Language lab was exhausting, the school apparently thinks she's good enough at all the languages she knows that it doesn't need to drill her on any of them and should instead introduce another. It seemed like a good idea at the time to say "oh I know twenty-three languages, that's an absurd number, of course I'll go language track" but actually language track means learning more languages on top of the pre-existing twenty-three, which is, in fact, an absurd number; she sometimes thinks that if there is a God then They forgot how many languages a reasonable person, even a reasonable wizard, is going to speak when they enter the Scholomance while she was growing up. 

She refuses to display her exhaustion, as she gets in line at the cafeteria. It's still early enough that she's making first impressions and she does not need someone's first impression of her to be that she can't hack it. She encourages Atlach to sit at a reasonably visible point on her temple and checks for mals anywhere around. 

Malak is exiting the food counter with a good quantity of food, none of which is pretending to be haram, having successfully evaded Raleigh's suggestion of walking to the cafeteria together by stopping by the girl's bathroom first. This way he can find out that she's not a Boston kid when he looks for her at the Boston table, rather than when he follows her out of the cafeteria line and she sits down with a bunch of indie kids. If she's not right there to see him realize his mistake it'll be less embarrassing for him and maybe she will not be totally ostracized by Sacramento. She finds Naima, as promised, and sits down near her after checking the table for mals.

"Hey! Looks like magical conflicts is not going to be as useful as I'd hoped."

Is that a spider? Annisa's understanding was that if you try to keep insects alive around lots of wizards someone'll accidentally pull from them and kill them while trying to cast a spell. Which seems like it'd be extremely awkward, if the spider in question is someone's familiar. Maybe she has a way to protect it. Annisa thinks she'll just not ask about that and not cast any spells so as not to be the girl who accidentally murders someone's familiar, even though if she doesn't have a solution for that the spider isn't long for the world...oh no now she's been staring and not saying anything - "Hi! I'm Annie, artificing, how was your first morning of classes?"

"Long. I had language lab and the school decided I was fluent at everything I already speak, so I was starting something brand-new. I'm Lucy, uh, languages, my twin brother does artificing though. How was yours?"

"Good! I had intro comp and the assignment was looking over a bunch of drafts of a spell and keeping track of what they were improving and then writing a final draft. What's your brother's affinity?" Twins are an advantage; some people induce them on purpose. Rude to ask, though.

"Thread! It's why Mum got us a breeding pair of spiders for familiars. He made and enchanted our clothes," she adds, smoothing a hand down the silk of her shirt. 

"Oh, that's cool. How do you protect the spiders, do you have to shield them all the time?"

"--Oh, familiars aren't vulnerable to incidental cheating the way regular bugs are, it's about how smart the critter is and a familiar that's a spider is smarter than a non-magical small mammal."

"Oh, that's clever." Doesn't answer what they're doing with the breeding pair's babies but maybe they found a distant library nook, if you ask too many questions you look like you're thinking of something clever yourself. "Thread's a good affinity, very flexible."

"I know! And we managed to barter for a chunk of the muggleborns' hair last night, you have to feel sorry for them but wizard hair is such a good material for his affinity. What's yours?"

"Weapons. When I was little, we thought it was just knives, and my father was working so hard to convince me it ought to cover swords, too - 'they're just big knives, Annie' - and then one day I got a slingshot and had it spitting lightning by the end of the day. Turns out it's anything I can wield. My swords were too big." She has used this anecdote at least four times because it's very well crafted. Cute, memorable, establishes that she's well-prepared and has known her affinity since she was very young.

"--Oh, nice. That's a great affinity to have in here."

Naima spends like two minutes shoveling food into her mouth as quickly as possible, so as to spend the rest of lunch on things that are more interesting but less strictly necessary than eating. Such as talking to Malak.

"Yeah, I was really hoping for more spells, or things that looked like they might lead to spells? But on the other hand I feel like the social stuff about how interpersonal conflicts work and the mechanisms behind them might be useful for me, so I'm gonna try to take this one pretty seriously anyway. Do you want to compare notes? I think I took pretty good notes."

"Yeah, sure, here's mine. When I saw it on my schedule I was delighted, I hadn't requested it but I was so sure we'd be getting some good combat spells, which is pretty good for History. But then instead we get a whole lecture on 'sometimes, people want different things' and quotes from mundanes with hard-to-pronounce names. Even if we get some spells once we get to the actual history it's going to be months before we're covering anything that might have spells in a language I can speak."

Naima's notes are pretty good. They spelled some of the mundanes' names differently, who knows who got it right, the lecture was not kind enough to provide a spelling.

Oh, hah, there's Malak, and the table still has some seats. Annisa takes a scoop of hash and a scoop of something she can't immediately identify from the safe counter and wonders why this place doesn't serve any rice, which people are known to be able to unproblematically eat at every meal for years on end. Maybe there are inconveniently rice-sized and -shaped worms. 

She heads over to join them.

"Oh Hey Annisa, did you know that sometimes people want different things, and that sometimes they will have a fight about it, or, maybe not have a fight about it? Because Naima and I Just had a double-length lecture on this fascinating and novel concept."

"What? Oh, there's my plan where we all graduate by holding hands and combining our powers for the benefit of everyone ruined."

"I'm sure we'll learn some spells. Hopefully. You can't have a whole class on the history of magical conflicts without any combat spells in it, can you?"

"You could have exclusively combat spells that require a dozen senior wizards with an army behind them to cast. - I don't think we've met, by the way." The time you interrupted us when we were sitting with Boston doesn't count. "I'm Annisa."

"Naima, Cairo, city-not-enclave. My affinity is healing. Good to meet you."

"I had intro comp and it was great, are either of you in intro comp?"

"No, but I'm interested! What'd you learn?"

"I've got it tuesday/thursday last period."

"We got six rough drafts of a spell - not anything super useful, a spell for cleaning ink smudges - and were supposed to track the changes and try to write a further revision. Well, I did, I didn't check if we all got the same assignment. But it was a fun assignment."

"Ooh that sounds great. I was a little worried that if I went creative writing it would be nothing but French Poetry - well, I'm sure I'd learn other styles too - and praying that some good spells come out."