three healing cookies and the alarm clock for all one hundred and twenty."

"...You know what, deal."

He expected her to haggle back more but he'll take it! He unzips a side pocket of his backpack and starts carefully looking through it.

"If you're going alchemy maybe we can deal more in the future, I do light. Which means lasers and flashlights mostly so far."

She opens up her backpack and pulls out the alarm clock from on top, then counts out three healing cookies from a large tin of them. "Can you do ultraviolet? That would be useful for sterilizing lab equipment."

"I have a spell for it, shouldn't be too hard to get into a pen but I don't wanna make promises I can't cash."

"I'd be willing to trade a potion or two for one of those if you can get the enchantment to stick. Also if you come into any alcohol I could use that too." She'll just leave out that it's for her and not her lab equipment.

“I’m definitely super inconsiderate sometimes, I guess, I, like, arrive late to birthdays and stuff. You’re getting dressed and then something distracting happens and when you arrive people are mad at you! It’s super unfair and I dunno how other people do it.”

"True enough, I apologize for putting words in your mouth. They cause more than enough trouble coming from my own mouth. Clearly I should have included myself as one of the inconsiderate jerks, which is... not wrong."

Silas shows up for Zeke's classes, at this point.

"For sure, I'll work on it. No booze - or alchemical agents-" He apologizes to Hannah, "But I'll keep you in mind." He can carefully pack the healing cookies away and brush some dust off the clock politely after pulling out four sheets of 30 Adderall pills each. They're labeled as 50mg, a pretty heavy dose.