"Well then. Fool me twice. I guess now I have to start plotting my revenge, or people will start to think I'm gullible."

"Why didn't it give me metallurgy, I would've loved metallurgy, but no, just Monday morning shop to try to destroy me with my own hubris. I'll show you my intro to comp assignment, in exchange, I really liked it and felt like I learned a ton."

"Carrel," announces Naima, from several paces ahead. "I don't know whether it's a good one."

"Sounds good. I also have intro English comp but I must be in a different section – still, if we have different assignments that'll be information." 

"Oh, yeah, maybe you'll get the same. - oooooh." The carrel is not spectacular but it's not far into the stacks at all, if it stays where it is, which it might or might not. It only has two chairs, but they could in principle drag back two more, and it looks monster-free.

Malak does the same calculation " - OK, who wants to stay here making sure it doesn't run off on us and who wants to go grab some more chairs from somewhere else?"

"Well, I'd go off with you but I hear you're plotting revenge. If you go off with someone plotting revenge you shouldn't expect to come back."

"Oh really? My mother always said 'Keep your friends close, keep those you know to be plotting against you closer'."

"I'll go." 

Oh no - how to get out of this - "Uhm. Actually I just remembered that I want to talk to Naima about something, why don't the two of us go and we can talk while we're getting chairs."

"..Okay, Annisa and I can wait here." 

That was weird, right? That was definitely weird. Did he already say something to offend her? 

She and Naima will hurry off to get chairs.

" - I didn't actually have anything I needed to say to you, it's just that Julian is a boy and, secular, right, so explaining would be hard - "

Julian looks stressed. Annisa's getting at least moderately good at reading Malak, though, and she doesn't think that was about anything Julian said or did - oh. 

"She's religious," she says softly, once they're round the corner, and shrugs so as to hopefully communicate any of "how silly of them" or "how respectable of them", depending how Julian is himself.

"Oooooh, so not about breakfast. Understandable."

"Huh. I didn't think there were many religious wizards." 

"Well, in Indonesia there aren't, they all died out. Because they wouldn't send their daughters to the Scholomance. But I guess the Middle Eastern ones are more pragmatic."

"They'd certainly have to be. Where I'm from people are mostly religious in the parades-and-light-ancestor-worship sense, less so with the sincerely believing in a higher power. But then I've led a fairly sheltered life." 

"I'm not actually sure what sincerely believing in a higher power ...cashes out to. Like - maybe the world started out like the school, someone making it and cutting it off from some bigger reality to keep their children safe, I don't strongly expect that didn't happen..."

"Huh. And in this hypothetical, we graduate when we die? Or did the whole system get unhooked somehow and we're all just floating out into the void, like Chicago." 

"Oh, I don't know, I haven't given this a lot of thought. We sure do seem to be floating in the void, though, at least that's my understanding of how...space...works..." Oh no she was sounding so cool and thoughtful and then that was a really dumb ending.

"It would be nice if there were some real grown-ups out there somewhere, wouldn't it?" 

"- yeah. I guess in that sense I don't believe in a God, not in something else that - cares if we live or die, like we do." ....enough bonding. "Did you want to see my intro comp homework?"

"Yeah, sure." And Julian can hand her his copy of Fundamentals of Metallurgy. 

Malak and Naima return, bearing chairs.

"Got chairs! Also I remembered that I ambushed you at dinner yesterday, so I don't need to plot any more revenge yet."

"Oh right, you did. I am justly avenged - no, that's the opposite - venged?" There goes her ability to act like a native speaker of English.