"Same. - are you not creative writing track? I figured -" If she wrote poetry that good she'd be tempted by creative writing track and she has the world's most aggressively artificing-friendly affinity. 

"My affinity could really go either way, so I haven't decided yet." And he's going for valedictorian, but that's not something one mentions this early or possibly ever. 

"I've got History of Artificing and then History of Alchemy. I guess maybe the school doesn't know which track will be a better fit for my particular brand of healing and is giving me some background on the uses of both?"

Annisa starts packing her bookbag. "I don't think you said what your affinity was?" He definitely didn't, she remembers that right alongside peoples' names.

- slant rhyme? She's not sure what that is. Also, that sounds a lot like what he would say if he noticed that she sucked and was too polite to say it to her face.

- Wait a second, history of artificing is... not usually given to people who aren't considering artificing. So Julian's artificing track. So this isn't even 'randomly selected sino kid', it's 'randomly selected sino kid who's not doing incantations' She's doomed.

"Oh, me too. I guess we're all going together." She is NOT going to cry about how doomed she is but - her throat is choking up - probably she should not talk much or they will hear how upset she is -

He did not. It's not exactly something he leads with. 

"Enclaves. Maybe extradimensional spaces, maybe large-scale constructs, I'm not entirely sure. My parents had to take me to a diviner, since, you know – " I'll be totally useless for the most important four years of my life. But that part goes without saying. 

It's bad luck, but it also means his affinity isn't incantations, he's just that good at it. (Might mean he's undervalued as an ally... - stop getting ahead of yourself). She refrains from commenting because the only things she can think of are 'oh, bad luck', which he obviously knows, or 'well, you're set for life if you make it out', which he also obviously knows, or 'some enclave might have enough slack to get you through on a promise to build them out afterwards', which he also obviously knows. It's not the sort of problem you'll contribute to with three seconds of thought. "Room 413?"

Malak is pretty sure Mother is planning to found an enclave somehow - she and all her siblings were told that they shouldn't worry about securing enclave slots while they're in here, and shouldn't commit to anything that locks them in for twenty years after graduation - but she cannot think what she or her family could offer Julian that he can't get elsewhere. There's probably something but secrecy runs in the family so she has no idea what it is.

- Also he does not even have an affinity for cleaning ink smudges, Malak is SO DOOMED.

"Yeah. 413."

It looks like Julian hasn't lost his – study group? prospective future allies? friends? – over his obvious uselessness. At least not yet. Small victories! 

"That's convenient, we can go in a pack." 

Malak is always happy to travel in groups! Though she feels kind of guilty now because she is starting to like these people and the usual reasons company is good don't really apply when she's the company. If a mal comes after them, all she can really do is hide so it eats someone else instead of her. Hopefully she'll learn some more spells soon so that's not the case.

She reminds herself that she shouldn't actually feel guilty about this, everyone in the school is trying to save their own skin first. She's not feeling guilty because leaving them to die in her stead would be wrong, she's feeling guilty because she has positive feelings about them, which is why she is supposed to be careful about having positive feelings about her fellow students.

"All of you had better not be eaten, this is a really convenient setup we've got here and I'll be very put out if you go die and ruin it." That's unserious enough to not be an excessive amount of friendliness, she thinks. 

"I was thinking about taking a jog around the senior res hall after curfew, you know, build some mana, but if you insist I guess I can stay in my room instead."

"I'll do my very best. - Malak, do you suppose there's some way to convince Damascus that the obvious interpretation of the microscope deal is that their three weeks of guard duty start when they give the microscope back, I've been thinking about it and I'm almost sure we never specified which three weeks."

"Yeah, they'd cry foul if you saved it up for the end of term but waiting until they give it back is fair play."

"You brought in a microscope?"

"Oh good. Yeah, I'm kind of interested in the end of healing that combines magic with science, you know, giving the magic really specific instructions instead of just saying 'person is sick, make them not be'? And I thought that being able to see the specifics might come in handy someday, even if I can't do anything on that scale yet. It's just a pocket one, it's not that heavy."

"And well worth it, if you've loaned it out to an enclave already. You should meet my neighbor Shannon, she has a healing affinity too. She's very American but she's perfectly nice."

"Damascus used to have a microfilm reader, which they shared out to the rest of the middle-eastern students, helped economize on mail weight so we could all bring more stuff in each year. It went bad, the kid who was using it got blinded, we didn't hear if they think he'll recover - anyways, I think Damascus also sent in some spellbooks that way and really wanted to maintain access so they rented Naima's microscope."

"Oh man, blinded, that's a bad way to go." It could take weeks of sitting around, startling at every noise, but it was a sure thing eventually. If he looked likely to recover maybe they'd be able to keep him guarded until then. "I guess there had to be a catch or more people would do that."

"I think they figured they were treating it well enough and that if it wasn't satisfied it'd do something else before going straight for the eyes - My guess is the kids who were around when they made it all graduated and the new caretakers slacked off."

A decision that one of them will now have plenty of time to contemplate, dying alone in the dark.