A white boy even paler than those typically are, with a greyish tinge suggesting he isn't just melanin-deficient even for his ethnicity, enters the classroom not long after her, rubbing the embroidery on the cuff of his sleeve in a dissatisfied manner. 

Malak arrives with the rest of the crowd - Everyone here is coming straight from mal studies so everyone who doesn't have to run to the bathroom or something in between moves pretty much as a group. Safer that way. She can't immediately place the style of the classroom, but it looks old. All the desks have drawers, so she makes sure to check hers before sitting down. Does the school put them back together? Surely if it didn't they'd all have been removed by now?

Oh hey it's Malak!

She rummages around in her backpack and looks at what she has on her. (More than really makes sense to have on her, for its own sake, because carrying heavy stuff: builds mana).

Half a minute later she walks over to Malak's desk and places five little tablets on it. "Peace offering. Julian told me I was being dumb, and if I caused any trouble for you I'm sorry. They're multivitamins."

"Oh. Thank you. It turned out fine, Marcy's cool," that was not even remotely the most stressful part of breakfast, but she can't say that "But other enclavers might have been more judgemental. Here, we can compare schedules now if you want, we've got a couple minutes before the lecture starts - or we can just wait for lunch, get a table together."

"I do still want to talk at lunch! But if you're not doing anything else this second, sure." 

Naima has History of Magical Conflicts, History of Artificing, and History of Alchemy left today. Next week she'll also have Intro to Economics (in Mandarin), Writings of Avicenna, Egyptian Books of the Dead, Algebra II, late Tuesday morning shop, late Wednesday morning lab, Formal Logic for Spellcraft, and Intro to Incantations.

Malak has the same Magical Conflicts (obviously), History of Artificing, and shop sections. She's also got intro incantations, composition, French poetry, Theory of Artificing, and a history of Mediterranean secret societies.

Lily arrives slightly late and out of breath - apparently she misread her schedule, she does NOT have lab right now, that's Wednesdays - sweeps the room for mals, checks her desk drawer, and takes her seat. At least she's built up a little mana from the run over, that's some compensation.

"Ooh, Mediterranean Secret Societies. That's not a bad amount of overlap. I already know a couple kids who we could pull into a History of Artificing study group. I guess we should be on the lookout for more kids in this class and in Intro to Incantations, I guess assuming that people in different sections of the same class still cover the same material and have the same assignments."

Malak thinks she can probably get into a study group with Marcy and Annisa for history of artificing, and is not sure she can get Naima into that study group, and Marcy's group is obviously going to be a better idea than Naima's.

"Oh yeah, if you've got a study group going I'd love to know about it. Annisa's in that class too, she's the other indie who was with me at breakfast - Marcy too, she's one of the enclavers, but I bet she's forming her own group and I don't know if we'd get invites."

"Makes sense. Well, I'll keep you posted, and whatever works out works out, okay?"

"Yeah sounds good"

Raleigh was able to chase down Shannon in Maleficaria Studies and sit with her there, and he's slightly late to his next class because he walked her to Welsh mythology first.

He's also...shaken. Because right before leaving for Maleficaria Studies, he was finally able to pin down Cassie, confirm that she knew what happened last year, and demand the two-minute summary, right before she had to rush off to get Vanya to his morning language lab. 

He does not like the explanation much at all. He didn't tell Shannon, since it was terrible timing and he couldn't get her in private, and he managed to mostly get it off his mind, but apparently Malak is in this class? And now he's remembering that he agreed to tell them? Wow, he really doesn't feel like it. It's...a lot more private history than he'd realized. But he can't just go back on his word... 

It's very tempting to ignore Malak entirely, but that would be incredibly rude and she didn't do anything to deserve that, so instead Raleigh offers her an extremely sheepish smile and sits down. 

Oh no what is going on - oh it's not lunch yet, he probably hasn't been told she's not from Boston yet -

"Oh, hi. Raleigh, right?"

"Yeah. You're...um..." Oh god he is such a failure of a person today. "I'm really sorry, I forgot your name." 

"Oh that's fine, it sounds like you've had a pretty rough first day. Haniyah Malak Bahar, you can call me Malik."

"Malik." He fidgets with his power-sharer bracelet and looks upset and distracted; he's not really making eye contact with her.

"I - sorry -" he lowers his voice even further, "- I know I said I'd fill you in when I got the story on Vanya, but it's...a lot of it's private and also really weird and not likely to happen again in our year? But, uh, if you want one piece of advice: if you meet someone with a mind-related affinity and they want to give you an artifact they invented for a mental link between you so they'll know if you get into trouble, this...has some serious risks and probably you just shouldn't ever do it?" 

No shit.

" - Oh. Thanks for the tip. Uh. Condolences."

"Mmm." 

