"Huh, what kinds of changes? Can I see?"

"Yeah, sure, I should probably finish it before next class anyway, don't want to get behind -" And she pulls it out. "So - we didn't actually cast the spell, but the notes say the effects and why the effects weren't precisely as intended - this version's overpowered. So where's the power coming from? Emphasis does power, repetition does power, unusual syllabic stress can do power, so maybe we could cut this line - that's revision 2 - or this line - revision 3 - or this line - revision 4 - or all of them, revision 5, which unsurprisingly doesn't work at all. 2 and 3 get inconsistent results, probably because it's now unbalanced. 4 is no longer over-powerful but still just as mana-intensive as when it was, I don't know why. Six is an effort to balance out 2 but it gets the stress wrong and so the targeting's terrible. - I'm sure usually revising spells is much harder than this and they just gave us a toy problem where lots of variations had some effects and it was also easy to see how they were the wrong effects.

"Oh that's fascinating, getting to see all the moving parts that aren't working right. If four isn't overpowered but is still mana-intensive, then does that mean there's something doing power drain in the rest of the spell without any positive effects? I wonder if - revising some of the poetic elements without cutting, or maybe condensing the material across multiple lines without entirely cutting any one of them...? I wonder if there's some way to condense the lines cut in two and three into a single line, or something... I'm not seeing one, but... Sorry, I don't actually know much about spellwriting, you probably learned more in class. But I see what you mean about it being interesting."

"It was pretty much just the assignment and a textbook." She sets it on the table. It's faded and in mediocre condition, and it's labelled 'SPELL THEORY' on the front. "But yeah - I think four must've been - modulating, rather than intensifying, syllable stress can be doing that too? And without the modulation you're still using all the power you're just wasting most of it. I'm decidedly not creative writing track but maybe I'll try to take one class like this each term, it seems useful and a nice break from everything else."

"Yeah, maybe I'll push for a comp class next semester. Had to spend two requests just getting my shop and lab to reasonable places this time, though, so there wasn't much wiggle room. It wanted to give me shop first thing Monday morning."

"Oh man, me too!!! I was so mad. - because I was tempted, if I hadn't been tempted I wouldn't've been mad. Why does it even offer freshman shop first thing Monday morning."

"Well there's got to be a first and most dangerous slot. Probably they never changed how the school assigns classes since the mals got in, so as far as the school knows when scheduling that's the best slot and everyone should get a fair shot at it."

"Well, I've got Tuesday before lunch now, which should be good and also not kill me, and Marcy's in it. Oh no, is New York also in it, I've been worrying that we'll have to pick early between them and Boston -"

"There's gotta be multiple sections of Tuesday before lunch intro to shop, that's where I put mine, too. A third of the class must have asked for it. I guess maybe the question is what room?"

"106. Maybe we can swap rooms, if we want to all be in the same one."

"The workshops are pretty big, I think? I would guess there's only one freshman section and maybe not everyone got their request for that spot granted. And some enclaves probably prioritized getting the same spot to watch each other's backs over getting the objectively best spot if you're on your own, and a lot of kids aren't artificing track and might not mind something later in the week. I've also got it in 106."

She checks her schedule. " - yep, 106. Maybe it is all the same. Seems like there must be too many of us for that, though."

Well, most kids are on other tracks, and enclavers have older students to source their materials. Annisa wants to say something flippant about the obvious superiority of artificers to all other students but she doesn't really know these kids well enough to joke, yet, even though it feels like she does with Malak.

"New York and Boston at least had someone running around so they could coordinate - we should've kept track of who else was doing that, actually, I bet it's a decent proxy for, uh, whether they are the way enclaves are supposed to be at all or not."

snort "It'd be a bit hard to keep track of that beyond who sent a runner to our room. I don't know whether any other enclaves had a kid in the room with us, but those two were the only runners I saw."

"There was a kid from ...Dubai, I think? If I fantasize about having a choice I already wasn't gonna choose Dubai." She knows almost nothing about the enclave and obviously they're higher up the totem pole than an independent from Indonesia but she's known since she was seven that no one in the Islamic world was going to want to marry her and this anticipated rejection had long since become mutual. If she has the luxury of choosing. You only get to want one thing and 'an American enclave' is two things, right there in the name. 

She blinks. Thinks back.

"Some kid in my homeroom announced that he wanted a Monday shop class, and then ran out to see if anyone had one, and then came back and whispered with someone in our room who - looked like the kid who came in in pajamas yesterday? I wouldn't pegged either of them as enclavers, though, they seemed pretty clueless."

"...well I guess some people are crazy enough to take it. What is with the suicide rate this year?"

"Noo, I bet that's not it, not a girl in pajamas, I bet no one told the mundies to swap out - shoot, the poor kids. I mean, something was going to get them sooner or later, but I'd have told them that for free, if I'd been thinking about what the first thing they'd screw up was, which I wasn't."

"Oh, are there - I assumed anyone with a spot would have someone who told them how the school worked, I feel sort of bad for not saying anything now. - augh, I should have realized something was up, she asked me whether it was bad to be in a language lab."

"Oh, not knowing to swap out sure. But if the one kid was actively trying to swap into Monday morning shop that's - did no one in your homeroom warn them after he announced it?"

"I mean, he didn't say the second bit out loud so everyone could hear? I thought he might have been trying to kill her on purpose or something, but I don't know why he would've been doing it that way, and I didn't want to get in the middle of whatever it was. He had this aura? And stank, the way they say far-gone maleficers get sometimes. But that seems like a bizarre way for a freshman to be, doesn't it?"

- well, that's extremely alarming. Annisa is extremely alarmed.

Great, half the enclaves are completely dysfunctional and there's at least two pretty serious maleficers running about in the freshman class.

"...Yeah. There was someone with a pretty bad aura in our homeroom too. Anyone else feeling like we might've picked an unlucky year to be born in?"

"I haven't noticed any others, but it's only been a day? Maybe he is trying to assassinate her for malia in an empty classroom somehow, I don't know. Maybe they're both clueless and they're leading each other a cliff. It's a little black kid, boy, dressed in rags, stinks. I guess avoid him until someone with more resources decides what to do about someone like that?"

"I hope New York and Boston aren't secretly also shitshows, enclaves are - the only unit with which I'd expect it to be possible to put someone down without hard proof or neighbors scareder of them than the consequences of killing them."