He does! He does want to show off. 

- Oh but now she's curious.

" - Hey, if one of you who's seen it already wants to copy the prompts, I want to do it myself since I might be creative writing track but we could compare after. Or I can just wait for my own section next week."

She reads it through, humming it to herself a little bit, not saying the words - you don't mess around with spells - but trying to hear them. He's taken the intensifiers in the second and third lines and left in weaker ones, and then reworked the fourth. It's not just more practical, it also flows better; it would be more fun to say aloud, even if you didn't know anything about how spells ought to taste on your tongue. 

It's better than she'd have gotten if she spent all weekend on it. Well, grades don't matter, and she knows what she's good at. 

"I'll copy it over for you, you're right that you ought to try it yourself first so you can appreciate it - it's very nice," she adds to Julian -

"Thank you! We have to write loads of poetry in Classical Chinese for our entrance exams, everyone is always complaining about it but I think it's really quite practical. It's got all these formal constraints you have to balance so it's good training for spell-writing." 

"Huh! Indonesia lets you interview in English, though more kids do Chinese, but I guess it makes sense that Hong Kong would only let you test in Chinese." Does it make sense? He's a native English speaker. Note to future Annisa, look up the Hong Kong something something Britain situation. "Ours didn't have much poetry. Maybe it would've if I hadn't specified artificing."

"Hong Kong uses the same tests as the mainland and the written sections are in Classical Chinese since that's what the vast, vast majority of Chinese spells are in. And Chinese wizards of all kinds are just nuts about poetry. I guess the language distinction is less important for us,  since we almost all speak both English and Cantonese." 

The mainland. Note to future Annisa: Hong Kong is ...an island? Probably an island. Certainly a separate landmass. In Indonesia everywhere's an island but most places just glob all their land together in enormous mounds. "I'm not sure who devises our tests," she says instead. "I think it's a council of several different important circles, none of them enclaves and so none of them with proper authority over the thing. Maybe the Chinese-language tests were the same as yours."

- OK she was kind of suspecting that hong kong was on the coast but now it sounds like it's off the coast. And they all speak English there? New Hong Kong facts.

She returns to her copy of the comp assignment.

Julian would be happy to fill everyone in on the location of Hong Kong if only they happened to ask. 

"It wouldn't surprise me, Shanghai pushes them pretty aggressively. I wonder how it works in the rest of the world – I think in India all the big enclaves have their own tests but surely someone's got to run the thing." 

"They've got more slots per capita than us but I wouldn't trade them, it sounds awfully complicated if you're not an enclaver. Whereas in Indonesia no one is, so," shrug. "No local disadvantage. I'm still planning to emigrate, of course."

She keeps feeling like this is a good conversational opening to share how she got in, and then remembering that this is a terrible idea. Like, if Malak shares and she's the only one left, then she can do it, if it'll be awkward otherwise, but you don't want to just go around looking for excuses to talk about it.

She will... start on the first comprehension question.

"In the middle-east it varies, some enclaves don't even have enough for all their kids, some have a few spots going spare that they - sell to independent wizards. 'Sell' isn't quite the right word, they... give them out as gifts? But to people who have helped them a lot in the past."

Does that make it awkward not to say. Is she supposed to share or is this a situation where you can assume that Malak is explaining a situation that applies to both of them.

She will, uh, keep working on that first comprehension question and see whether anyone else says anything.

"When I was eleven I looked up who had the most slots and then which country was the richest and then which country had the most intermarriage - so the kids won't be second-class citizens forever - and then I decided I was moving to America, if -" gesture. If I live to nineteen. "Toronto and Sacramento could scare me off yet, of course."

Malak feels like her explanation adequately covers Naima, who does not want to talk about the deal she made with Paris for some reason, probably because it sucked. Malak is not sure what deal Mother made to get her and her siblings in, but it has gotten them all in so far and she has not seen any onerous burdens imposed by it so it was probably a much better one?

"America's pretty good if you can get it, I hear." Except New York but she doesn't think other people share that opinion so she won't voice it.

"Is America at the top on all of those?" This is in no way relevant to her but maybe it's a useful set of words or something.

"China has slightly more slots total and Britain has more per capita, I think. That's probably going to change before our kids are old enough to attend, inshallah."

It's a bit early – in their acquaintance, in the year, in his life – for Julian to say what he's thinking, which is that even if he graduates and gets a spot in an enclave, he's never going to have children. He loves kids, he's known that since he held his baby sister for the first time. But it just wouldn't be fair to them. 

"America's the second-most slots per capita and the richest and most of South America has more racial mixing but that's of the peoples native there, doesn't have a lot of bearing on whether people'd look at my kids and see a foreigner, and America's pretty high up on that list and does have lots of Indonesians. And also can't tell us apart from other Asians and has lots of those."

"I guess it makes sense to shoot for, then."

Hmm, if Malak's doing her comp assignment then maybe Naima should just do the whole set of comprehension questions? She can probably finish them by the end of the work period if she focuses.

Malak did get some of her half of the comprehension questions done before switching tasks. She's pretty sure she'll have time to finish the comp homework and her half of the history questions before the end of work period, and she wants to get the composition part done first so she can compare with Julian.

If left to his own devices, Julian will happily spend the rest of work period experimenting with Annisa's comp assignment to see if packing in more assonance has any relationship to mana efficiency. 

Annisa has a study group! And a carrel in the library not far from the reading room, but where they can sit on chairs, instead of sprawling on the floor around the enclavers like sad little supplicants. ...and statistically one of the four of them will be dead by the end of term, so stop being happy and focus on not being that one. She reluctantly puts the metallurgy book aside and goes back to her comp assignment; she's not going to just copy Julian, she wants to try to actually figure it out herself, it's good practice even if her final solution isn't as clever as his...

Nothing jumps them. The library's the safest part of the school, and it's the first day. She makes herself not really fully focus on the work, but only because it's a good habit.

When she finishes her copy of the comp assignment she swaps with Julian.

"Oh - wow, this is really good." is all she can manage to say because inside she is screaming. This is way better than what she did, and - Julian is from Hong Kong, but he's probably not any smarter than most sino kids, right, it's not like she was picking her studymates based on their test scores, she doesn't even know those - so this is probably what every sino kid can manage, which means it's probably what the school is expecting, which means she is going to fail composition so badly. Well. That's... not fine. It's really bad. But it's not like creative writing is her only option, she'll just have to do better in artificing. If she won't be able to write any good spells she'll just have to spend four years making herself an invisibility cloak. She can do that. Maybe.

"Thanks! I like yours, It's clever how you worked in that slant rhyme, there." Julian just manages to bite his tongue before he can say 'for a non-native speaker,' even if it does make Malak's work more impressive. In here, it's the results that count. "Anyway, what do you all have next? I've got history of artificing."