"I think it helps if you've practiced at all even a little, it contextualizes some of the - flowery analogies people pull out when they're trying to describe it, so you can pick out the actual content better."

"Is it the sort of thing I can try in an afternoon?"

"Normally you'd take a whole class on it or at least a summer camp, I think you could cut it down some but not to an afternoon without cutting a lot of the safety lecture."

"I suppose I'll have to make do with waiting till a spot in a class opens up."

"Did your high school not have it?"

"It was at the same time as economics."

"Oh, now, my high school didn't have economics, but I think witchcraft would still have won, economics you can get a fair ways just reading books."

"At the time I didn't realize this wasn't true of witchcraft... I can't actually bring myself to regret my choice, Economics was very fun."

"What'd the class add to the experience over books alone?"

"More structure, projects, and a really good teacher."

"Kinda projects?"

"There was a simulated market economy for a week, with little scraps of paper to stand in for vegetables and money. I did accounting for it."

"What motivated people to buy paper vegetables?"

"You had to get enough to feed your family at the end of each day."

"...seems hard to do with only vegetables and wouldn't really motivate discrimination between kinds on anything but price and calorie."

"Some of them would spoil quicker than others, or be easier to make into dishes that could feed more people. Also I think some of my classmates just really wanted eggplants for some reason."

"...ah-huh. Did you arbitrage eggplants?"

"Yeah. I earned more than anyone else I think, but I gave out a bunch of my stockpiled food to people who were running short on the last two days, so I didn't get on the class scoreboard for wealthiest student. But my class period was the only one that didn't have anyone starve."

"Congratulations!"

"Thanks." Lucien is in fact pretty proud of this.

"Was the teacher impressed?"

"Yeah, I got bonus points."

"Oh good."

"What sort of magic have you learned so far?"

"I want to focus on infectious diseases but so far we're doing a pretty broad survey of the basics so on top of high school stuff I have, like, the classic tidying spell and some first aid."