"Really? Why?"

"Mum was sick for a while after me and had to wait."

"Oh. But that didn't happen again with any of the littles?"

"No, she's fine now."

"That's good. It seems like it must be frustrating, to survive the whole Scholomance and then be brought low by something so human."

"Yeah. They think maybe she had me earlier than she should've, she was injured at graduation and waited a year and a half but maybe that wasn't long enough."

"Ooh, that could do it, yeah. Graduation hall's got nasty stuff in it."

Nod.

"Well, even if you can't personally help your little siblings, at least they'll be enclavers."

"Yeah, there's that."

"And you can help them get ready! Of course, affinity also matters a lot, I'm a little jealous of yours."

"I'll definitely have a job lined up after? If there's an after."

"...I mean, some mals aren't super biological, but a lot of them are, and anything biological has a lot of water in it."

"Oh, yeah, I guess maybe once I can handle bigger spells that might help. I could boil them or something."

"Or, like--" she clasps her hands together and then flings them apart. "Bwoosh!"

"I'd worry about splashing myself in the face with something awful."

"Point. You could make sure to keep the bwoosh smaller than however far you were from them but boiling is probably still safer."

"Or freezing. Safer still."

"It's convenient how ice is bigger than water! You can get a lot of the same rupturing effects alongside the temperature problems the mal is no doubt having, without risking suspicious vapors."

"Yeah. I'll ask the void. Dad told me to ask the void for spells often as I can, there's no better place to get them."

"I think I'm gonna have to write a bunch of my own, I haven't heard much about affinities like mine, but yeah, that doesn't mean I ought to slack on checking in with the void. If non-languages students could get away with not doing that then having bits would be less verboten."

"That's the idea, yeah."

"Probably there's all sorts of details about things like being spell-blocked that we don't know because anyone who experiences them dies."

"That's a worrying thought."

"Enclavers have loads better odds than anybody else but you're still not much higher than four in five."