Raleigh feels a bit like he should apologize for this morning being so awkward, but he's not sure what to say and also it felt like all the interactions with Malik and...her other friend, whose name he ALSO can't remember...were somehow off and he couldn't figure out what he was saying wrong. So he just offers her a very small smile, and turns back to his desk to check if a textbook has appeared. (It has!) 

Ghassan arrives to his next class just a bit before the bell. He'll have to walk faster next time.

Rather than spend time looking for someone he already knows, he takes a seat. He gets his textbook out and reads the table of contents. He's curious what kind of spells this class will offer- large-scale, the kind best used by generals? Battlefield? Given the spells he already has, this could either help him diversify his options, or be completely redundant with spells he can cast in-affinity.

Alex is not late for class but it's a near thing, as he'd walked with Zed to theirs. Inside, he looks over the heads of his classmates, makes a small face, and then selects a seat somewhat nearish Lily. It's real annoying that he couldn't get all his classes with at least one of his clavemates, but he'll manage. He checks his drawer (why? Is it just so they don't get complacent??), Checks under the desk and the seat, peers and pokes at the chair, and then sits and cracks open his textbook. 

Lily cracks her textbook as well and starts reading the table of contents. 

Malak needs a moment to remind herself that under Raleigh's current assumptions it's not weird at all for him to have come up and sat next to her and stayed there.

She cracks her textbook. She was pretty happy to get this history class because it seems likely to have some good combat spells, but it's not off to a good start - the first chapter is titled "Defining Conflict", the second "Grand Strategy". It's not until chapter 3 that they get to the actual history, starting with ancient Chinese circle wars. If the lecture follows the book, it'll probably be months before there are any spells she can actually use.

Sure enough, when the grainy image appears on the wall, the words "What is conflict?" are there in big letters at the top, and the disembodied voice of an English gentleman starts softly narrating "Conflict is what occurs when two parties have sufficiently divergent aims that competitive or adversarial strategies are more appealing to them than cooperative ones. While the most obvious examples of conflict are violent, violence is not a necessary component..."

Malak does not know all of those words. She groans softly and puts her head on her desk.

Well, looks like Naima should be taking notes for both of them? Naima can take notes with the intention that they be for both of them.

This is not about combat spells, but it does seem like it might be relevant to all of the impenetrable rules that everyone else seems to know and use here and that she doesn't, so probably she'd better be learning this anyway.

Wow, this is kind of a weird and creepy way for a lecture to work! Raleigh was informed in detail what to expect, of course, but it's still creepier than he was accounting for. 

He gets to work on his own notes. 

Malak recovers fairly quickly and starts taking her own notes, even though this class is VERY DISAPPOINTING. She will build mana by paying attention to this stupid lecture about some unnecessarily complicated definition of 'conflict', which, being stupid and unnecessary, will probably be on the final.

Alexei takes notes, even though he can feel this settling into his memory, because getting out of that habit will kill him and he'll need to restudy all of this when the potion runs out anyway. 

Wilbur takes notes, with an emphasis on where the lecture's definition of conflict and his own intuitions don't match up, and doodles fiber ideas in the margins.

Lily takes notes as well, though this isn't how she would ideally be spending her enhanced memory time she hasn't had time to get books on Latin from the library yet -

Orion is more interested in this class than in some classes but not that interested. He skims the book, nods along to the lecture, writes down about thirty words and some punctuation over the course of the class, and mostly looks hopefully at the air vents and fidgets. He gets up to walk the perimeter of the room at one point when the disembodied English gentleman is talking about how conflict does not always entail coming to blows and might mean cold wars or trade wars or something.

It would be nice to see some kind of display of Orion's mal-killing abilities to confirm that he isn't totally fucked come Monday.

...maybe she can alternate note-taking with some of the other students, leave time to do other homework in class. Her notes have scrawled commentary in the margins ("we KNOW what a conflict is shut UP") but are otherwise neat and organized, if in kind of messy handwriting.

It hints at interesting things to come, but that's the best he can say about it. It doesn't look like this class will be particularly useful. Ghassan tries to generate some spell concepts for preventing or encouraging conflict- neither likely to help, so he won't follow up on these, but it's good practice if he's going to commit to the creative writing track.

Alex is Not Getting Distracted- no, he is getting distracted, Orion pacing the perimeter makes him suppress a twitch whenever he's at his back and at one point he catches himself doodling a poor cartoonish representation of the mal of the day instead of listening to The Englishman lecture briefly on the use of taxes and embargos in trade conflicts and has to force himself to refocus. Also, is it just him or is the air buzzing a little? Probably just him, since no one else is reacting, including the combat prodigy he'd heard about through Zed who heard from their mom when they lived in New York before she died. 

Ow, his head. 

Looks like that kid is having a bad time. Ghassan will need to find him during lunch.