Bella gets out her notes for the morning at lunchtime, once she's sat down at the table Suze-and-friends reserved for her. She starts trying to condense them into a journal entry, and - keeps stopping and checking them again, stopping and checking, frowning at her notebook.
She points Suze at Alexius, who she can see still in the lunch line, and Suze buttonholes him on her way out. "Hey, Bella wants to talk to you, she's over there."
Bella's room, 563A, is on the top floor along the outermost ring with a void wall. She puts down her bag on her desk, checks under her furniture and her pile of terrarium supplies - "I'm going to keep agglos and experiment on them, to be clear" - and then sits at her desk and says, "I would like a spell to cancel ongoing potion effects in human drinkers."
Angie lingers in the doorway and peers in corners - it's a good habit - while she waits.
Wait why is she experimenting on agglos - not important right now. What is important: push-ups. He has a lot of mana to repay.
The room is not very big but he can do pushups if he's determined and everyone else makes space.
She gets a Spanish book - "Spanish," she warns - and starts paging through it. "Ugh, I think this is from the Inquisition."
Angie averts her eyes as she tends to when there's another language in front of them, "Inquisition counterspells?" She considers, "I suppose that makes as much sense as any place to find them."
"I guess it might have caused some intra-wizarding conflicts! Anyway, it's a little archaic but I think I found the one I want, give me a bit..." She is frowning at page seventeen.
(Angie pulls a somewhat sad apple out of the bag she's carrying and munches on it while she does that.)
"I thought I'd heard they wrecked an enclave, sounds like there was a difference of opinion."
"The Jewish enclave in Castile, I think," she replies between bites, "I didn't read about it myself, but my brother told me about it."
"Eugh. Figures they'd get the short end of the stick." Don't quote Tom Lehrer that never helps. "Less depressing topics... Did you mention your affinity, Angie?"
"Movement! I can make good use of speed spells, for a freshman, and dance has always worked well for me. You? I believe I heard something about books?"
"Yeah, I summarize it as 'books'. It seems to particularly like reference books and such, helping me navigate libraries or open a book to the relevant page sooner. So I'm mostly languages track, though I'm going to spend more time in shop than lab if I can arrange it."
"...Hm. I wonder if you could do anything interesting with my clavemate? Zed's affinity, which we just call 'Finding'."
"I bet we will have a lot of affinity spells we could trade each other - Well, if the languages match up. My first priority is getting my Mandarin up, but I can probably start on French too. I mostly have Germanic languages plus Latin and Ancient Greek, and I accidentally learned Klingon and had to cram it."
Oh, Theun speaks Greek too. Good to know. Alexius stands. "I still owe you if you want language tutoring."
Hmm, this isn't quite as mana-productive as he thought...oh, he's still feeding the stimulant spell. It's only a trickle but every bit matters. He cuts it off.
...and his knees buckle as fatigue washes over him. He narrowly avoids falling over.
Well. Should have expected that. On the plus side, now everything is more mana-building.
Squats in the hallway, next.
"There are spells in Klingon?" asks Bella, startled out of her study.
"I mean, probably not? But getting spell-starved because I started picking up the patterns in the conlang and didn't follow up enough to decipher spells in it would be the stupidest way to die."
"I guess it would be mighty difficult to get tutoring in it here!" She shakes her head and returns to archaic Spanish. At this rate she's going to get old Spanish on top of old French, but no big deal, it's day one.
"I suppose uncle Ned was right about avoiding sci fi, then. Shame. Zed has Latin, and French, from that list. And English, of course."
"I wouldn't go that far. Parents can screen things for conlangs pretty easily, Google is our friend. And Sci Fi produces... worlds to aspire to. That's worth a lot of trouble."
"I like spec fic and did not accidentally learn Elvish." She mutters under her breath a bit. "I think I have it down, though I'm glad I won't have to learn any more spells around this side effect - anyone have somewhere to be and wanna go first?"
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